[OSList] A strategic planning retreat in NJ

[Steve Cochran]

Chuni Li -

Thank you for sharing this wonderful summary of your first 'solo' flight.
Your experiences and support for the always-tricky "latecomer and
partial-participant" integration are inspired and more importantly were most
effective!

Welcome to the 'circle' and again thanks including us in your experience.

Best to All - Steve Cochran

On Fri, Sep 30, 2011 at 12:08 PM, <chunili2000 at yahoo.com> wrote:

>  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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