Open Space -- A Quiet Revolution

[Brendan McKeague]

Thanks for the prompt Harrison - I've just had an experience that 
confirms the paradox...

On the first half of this week, I was facilitating an Open Space 
Facilitators Co-Learning workshop at one of the local universities - 
about a dozen professional development/teaching & learning/training 
staff from within the university system - who had all signed up to 
come - most with some responsiblity for staff and organisational 
development - and the program went a bit flat on the second day and 
virtually fizzled out on day three - there could be many explanations 
for this - anxious to get back to work, upcoming start of the 
academic year (in Australia), they already learned what they needed, 
over-tiredness, hot weather and so on....who knows...those who 
remained to the end (six people) were really interested and convinced 
of the potential of OS to be used in their work areas.

I then opened space for two days at the annual 'retreat' for senior 
leaders at a neighbouring university - it was pretty awesome walking 
the circle of 125 academics and administrators (more than half of 
them with PhDs) especially when I knew just how big a 'risk' the 
Executive team and the Organisational and Staff Development  had 
taken in signing up to sponsor  OST.  As we know - when the question 
is right and the invitation appropriate, the right people show up and 
deal with it - and that is exactly what happened...the spirit and the 
levels of engagement were extremely high and, thirty topics and nine 
action plans later, it was declared the best of the four 'retreats' 
they've had so far....I was even offered a job by the Head of 
Psychotherapy who gave high praise to the 'therapeutic properties of 
this process' evidenced by, in his words, 'the positively healthy 
dynamics so unexpected in such a meeting of highly disparate interests'....

So - the mystery of the process unfolds yet again....and the profile expands...

Cheers
Brendan

At 02:20 AM 8/02/2007, you wrote:
>Right then and there I knew we were in serious trouble. If Open Space
>somehow caste into question many (most?) of the activities and practices of
>mainstream management, whole careers and reputations were in jeopardy. And
>attempting to sell Open Space could obviously be quite hazardous to your
>health, not unlike selling powerful space heaters to Ice cream factories. If
>somebody actually bought the heater, and it worked - everything would melt.

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