Givens -- Again

[Chris Corrigan]

I tried for a while to integrate the practice of identifying givens
and developing conversation in the pre-meetings around these things.
The last time I did it, the conversation about the givens became so
large that the whole event was postponed indefinitely.

Since then, there was one case where givens were useful.  I was
working with a child welfare organization to develop strategy in five
specific areas: service delivery model, government relations,
financial resources, human resources and labour relations.
Participants in the meeting (the Board and staff and some key
stakeholders) were invited to convene any topic they wanted to, but if
they wanted their thoughts to make it into the final plan, it need to
be slotted into one of the five categories.  We divided the news wall
into five and people posted their proceedings in the appropriate
"bin."

Only one set of proceedings lay entirely outside of the scope of the
exercise, which was fine for everyone.  It was a conversation that
needed to happen and it did.

For the action planning day, the participants were invited to assign
themselves to one of the five areas of consideration and to review all
of the proceedings in that area and come up with the "go forward"
strategy ideas.  The participants collapsed the categories of human
resources and labour relations together, took flipchart to the four
corners of the room and met for an hour and a half, crafting excellent
strategy in the end.

By lunch we were done.  The participants had talked about their
passions, and the leadership got their strategic plan addressing those
five key areas.

I thought this was a very elegant use of the givens on management's
part.  They DID have outcomes, but wanted to leave the entire process
as open as possible while still asking the participants to help them
focus on these five areas.  It was a lovely balance.  I believe I
suggested the design to them based on something Michael Pannwitz had
contributed to the list.

Other than that, I largely subscribe to the theory that whatever we
give our attention to grows.  I have found the givens naming and
identifying process to be an obstruction to opening and a little
deflating.  For the most part if there are impossible situations, it's
best for people to discover that themselves and either become creative
about working around them, or realize themselves that their efforts
and energy may be better directed in other ways.

Chris

-------------------------
CHRIS CORRIGAN
Consultation - Facilitation
Open Space Technology

Weblog: http://www.chriscorrigan.com/parkinglot
Site: http://www.chriscorrigan.com

*
*
==========================================================
OSLIST at LISTSERV.BOISESTATE.EDU
------------------------------
To subscribe, unsubscribe, change your options,
view the archives of oslist at listserv.boisestate.edu:
http://listserv.boisestate.edu/archives/oslist.html

To learn about OpenSpaceEmailLists and OSLIST FAQs:
http://www.openspaceworld.org/oslist