A small matter of curiosity

[Chris Kloth]

It has been a while since I have "spoken up" here.  I continue to be a lurker as I spend a fair amount of time on family and other activities.

What has lead to my "showing up" is an interesting question from a client...one we both found as amusing as we did curious.

This past year she began working for the Ohio Coalition On Sexual Assault.  One thing they have done for many years is host an annual conference based on the traditional "expert" workshop model.  As we all know from the lore of open space and direct experience, their evaluations consistently said that the workshops were fine, but the real valuable part of the conference took place between formal sessions.  In addition, there were always many complaints about the food and room conditions...not matter how good or bad the conditions really were.

At her suggestion the organization decided, with considerable trepidation, to hold this year's conference entirely in open space.  The evaluations were outstanding...all of the predictable feedback when people are provided a setting within which to express passion and exercise responsibility.

But here is the curiosity...despite rooms that really were consistently too cold or too hot or too noisy and food that was tasty, but not as portable as it was supposed to be, there were no complaints about food or rooms!  She said that she has been planning and conducting meetings and conferences for many years and has never had so few comments on rooms and food.  

Her questions, which I offered to pass on to the list, is "When people take responsibility for their work and find that they are spending their time doing what they need to do, does that lead to such focus that the rest of the conditions don't matter?  Do people accept responsibility for making choices within the space and, therefore, factor food or room conditions into the decision to stay or use their two feet?  Or was this group an anomaly and this is just one of those moments that happens for reasons we will never know?"

Was denken sie?
Shalom,

Chris Kloth
ChangeWorks of the Heartland
250 South Virginialee Road
Columbus, OH 43209-2052
Phone: +1 614.239.1336
Fax: +1 614.239.1336
E-mail: kloth at got2change.com
URL: www.got2change.com

Think globally, act locally.

*
*
==========================================================
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
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.openspacetech.org/pipermail/oslist-openspacetech.org/attachments/20041026/ce77af25/attachment-0015.htm>