Nescience, Nichtwissen and Open Space

Larry Peterson larry at spiritedorg.com
Mon Jan 17 11:09:49 PST 2005


Harrison:  I also found your new article quite helpful for learning and
framing.  I especially liked the image of "sitting the question" and
taking it into "possibility space".  "Sitting the Question" is a good
metaphor for what I seem to do with clients as we explore context and
theme in developing the initiation to an OST event.  The conversation
that leads to a powerful question, one that enables a possibility space
that "fits" the organization and its movement, is critically important.
It usually takes one "overnight" and maybe more for the planning group
to reflect on their context and discover/discern a question that is and
feels powerful - that suggests the direction for the possibility
exploration in Open Space.   Possibility Space is much more powerful
than Bridges "neutral zone" and does fit with the Grief Work metaphor.
The letting go of previous learning (de-schooling/learning) that is
often required to embrace possibilities beyond where we have been
before.  Being, albeit briefly, an Electrical Engineer somewhere in my
past life, I really like the metaphor and reality that the space is
"negatively charged" creating the potential or possibility for the
positively charged action of leadership to move to the centre and begin
the release of energy - that does often feel magical!

I recently interviewed the senior government sponsor of the 14 (1 day)
OST events that I with some colleagues (Sharon King, Diane Gibeault, Meg
Salter, Kim Martens and Judy Gast) were involved with the sponsor in
designing and facilitating.  They happened over less than a three week
period and I was involved in 9 of them.  It was the "same" design and
"question" in 14 regional locations, with some voting fixes in
convergence, and the events involved almost 3800 people in total.
Participants saw possibilities in terms of health care integration and
produced planning results when they returned to their back home regions,
exceeding all government expectations. It has also created a critical
mass of conversation around the Province, it seems.   I just led a
follow-up two day event with some volunteers from each of the 14 events,
with two OST conversations - different questions.  The energy and
possibilities were further enhanced.  Given the pace and set up, I was
anxious.  But, on day one we seemed to have found the "question",
although not all understood or connected to it at the beginning.
However, some participants jumped to enter into the possibility space
even before I completed the opening and the positive energy began to
flow again.

Thanks for naming the knowledge in another useful way.

Larry

Larry Peterson
Associates in Transformation
Toronto, ON, Canada
416.653.4829

 <mailto:larry at spiritedorg.com> larry at spiritedorg.com
 <http://www.spiritedorg.com> www.spiritedorg.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
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.openspacetech.org/pipermail/oslist-openspacetech.org/attachments/20050117/c5831666/attachment-0016.htm>


More information about the OSList mailing list