OST second time around

[Koos de Heer]

Dear all,

Many thanks to all that have responded to this thread. I have agreed with 
my sponsor to have a planning meeting a few months from now, so that we 
have a lot of time to prepare next year's meeting and to find out what is 
appropriate. We did not do that last time. So I think I have created an 
opportunity to give more attention to grouding.

Thanks Chris for this insight.

Koos

At 20:33 6-12-2005, you wrote:


>On 12/6/05, PeeJee Bee <<mailto:pjbuys at gmail.com>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>http://www.chriscorrigan.com/parkinglot
>Site: <http://www.chriscorrigan.com>http://www.chriscorrigan.com * * 
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