Totally present absolutely invisible

Harrison Owen hhowen at verizon.net
Fri Jun 4 05:01:06 PDT 2010


Chris – Great story. But I am not sure it tells us anything about the
failure of the process (OS), if only because the process (sit in a circle
)
was never followed. Now the facilitator ----

 

ho

 

Harrison Owen

7808 River Falls Dr.

Potomac, MD 20854

USA

Phone 301-365-2093

www.openspaceworld.com

www.ho-image.com (Personal Website)

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From: OSLIST [mailto:OSLIST at LISTSERV.BOISESTATE.EDU] On Behalf Of Chris
Corrigan
Sent: Thursday, June 03, 2010 5:46 PM
To: OSLIST at LISTSERV.BOISESTATE.EDU
Subject: Re: Totally present absolutely invisible

 

Colleagues:

 

The worst Open Space I ever saw was more than 12 years ago, in the days
before I was really opening space.  I was working for the Canadian federal
government at the time leading consultation processes with third party
stakeholders on the treaty making process between governments and First
Nations.  One of our advisory committees wanted to try a different sort of
community meeting and my provincial colleague suggested open space.  They
thought they might give it a go and so we brought in a well known
facilitator of Open Space within the federal government to lead the session
(it was NOT Bob Chartier, for those who are wondering).  

 

This woman arrived without really knowing anything about what we were doing
and I remember on the drive up to our venue I had an uneasy sense of things.
She hadn't been involved in the invitation or the preparation and was
talking a lot about herself.  

 

The theme of the gathering was "What does treaty making mean for you?"  We
wanted to get perspectives from people, bring them into the work of making
treaties and make it personal.  I though it was a good question.

 

When we got to the venue -  a community centre gym - the room was set up
with many rows of chairs in a semi-circle.  When I asked our guest if she
wanted the chairs in a circle, she said not to bother.  About 100 people
arrived for the evening which was a good turn out.  She began by standing at
the front of the rows of chairs, saying nothing about the invitation and
describing the process, with no life in her voice and with no enthusiasm at
all.  I was shocked.  And then I was surprised.  Because it turns out that
most of the people thought that the question we had asked was a rhetorical
question and that  they were there to find out the answer.  And they thought
that the government people would be giving them the answer.  Uh oh.

 

Our guest of honour flailed badly with the increasingly angry comments from
the crowd, and she was having a hard time getting any space opened at all.
When the comments go too content heavy, I stepped in and took the mic,
shaking like a leaf, explained what we were trying to do and invited people
to post topics.  Three quarters of the room left right there, with a lot of
noise and bluster.  About 25 people stayed behind and actually convened a
few sessions and had some great conversations.  So, yes the process worked,
but it was an abject failure from my perspective, the perspective of the
client.  I never saw or spoke to the facilitator again so I have no idea how
it was from her perspective.

 

In retrospect, I learned a ton about running OST meetings from that one
experience.  I learned that the invitation is critical, that the room setup
matters and that the facilitation has to be enthusiastic, energetic and
possibility based.  As a facilitator it helps a lot if you embody the
invitation.  It also helps a lot if you know something about what you are
talking about.  

 

In the end, the advisory group gave us some really generous feedback.  At
our next meeting we all acknowledged that the process had failed to do what
we wanted it to do, and that it may even have set back our efforts to engage
the community in our work.  But one of the advisory committee members summed
up the group's feelings by saying something along the lines of: "we really
appreciate you trying to do something different.  You're not like the usual
government people we have come in here.  You;re willing to try new and
challenging things to make this work, and although we screwed this one up,
thanks for trying."

 

Cheers,

 

Chris

 

 

----
Chris Corrigan
chris at chriscorrigan.com
http://www.chriscorrigan.com

 

On 2010-06-03, at 1:49 PM, Phelim McDermott wrote:





I'm Interested in this wonderful skill:

Being totally present and absolutely invisible

 

 

It is what I aspire to every time I faciltate orvdirect a show and relates
very closely to stage presence as It is what I have worked with puppeteers
in training to do over the years. (it is especially useful dramatically when
you want to disappear and appear as if from nowhere onstage at just the
right time. A skill some of the best facilitators have or so I have heard!  

 

There is another aspect about this I am interested in which for me relates
to what some cultures would call the dreaming aspects of reality.

 

So here's the question: Is it possible to be in this state of
presence/invisibilty whilst on another space in the room? Or outside the
room? Or whilst asleep? 

 

So can one be totally present, absolutely invisible and take a nap? 

 

Phelim  

Sent from my iPhone


On 3 Jun 2010, at 21:23, Harrison Owen <hhowen at verizon.net> wrote:

Michael – it would be really interesting to hear some actual situations
where what you are describing is true. I’ve never seen it, but I did hear of
one. It happened in South Africa where a local consultant took Open Space as
a license for absence. He literally left for most of the day. As it turned
out (as I heard from one of the participants) the group really didn’t miss
him, and was basically sorry to see him return. And that same participant
was sure that there had to be something more than he had seen. As a
consequence he came to a “training program” (back in the days when I used to
do something like that J) and subsequently opened space all over the place.
So I guess there was a happy ending after a rocky start. Or something. 

 

But you really put your finger on something – “active listening” – which is
not so much about doing anything but rather Being intensely.  Definitely
hard to describe but my best shot is the enigmatic phrase – Being totally
present and absolutely invisible. In my experience this is a matter of
intention and practice. And the best part is that it is all definitely
rewarding, not only in terms of facilitating Open Space, but equally in
terms of self understanding and personal presence. It feels good.

 

Harrison

 

Harrison Owen

7808 River Falls Dr.

Potomac, MD 20854

USA

Phone 301-365-2093

www.openspaceworld.com <http://www.openspaceworld.com/> 

www.ho-image.com <http://www.ho-image.com/>  (Personal Website)

To subscribe, unsubscribe, change your options, view the archives of
oslist at listserv.boisestate.edu:

http://listserv.boisestate.edu/archives/oslist.html

 

From: OSLIST [mailto:OSLIST at LISTSERV.BOISESTATE.EDU] On Behalf Of Michael
Herman
Sent: Thursday, June 03, 2010 2:41 PM
To: OSLIST at LISTSERV.BOISESTATE.EDU
Subject: Re: On "Failure"

 

i have a teacher who likes to put little reminders on pencils and pass them
around.  one of my favorite pencils says:  "really easy is often quite
difficult."  

i think this is true of open space.  i've seen a number of situations where
the facilitator or the process itself was assumed to be a bit of magic, so
nobody needed to do much else to make it happen.  this makes all kinds of
large and small "failures" possible -- all owing to some lapses in the
quality of attention, awareness, relationship.

somebody once told me that carl rogers (some sort of psychologist, i think)
used to listen so intently that he would often break out in a sweat -- just
listening to someone.  sometimes i think open space takes this sort of
quality or intensity of attention... or maybe of awareness.  that the heart
is this active, even if the body is apparently doing nothing.  like when so
many muscles are engaged in walking a balance beam, or timing a jump.
actively pulsing, checking, on and off, holding and releasing, inviting and
reporting.  

i'd guess a fair number of "failures" have their roots in forgetting that os
is this sort of active practice, even if a lot of the action is not
outwardly visible or dramatic or difficult.  weirdenss seems to flow from
gaps in clarity, in attention, in awareness, in relationship.  not so much,
i think, from gaps in actual outer logistics.  

m





--

Michael Herman
Michael Herman Associates

http://www.michaelherman.com <http://www.michaelherman.com/> 
http://www.ronanparktrail.com <http://www.ronanparktrail.com/> 
http://www.chicagoconservationcorps.org
<http://www.chicagoconservationcorps.org/> 
http://www.openspaceworld.org <http://www.openspaceworld.org/> 

312-280-7838 (mobile)




On Thu, Jun 3, 2010 at 12:07 PM, VISUELLE PROTOKOLLE
<mail at visuelle-protokolle.de> wrote:

Harrison and all,

Another example of an OS that went terribly wrong:

It was a factory producing printing machines, both in Eastern and western
Germany, and the participants were mixed from both areas. We had the o.k.
from the four directors, to whom we had illustrated what to expect, and a
final conference after the OS was already determined. One of the directors,
the one who seemed to be the most employee-oriented, was choosen to say some
words at the end of the OS. Our partner in the company was a young man from
HR, very active, with good contacts to the directors. So he insisted that he
should brief the director what to say at the end of OS.

Everything went fine. The groups worked with joy and enthusiasm. We
accompanied the whole OS with 3 people visualizing everything, and that was
a big success, because  everybody could see what had happened everywhere.
After we had shown the pictures in a final slideshow, the director stood up
and destroyed everything within 5 minutes. He said that he was disappointed,
had expected other outcomes, and that the managers wood have a hard time to
use some of the results.

That was the end of the project for us, but much worse all the participants
were angry and a big chance was lost for the company.

Of course the mistake was to let the young HR-man brief the director. 

Reinhard

Reinhard Kuchenmüller 
Dr. Marianne Stifel
VISUELLE PROTOKOLLE
Kuchenmüller & Stifel

+39-0566-88 929
www.visuelle-protokolle.de <http://www.visuelle-protokolle.de/>  




Am 03/06/10 18:12 schrieb "Ralph Copleman" unter <rcopleman at comcast.net>:

Harrison and all,

I've had a few that sort of fell flat.

One involved a group concerned about availability of services for senior
citizens across an entire US state.  Two-thirds of the room consisted of
seniors themselves and, frankly, a lot of them ran out of energy about an
hour after lunch.  So they sat around, a number slumping in chairs with eyes
closed.

Another involved an exploration of customer service issues for an airline.
Lots of corporate leaders from the airline present, along with their booking
agents (this pre-dates internet booking sites), frequent flyer customers,
and corporate travel execs who make travel policy for their companies.  A
great mix, actually.  We were set to go from 8:00 a.m to 4:00.  About 2:00,
a group of participants more or less seized control of the meeting somehow
(I wasn't in the room when it occurred) and got everyone to agree to shorten
the meeting by a full hour.  When I returned at 3:00, someone simply
informed me, and asked that I begin the closing circle.  So that's what I
did.  I never found out what actually happened.

Not sure how to think about that last one, since I never found out how it
all developed, but the following one is more like a true failure.

I was asked to convene a two-day open space gathering for about 200 folks
from around the US.  It would be the annual meeting of an association of a
certain type of public health officer (cannot recall the details).  The
whole thing was pretty dead from the outset –– I mean 200 people posting a
total of only 15 sessions for two whole days!?  I found out the theme was
all wrong.  The planning committee chose an idea that turned out to have no
juice for the association's members.  I had spent hours in conference calls
with the leadership group and the planning committee, and they'd assured me
that the idea they chose was at the heart of the challenges facing them and
their organizations.  Turns out that was dead wrong.  Nobody else cared.  I
don't know how I might have seen through this situation ahead of time.

I essentially agree with you, H.  If the conditions are appropriate, it will
work.  But, if the three experiences above teach me anything, it's clear
that stuff can always happens.

Ralph Copleman

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