[OSList] Poke the Open Space Box

Tue May 17 12:07:31 PDT 2011

to phelim's thoughts about not our advice to insiders not facilitating their
own os meetings... i would make the distinction between not facilitating and
not facilitating the *first* one.  os can be challenging... for
participants.  when challenged, they may attribute that discomfort to old
stories they have about the inside facilitator person they know.  when the
person facilitating is outside and unknown to them, it's clearer that the
discomfort is coming from the space.  easier to learn from, i think.  and
then, once that's noticed, it will be easier for insiders to facilitate and
not be tagged as this or that bad thing.  i learned this at osonos in oz,
where it took me an hour or more, as i recall, after the event to separate
one person's discomfort with the process from fr. brian's being a father.

to lisa's comment about sometimes facilitators hosting events and finding
few or nobody attending, it reminds me of a city planning group i worked
with, and reminds me that it isn't a facilitators-only phenomenon.  the
planning group wanted to host a meeting on writing the city plan.  they
wanted to invite and engage all residents.  but mostly they kept saying
"come write the plan."  point is, they were the only ones who cared about
"the plan."  residents wanted walkable neighborhoods, vibrant downtown
business district, this road and that train -- all stuff in the plan, but
they had no passion for planning.  some of those facilitator invites that
miss the mark and attract few or none are likely invites drawn up with too
much inside knowledge and not enough language for others to relate to.  just
a guess.

and finally, to harold's questions about invitation... first, inviting is
something technical we can do.  it's a certain kind of writing, relies on a
database of invitee email addresses (maybe), an inventory of meeting places
we might pick from, etc.  technical.  but it's also somethign we can aspire
to be, giving people, as you say, the space to accept or decline the
opening.  then you asked...

How do you suggest to clients that invitation is a good way to do business?
> What else does that mean? What changes when your clients do business by
> invitation? What are the other places your clients do business from?
>

if self-organization is one distillation of what open space is, then
invitation is my distillation of what *opening* space is.  it's as much as i
think i can do -- in a self-organizing world.  it's the small bit of
everything that i can actually control, and it's the posture i can hold in
the churning of everything.  what i can do and what i can aspire to be, in
spite of everything.  and then, everything is invitation.  there's no need
to convince clients as much as there is the potential to point open space
out to them, in what they're already doing.

for instance, they already have a bunch of conference rooms, they have maybe
some bulletin boards around, everyone is already posting things they care
about around their cubes or offices (usually starting with family pictures,
right?), and then they have shared calendars software which starts to look a
lot like the wall in open space (except that it's people-centric instead of
issue centric, small detail.)  there is a circle that forms at the bar
across the street on thursday or friday evening.  there is the coffee shop
in the lobby, just outside of the security detail, where it's easier to have
meetings and interviews and such.

if all organizations are already self-organizing, then all we need to do is
show them how they're already doing it, so that they can notice and
emphasize and make more of THAT.  and THAT is circle, bulletin board,
marketplace, breathing, invitation.  basic mechanisms.  invitation,
sometimes also called 'post and host' as opposed to 'command and control' is
just an easy handle for all those other mechanisms.

and i guess what changes is that it gets easier.  cuz it's all just open
space.

does that make sense?

m

--

Michael Herman
Michael Herman Associates
312-280-7838 (mobile)

http://MichaelHerman.com
http://ManorNeighbors.com
http://OpenSpaceWorld.org

On Tue, May 17, 2011 at 10:38 AM, Arno Baltin <arno at tlu.ee> wrote:

> Thank you, Lisa for these lovely questions.
> Eveyone of them reached some of my strings :)
>
> With best,
>
> Arno
>
> On 17 May 2011 17:46, Lisa Heft <lisaheft at openingspace.net> wrote:
>
>> Well my first answer is:
>>
>> "Just do what makes your heart sing."
>>
>> And then (of course, being me ;o) I'll go on.
>>
>> I'm an analyzer, among other things.
>> So I diagram the question, in a way. And of course, ask more questions to
>> see the patterns.
>>
>> Do you want to be around the juicy OS more?
>> Do you need more income or exposure for your work?
>> Are you trying to shift into more visibility as a facilitator / meeting
>> convenor from the way people see and hire you otherwise?
>> Are there particular issues around which your passions invite you to
>> invite others to join together about in dialogue?
>>
>> The answers / 'therefores' to these may be different, depending on what
>> you are like and what is important to you for this time in your life.
>>
>> And: is your skill-set and interest *both* those of a facilitator...and an
>> event producer?
>> For some people the answer is "yes!" and for others it is "absolutely my
>> passion and skills are to facilitate - my strengths and passions are not in
>> those many details of creating an event."
>>
>> And: I hear a good number of facilitators who try to host their own events
>> but 'nobody comes' - it is interesting to explore why that may be. Is it
>> because it was the facilitator's passion or sense of urgency and not the
>> participant group's highest item of urgency among the many issues calling
>> for their time and presence? Is it because they created an event without
>> being part of a community- / participant- / organization-driven interest or
>> need?
>>
>> What creates those successes such as Phelim describes in his growing
>> ongoing community of vibrant OS events?
>> I'm guessing you did not do these things as an individual, Phelim. Perhaps
>> you would like to share what you think were the ingredients for success from
>> the beginning event(s). What contributes to sustainability in the ongoing
>> nature, as well.
>>
>> Other questions for those of you exploring this...
>>
>> Do you have resources for being an event producer?
>>
>> - advance funding to secure a site and possibly also food?
>> - flexibility in those resources so that if less people come you still see
>> it as a 'go forward' and a success?
>> Can you really do all the tasks and roles - from outreach / invitation /
>> registrar to site and food arranger to answering everyone's questions about
>> local housing or resources to facilitation to finalizing the Book of
>> Proceedings post-event to whatever else you see as part of this event?
>> - Do you have to do it all on your own, or can you be part of a team?
>>
>> And what about...
>>
>> - inviting events that are OS in their design
>> - traveling around helping other people do their OS - such as offer to run
>> their Newsrooms - put all that on our resume / CV because it's real work
>> with real responsibilities (whether it pays or not), and grow your
>> visibility and your experience that way
>> - saying 'I do Open Space' instead of 'I would like to do more Open Space'
>> - growing your facilitator 'toolkit' to include some other fabulous
>> methods / tools (World Cafe comes to mind) so you have even more
>> participant-focused passion-driven offerings and be able to do those too,
>> which often lead clients and communities to saying 'more of this kind of
>> stuff, please'?
>> - doing a reflection / analysis of how you got your other similar jobs
>> over let us say the past 5 years - and see where the pattern was. Was it
>> because someone saw you at work doing your marvelous thing? If so, where can
>> you choose to be when you choose where to be? For example - does it pay to
>> invest in attending an OS gathering - or does it pay to say when invited
>> that you yourself do Open Space and to help make that gathering happen and
>> offer your facilitation skills for future gatherings for this region as
>> well? Do you want to spend resources showing up at a peer conference (yes if
>> you can learn a lot) or do you want to save those particular resources to
>> use to get to / help on another OS event?
>>
>> Perhaps another question to invite you all to respond to is - think of
>> your work in facilitation / convening people in general. Not just about OS.
>> Maybe even your other work in past that was not facilitation but that you
>> loved at that time.
>> How did you get more jobs? Visibility? Experience that you could add to
>> your learning and your resume / CV?
>>
>> And then another series of questions for your reflection:
>> - when you had a dream, that was realized, what got you there?
>>
>> Just a bunch of questions ;o)
>>
>> Lisa
>>
>>
>>                        *
>>
>> Lisa Heft
>> *
>> Consultant, Facilitator, Educator
>> President, Open Space Institute US
>> Fellow, Columbia University Center for International Conflict Resolution
>> *Opening Space*
>> lisaheft at openingspace.net
>> www.openingspace.net
>> *
>> *
>> *
>> Ask me about these 2011 workshops for facilitators and others who convene
>> people:
>>  - The Open Space Learning Workshop
>>          - June and October - Santiago, Chile (en
>> español)
>>         - July-August - Buenos Aires, Argentina (en
>> español)
>>          - December 14-16 - San Francisco, USA
>>  - The Power of Pre-Work - August 24-26 - San Francisco, USA
>>
>> *
>>
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>
>
> --
>       Arno Baltin
>
> Psühholoogia Instituut
>     Tallinna Ülikool
>
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