Collective Wisdom

[Michael M Pannwitz]

Dear Nigel,
its great to have you on our listserve giving me an opportunity to
reflect on my own practice by offering issues from your practice...and
apparently a bunch of others among us are animated to do the same.
There a couple of points in Doug's mail I want to address:
1  I go to great lengths to avoid getting involved in formulating a
topic for an event that I have been engaged to facilitate. Finding the
topic is a great opportunity for the sponsor and his planning group to
deal with the content, aims, aspirations, hopes, imagined results and
other stuff and to collectively own the event. So, making as much space
as possible for finding their topic is an important preparation not only
for the event itself but also the inviting process....when they invite
others to their topic.
I consciously intervene in the "topic-finding-process" only at one
point: after the planning group has found a topic (I usually suggest its
their first draft of the topic) I ask them to reflect and record who all
needs to attend so that the topic can actually be worked on as
productively as possible. After they have collected groups, names, etc.
I asked them who they think are essential to the meeting. If at that
point it turns out that some of the "essentials" will definitely not
come (like their customers, etc.), I ask them to look at the topic once
more. Sometimes they fiddle with the topic a bit more and other times
they start thinking up strategies for inviting people that need a very
special "invitation".
2  I go to great length not to get involved in the inviting process.
(I do point them to examples of invitations on our website and to the
hints on what one might want to put into invitations about OST).
Actually, when the Planning Group experiences the planning process in
which nothing happens unless they do it themselves they dont even ask
me. Invitations are the business of the sponsor...its an activity that
tells the invitors a lot about their event...after having called or
visited or mailed or bribed or...a bunch of people that they want at the
event they learn a lot about their project...sometimes they find out
that they have chosen an impossible date or that those invited are
interested in inviting others.
I need to be unattached to outcome to find my facilitation role of
"completely present and totally invisible" which is prerequisite for
expanding time and space for selforganisation.

Have a great event!
Greetings from Berlin
mmp

douglas germann wrote:
> Nigel--
> 
> I too prefer the longer sessions.
> 
> One other thought: You might surreptitiously or otherwise invite some of
> the rank and file attenders to talk with you to help you refine your
> topic. The sponsors will probably be willing to give you names of people
> who will likely attend whom you could call....
> 
> 			:- Doug.

Michael M Pannwitz, boscop eg
Draisweg 1, 12209 Berlin, Germany
++49-30-772 8000
mmpanne at boscop.org
www.boscop.org


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