What have we learned?

Peggy Holman peggy at opencirclecompany.com
Sun Mar 20 11:33:57 PST 2005


Harrison,

Thanks for the question asked in such a loving, powerful way.

Where to begin?  Open Space changed my life.  So many, many lessons.  And
after 11 years of working with it, I still feel I am just at the beginning
of my learning.

Here is a bit of a retrospective of learnings.

The miracle of my first Open Space was to see that it somehow enabled the
needs of the individual and the collective to be met.  That's when I fell in
love with it.

I think my very first practical realization was that as a facilitator, I
wasn't responsible for other people's experiences.  What a revelation!  I
could do my best to create the conditions for the work to be done.  Beyond
that, it was up to the people in the room.

Over the next several years, I found myself talking about my lessons from
Open Space.  Some of them come through your words, Harrison, others through
the experience itself:

Focus on essence -- the form of OS is so elegantly simple that it is a clear
message that what is most important is the core content of whatever the
subject is.  I remember very clearly a conversation with Chris Kloth at
OSonOS IV in Washington, D.C.  He told me that where other change
communities he was a part of spent most of their time focused on questions
and arguments about process, the OS community was always asking about
essence, purpose, the core meaning of whatever it was we were discussing.
Kerry shared recently a comment from a participant: "one day in open space
was the equivalent of two years of hearings." I think this is because when
all you've got to pay attention to is the essence of what's important, well,
it sure makes it easier to let all the nonsense fall by the wayside and
focus on getting something done!

Simplicity of design -- you gifted me/us with a very profound design
question: what is one less thing to do? (and I would add implicit in the
question: and have this be whole and complete?)  While I sometimes joke that
you came to this by being a master of laziness, I think continually doing
less ensures the focus remains on what is most important.  Whether OS or
just life, I find this insight of remarkable power.  Anytime a group is
struggling, with how to do something, this question cuts through the mess.
During my Total Quality days, there was a saying: "remedy first, then deal
with the root cause."  My definition of remedies were they always added more
steps -- made things more complicated.  When the root cause was handled,
100% of the time, it resulted in less steps -- a simpler process.  And it
always required looking at the essence, the purpose as the starting point.

Invitation/Inclusion -- you talk about invite whoever cares about the
subject and welcome the stranger -- whoever comes.  It is such a huge gift
to accept the rightness of whomever and whatever shows up.  It is also at
times a deeply courageous act of of faith.  Through the years I have seen
people healed by the experience of being welcomed, with all of their quirks,
of feeling heard.  I have also seen it as a challenging test of people
uncomfortable with those who are different.  The rewards for those who
usually exclude others and for those who are often excluded are powerful.
People discover compassion in themselves.  Outcasts experience something
often unfamiliar: support.  I remember years ago at OSonOS in Monterey
(1998?), an intense day 2 opening circle where there was this conflicted
discussion of "in group" and "outsiders".  Finally, this woman, I don't know
her name and I never saw her again, got up and walked, or perhaps she flew,
around the circle, inside and out.  Her words were something about belonging
coming from within ourselves.  It shifted everything.

Generosity of Spirit -- you gave OS away, no trademark, copyright,
certification or other hurdles.  You said there is one responsibility -- to
give back what you've learned.  I look at the extraordinary community that
we've created -- one that shares its stories, its fears, triumphs,
insecurities, and questions.  I follow several learning communities.  This
one is my home.  It is in part because of the incredible ethic of sharing we
gift to each other.

Abundance -- there is always enough for what is important.  When I've
underestimated the number of break out sessions for an event, I often joke
that time and space are infinitely expandable and people figure out where
and when to meet.  This is a reminder to me of just how incredibly creative
we are as a species when something is important to us.  People find
remarkable solutions.

These were my first deep lessons from living with Open Space.  I think
somewhere about this time, I began to realize that self-organization and
spirit -- the two ways I talked about OS -- described the same phenomenon in
different language.

And then Spirited Work began.  While I already understood Open Space was way
more than a good meeting method, this quarterly foray into living in Open
Space opened a new and deeper journey of understanding.   It was Anne
Stadler who helped me understand that the Law of Two Feet is about taking
responsibility for what you love.  I now believe this is the essence of Open
Space.  It is the power of this one idea -- to take responsibility for what
you love -- that creates the remarkable invitation to listen to our internal
voice and act on its message.  Now I understand the dynamics behind what I
originally loved about OS: when people take responsibility for what they
love, they discover that others love the same things.  Thus, the needs of
the individual and the collective are met.

At Spirited Work, watching Anne Stadler showing up wherever there was
disonance or conflict, I learned to welcome disturbances.  I came to
understand that they are indicators that something new wants to emerge.  And
it was watching the patterns of behavior at Spirited Work, the complex,
unpredictable human behavior as people experimented with living with spirit
in the material world that I have come to understand what Open Space
governance looks like, what it means to make difficult decisions in Open
Space (way beyond consensus), the role of silence in individual and
collective learning.

I now understand the dynamics of  emergence when consciously embraced.
Emergence is spirit in action -- where people discover that what is most
personal is also universal.  When this happens, what we in the OS community
call Convergence naturally occurs.  People move into coherent individual and
collective action.  This has shaped how I see my work today -- to grow the
capacity for emergence through caring for ourselves, others and the whole in
service to meaningful purpose.  What I see today is that Open Space provides
the essential conditions for emergence without the destructive force that
comes when the disturbances that signal something wanting to emerge are
resisted.  It happens by asking an attractive question that matters (the
theme), inviting all who care to take responsibility for what they love, and
by putting them in a circle to begin and end each day to reflect together.
This pattern enables people to step into what they fear with some glimmer of
hope that something useful will happen.  And, miraculously, time and again,
it does.


Doing the international Practice of Peace conference -- an experience
planned in OS mostly by people from the Spirited Work community -- brought
new lessons. We took the leap that we would have sufficient participation to
fund inviting 10 OS practitioners from conflict areas from around the world.
We not only accomplished that but created an experience that many, many
participants described as life changing.  They describe some variant of
feeling their own capacity to make a difference.  I got a deeply embodied
experience of what Anne Stadler named the Radiant Network -- that innate
knowing that we are all connected, that we are held in some mystical way.
When my heart is open, I feel the connection.  When not, the connection is
still there, it is just hard to believe it exists.  My lesson from PoP is
that what is on the other side of emergence is the coherence of the Radiant
Network.  The most powerful OS events bring people to where they feel a
sense of collective consciousness.  They touch that place of deep, personal
meaning that connects them to others and they have at least a glimmer of
their connection to the whole.


Today, I wonder about how the people I have worked with have been touched by
their time in Open Space.  How have they been changed by the experience?
What has been the effect when OS is used over and over in a community or
organization?  How have people and collectives been changed by the
experience?  That's what I hope we learn through the research questions that
Larry, Chris and I put out.
http://www.openspaceworld.org/network/wiki.cgi?OpenSpaceResearch

I believe that we are growing people's capacity to deal with what they fear,
what they resist by offering them a path to emergence that runs through
powerful, attractive questions.  What are their stories?


Harrison, for all that you are and all that you have done, I thank you.
Finding you and your work was a turning point in my life.

Love,
Peggy


________________________________
Peggy Holman
The Open Circle Company
15347 SE 49th Place
Bellevue, WA  98006
(425) 746-6274

www.opencirclecompany.com


P.S.  It is curious to me that not one of us responded to Billie and
Barbara's request.  Wonder what that says about our community?


----- Original Message -----
From: "Harrison Owen" <hhowen at comcast.net>
To: <OSLIST at LISTSERV.BOISESTATE.EDU>
Sent: Friday, March 18, 2005 3:39 PM
Subject: [OSLIST] What have we learned?


> In 1985 the first Open Space happened in Monterey California. This year
> (in
> case you haven't noticed) is 2005. In short OS has been around for 20
> years
> (not counting the 14,000,000,000 years previously). So what have we
> learned?
>
>
> This is not an idle question. A recent publication of the American
> journal,
> JABS - otherwise known as the "Journal of Applied Behavioral Science"
> offered a "special issue" dealing with Large Group Interventions. All the
> usual suspects appeared, but somehow Open Space was among the missing. One
> of the editors, Barbara Bunker, who is definitely an acquaintance, and I
> would consider a friend - told me that they had advertised for "papers" -
> including the "OS Network" - and nothing showed up. Frankly, I don't
> recall
> seeing anything, but my eyesight is getting pretty cloudy. Anyhow, I feel
> inspired to ask a question - What have we learned?
>
> This is not about making a special edition of JABS. And for sure it is not
> about "sour grapes" because we were not really present in JABS. It is all
> about a genuine question - What have we learned????
>
> My hope would be to inspire/goad/embarrass/encourage each one of you to
> reflect of the past 20 years (or at least that part of the 20 years in
> which
> you participated in the OS community) - and offer up your understanding of
> what you, personally, have learned - about Open Space, yourself in Open
> Space, about organizations in Open Space. And of course anything else you
> choose to share.
>
> I would hope that we would hear from more than the usual suspects. This is
> a
> call to all you Lurkers! Last time I checked there were some 440 folks on
> OSLIST. Not everybody has been heard from! Now would be a good time to
> break
> the silence!!!
>
> And although it is doubtless Politically Incorrect - I suggest a rule for
> our discussion. Pretend this is a closing circle, and we are passing the
> Talking Stick. Take a moment, maybe even a LONG moment (days/weeks) to
> reflect on what you have learned, and then talk as long as you want. And
> not
> just the "good stuff" - the pain and disillusionment as well, if that is
> your story. You have the stick! And please NO COMENTARY! I suggest that we
> just let this roll without response - just like a Closing Circle.
>
> In August we will gather for OSONOS in Halifax. That gathering will be a
> lot
> of things - but one of the things it WILL be is a celebration of 20 years
> in
> Open Space. I can think of no greater birthday present from everybody to
> everybody than a reasoned, articulate description of what we have learned
> in
> the 20 years on the journey.
>
> Harrison
>
> Ps Assuming we have really learned something and manage to give that
> learning expression, there is no doubt in my mind that a copy of our
> Collected Works would be fun to read. ho
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> Harrison Owen
> 7808 River Falls Drive
> Potomac, Maryland   20845
> Phone 301-365-2093
>
> Open Space Training www.openspaceworld.com
> <http://www.openspaceworld.com/>
>
> Open Space Institute www.openspaceworld.org
> Personal website http://mywebpages.comcast.net/hhowen/index.htm
> OSLIST at LISTSERV.BOISESTATE.EDU
> To subscribe, unsubscribe, change your options, view the archives Visit:
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>
>
>
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