Democracy and Open Space

[Chris Corrigan]

Robert:

This --
>  The question then comes "What is the unique contribution of this work
to
>  our
>  agreed reason for meeting?"  so that the priceless gems are there for
all
>  to see
>  and use.   The next step is devising ways and means so that these
gems
>  can be
>  used to develop the "thinking/action/recommendations etc" to a level
>  beyond what
>  any of the individual pieces have achieved while at the same time
>  allowing
>  everyone to agreed that this is the best we can do now.
>

And this --

>  In the proceedings "We agreed that..........." has more power (for
me)
>  than the
>  fact that "the ........ received the most votes".

...are priceless.

I have always sort of steered away from Open Space as a way of actually
making decisions, mostly because I couldn't see how it might happen, but
this conversation is clarifying some things for me and opening some
doors.

So, I might ask, is it too far to go to say that in the heart of what
you are saying we can use the process to actually get some decisions?
How would we do that?  What might be the benefits and pitfalls?

The cases where I have been confronted with possible decisions include
such democratic exercises as land use planning, direction setting and
choices about options.  Some of these exercises are more closed than
others.  For instance once a woman asked me if we could use Open Space
to choose between three options for situating a parking lot.  All of
these options had been articulated and assessed through a planning
process that involved everyone involved, and now it was time to decide.
I suggested that maybe this was her responsibility, now knowing the risk
and benefits of each option, and that OST would have been more useful
for developing the options.  I didn't see how it could work in that
context.  So that was too closed a situation.

But maybe for planning exercises like, planning the commercial uses of a
street for example, could we use OST to hash over options and have
people make decisions that could be incorporated into the planning and
zoning decisions.  It's almost like decisions on values.  And if we
involve the people who will actually be using the street, then we get
the right people there...

Again, I might be over my head, past my "best before" date, but what do
others think?

At any rate, I love the language of "we agree that" which to me outlines
the emergent agreements and collaborations that come out of an OST
meeting.

Thanks,

Chris

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