Open Space -- A Quiet Revolution

Fri Feb 9 05:22:37 PST 2007

Brendan -- this is marvelous! I have found, without exception, that the most
difficult group to work with when it comes to an OS Training program is the
"professionals." This is particularly true if the whole group is made up of
such professionals. A mixed group (including some regular folks) is
marginally better, and if the "folks" are in the majority, it gets even
better yet. The core problem seems to be that for the professionals it is
inconceivable that anything so simple could do so much. And of course if it
(OS) did do what it seems to do, large questions arise about all the
complicated processes just seem to love.

But what really delights me are the comments from the Psychology Professor,
"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'...."

I am reminded of a situation in Canada when the senior staff of a large
sheltered workshop program for the "developmentally disabled" came to a
training. After the training, the staff returned to their facilities and
resolved to put OS to work in a much larger staff conference on the future
of the program. To save some money they held the gathering in one of their
facilities. Accordingly they set out the chairs in a circle and were
surprised to find that their clients joined the party. To the staff's credit
they just added more chairs and proceeded with the business. 

I am not sure what they thought would happen, but as it turned the clients
took a very active role in the OS, offering a number of sessions and
attending sessions offered by others (surprise!).

Some months after the gathering, I got a letter from the director, who had
attended the training program much against her better judgment :-). She told
me of what happened, and then we on to say that a major impact of the OS had
been a doubling of services for no increase in budget. It seemed that just
about half of the previously offered services were neither wanted not needed
by the clients -- but nobody had ever talk to them before. And of course in
the open space, everybody talked.

More than a year after the original training I got another letter from the
director who said that a totally remarkable thing had occurred. Every year
the program tested its clients in terms of their capacity to cope in the
world. I am not sure how these tests worked, but I guess there are some sort
of standardized versions. Anyhow, when they administered the test they
discovered that for all the clients who had participated in open space there
was the largest increase in test scores anybody had ever seen. The
director's conclusion was that OS was the most effective therapeutic
modality they had ever employed.

With that story in mind, combined with the remarks of your Psychology
professor -- it strikes me that the good professor might find open space a
fruitful field for research. I can just imagine what the results are likely
to be, and then we would really be in trouble!

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 Brendan
McKeague
Sent: Friday, February 09, 2007 12:12 AM
To: OSLIST at LISTSERV.BOISESTATE.EDU
Subject: Re: Open Space -- A Quiet Revolution

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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