Summary of a day in OS without Notes

[Phil Culhane]

Thanks to all who supplied thoughts and insights on running an OS without
data-entry by participants throughout the course of the day. As I believe I
mentioned, the laser printer that was assigned to me was ink-free, so the
NEWS area was going to be original notes whether I liked it or not!

In the end, collating was simple enough - it took about 4-5 hours to
transcribe the 10 reports yesterday, and after some time spent "prettying
up" the document, I've just sent it out to the sponsors. I'd be curious to
know - does anyone else include photographs taken during the day and
photos/scans of original participant notes and diagrams in the book of
proceedings? I do - I find it makes the document more dynamic, more lively,
more a work of the group, when they can see themselves working, the agenda
wall, and original notes (this event provided a beautiful stick-man drawing
with an unhappy face - representing "patient" perfectly!).

As an OS practitioner, the event was a joy to watch unfold - the innate
intelligence of groups never stops surprising me. The group of 12 quickly
posted 21 topics, then went to the wall to arrange their day. But, rather
than go off immediately to breakout groups, they did something I've not yet
had a group do - they spent over 25 minutes at the wall. I've learned
through past mistakes that "when it starts is the right time", so watched
them quietly rather than try to hurry them along. The reality was, they were
creating a common vocabulary and establishing their own set of "givens" for
within the event space - in short, having their first session at the agenda
wall! After this session, they moved to a 7 minute demonstration of the
product they were looking to take to market, as several of them hadn't seen
it yet. As they then moved off to their groups, one of the participants
stopped in front of me and said "we've just had our first two sessions,
haven't we?" I smiled and nodded. "I really like the dynamics of this
stuff," he responded. This gentleman works with at my company and is a more
classically trained facilitator, who has been curious about OS for a while.

After two full-group sessions, in which they swam around through all 21
topics iteratively, they decided that there were immediate action tasks that
needed to happen. The group drove out 10 action tasks, then broke into
groups and did three rounds of three tasks in subgroups, with the faster
groups picking up the slack items when they realized one group needed all
three sessions to deal with the one most difficult action task. In short -
they used the principles of OS beautifully - redefining their needs, their
schedule and their tasks as the day unfolded.

I found it particularly interesting the one comment by a participant during
closing circle that he wasn't "sold" on OS yet, but that, while he was
passionate about this initiative on arriving, he was "very, very, very
passionate" about the initiative by the end of the day. He was "sold" on
something!

Thanks again for all your support.

Phil Culhane


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