On "Failure" / Invitations
Chris Corrigan
chris.corrigan at gmail.com
Fri Jun 4 09:21:59 PDT 2010
Echoing Michael's approach here. I learned this from him many years
ago, to pay attention to the clarity of the first five minutes.
Where it gets sticky is in the gut check conversation and that can
take time too. But I also want to put in a plug for skillful practice
of invitation. I often work closley with people not only to write an
invite but practice it as well. In other words beyond just hitting the
send button I find that it supports action better if people use their
networks to invite more deeply. When the meeting is over these
networks often become the place where people continue to connect to
execute action.
And as for my OS that failed I will say that the shape sometimes
doesn't matter. I always try to put people in a circle but on the odd
occaision when that hasn't been possible i have still managed to do
fine.
There is rather something in what I can only call the energetic
architecture of open space that needs paying attention to. Even under
dire logistical conditions getting that right seems to make all the
difference.
That architecture consists of things like the real business issue, the
invitation, the authentic desire to let go of control and outcome on
both the client and the facilitators part and something about the
quality of the space. Get those things right and you have the actual
conditions for space to open. Get them wrong and even the most
orthodox execution of the process will fall flat and seem like a
failure. And people will see that as "open space doesn't work."
Chris
-----
CHRIS CORRIGAN
http://www.chriscorrigan.com
Sent from an iPod, typed with thumbs...
On 2010-06-04, at 7:03 AM, Michael Herman <michael at michaelherman.com>
wrote:
> yes. this is exactly my experience, harrison, with some exceptions
> for those cases where the sponsor was already so thought-into the
> scene that they didn't tell a very clear story. but for vast
> majority of cases, my experiene goes like this...
>
> phone rings. caller introduces self and says some version of
> "calling about open space." then proceeds to tick off the
> following... organization name, we've always been [whatever] sort of
> an organization, we've had this success or that success, but now
> things are different. (or now we want them to be different.) (or
> then must be different.) we're up against this, that and/or the
> other obstacles or deadlines or usual custom (we have this same
> meeting every year)... and we want to do something different, so we
> thought open space might do the trick"
>
> then we talk about who's coming, or should be coming; wehre it might
> happen, what's already in place, what sorts of documenting, how
> people already are talking in org with current systems, and then it
> comes back to... now what? and the only thing left is to pen the
> invite. "invitation?" they ask, "what's that?" -- and i always
> point out that they already said it, they just have to write it down
> and tidy it up a bit.
>
> there is a bit of reality/gut checking. there is a bit of fishing
> around on my part to see if they just want to do a different dance
> or if they really want it to rain this time. do they want a
> different meeting or a different organization, but mostly, it's
> those first five sentences they give me on the phone.
>
> i always pay very close attention to those first five sentences.
> not as easy by email. sometimes when it starts that way we're able
> to recreate it quickly on the phone. sometimes it takes a bit of
> swimming upstream.
>
> and maybe this is one of those lapses in attention... if i miss that
> moment of first, true clarity, when that space first opens and
> somebody dares to ask if things couldn't be different... you used to
> talk about that moment of "wondering...", harrison, then it might
> well be that no amount of thinking and such can replace it. that's
> maybe the place where a lapse in the quality of attention, in those
> first lines and first few conversations, when client and i are still
> new to each other, where maybe things get more or less lined up for
> success or failure.
>
> m
>
>
>
> --
>
> Michael Herman
> Michael Herman Associates
>
> http://www.michaelherman.com
> http://www.ronanparktrail.com
> http://www.chicagoconservationcorps.org
> http://www.openspaceworld.org
>
> 312-280-7838 (mobile)
>
>
> On Fri, Jun 4, 2010 at 8:38 AM, Harrison Owen <hhowen at verizon.net>
> wrote:
> One of the themes that seems to be surfacing here is the whole
> subject of Invitations. The Invitation (theme) is definitely
> important as it sets the raison d’être and frame for the
> gathering. I know that some people spend terrific amounts of time an
> d effort crafting that invitation – but my experience has taken me i
> n a different direction. In fact I have found that the effectiveness
> of the Invitation is (oddly) inversely proportional to time/effort
> expended. The key, I think is the necessity for a “real business iss
> ue” as a first condition for a functional Open Space. And a real bus
> iness issue (no matter how you define business) is something that hi
> ts you right in the face. You don’t have to think about it very much
> , and in fact it is pretty hard to think about anything else. It is
> also usually true that the folks in the organization (those who migh
> t care) have already named it. That name might be something less tha
> n elegant and seemingly lacking in precision as an outsider might se
> e it – but for those in the know, the people who care (exactly the r
> ight people for the Open Space) – they will instantaneously recogniz
> e “it.” Some years ago I received a call about doing an Open
> Space. After some initial, rather generalized conversation, the pers
> on on the other end of the line said in some deep pain, “Our system
> is broke in just about every way a system can be broken and everybod
> y knows it.” As it happened that system (business) resided in the st
> ate of Arizona – and there was the theme and invitation. “Fixing
> Arizona: Issues and Opportunities.” There was no reason to give all
> the details, motivational encouragement, pleas for attendance. Every
> body who cared already knew.
>
>
>
> Actually when you think about it, it is probably true that if you
> have to spend a lot of effort developing and clarifying the focal
> issue the chances are you don’t have a “real business issue.”
> That being the case, doing an Open Space may not be the appropriate
> way to go. Without the passion, focus, and caring not too much is li
> kely to happen. I guess that is not too surprising as without passio
> n, focus, and caring not too much happens in any other part of life
> either.
>
>
>
> Harrison
>
>
>
> Harrison Owen
>
> 7808 River Falls Dr.
>
> Potomac, MD 20854
>
> USA
>
> Phone 301-365-2093
>
> www.openspaceworld.com
>
> 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 5:50 PM
> To: OSLIST at LISTSERV.BOISESTATE.EDU
> Subject: Re: On "Failure"
>
>
>
> there are some situations that come to mind, harrison, but is sort
> of reminds me of that time when louise mitran brought all the
> drumming gear to one our trainings at the carleton. she took a
> group out in one session and challenged them to play chaos. they
> really had a heck of time doing it, sustaining it. for sure there
> were moments of discord and a lot of messiness, but the driving
> force underneath it all was the inclination, some sort collectively
> mutual invitation, to entrain with each other... and turn it into
> music. so i was thinking not so much about any 'grand failures' but
> more those moments of confusion, facilitator choice points, apparent
> chaos, but pretty much i they always seem to resolve again. moral
> of the story might be, when you find yourself under water, go with
> the flow, stay in relationship, let the river take you where it's
> choosing, try not to get stuck and hold your breath... you'll likely
> have another chance for opening and fresh air, soon enough, even if
> not exactly soon as you want or expect.
>
> that said, here are some of the situations that came to mind...
>
> a buddy of mine called in sick the day before an event, so i walked
> in to open space with no experience with the group. the managers
> had written the invitation, and invited 100 folks to come work on
> the issues that made their stomachs churn, hands sweat, or kept them
> up at night worrying. the were working from a language they'd
> developed around "adaptive challenges" based on a book they'd read
> together. when the issues all went up, the managers, who had their
> own list of issues, looked at the wall, they were astounded to see
> that the group had covered all of the mgrs issues. mission
> accomplished, or so it would seem. next day, however, morning news
> sort of blew up because all the lower level folks were feeling a bit
> disheartened, thought they'd failed miserably, because they hadn't
> found a single issue that really scared them. turns out what was
> freaking the mgrs out was just the everyday challenge to folks down
> the hierarchy. the disheartening got turned more confusing when
> some of the younger managers, who were very hot for this new
> language they'd come up with from this book, tried hard to impose a
> "training" in the right way to talk about these things. made for a
> long morning news and then required the miracle of "the group
> catching up" to the schedule... but none of that is particularly
> remarkable. in the end, all the issues that mattered got discussed,
> documented, and they made a good run at tackling the various things
> that were identified for doing post-meeting.
>
> so is this even a failure? could it have been if i'd made some
> different choicse along the way? maybe, maybe not. depends on the
> definitions, i think. certainly it was a deviation from the story
> told in the user's guide. but we recovered. and i think that's
> what happens in every, or almost every, case.
>
> some of the recoveries happen before the event. the client dodges
> the real issue and writes an invitation that says "come to an open
> space meeting." well, that's not much of a theme, unless it's an
> osonos. so we fix that, go deeper, dare to invite the real thing
> and get on with it.
>
> then they want to have three short keynoters to open. well maybe we
> talk them out of that, maybe we don't. once we had two of three
> keynoters cancel. so one guy talked for 20 mins instead of his
> allotted 10. circle was 200, statewide group, very diverse, never
> worked together. big issue. but this guy was more readily
> associated and more active in one side of the story. it set up a
> sort of competition because some felt heard and addressed in teh
> opening, but others thought they'd been put in second place. i
> motioned to the sponsor to pull the plug. he went out and put an
> arm around the guy, thanked him and said "let's get started". i
> walked in, past the podium he'd been standing at. with one hand, i
> tipped it over, laid it down. by the time i got back around to that
> point of th circle, interns had carried it off. but the damage was
> done. later that morning, one of two key sponsors comes to me and
> says "fix it. my people are pissed." she happens to be the one
> who's got to sign my check. i tell her honestly, "now can do. it's
> in their hands now." on the second day, it started to be dealt iwth
> directly, our friend ted ernst raised an issue that began to put the
> two 'sides' together. we came up with tons of good stuff, over 2.5
> days, but i think it took another couple of annual repetitions of
> this first event before everybody really felt like they were on the
> same side. didn't help, probably, that one sponsor was a
> foundation, funding some and not others. but that's the messiness
> we work in. i'm not sure that co-sponsor's view of the thing ever
> improved, though she did take a lead role in convening after-event
> meetings. a city-wide coalition came out of those meetings and is
> now active and very successful 9 years later.
>
> then there is the client who -- after sprinkling a day of open space
> sessions into a week of meetings, 150 top people from around the
> world, fortune 150 company, all the c-folks there -- came to me, as
> the proceedings were just finished being printed, and said "the ceo
> says we can't distribute these. there's no time. he hasn't read
> them. etc." i pushed hard for a conversation with the ceo and got a
> very few minutes, in which i was able to convince notice that he was
> trying to stop them from giving out notes about waht everyone in the
> room was already thinking and speaking about. he agreed that it was
> more dangerous to get in the way of it than to just let it go. but
> he scuttled the session, can't recall the exact form, of the
> prioritizing or conversing or voting or something that was to be
> done with the rpoceedings. actually, i seem to remember people have
> to go through and tear out the ballot pages from the books. luckily
> spiral bound, so the page was never missed.
>
> and then there is the client that thinks that all they need to do is
> call the meeting to order, the facilitator will take it from there,
> and they're off the hook forever. you think you've got them lined
> up, they get it, they're on for it.. but deep down they want out.
> this is the sponsor who might let slip in the opening intro "well,
> glad you all could get here. we have no idea what's going to
> happen. that's michael's problem now...". oops. checked out. and
> when the notes were all assembled, the client i'm thinking of
> mysteriously managed to avoid sending them out for several weeks.
> mostly the high-end consultants in this company, who'd travelled
> from everywhere to london for this meeting think this meeting
> failed. no follow-through. but... eventually one person, brand new
> in the office and company, stepped up, got the notes from the
> leader, sorted things out and sent them around to everyone. the
> conversation never recovered, but four years later, it seems that
> that moment of leadership on the part of the new person set her up
> to take on a leadership role in rebuilding their entire technology
> platform. again, failure depends on definition and time frame.
>
> but mostly i don't think of open spaces that failed, as much as some
> were more fruitful than others, apparently, and moments when it was
> possible to take the easy way out, letting that ceo do what he
> wanted without challenge, instead of hanging in, and hanging with,
> no matter what, again, apparently, happens to me personally.
>
> m
>
>
>
>
> --
>
> Michael Herman
> Michael Herman Associates
>
> http://www.michaelherman.com
> http://www.ronanparktrail.com
> http://www.chicagoconservationcorps.org
> http://www.openspaceworld.org
>
> 312-280-7838 (mobile)
>
> On Thu, Jun 3, 2010 at 3:23 PM, Harrison Owen <hhowen at verizon.net>
> wrote:
>
> Michael – it would be really interesting to hear some actual situati
> ons 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 consulta
> nt took Open Space as a license for absence. He literally left for m
> ost of the day. As it turned out (as I heard from one of the partici
> pants) 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 gues
> s 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 th
> e enigmatic phrase – Being totally present and absolutely invisible.
> In my experience this is a matter of intention and practice. And th
> e best part is that it is all definitely rewarding, not only in term
> s of facilitating Open Space, but equally in terms of self understan
> ding and personal presence. It feels good.
>
>
>
> Harrison
>
>
>
> Harrison Owen
>
> 7808 River Falls Dr.
>
> Potomac, MD 20854
>
> USA
>
> Phone 301-365-2093
>
> www.openspaceworld.com
>
> 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.ronanparktrail.com
> http://www.chicagoconservationcorps.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
>
>
>
>
> 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 plan
> ning committee chose an idea that turned out to have no juice for th
> e 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 faci
> ng them and their organizations. Turns out that was dead wrong. No
> body else cared. I don't know how I might have seen through this si
> tuation 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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