FW: Causing Trouble

Wed Mar 21 08:42:06 PDT 2007

Thanks for this Harrison.

I have invited a team of 15 MBA students to help me with an open space piece
of an upcoming conference. This description will help me offer some clear
context.

Be well.

Tenneson Woolf

The Art of Hosting
tenneson at berkana.org
www.artofhosting.org
801 376 2213

Dyer Institute for Leading Organizational Change
tenneson_woolf at byu.edu
www.dyerinstitute.byu.edu
801 422 2665

-----Original Message-----
From: OSLIST [mailto:OSLIST at LISTSERV.BOISESTATE.EDU] On Behalf Of Harrison
Owen
Sent: Wednesday, March 21, 2007 7:47 AM
To: OSLIST at LISTSERV.BOISESTATE.EDU
Subject: Causing Trouble

A friend of mine who teaches in a business school wrote to tell me that she
was introducing Open Space to her students in a "Change Management" course -
and she asked if I might write something for the occasion. I didn't tell her
what I thought about the oxymoron "change management" - but I did write a
little something (see below). Hopefully we will remain friends.

Harrison

**************************

To My Young Friends -

I understand from my friend Devorah Weiner, your Lecturer in Charge of the
Change Management course, that you are being introduced to Open Space. I
think this is wonderful, but I do have to warn you that this introduction
may entail some serious problems and could in fact be hazardous to your
career as a Manager.

Open Space, as you will discover, is an extraordinarily simple means of
enabling groups of people to deal respectfully and productively with highly
complex issues. In fact, all the people have to do is sit in a circle,
create a bulletin board displaying the issues they choose to address, open a
market place to negotiate matters of time and place of meeting - and then go
to work. There is a facilitator who typically spends 15 minutes getting the
process started, and then essentially disappears. There is no prior warm-up
or training, and during the gathering no form of intervention is required.
The people do it all by themselves.

Over the 20 years that Open Space has been around, groups from 5-2000 have
had the experience well over 100,000 times in 124 countries. These groups
have included Israelis and Palestinians dealing with issues of war and
peace, 1800 street kids in Columbia discussing how to get off the street and
into a job, and 500 Boeing Engineers redesigning the way they make doors for
their airplanes. In every case, the groups met or exceeded expectations, and
more usually just blew all expectations away. 

At this point you might be asking yourself - What's the problem? Here things
become a little interesting. In the first place, everybody knows that you
simply cannot take 2000 people, sit them in a circle and expect anything
other than massive chaos, particularly when the facilitator spends only 15
minutes getting them started and then basically disappears. How could
something so simple do so much? And if it did work, why are we spending so
much effort in other situations?

I am reminded of a luncheon conversation I had several years ago with the
Vice President of ASTD (American Society for Training and Development) who
wanted to know about Open Space, so I told him. Before I had finished he
stopped me to say, "Harrison, I am not doubting what you say - but if what
you say is true 95% of what we are currently doing doesn't need to be done."
After all managers and trainers are supposed to organize and control things
- but if the people can do it all by themselves, where do we fit in?
Interesting question!

Even more interesting (I think) is the deeper question of what is going on
anyhow? Why does Open Space work? Conventional organization and management
theory is pretty clear on the matter. Open Space shouldn't work. In fact it
can't work - but unfortunately it does. So now what?

After 20 years fussing with this anomaly I have been driven to the
conclusion that Open Space works because self-organization works. And it
gets worse. I now strongly suspect that there is no such thing as a NON
self-organizing system, there are only some mildly deluded people who think
they organized it. And when it comes to managerial control, we are really in
trouble. If the theorists are correct, self-organization takes place without
benefit of our wisdom and care. 

Of course, I could be totally wrong which would save a lot of painful
re-thinking, to say nothing of the necessity of finding new careers. But I
have warned you.

In any event, please have fun. I certainly have had fun, even if I didn't
end up where I thought I was going. Should you be interested in a little bit
more about that particular journey as it relates to Open Space, you might
check out http://openspaceworld.com/emergent_order.htm 

Cheers!

Harrison

Harrison Owen
7808 River Falls Drive
Potomac, Maryland   20854
Phone 301-365-2093
Skype hhowen
Open Space Training www.openspaceworld.com <http://www.openspaceworld.com/>

Open Space Institute www.openspaceworld.org
Personal website www.ho-image.com 
OSLIST: To subscribe, unsubscribe, change your options, view the archives
Visit: www.listserv.boisestate.edu/archives/oslist.html
<http://listserv.boisestate.edu/archives/oslist.html> 

*
*
==========================================================
OSLIST at LISTSERV.BOISESTATE.EDU
------------------------------
To subscribe, unsubscribe, change your options,
view the archives of oslist at listserv.boisestate.edu:
http://listserv.boisestate.edu/archives/oslist.html

To learn about OpenSpaceEmailLists and OSLIST FAQs:
http://www.openspaceworld.org/oslist

*
*
==========================================================
OSLIST at LISTSERV.BOISESTATE.EDU
------------------------------
To subscribe, unsubscribe, change your options,
view the archives of oslist at listserv.boisestate.edu:
http://listserv.boisestate.edu/archives/oslist.html

To learn about OpenSpaceEmailLists and OSLIST FAQs:
http://www.openspaceworld.org/oslist