On "Failure"

[Jeff Aitken]

I have facilitated a few open spaces that i have considered failures. It's great to write them down and really look at the dynamics involved.

 

It has happened when i'm working close to the edge of the smallest group and/or shortest time that we recommend for a good open space. Groups smaller than about 12 people, or working for three hours, have worked really well many times, and not so well sometimes.



The dynamic that sometimes happens is that the agenda wall is created and then someone says "let's not move into small groups, let's stay together." If very many people agree and they stay in a circle, they begin to explore the posted topics one by one.  Sometimes I have walked away and held space and it worked well -- the group engages the topics, or focuses on one topic and really digs into it, and they come away satisfied.
 
One of my favorite 3 hour open spaces took place at school while classes were in session. The President of the school was there with the student alliance officers and other students. They created an agenda wall and before any sessions took place, a big group of students walked in on a class break. i invited them to post their items and we generated another 20 topics. Then the group left, and those who remained began to talk about topics as a whole group. An hour later another big group of students walked in and posted topics and left. It became a very fluid, engaging process and we captured a ton of issues for the student alliance to pursue over time.
 
One failure I remember is when I reluctantly agreed to facilitate the meeting (they were friends, and paying me a lot for a short meeting) and I calculated in my head that we had about 15 minutes to talk about each of the topics if they were given equal time. We kind of stumbled from topic to topic without much depth.
 
In another similar setting (my doctoral program retreat) I decided to emphasize the point about asking the convenors if you want two sessions to combine. I guided them into asking each other about combining their sessions such that we had several sheets of paper taped together into a linear agenda of topics. We then pursued the topics and it worked well. It felt like too much interference from me, but there was a flavor of open space.

Another failure I remember was a meeting of about 20 people for a half day in someone's living room. It was a beautiful day, and the windows were big and bright, and spaces for breakouts outside were plentiful - but some unseen force kept everyone together inside. And the theme was broad enough (chaordic design in organizational life) that we had more topics than people, and they were widely different topics. So we floundered around, and few people's topics got any air time. Because I was not (at the time) inviting people to make notes of their sessions, we did not capture any thinking from the richness that was available.
 
It was a failure because i felt that people did not experience the real power of open space.
 
thanks for the question Harrison - very important to look at our experiences in this way.
 
Jeff 		 	   		  
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