[OSList] A strategic planning retreat in NJ

Sat Oct 1 17:38:55 PDT 2011

Chuni,

Thanks for sharing.  It all sounds very exciting and like a huge success.
You have inspired me.

I love that your team mates adopted the language so quickly and are bumble
bee-ing and creating butterfly moments for themselves.  

This sounds like the beginning of new possibilities for you.

Elaine S. Hansen

 <http://hansen-rd.com/> Hansen Resource Development Inc

Skype: elaine.hansen

513.238.5999 

iStock_Medium-stones-wee

...in the end, it is the reality of personal relationship that saves
everything.

Thomas Merton

From: oslist-bounces at lists.openspacetech.org
[mailto:oslist-bounces at lists.openspacetech.org] On Behalf Of
chunili2000 at yahoo.com
Sent: Friday, September 30, 2011 12:09 PM
To: OSLIST
Subject: [OSList] A strategic planning retreat in NJ

I am writing to share my first full-scale, solo open space event that took
place in the last two days.

It was a two-day, off site (at a tranquil, wooded camp site) strategic
planning retreat. All staff were invited to come. Of the 60 staff members,
37 came on the first day and 20 remained for the 2nd day (due to various
work commitments, many couldn't do both days as we are a government
contracted social service agency.)

Words cannot describe the spirit and emotions that permeated throughout the
two days. I am getting overwhelmingly positive feedback and profuse "thank
you" from the participants. It created a tremendous bond for those who cared
and were able to come to celebrate our 10-year anniversary in creating
social innovation for children's mental health care, and to craft the agenda
for the next 10 years as we continue to "Be the Change We Wish to See in the
World." (This is our agency mantra and the theme for the OS retreat.)

Part of the reason for a smaller number of participants on the 2nd day was
because I didn't want people who couldn't come on the 1st day to just show
up on the 2nd day.  However, one person who committed to coming on both days
had an unexpected client emergency to attend to. I made an exception for him
to come on the 2nd day. In order to prepare him, we asked him to read all
the discussion notes from the first day break-out groups. Our Newsroom was
set up for session conveners to type their notes right into our agency
intranet database. Therefore all notes were immediately visible to all staff
(including those who couldn't come) and also printed for the News Wall.  

On the 2nd day, the "new" person, Rick, showed up having indeed read all the
discussion notes from Day 1.  During Morning News, we welcomed Rick and
"initiated " him into the circle by sharing a lot of the positive energy and
people talking about how their night was "wrapped up" by the Day 1
experience.  As I opened the circle, the sponsor (my boss in this case)
wanted me to go over all the OS posters for Rick because he never hear the
explanation.  I said I wasn't going to go through the "ritual" again, and
figured how about we have some volunteers to explain all the posters. With
no hesitation, one person stood and walked the circle as he explained the 5
principles (perfectly!); then a 2nd person stood up to explain the Law of
Two Feet; a 3rd person walked the circle and explained the Bumblebee, and
then a 4th person explained the butterfly. Finally, everyone asked Rick to
explain the last poster "Be Ready to Be Surprised."  Rick stood up, slowly
walked the circle and said matter-of-factly: "Be ready to be surprised - you
have to keep an open mind and do not have fixed expectations about what
ought to come."  Everyone applauded.  I found this variation of "initiating"
a new member quite engaging and fun.

Thank you Suzanne for being the support throughout the preparation and
delivery process. Your advice on allowing an one-hour break for lunch was
right. While it initially felt like there was too much "unfilled" free time
in between sessions (people are used to having back-to-back activities so
having nothing to do is hard), that free time turned out to be important for
people to get their notes into the computer. More importantly, people
quickly learned to use that free time to just relax, take a walk in the
woods, or chat freely with one another. Nobody was annoyed by the free time
and they finally realized that we were in a retreat. They began to call such
free time "butterfly moments." The OS lingo was used throughout the days as
people described themselves "bumblebeeing" from session to session. One
statement I heard the most was "I just had a butterfly moment with so and
so..." meaning they just chatted with someone incidentally by the coffee
pot. Free time turned out to be important in creating the feeling of being
both relaxed and productive in an OS event. In the end, people were tired
but happy and fulfilled. And the language helped create such a bonding among
the participants.

Thank you Harrison, thank you Suzanne, and thank you Karen Davis for opening
this door for me. And thank you to all the contributors on this List. I
borrowed a lot of good ideas from you all, including action planning and
using the balloons.

Chuni Li

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