[OSList] Rescue a project in crisis with OST

Wed Mar 21 15:48:36 PDT 2012

Thank you Peggy. I admire your courage to care reminding us of who we are
meant to BE.

spark
2012. 3. 22. 오전 3:54에 "Diane Gibeault" <diane.gibeault at rogers.com>님이 작성:

> Thank you Peggy for this written refresher on details and for the greater
> access to the US West video.
>
> I present it at every OS training and it still feels current to people.
> It will continue to be on the list of OS resources that I provide to
> participants and on my web.  I gather we can now also give them the free
> link. Thank you for that gift.
>
> Diane
>
>
>   ------------------------------
> *From:* Peggy Holman <peggy at peggyholman.com>
> *To:* World wide Open Space Technology email list <
> oslist at lists.openspacetech.org>
> *Sent:* Tuesday, March 6, 2012 12:14:42 PM
> *Subject:* Re: [OSList] Rescue a project in crisis with OST
>
> How about another telecommunications company story?  It was my first real
> experience of Open Space.  The company was US WEST and the year was 1995.
>  There had been floods in Arizona and serious outages.  It was also a time
> of transition to high bandwidth technologies so little investment in the
> old copper phone lines had been made.  The system was in bad shape as a
> result.  And to complicate matters further, union contracts were being
> negotiated behind the scenes.
>
> A union rep, Bill Mahoney, who also worked with Open Space, convinced the
> head of the state organization to try Open Space.  I was part of a
> corporate group and got involved.  We contacted Harrison and ran a 2.5 day
> Open Space called "Discovering Priorities".  It was a wild event!  The
> majority of the participants were network technicians -- the people who
> climb telephone poles.  (When they were made of wood and people still
> climbed them.)  They had a colorful vocabulary, with more 4 letter words
> (curse words) than I'd ever heard before!
>
> The outcome: people not only worked out how to deal with the aging
> technology and get back to reliable service (a high value for the company
> and among the many veteran employees), but long-time broken relationships
> between groups were mended.  My favorite example:
>
> People from two departments who were always fighting met with each other.
>  They discovered that their performance goals were written in a way that by
> definition put them in conflict.  They worked out a manager swap, where
> they'd have first-line supervisors trade jobs to learn about each other's
> businesses.  And of course, renegotiate goals that supported the success of
> both groups.
>
> Another favorite moment: about a week after the Open Space, a meeting
> about next steps occurred.  Rather than just managers, it was opened to
> anyone who wanted to participate.  A number of the union people -- network
> technicians -- were there.  One of them said, "let's hire contract workers
> (non-union labor) to handle the daily stuff while we rehabilitate the basic
> plant."  This would have gotten him shot before the Open Space!  What had
> happened during the OS was people had a chance to learn more about how
> everything worked so rather than making decisions from a narrow
> perspective, this suggestion was based in having an understanding of the
> whole system.
>
> This is the event where I fell in love with Open Space because I saw the
> needs of individuals and the whole both met.
>
> And I'm happy to report that it is on video.  It's still my favorite video
> about Open Space all these years later.  The Open Space Institute US,
> through Harold Shinsato, put it on Vimeo about 8 months ago:
> http://vimeo.com/25251316
>
>
> Peggy
>
>
>
>
> _________________________________
> Peggy Holman
> peggy at peggyholman.com
>
> 15347 SE 49th Place
> Bellevue, WA  98006
> 425-746-6274
> www.peggyholman.com
> www.journalismthatmatters.org
>
> *Enjoy the award winning *Engaging Emergence: Turning Upheaval into
> Opportunity <http://peggyholman.com/papers/engaging-emergence/>
>
> "An angel told me that the only way to step into the fire and not get
> burnt, is to become
> the fire".
>   -- Drew Dellinger
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> On Mar 6, 2012, at 7:32 AM, Harrison Owen wrote:
>
> 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)
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> *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
>
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