[OSList] A strategic planning retreat in NJ

[chunili2000 at yahoo.com]

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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