[OSList] Rescue a project in crisis with OST

[Harrison Owen]

Rescue? Ah yes! My favorite on one occurred almost 20 years ago. The
Venezuelan Cell phone company - TELCEL - was just launched and they were
about to fail. The problem  was that the business was much, much, too good.
In a word the company had massively underestimated the public demand for
cell phones. In fact TELCEL had sold more phones in the first 6 months of
operation than they expected to sell in the first several years. With demand
like that the system was in massive overload. It wasn't just the individual
phones, but all the infrastructure - towers, switchers, and all the rest.
They were about ready to go down the tubes. My client owned the company and
knew about Open Space because we had used it many times before with his
other businesses - but this was a big one. 

 

When a company gets into trouble like this, one of the first things to go is
the ability (time) to communicate with all parties. So busy there was no
time to talk. So -- a bad situation was getting progressively worse. 

 

We did an Open Space for everybody (350 people, I recall). Essentially shut
down the company, save for a skeleton crew. We only had a day, but that was
all they needed because the folks were energetic, bright, and very
motivated. By the end of the day, channels of communication were open again,
plans were made, problems identified and on the way to solution. The biggest
learning, I think, was articulated by one person who said - "We didn't just
do an Open Space - we live in Open Space. This is our world!" One result was
that Open Space became the "go-to" approach whenever real difficulties or
opportunities presented.

 

Harrison 

 

Harrison Owen

7808 River Falls Dr.

Potomac, MD 20854

USA

 

189 Beaucaire Ave. (summer)

Camden, Maine 20854

 

Phone 301-365-2093

(summer)  207-763-3261

 

www.openspaceworld.com

www.ho-image.com (Personal Website)

To subscribe, unsubscribe, change your options, view the archives of OSLIST
Go to:
<http://lists.openspacetech.org/listinfo.cgi/oslist-openspacetech.org>
http://lists.openspacetech.org/listinfo.cgi/oslist-openspacetech.org

 

From: oslist-bounces at lists.openspacetech.org
[mailto:oslist-bounces at lists.openspacetech.org] On Behalf Of Csaba Lengyel
Sent: Monday, March 05, 2012 5:29 PM
To: oslist at lists.openspacetech.org
Subject: [OSList] Rescue a project in crisis with OST

 

Hi all,

 

 

I have had a discussion with the sponsor of a really troubled big IT
investment and business transformation project. 

 

They have go-live date in 4 month and in reality the project is so much
behind schedule they have hardly any chance to meet the deadline. 

 

There is a lot of conflict within the project, the task is almost
impossible, time is short - well I thought it's quite a typical situation
calling for OST.

I mentioned it and the guy has shown interest, however he's had too many bad
experience with miraculous techniques and solutions, he was a bit sceptical.
So he asked if OST has ever been used for project turnaround. 

 

I'm sure the answer is yes (and I also know OST always works), but I have
only used OST for kicking-off projects and not for rescuing them.

 

So I decided to ask the community. Do you have any experience with OST in
rescuing projects? If yes, please help me sharing it!

 

 

BR,

 

Csaba Lengyel

 

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.openspacetech.org/pipermail/oslist-openspacetech.org/attachments/20120306/56a6de31/attachment-0008.htm>