speaking with Lena Marchuk and more

[chris macrae]

Personally I think OS is the most undersold method on the planet- but
then since space and open are as free as air, sold is an odd adjective
to scale this large change method with ( I can think of 95% of
management methods that are in the opposite box of not just oversold but
ruining the globe at the moment - so I feel a bit biassed)

I have listed another 19 most undersold systemic change methods for
sustainable organisation in my gallery:
http://www.valuetrue.com/home/gallery.cfm

This intended to be an open competition; if something ever knocks open
space off the top spot, well I'll be jolly happy to try and spread that
worldwide as fast as possible to

However, there is a different issue which seems to me to do with a
couple of things:
-there are various contextual uses of open space; some may not be as
core to its brilliance as others
-depending on whether all the elements of open space are coordinated, I
believe we could say ability to facilitate open space goes through at
least 12 grades - I really think it would be inadvisable to stage your
first open space on a football ground with 2000 people, even though the
method won't stop you.

Chris Macrae wcbn007 at easynet.co.uk
-----Original Message-----
From: OSLIST [mailto:OSLIST at LISTSERV.BOISESTATE.EDU] On Behalf Of Raffi
Aftandelian
Sent: 30 May 2004 12:45
To: OSLIST at LISTSERV.BOISESTATE.EDU
Subject: Re: speaking with Lena Marchuk and more

Dear Harrison, Lena, and anyone else who has survived (like me!)
scrolling through lots of html (aargh!) in their OSlist message,

Thank you for your replies. For me, there are several ways to reach the
unspeakable, as Tova Averbuch put it. What we as a
group/community/organization want to achieve. It is hard for me to
fathom that OS is THE way.

On a gut level, I know that offering OS to organizations is part of my
path, not the whole path. And my questions, doubts about OS help bring
me to a more nuanced and careful yet passionate and interested place (in
my attitude towards the technology).

I think it is hard to say at this point if OS "works" or doesn't work
here in Russia. While a lot of different people use OS, there isn't yet
a virtual community of Russian-speaking OS'ers. We had a listserv; and
Elena liked my nickname for us: "the silent community". That was because
no one posted. I attribute the non-posting and non-existence of a
Russian-speaking OS community -- real or virtual-- mostly to a lack of
trust overall in the former Soviet Union. It is hard for me not to have
judgement about this, because I have essentially chosen to make Russia
my home. Maybe at some point I'll want to go back to what I call
Bushastan (hence its citizens are Bushastanis, pardon the phrase). So, I
think the verdict is out. One of the values of OS and FS here, I think,
is that these approaches build up that key ingredient between people:
trust.

In terms of OS working (while all the pre-work conditions you describe
happen), that's an important point. Risking making a generalization, I
think that level of thoroughness does not happen. In other words, I work
really hard with clients so that these conditions (doing the preparation
work fully) are observed and it is rare that I feel it has been done
adequately.

But I do think there may be something to OS being "oversold" as a mentor
and colleague put it. I am not sure I can develop the thought. As an
analogy, I think of NLP. Now, I have never been trained in NLP, but I
have read a number of books by its "founders" and have a friend and
colleague who consciously uses NLP as an English teacher and
interpreter. Initially, the NLP crowd poo-poo'd other therapeutic
approaches, specifically humanistic ones. That therapists kept clients
for years dealing with problems that could be solved in a single
session. Now that may have true, but NLP in psychotherapy is not the
answer to everything.

And I am not sure OS is the answer to everything even when the basic
conditions- presence of passion, space "open", etc.- are met. But I am
loving the exploration for now and I do it with heart!

On a side note, is there any way of setting up receiving the OSlist
digest so that I just get text and no html code?

Best,
Raffi
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