OST at the OD World Summit

[Peggy Holman]

Friends,

I wanted to share something from the OD World Summit that took place in Budapest last week - http://www.odworldsummit.org.  I was honored to be asked to do a "master class" on OST and to be part of an opening plenary to bring an OST perspective.

The others speaking were:
* Sandra Janoff on Future Search
* Diana Whitney on Appreciative Inquiry
* Janet Fiero on America Speaks/Twentieth Century Town Hall
* John Nkum  on the Gestalt approach to Organization Development
* Joseph Melnick on Gestalt, the Cape Code model
* Sari van Poelje on Transactional Analysis
* Bo Gyllenpalm on the World Cafe

We were each asked to speak to the question:
What are the three most important ways that our practice (e.g., OST/self-organizing) has influenced the field?

I tried to send my thoughts to the OS list for comment before the event.  For some reason, the message wouldn't go through.  So instead, I'll tell you what I chose to say about OST:

Open Space Technology made explicit the notion that everything is self-organizing.  OST offers a pathway for productively working with the dynamics of self-organization.

OST re-defines the role of the facilitator.  No longer the expert in the front of the room, but “totally present and completely invisible”.  Rather than a facilitator who intervenes, the OST practitioner opens a welcoming space for self-organization to emerge.

OST provides a profound invitation to people to work from passion and responsibility.  Or, as I usually say it, to take responsibility for what they love.  Not just during an OS event, but as a life practice, when we pay attention to passion and responsibility, the good of the individual and the good of the collective are both served.  This seems a contradiction.  Some have told me that they thought this behavior was selfish. Just the opposite is true.  It takes people to a deeper place.  When we operate by taking responsibility for what we love, we touch the part of us that connects to a deeper stream from which we all draw. In practice, when we each bring our full-voiced selves, a differentiation occurs from which novel patterns that draw from all facets of a system emerge. In the process, individual passion helps us discover our fit as a greater whole.

All in all, ODWS was great fun - about 350 people from 30 countries.

back in Seattle,
Peggy



_________________________________
Peggy Holman
peggy at peggyholman.com

15347 SE 49th Place
Bellevue, WA  98006
425-746-6274
www.peggyholman.com
www.journalismthatmatters.org

Engaging Emergence: Turning Upheaval into Opportunity
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"An angel told me that the only way to step into the fire and not get burnt, is to become 
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