Open Space for small groups

Fri Aug 11 08:21:38 PDT 2006

sounds like a great opportunity, justin, provided that you actually
have some real work to do in this group, something meaningful and
important to accomplish together...

brian bainbridge ran a fantastic little session on this at osonos 4,
justin.  unfortunately that was before we were posting proceedings to
the web. <grin>  but the thing i remember him talking about most is
the vulnerability.  there's no place for anyone to hide.  with such a
small group the links between people are obvious and usually quite
strong.

open space introduces new ways of being connected and this can be a
strain.  not necessarily a bad thing... but i find these small groups
*can* be more intense than the large ones, because of the exposure,
the closeness of the reality that, for instance, these four principles
are obviously true and also perhaps obviously not how we usually treat
each other.  or, for instance, when everyone is to type their own
notes, everyone can now see that the secretary/assistant is telling
the boss to type his/her own notes this time.  all good learning in
the end.

what makes your situation more different...

...and interesting for me, however, is that you are the chair and that
this group, if it has a chair, must also meet with some regularity,
even if not frequently.  at osonos 5, brian bainbridge taught me about
using os in repeating groups.  he used the example of a school gropu
that met for opening and 1-2 breakouts in first day, then following
week held next breakout sessions, then the follwoing week, last 1-2
sessions and a closing for that particular issue/theme.

at each regathering, there was a quick updating of the agenda
postings, some things having been accomplished in teh interim came
down.  new things went up.  this is very much like the way the open
space instititute usa runs board meetings, keeping a 'bin' of issues
for consideration at its meetings.  since the osi meets on the phone,
there can't be any breakouts, but the 'wall' and the responsibility
for those who post issues to lead the conversation, in whatever order
the group chooses to take those issues, is pure open space.

one more story then...

of a project team in a big-corporate environment, particularly renown
for its bureaucracy and hierarchy.  we worked for 2.5 months on this
fuzzy mission, the project leader bobbing and weaving trying to please
her boss iwth the output of every weekly team meeting.  but all the
zigging and zagging was driving the team nuts.  we didn't think we
were gaetting anywhere and didn't know how we'd finish on time, or
even what to finish, even as we were halfway through the project
timeline.

luckily, we managed to get permission to create the agenda in the
meeting, the 6-7 of us, rather than spend 2 days before trying to
wordsmith the agenda to satisfy the boss who might or might not show
up at the meeting.  in the 3-hour meeting, we sat around a big table,
had no formal opening briefing, but had a purpose:  issues and
opportunities for finishing the project on time, on budget, and on
target... whatever that was.  we raised 8 issues as i recall, and then
started chunking through them.  we finish two of them.  but when the
meeting ended, we went back to our cubes, and kept working on the same
8 issues.

next week, the project team leader had the fancy typed agenda to pass
out again, but it looked strangely familiar this time... same 8
issues, which were updated and dutifully discussed, and then the
"meeting" ended and we moved those same discussions outside again.
and so we finished the project, finally working on all the most
important issues, and also working to address them 3 hours per week in
a "meeting" where all could apparently be managed and controlled in
the usual ways.  but for me it was always open space after we got the
real agenda on the wall, just that once.

in this way, even a little shred of open space seemed to make a big
difference, in an otherwise very controlled space.  what made it work
was that everyone, for all kinds of different reasons, wanted the
project to get done in a good way.  so the most important thing to me
is finding this clearly shared purpose, and the rest can work out, in
the meeting, or many meetings, whenever it starts and whenever it's
over.  circle (a group that's known to itself, with or without a table
in the middle of the room),  bulletin board (open agenda), marketplace
(freedom and responsiblity to *move*), and breathing (in/out,
back/forth, pulsation in the direction of accomplishing the purpose).
large or small, still works.

good luck!  michael

On 8/11/06, Erich Kolenaty <e.kolenaty at aon.at> wrote:
>
>
> Joelle and Chris, and all the other openspaceniks,
>
> I can confirm your experience with small groups. I made an OS for 13 some
> months ago for  1 and a half day. There were 4 working sessions, 11 topics
> and a couple of hours for conversion and deepening the found solution. It
> was a lot like an OS for 113, but indeed it is much harder to get out of the
> way. I tried to keep me busy all the time and not to join the people except
> for morning news, evening news and the conversion. It was a great experience
> and I found out once again that the important criteria of success is, that
> all the conditions for successful open spaces (different views, important
> business issue, complexity, urgency etc.) are fullfilled. And in my opinion
> the fully coverage of this conditions is much more important in a small
> group.
>
> Erich
> from lovely Vienna
>
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: Chris Corrigan
> To: OSLIST at LISTSERV.BOISESTATE.EDU
> Sent: Friday, August 11, 2006 8:07 AM
> Subject: Re: [OSLIST] Open Space for small groups
>
> Justin:
>
> The hardest thingto do is get out of the way.  It is much harder for a
> facilitator with a group of five to just leave the room and let them work.
> So I usually volunteer to type notes for them while they work, which lets me
> be with them but stay out of the way.  If I was doing my first again, I
> would take the 175 I was with and not the 8.  It's a lot easier with a
> crowd, ironically.
>
> Chris
>
>
> On 8/10/06, Joelle Lyons Everett <JLEShelton at aol.com> wrote:
> >
> > Justin--
> >
> > I've used Open Space a few times with groups of 5-15--no question that it
> works.  I often find that the group is reluctant to divide, and may cover
> all the topics sequentially, though sometimes even a small group will break
> out into groups of 2 or 3.
> >
> > After a large Open Space conference of around 100 people, I continued
> meeting with a Transition Team that was working with logistics and emotional
> concerns for a move of two work groups into one new building.  This team was
> 8 or 9, and we used a slightly modified Open Space format for our monthly
> 3-4 hour meetings.  This group chose to work together, topics were posted by
> tem members at the start of every meeting, and the talking piece created for
> the large Open Space usually came to the table.  We met in a circle around a
> large conference table, for the reason that there was no possibility, in
> their overcrowded office space, to move out the tables.
> >
> > Because there was a lot of complicated project management to track, I
> generally kept a list of items that would need to be followed up at a later
> meeting.  But it was very rare for an ongoing item to be overlooked when the
> topics were posted.  I also loved that for every action item identified in a
> meeting, someone volunteered to take responsibility for it before the
> meeting ended.
> >
> > I think there are some parallels with the organization you mentioned.  I
> find that after a group has met a few times in Open Space, the principles
> and law become "business as usual" for the group, sometimes quite a
> different working climate.
> >
> > Joelle Everett
> > Sound Resources
> > Shelton, Washington, USA * *
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> --
> CHRIS CORRIGAN
> Consultation - Facilitation
> Open Space Technology
>
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> Site: http://www.chriscorrigan.com
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-- 

Michael Herman
Michael Herman Associates
300 West North Ave #1105
Chicago IL 60610 USA
Phone: 312-280-7838
michael at michaelherman.com

skype: globalchicago

http://www.michaelherman.com
http://www.openspaceworld.org

Inviting Leadership ...getting
the most important things done in
the easiest possible ways.

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