more givens again

[kerry napuk]

Harrison & co.

I promised myself not to get snookered into this "givens" vortex
again, but, alas, my willpower is weak.

Taking Esther's point that it is easier to put everything on the
table when dealing with community issues, we still cannot deny the
spirit of Open Space, which, let's face it, fundamentally involves
self determination and participatory democracy.

If a sponsor ring fences an issue and eliminates discussion, it
excludes people from considering what might be a very important
burning issue.  Stifling discussion is not the way to build
understanding and acceptance let alone ownership.

When given a rare chance to discuss important issues, our experience
is that participants respect the opportunity and contribute
positively to improve things, because, after all, they are
stakeholders or they wouldn't be there.  Let's not forget that the
sponsor sets the theme and invites the audience to discuss it, but
that's all they are suppose to do.

If a sponsor has a lot of givens, we question how open they are about
the exercise and whether or not we want to work with them.  So, our
approach is simple: we never discuss givens and they hardly ever
arise.  If a sponsor has a problem, we discuss it with the planning
team.  Our response, invariably is, if you want creativity and
commitment, "trust the process" and "trust your people."  These
should be the only real givens in large group processes.

Regards

Kerry
Open Futures
Edinburgh
www.openfutures.com

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>From  Thu Nov 18 13:29:57 2004
Message-Id: <THU.18.NOV.2004.132957.0800.>
Date: Thu, 18 Nov 2004 13:29:57 -0800
Reply-To: chris at chriscorrigan.com
To: OSLIST <OSLIST at LISTSERV.BOISESTATE.EDU>
From: Chris Corrigan <chris.corrigan at gmail.com>
Subject: Re: Givens -- Again
In-Reply-To: <002301c4cd90$3036a9d0$6501a8c0 at harrison>
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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

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