[OSList] Using OS with a team on a project

Sun Dec 23 09:06:54 PST 2012

Susan - Fun project! And I have some thoughts. First is that I wouldn't
worry too much about the formal Open Spaces and how to arrange them. I
believe that will fall out naturally and they will be useful and productive
- but much more useful and more productive will be seeing your total
collective effort as ALL taking place in Open Space. Seen this way there
will be no beginning or end but only a difference in mode and intensity.
Said a little differently, it is all open space, just sometimes it is
engaged in a more formal fashion (sit in circle, create bulletin board.), as
need and occasion require. As for the 4 (really 5) principles and the one
law, they have always been DE-scriptive and not PRE-scriptive. Which is to
say they will happen anyway, that is just the way life is.  Of course, being
aware of them is useful, just as it is useful to be aware of any fundamental
fact of life. Something about the unexamined life being less than fully
livable.

My suggestion has nothing to do with the notion of "Doing your Project as
Open Space," as if you really had any choice. Unless I have totally missed
the boat (quite possible) we can't choose to be self organizing (live in
open space) - that is just the way things are, much like our  relationship
to gravity. Comes with the territory. We can, however choose to fight city
hall, and seek to impose our own notions of how things ought to be - which
is what happens when we attempt to organize a self organizing system. As I
have said ad nauseam - that is not only an oxymoron, but stupid, and also a
waste of time. So the first, and really only thought/suggestion is that
your project is already "in open space" (like all the rest of life) - and
the major question is how to behave in useful, appropriate, and productive
ways. 

Given this perspective, Open Space events are simply training programs for
life. They may also (usually do) have specific positive outcomes (plans
made, designs created, etc) but at the end of the day the major gift is to
build our awareness and skills for living. After 27 years and 100's of
thousands of iterations, I think we have built a small knowledge base
relating to how all of this can be well done. Interestingly, virtually none
of this learning is all that original - but so often we forget, and it is
nice to have a refresher course.

So as you prepare for your project, I suggest you worry less about how to do
OSTs and rather more about how to acknowledge and optimize life in open
space every day. The events will take care of themselves. And where to
start? I think you are already at the starting line, given your experience
with the Art of Hosting. It all begins with Invitation.

What can happen next will be multiple and various for there have been lots
of people doing lots of learning. My take of the state of affairs is laid
out in the second part of my book, "Wave Rider", called "The Wave Rider's
Guide to the Future." 

Susan, thanks for sharing - and I for one look forward to your next
installment!

Harrison 

Harrison Owen

7808 River Falls Dr.

Potomac, MD 20854

USA

189 Beaucaire Ave. (summer)

Camden, Maine 04843

Phone 301-365-2093

(summer)  207-763-3261

www.openspaceworld.com 

www.ho-image.com (Personal Website)

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From: oslist-bounces at lists.openspacetech.org
[mailto:oslist-bounces at lists.openspacetech.org] On Behalf Of Susan Geller
Sent: Sunday, December 23, 2012 8:53 AM
To: oslist at lists.openspacetech.org
Subject: [OSList] Using OS with a team on a project

Hi, all.  I am new to this list.  I posted this question to the LinkedIn OS
group and was encouraged by Lisa Heft to post it here.  I am somewhat new to
OS as well, having first been introduced to it about 1.5 yrs ago through Art
of Hosting. I recently attended a full day workshop on OS in OS.  During
that day of workshop I worked on the idea of using OS with a team of people
at a large institution on a two year project. 

We start working together early in 2013. We will have weekly 2 hour
meetings. The people in the room will be the leadership of the project and
the staff working on the project - about 20 people all together, four of
whom will be attending virtually (via Google Hangout). I think OST can
really help this group work together well. I am looking for some input from
people who have worked with a team over time using OST as a way of being
together.   

We have a 1/2 day together will we will be in OS around the theme of us
working together. And, then thereafter our 2 hour meetings will be held in
OS.  I have thought about the way we can use the principles to guide our
work even to the extent they seem to be contradicted by our frame. For
example "it's over when it's over" means that even if our 2 hour meeting
ends, if the topic is not complete, we don't need to say it is done or
assign it as an "action item" (traditional meeting frame).  It can be
continued in whatever way that group identifies.  

My current thinking is that we'll start each gathering in a marketplace and
end each gathering with the question "what does our entire group need to
know and/or work on?"  as a way of bringing the conversations back to the
center.  

It will be hard for me to add spaces on the fly to these meetings b/c of the
logistics of having people attend virtually.  It will work better if I have
the google hangouts created from the start and have an external web cam
devoted to each break out.  So, I'm wondering for a group of 20 how many
spaces I should be preparing.  I'm thinking 4.

I'm interested in what you think about all of this.  What might I be
thinking about? How can the core principles of OST help guide us given our
structural limitations? What have you learned by doing something similar to
my challenge?

Thank you.

--Susan

Susan B. Geller

Project Director, Enterprise Portal, University of Minnesota

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e-mail: sgeller at umn.edu

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