OZZON reflections (long)

Raffi Aftandelian raffi at bk.ru
Sat May 27 07:52:06 PDT 2006


Dear fellow space-holders,

Today's story goes back a few years. I recall Chris Corrigan (hi
Chris!)'s words from a thread from the Genuine Contact listserv (and
maybe here) called "the Tao of Marketing" where he elaborated about
how if you want to "sell" OS the best and most logical way of doing
that is by offering an experience of that.

So, it is curious for me, Chris, when you wrote recently about your
doubts of making it to the Holy Grail of working with companies. Yes,
there are many reasons why companies may not be ready for the real
control that OST offers, but I have been holding your wisdom for a few
years now. And I admit, I have still rather FIV+ (flatland
immunodeficiency virus positive) thinking to want to sell OST...

The other pre-piece to this story is that in the course of informing
people around Moscow about the upcoming OSonOS, I have visited many
professional clubs for corporate trainers, HR-managers, and
consultants. And it has been almost painful to sit through these
meetings where experience non-sharing is called experience sharing.
Not much os.

Hence the idea of OZZON, which had its first meeting today.

OZZON, a quirky abbreviation for "Zona orgzdovorya" (Zone for
organizational health) in Russian, is my
project aimed at bringing organizational health into the mainstream in
Moscow. Like most ideas that I imagine will work it is very obvious:
if we want to talk about organizational health, people need to have an
experience of it. And to have a holistic experience of it, you need to
bring together all those who are part of the system/organism. OZZON, then, is a
regular monthly space inviting corporate trainers, consultants, coaches, HR-managers,
and anyone else with the passion for this topic to exchange experience
of organizational health.

Today was a planning meeting, to see what should OZZON be. It was
advertised widely, many people said they wanted to come. And at the
time the bells rang, we had a grand total of 4 (four)! Did anyone
promise that it would be simple to live according to "Whoever
comes..."? Nope, didn't read that anywhere.

I had put a lot of love and energy in organizing it. Too much perhaps?
And along the way unexpected and pleasant pieces of support. One
trainer helped me conceive this graphical invitation

http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/6164/1604/1600/proekt%20ozzon.jpg

We had one HR-manager, two corporate trainers, and a representative
from an online HR-resource (a subsidiary of a local equivalent of
Berrett-Koehler books). The online resource was very keen on
advertising the event and intend on putting up a mini-report
post-event.

I experimented for the first time in participating while facilitating.
It was great to experiment in a low risk setting and see that mixing
those roles does warp the space.

Before formally opening the space, I gave a little introduction about
myself and qualified my opening by explaining that the language I
intend to use will not only be adult language, but also childlike and
adolescent language: organizational health and balance, I explained,
is too serious a matter to leave only to adults. I forgot to say,
however, that organizational health is so simple that really it's
child play.

Then, I explained that the serious part of my presentation would begin
now: To give a definition of organizational health we need to first
answer the question, "Why am I on planet Earth?"- a question we all
answer, I imagine, whether or not we are philosophical. My best guess
at age 36 is: "To have a ball (lots of fun), learn hard, and be of
use." If we take that as a given, then, my the job of organizations be
to serve that purpose? If so, might the definition of organizational
health and balance be- the ongoing experience of high play and high
learning in organizations?. We did a fill-in-the-blank hangman game to guess "high play
and high learning". The winner got a plastic crab.

Then I said the nonserious part of the presentation would begin:
Went through Marv Weisbord and Sandra Janoff's learning curve- how
society solves problems. (and explained, that while I think Marv and
Sandra are great fun people, Future Search is kind of like creating a
Harley Davidson and Bentley hybrid, creating a bicycle out of the
hybrid, adding solar-cells, make it run on gas. And then exclaiming
that it works it works in wonder.) Then went on to Ken's 4 Quadrants
and how we confuse the Internet with progress. And that lower-left
quadrant is having a very hard time playing catch-up with lower-right.
And that we probably can't talk of rapid progress right now, but rather that
we are falling behind, going backward at a frightening pace. And that
the job of orghealth is to reinhabit the lower-left.

I also talked about how with the rise of lgit's in the late 80's a
first tombstone was placed to the still lucrative forms of non-work
(work=fun; so, as a Jo Toepfer says, "if it ain't fun, it ain't
work.") called training and consulting.

After which I opened the space-
And the group of four generated some 10 topics which they sat and
discussed leisurely without taking a break for 4 hours-

They discussed-
- the application of western HR technologies in Russian and their
successful adaptation

- developing a culture of responsibility

- which trainings work
- staff evaluation
- and many other things.

I think some of the discussion highlights for me were:]

1. A discussion on responsibility. I have been wondering what
responsibility is recently. And here we found ourselves talking about
the apparent culture of irresponsibility in Russian companies. I offerred that we
break this down. We got: "indifference, what if-ness, carelessness,
dependency," and a number of other juicy qualities.

This got me thinking that the first OZZON meeting should have the
topic:

Indifference, carelessness, freebe-ism, dependency- impeccable irresponsibility as
the unique path of Russian companies to responsibility: issues and
opportunities"

It also got me thinking about how much of our discussion focused on
what's wrong with Russian business. It was pleasant to see eyes light
up when I suggested maybe we'd get a lot more information if we asked
ourselves, "What's right with Russian business?", growing that
appreciative core (I'm looking forward to the Moscow AI learning
workshop here in June).

2. Service- i have been wondering what service is recently. And
OZZON's first meeting gave an answer= it's the ability to say thank
you to Spirit and creation for the opportunity to share my original
medicine with a much smaller group than I expected.



We all learned today, we all enjoyed ourselves. And we were all
stretched beyond our comfort zone.

Here are some flickr highlights.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/81882819@N00/154163370/

http://www.flickr.com/photos/81882819@N00/154163394/

reflection of four org'l archetypes in closing
http://www.flickr.com/photos/81882819@N00/154163157/

participants
http://www.flickr.com/photos/81882819@N00/154163086/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/81882819@N00/154162833/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/81882819@N00/154162770/

Hats off to Spirit!

In iodized granularity,
raffi

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