open space and heros

Mon Nov 29 15:14:53 PST 2010

Christine...

I don't have much more to add to what Lisa has said here, except to sya that my own experience has borne out the fact that high levels of diversity are a good thing and in fact if you have high levels of diversity in the room, OST is a very good process because it allows the resilience in the container to hold the passion that goes with that diversity.

Giving people different levels of status in OST is not something I would ever do.  The fact is that everyone has various bits and pieces of status because of their history and contributions and that is all going to be in the room.  But I would never organize structure around it - such as a "scientific committee."   The closest I have come is having indigenous Elders sitting at tables near the middle of the room while 150 people talked about an indigenous child welfare organization.  The Elders also convened sessions, but they had a space in the room that was theirs and throughout the day people came to visit with them.  I would do that in the context of your meeting though.  In fact the wise ones may actually be happy with just being treated like everyone else.

As for the fears, it is very difficult to engage in the "what if..." kind of hypothetical questions.  You would be hard pressed to bring me an unsubstantiated fear that I have not actually experienced in Open Space...what if no one posts a session?  Been there.  What if someone gets angry?  Yup.  What happens if a small group tries to take the process over?  Check.  THe more tied you are to your own outcomes, the harder these situations will be to deal with.  And if you are severley constrained by your own pre-determined outcomes, beyond even reasonable givens, you shouldn't really be using Open Space.  

My learnings in all of these cases is that it worked out.  It wasn't always nice or fun, and occasionally it was a waste of time and money.  I'm not going to kid you that challenging situations can always be resolved by simply using Open Space.  This can be very hard work.  But if I could guarantee that everything we did was going to go perfectly we wouldn't need to meet would we?  Dealing with complex groups of humans always has the risk that things will be different than we expect.  Prepare to be surprised, because most of the time in Open Space, most people's expectations are exceeded.  Just don't panic, and if you get confused or ambushed, stop and ask everyone the question: what's going on here?  And then open space.

Sending you great good wishes.

Chris

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

On 2010-11-29, at 6:12 AM, christine koehler wrote:

> Hi to all
> 
> I am working with a group that wants to organize a open space event in a highly “political” context :  Theme is very sensitive, has been discussed for years by all actors without any results except fights and division. But now context has changed and they feel that if they, actors of the system, don’t work together now and suggest something very quicly, the law will do it for them without them... 
> Yet it took them some time to agree to go for OST. Their fear is great : they fear that some actors in the system will take advantage of the event for their own interest. They also fear that “wise men (and women)” who were pionners in their field but now do not act any more but talk talk talk , will take advantage of the event to … talk and bring the audience somewhere else.
> Interesting fears, aren’t they ? I'd love to have your opinion on those.;
> 
> Regarding the first fear : they choose not to invite one specific person as co-inviter with them. There was a strong veto from one of the co-inviter, saying that working with this person had been one of the worst experience in his life and that he won’t do that again. As this co-inviter is probably one of the most active in the group (he DOES the work), I think his request was accepted as a given.
> Yet now the group fears that this (not-invited-as-co-inviter) person, who has a strong influence base, might come with lots of his people at the event and influence the whole result..
> The risk is that they limit the number of participants to X people per organization (or/and whatever criteria they choose). 
> My question : did you experience a situation where a person, not invited as a co-inviter because too difficult to deal with, has “spoiled”an OS event ?  I wonder if the risk is real (if so I’d challenge the group and have him included as a co-inviter) or if I just let them go with people they really want to work with... 
> 
> Their second fear concerns the wise persons (who are also “big egos” ;-))
> They don’t want them as co-inviters, but they want them somewhere. These people are the “heroes” of this community, but they are not so young now , and are not so active anymore in doing things.  They talk about  offering them to join a “scientific committee” or something like this.  I don’t like the idea of “scientific committee” in the context of an OS event, but don’t have any better idea. What do you suggest ?
> They also fear that they invide the space during the creation of the agenda. All of those wise persons, I was told, can, with the help of a mic, bring a group wherever they want and talk for hours. Especially if they are all in the same room (because none of them wants to speak less than the others...)
> Any suggestion to me, as facilitator , to avoid use of mic as a tribune without being rude to their heroes ?
> 
> Christine Koehler
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