MG Taylor and DesignShop Events - a step on the OS continuum or something completely different?

Tue Nov 16 11:57:18 PST 2004

Thanks for your thoughts, Chris. I've been reading Leaping the Abyss over the past couple
days. Matt Taylor appears to come from a background of architecture, so puts a lot of
emphasis on developing environments in which peak innovative/creative performance is
possible. MG Taylor builds "NavCenters" for institutions.

Borgess: http://navcenter.borgess.com/NavCenter/e_pages/Tour/Tour05.htm (don't these
images look familiar?)
Vanderbilt: http://www.mc.vanderbilt.edu/vcbh/ra_designshop.htm#
Calgary(! - new!): www.matttaylor.com/public/new.htm
Moreover, CGEY (Cap Gemini Ernst & Young) have licensed DesignShop and use it in 17
Accelerated Solutions Environments around the world! That's not small stuff!

Participant quote: "In every instance we are getting done in three days what we would
have historically accomplished in somewhere between six weeks and three months." Sound
familiar?

Don't you hate doing OS's in rooms where the tape doesn't seem to stick to the wall, the
ceiling is too low, the coffee too cold and there's no windows? Don't you wonder what the
ideal Open Space space might look like? Maybe Matt started from the OS tenets, but took a
different step at some point? That said, when CGEY buys in, there (theoretically) must be
something there.

I find it fascinating to think of what an ideal OS environment might look like.

One of my questions about DesignShop is whether the participants own the solution.
Knowledge Workers (scribes) copy/record everything and prepare it - so there's a real
risk that participants won't see their own words in the final product. And knowledge
workers/facilitators can and apparently do become active in discussions - thereby
relieving participants of some of the responsibility.

There is something beautifully simple about OS. I love that. I also remember a
conversation about OS as a halfway technology. Do we simplify it more? Do we add more to
it? So my point of curiosity is, is there anything within DesignShop that would augment
our current way of thinking, our current skills sets, our current tools of the trade?

I would love to attend a 3 day DesignShop event to see what happens....

Hoping there's someone lurking who has a story to share with us all...

Phil Culhane

On Nov 16, Chris Corrigan <chris.corrigan at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> I have no experience with DesignShop or their principles, so I Googled
> it and found their book, Leaping the Abyss is online in its entirety:
>
> <a
href='http://www.foresight.org/SrAssoc/99Gathering/lta_toc.html'>http://www.foresight.org/
SrAssoc/99Gathering/lta_toc.html</a>
>
> I have only taken a cursory glance through some of the chapters, and I
> find myself agreeing with a lot of what they say about chaos,
> complexity, self-organization, emergence, empowerment, collaboration
> and so on.
>
> So far I can't figure out why they don't use Open Space. It does look
> like they use this process to acheive specific outcomes though, like
> cost cutting for example.  And interestingly, participants talk about
> "feeling empowered" as in "getting people to feel empowered" but none
> of them have used the language I have heard in OST:  "I am empowered."
>
> Here are the DesignShop axioms:
>
>     1. The future is rational only in hindsight.
>     2. You can't get there from here but you can get here from there.
>     3. Discovering you don't know something is the first step to knowing it.
>     4. Everything someone tells you is true: they are reporting their
> experience of reality.
>     5. To argue with someone else's experience is a waste of time.
>     6. To add someone else's experience to your experience--to create
> a new experience--is possibly valuable.
>     7. You understand the instructions only after you have assembled
> the red wagon.
>     8. Everyone in this room has the answer. The purpose of this
> intense experience is to stimulate one, several, or all of us to
> extract and remember what we already know.
>     9. Creativity is the elimination of options.
>     10. If you can't have fun with the problem, you will never solve it.
>     11. The only valid test of an idea, concept or theory is what it
> enables you to do.
>     12. In every adverse condition there are hundreds of possible solutions.
>     13. You fail until you succeed.
>     14. Nothing fails like success.
>
> Again...cute but not much to quibble with, much like our own four
> principles and one law.  So I wonder why they use all the bells and
> whistles, and what that does for a client organization?  Is it about
> Harrison's observation that more stuff justifies the price tag, or is
> there something else...the illusion or reality of control that makes
> people comfortable with a DesignShop event?
>
> I'm musing openly, but I'm genuinely curious.  It seems that OST and
> DesignShop start from the same basic field and exit from opposite
> gates.   What's going on here?  Anyone experienced both processes and
> care to comment?
>
> Chris
>
>
> -------------------------
> CHRIS CORRIGAN
> Consultation - Facilitation
> Open Space Technology
>
> Weblog: <a
href='http://www.chriscorrigan.com/parkinglot'>http://www.chriscorrigan.com/parkinglot</a>
> Site: <a href='http://www.chriscorrigan.com'>http://www.chriscorrigan.com</a>
>
> *
> *
> ==========================================================
> OSLIST at LISTSERV.BOISESTATE.EDU
> ------------------------------
> To subscribe, unsubscribe, change your options,
> view the archives of oslist at listserv.boisestate.edu:
> <a
href='http://listserv.boisestate.edu/archives/oslist.html'>http://listserv.boisestate.edu/
archives/oslist.html</a>
>
> To learn about OpenSpaceEmailLists and OSLIST FAQs:
> <a href='http://www.openspaceworld.org/oslist'>http://www.openspaceworld.org/oslist</a>
>

*
*
==========================================================
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

>From  Tue Nov 16 13:22:31 2004
Message-Id: <TUE.16.NOV.2004.132231.0800.>
Date: Tue, 16 Nov 2004 13:22:31 -0800
Reply-To: chris at chriscorrigan.com
To: OSLIST <OSLIST at LISTSERV.BOISESTATE.EDU>
From: Chris Corrigan <chris.corrigan at gmail.com>
Subject: Re: MG Taylor and DesignShop Events - a step on the OS continuum
 or something completely different?
In-Reply-To: <200411161957.iAGJvISf026489 at webmail1.magma.ca>
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit

Hey there:

A couple of thoughts...

On Tue, 16 Nov 2004 14:57:18 -0500, Phil Culhane <pculhane at magma.ca> wrote:

>
> Don't you hate doing OS's in rooms where the tape doesn't seem to stick to the wall, the
> ceiling is too low, the coffee too cold and there's no windows? Don't you wonder what the
> ideal Open Space space might look like? Maybe Matt started from the OS tenets, but took a
> different step at some point? That said, when CGEY buys in, there (theoretically) must be
> something there.

You would not believe the logsitical nightmares I've seen in my days
doing OST.  Somehow, sometimes though that little bit of extra effort
to make do with we have got sends just the right message to a group of
people.  I'm all for comfy surroundings, but there's something about a
hard chair that drives home the point that if you don't get up
noithing will get done.

Also, I have no doubt that there is something to DesignShop...I just
wonder what it is and how it is different from OST.

There is something to a participant saying that they got more done in
a DesignShop day than they would have in six months, but it's not too
hard to raise the bar on the general strategic planning and
implementation standard.  The real question would be how much MORE
would get done in a three day OST rather than a DesignShop workshop.
Or more to the point, how much LESS would be put on "to do" lists.
How much of what gets done in DesignShop is stuff that really needed
to get done?  In OST, it seems to me, nothing happens unless it has
to, I have yet to run and OST event in which people complained that
they came out with too much or too little work to do.

>
> I find it fascinating to think of what an ideal OS environment might look like.
>
> One of my questions about DesignShop is whether the participants own the solution.
> Knowledge Workers (scribes) copy/record everything and prepare it - so there's a real
> risk that participants won't see their own words in the final product. And knowledge
> workers/facilitators can and apparently do become active in discussions - thereby
> relieving participants of some of the responsibility.
>

I think this might be the point...responsibility.  What does an
organization look like after DesignShop vs after a good juicy OST?  I
note in Chapter 14 in Leaping the Abyss where Matt talks about running
into entrenched structure at the other end of a DesignShop.  For sure
OST runs into this too...and right now some of us are working on a
paper to look at how we might leverage the passion and responsibility
in OST to move forward through the traditional processes of assessing
and implementing outcomes.  I thin the answer lies in supporting the
responsibility of the emergent leaders.

But Matt says "Structure wins every time."  I think that might not be
true.  I think story can trump structure, and action speaks louder
than words.

Anyway, I'm still in the dark about what actually happens in
DesignShop, so perhaps I'll wait for a real story or two to comment
further.

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