OST second time around

[Chris Corrigan]

On 12/6/05, PeeJee Bee <pjbuys at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
> At times, I must admit, I feel 'professional facilitators' of one-off
> events
> (like an Open Space event) think fairly lightly about what will happen
> next
> and what kind of facilitation may be appropriate. It is not in their terms
> of reference, so why bother. Do I see this correctly?
>
>
Peter...you are right of course.  Organizations and communities have a life
long before an event and a life long after the event.  One event does not
create change.

As an OST facilitator (or "walkalong," as I might interpret my German
friends' words) I spend easily 75% of my time with a client preparing the
ground for an Open Space event and getting very clear about how action is to
be supported.  The process is not magic...what makes it sustainable is the
practice before, during and after the event.  If a leader can work with
participants and members of the organization or community to develop
practices that support Open Space, then the results that one experiences in
an event such as emergent leadership, passion and responsibility, deep
engagement and so on, can be supported moving forward.  It is then that the
people in the organization become learners of practice and practitioners of
their learning.

Open Space is powerful often because it challenges traditional notions of
control, management and leadership.  People get excited because they see
what happens when we do things a little differently.  But with no sense of
how all of this gets grounded into the life of the organization and
community, there is no harvest of the benefits, and no tendency towards
change.

Michael Herman and I have called this part of working in Open Space
"Grounding" and that represents a whole set of practices that is about
supporting action, aligning work with the natural flow of work in the
organization, and making it all real - "getting it out of the room with
integrity."

Grounding practices complement the other practices we teach and write about:
Opening, Inviting and Holding.  Without grounding, the work stays in the
ether.

I think this is true, by the way, of any short term intervention aimed at
facilitating "change" in the organization.  Working with leaders and
participants in Open Space needs good coaching and needs facilitation that
not only opens and holds space but, in the words of the International
Association of Facilitators, teaches new ways of thinking.  It is for this
reason that I believe we "walkalongs" have to align our use of Open Space as
a process with the practices that we also live in our life.  If we view OS
(or any process) as simply a tool without being in ncomplete alignment with
it, then it doesn't provide the fullest possible potential ground for work.


I am not an advocate of using OST for everything.  I am a strong advocate of
using OST where leadership is willing to practice opening and invitatation,
where they hold and trust people and have a stroing sense of how the work
can be grounded.  If we have those conditions and we have urgency, passion,
complexity and diversity, then we can play marvellously, everytime, with
results that last.

Chris

--

CHRIS CORRIGAN
Consultation - Facilitation
Open Space Technology

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

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