Urgent

[Jon Harvey]

Rheinhard and Marianne

 

My starting point for all of this – is what outcomes / outputs does he seek
from the event he wants you to facilitate? I make a difference between
‘outputs’ – the agreements / words / documents etc that literally come out
of a meeting. And the ‘outcomes’ on the other hand are what impact he wants
the event to have – in other words how does he hope the world of the
participants and the rest of his organisation will be different as a result
of this meeting. Focusing on these two aspects and helping him to make the
connection between them and the process you wish to use – may help to sort
things. It may be (despite all of us on here being advocates for OS) that he
and his board are not yet in the mind space for open space. I think you need
to be true to your principles and not call this an open space if it is not
one. Call it a ‘large interactive conference’ – and then aim to push them a
small amount to be a little more open and a little less controlling than
your clients appear to be.

 

Another famous quote (from George Santayana I believe) is ‘those who forget
the past are condemned to repeat it’. He may feel he knows all the things
that have gone wrong in the past – but how confident is he that everyone
else does. Has everyone learnt from past mistakes (and successes??)

 

And I agree with Kerry (other post) – involving others may well help.
Although this person sounds very resistant to any influence.

 

Or you could buy HR manager ‘Fear of Flying’ by Erica Jong – sounds like he
might need it!!

 

Hope this helps

 

All the best

 

Jon

 

From: OSLIST [mailto:OSLIST at LISTSERV.BOISESTATE.EDU] On Behalf Of VISUELLE
PROTOKOLLE
Sent: 10 June 2008 12:05
To: OSLIST at LISTSERV.BOISESTATE.EDU
Subject: Urgent

 

Dear friends in open space,

I ask for your help in a difficult situation, and need it within 30 hours
from now. So if somebody has an open ear and some time to answer, we would
be very grateful.

The situation: since 10 years i have been accompanying open space sessions
as a visual recorder. Now i have for the first time the chance to use open
space in a project on my own. It is in the frame of a bigger project in a
company of 6000, which deals with values, more customer orientation, more
emotions within the company, as the board declared.  We proposed an open
space session of one day with some 80 representatives of the coworkers,
because we want to make their situation and priorities visible, to bring the
outcomes together afterwards with the aims of the board, to define the
frame, the aims and rules and conditions of a project of about 2 years. We
talked the method over with the representative of the client, a young,
friendly hr-manager. He is curious, but a bit anxious, and under somer
pression from the different board members. 

Now after some afterthoughts he declared, that he does not want an open
space session in pure form, because he thinks the people are not ready for
it. He is eager to end with some results he can control. 

His proposal for the workshop: at the beginning a board member and he will
talk about the bigger project for half an hour, and show a little movie, in
order then to ask the people for ideas and proposals for the definition of
the longer project. He wants to avoid discussions about the mistakes and
problems within the company (which he says he knows already), but to be more
positive. He does not want to call the workshop open space, but “offener
raum”, does not want to use the 4 principles (although some of their
contents), but wants to use the law of two feet. When people are asked to
bring their themes to the wall, he wants to moderate that himself, ask
additional questions about why and how. Then he wants to walk through the
groups and offer some moderation there as well. And in the end he wants to
interview the people offering their outcomes to the plenum again.

We are near the point to step out of the whole project. 

On one hand i remember discussions here in the open space network about
moderations of the os - method, for which we are open, and can also follow
some of the hr-managers ideas and doubts. But it has to stay a trustworthy
method. For that i would like to hear what you can recommend us.

We asked for a meeting with the hr-manager to get clear with his and our
feelings, in order not to mix them with the methods and procedures of the
project, and will have this meeting this week.

The project came to the actual  situation, as i see it, because at the
beginning the hr-manager was very fond of us, proud to present us to the
board, and start the project with us. Then we had two workshops, which ended
with results, which did not fully fulfill his expectations, and he somehow
withdrew his trust. We don’t want to be victims of an infringement (i hope
that is the right expression), of an unclear mixture  of roles and
responsibilities. We want to stay responsible for the methods we use. 

The results of the project so far in our view gave a realistic image of the
situation within the company, which is not very open, but has a good chance
to profit from the project. But it is important not to confuse the starting
phase with the project, and not to expect final results bevor it even
starts. Seen with “open space – eyes” the outcome was the only one that
could have happened.

Now we want to clear our relations with the hr-manager on Thursday and
Friday, and – if we succeed – develop the agenda for the coworkers workshop.
For this second task we hope to get some help from you, as what to propose
to him.

Thank you for every response in advance

reinhard


Reinhard Kuchenmüller
Marianne Stifel

VISUELLE PROTOKOLLE®
Kuchenmüller&Stifel

tel +39-0566-88 929
www.visuelle-protokolle.de






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