recent reflections

Tue Dec 12 12:12:12 PST 2006

Dear friends and colleagues,

I'd like to share some recent news, thoughts, questions on the eve of
returning to the my homeland, the US of A for a sabbatical or break from Russia.

On the one hand there is what is happening in Russia in the overall
sense, which gives every reason to be grim. And the newspapers don't
usually report the good news that happens beneath the radar.

Since the Moscow OS on OS, I have been hearing reports from all kinds
of places about OST successfully being used all over Russia. Some of this was
fruit of the seeds planted in preparation for the August conference,
some of this followed the conference.

By way of example, one young woman who came specially to a four hour Moscow
Mentoring
Circle from St. Petersburg and is now using OST on her own shared
recently that she is now "bring OST to the human resources masses."

In St. Petersburg there are plans to create a club for top business
executives. Format under consideration? OST.

OST is quietly being used with political parties here...

Another woman who attended a Moscow Mentoring Circle is using OST for
her HR manager club. Proceedings of each meeting are posted online.

I have had the privilege recently of twice working with Russia's
second largest cellular phone service provider. And it is absolutely
delicious to see others say what I have been saying for the past two
years: trainings don't work. Ok, ok, that may be a little overstated,
but it's been the general direction of my thinking recently. Plus,
it's refreshing to hear that here in Moscow where trainings as a
easily-recognizable learning format have not been around that long.

This company is looking to shift entirely to non-training formats for staff
development. They intend to focus on
action learning, coaching, Appreciative Inquiry and Open Space
Technology.

My first project with them I suggested they'd be better off if I
coached them in OST and if they ran the OST strategic planning session
for one of their departments themselves. After a one day intensive
mini-training in OST, they ran the OST meeting and couldn't believe
the results. Sound familiar?

The second time I worked with them, I ran a daylong strategic planning session
with about 35 and with less than an hour left invited one of them to
run a mini-OS on OS so that they reflect on the method. I was amazed
that in the space of a day not only was a fair amount of action
planning done, but that even had time to learn about the method.

Today, I had the privilege of running a mini-OST learning workshop for
an HR manager, a corporate coach, a corporate trainer, and an
entrpeneur in the field of innovative learning technologies. Such a
pleasure to see them really getting it and also realizing how much
complexity lies behind the simplicity.

One of them asked an unexpected interesting question about the OST practitioner
community/organization after I mentioned the culture of generosity
which you find among us here: Is there a mainstream and a minority/margin (a
la Arnold Mindell) in the OST practitioner community/organization? My
answer: you betcha! That for all the deliciousness of our
community/organization, we are humans, and there is much work for our
implicit shared values to be explicitly reflected in our relationships
with one another.  For me this remains one of the learning edges of
our community/organization. And I continue to explore how I can be
more of a positive and constructive contributor in this regard.

And before taking off for the US, I'll be running an OST learning
workshop (that's happening this weekend).

So yes, the seeds are sprouting here. Heck, let's not forget that OST
has been here since there was a Soviet Union, it was used here at
least as early as 1989...Time we began witnessing some sprout action.

I don't know when OS on OS XV is happening exactly. Late May? Kiev?
But I know one thing- wouldn't want to give up front row seats. For
the vegetarians who might be coming specially to this conference, you
might consider getting ready now to try one Ukrainian delicacy, salo,
jellied pork fat. While I did make a request that they make soy salo
for me, I am not sure our Ukrainian open space colleagues will be
ready to go there...

It's exciting to continue to follow the conversation(s) on the list.
And I want to share one of my greatest learnings from the Moscow OS on
OS: hearing Birgitt say that maybe she is a slow learner, but she
invited Harrison seven times, seven years in a row to Canada for OST
learning workshops and each time she saw something new, something that
took her deeper.

I saw after the OS on OS that I was asking myself, "What do I really
understand about OS/OST?" Nothing, absolutely nothing. Right now I'm
asking myself the same questions I was asking myself 5 years ago.
Perhaps the only difference is that I am inclined to try to answer
those questions myself and not put the questions immediately on the list.

It's a privilege to be in this community/organization!

from an unseasonably warm Moscow,
raffi

---------------------------------------
Raffi Aftandelian
consultant trainer facilitator essenceworker
essenceworks consulting group
organizational health and balance
Moscow
raffi at essenceworks.ru, raffi at bk.ru
+7 926 377 79 15
www.openspaceworld.ru

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>From  Tue Dec 12 15:24:12 2006
Message-Id: <TUE.12.DEC.2006.152412.0500.>
Date: Tue, 12 Dec 2006 15:24:12 -0500
Reply-To: hhowen at verizon.net
To: OSLIST <OSLIST at LISTSERV.BOISESTATE.EDU>
From: Harrison Owen <hhowen at verizon.net>
Organization: HH Owen and Co.
Subject: Re: Moving to action
In-Reply-To: <C24B0FC4-0616-4241-A393-56DC96FA79E0 at mac.com>
MIME-version: 1.0
Content-type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit

I guess a more appropriate phrase might be something like, "Opening the
Space for Action." I think that is what Chris Corrigan said (by the way,
Chris seems to have gone missing :-( )I have found that it works best the
morning after -- giving everybody a night to sleep on the work already done,
and maybe reflect on what next. And also morning is always a good time to
start something new. But I have also done it at the end of the day, but
there is an energy problem. 

Harrison

Harrison Owen
7808 River Falls Drive
Potomac, Maryland   20854
Phone 301-365-2093
Skype hhowen
Open Space Training www.openspaceworld.com 
Open Space Institute www.openspaceworld.org
Personal website www.ho-image.com 
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-----Original Message-----
From: OSLIST [mailto:OSLIST at LISTSERV.BOISESTATE.EDU] On Behalf Of Phelim
McDermott
Sent: Tuesday, December 12, 2006 7:43 AM
To: OSLIST at LISTSERV.BOISESTATE.EDU
Subject: Moving to action

Hi,

I'm interested ... "opening the space again" implies it got closed..  
or does it open wider? How does this fit in to the scheme.. and when  
do you feel the right time is for this in relation to an approaching  
closing? I've been using stickies but as they've been two day events  
without a next day follow on... it always seems to collide a bit with  
closing as people are still writing reports and have just finished  
their last sessions.

Phelim
On 12 Dec 2006, at 12:28, Harrison Owen wrote:

> Diana -- I presumed that you meant to send your response to OSLIST,  
> but it
> came just to me -- so I took the liberty of forwarding it.
>
> And it may well be that my presumptions also got the better of me  
> in my
> response. Your description of your actions made me think of TOP -- The
> Technology of Participation which ICA created perhaps 40 years ago.  
> It was a
> wonderful thing in its day, but boy, did that facilitator work hard  
> fielding
> ideas and arranging affinity groups. My problem with that approach was
> always that the facilitator seemed to be working much too hard, and  
> at a
> practical level, he or she often essentially defined the affinity  
> groups. If
> there had been no other way to go, I guess it is OK -- but my  
> experience
> said that the group could do all of this by itself.
>
> Voting, whether by computers or sticky dots, is pretty low  
> visibility stuff,
> at least as far as the facilitator is concerned. But it does  
> require a full
> listing of the issues discussed. This is typically available in the
> proceedings which had been printed up over night or simply on the  
> wall where
> the issues are posted. But as I said, I personally prefer opening  
> the space
> again for action. This allows the group to rework the shape of the  
> issues,
> either by combining issues, or by identifying some subset. Of  
> course they
> can also identify some totally new area for action. And in any case  
> the
> "rules" are the usual and the presence of the facilitator can be  
> minimal to
> non-existent. By that time in a gathering the group can usually  
> facilitate
> itself.
>
> Harrison

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