[OSList] number of topics and number of timeslots, presence board members

Koos de Heer koos at auryn.nl
Tue May 29 12:12:51 PDT 2012


Hi Jeroen,

I am not sure I understand all of your questions, 
but I guess that will become clear soon enough :-)

I let people post as many topics as they want, 
but each topic has one timeslot and one location. 
If they think they need more than that, they can 
post more than one topic. Which often hapens.

If I run an OST meeting that lasts several days, 
I let people post topics for the other days as 
well, but I reopen the space each morning to give 
people the opportunity to post new topics for 
that day. In the course of day one, so many 
things happen that folks often have new things 
they want to put on the agenda on day two.

In business environments, I have very good 
experiences with OST meetings that end on a half 
day. Especially 1.5 day works very well. The half 
day is for action planning. I quit doing report 
presentations years ago - that was usually a 
tedious and boring experience. I have not so good 
experience with two full days where action 
planning is on the afternoon of day two. That 
just does not work well with the dynamics and the 
flow of the meeting. The morning of the second 
day has a very different energy than the first 
day. The break between divergence and convergence 
usually goes together very well with the sleeping 
break. And convergence can usually be done in a half day.

So I start convergence on the morning of the last 
day, by reopening the space. If there are written 
reports, they will have been xeroxed overnight so 
that they are available before breakfast. I open 
the space after breakfast and the question is 
something like: based on yesterdays results, what 
ideas do you have that you want to put into action now?

The idea is that even if people have not read all 
yesterdays reports, the results and the energy of 
the day before are present in the group and the people know what to do.

A completely different question is if you have 
the complete system in the room. I would consider 
inviting senior management as well as some 
trusted clients and maybe a few people from HR. 
The completer the system and the higher the 
diversity, the better the results will be.

If you would like to discuss, we can always meet up for a coffee...

Good luck with it!

Koos


At 15:07 29-5-2012, Ermers, Jeroen wrote:
>Content-Language: en-US
>Content-Type: multipart/alternative;
> 
>boundary="_000_56812CB7C8FF2643AA116580CD3CB8F2011E65CDA1EXCNLDCM05eur_"
>
>
>
>
>Hi Linda,
>
>Thank you for your swift reply, we are inviting 
>about 35 people in middle management positions 
>(of which we expect most to attend). I think it 
>would be wise to invite the board as other 
>people as well to increase diversity and 
>perspectives but it’s not up to me to decide on 
>that. The issue at hand concerns making people 
>taking more ownership of their personal 
>development. Now management is in control on who 
>should develop which skills / competences so 
>they are adequately equiped to carry out their 
>work based on the needs of our clients (we are 
>providing IT consulting services to other 
>organisations, mostly by posting employees on 
>customer premises). We would like to have people 
>take personal accountability and proactively 
>seek ways to fasten their career and improve on 
>their job readiness and job mobility. The goal 
>of this OST meeting is to itendtify issues to be 
>addressed so that people (both management and 
>employees) are empowered to actually change 
>their behaviour which is needed to reach the intended goals.
>
>Regards jeroen
>
>
>
>From: oslist-bounces at lists.openspacetech.org 
>[mailto:oslist-bounces at lists.openspacetech.org] On Behalf Of Linda Stevenson
>Sent: dinsdag 29 mei 2012 14:41
>To: os list
>Subject: Re: [OSList] number of topics and 
>number of timeslots, presence board members
>
>Dear Jeroen,
>
>How many people you are expecting to 
>attend?  That will help you decide up front how 
>many concurrent sessions and therefore breakout 
>areas will be appropriate.  Once that matrix of 
>post-its is created, participants themselves 
>will self-manage and self-organize their time 
>together - no help needed on your part except to 
>hold the space open including any plans for 
>evening activities on the night of day 1 - in 
>other words the space is open from the morning 
>of day 1 until you close it on day 2.
>
>As for board members why not invite them to the whole Open Space?
>
>Open Space can end in a variety of ways, but it 
>is not about "presenting back" - again, can you 
>say more what you have in mind?  Don't close the 
>space before you close the space!
>
>All the very best,
>Linda
>
>
>
>----------
>From: <mailto:jeroen.ermers at kpn.com>jeroen.ermers at kpn.com
>To: <mailto:oslist at lists.openspacetech.org>oslist at lists.openspacetech.org
>Date: Tue, 29 May 2012 14:11:19 +0200
>Subject: [OSList] number of topics and number of 
>timeslots, presence board members
>Dear all,
>
>I am about to facilitate an 1,5 – 2 day OST 
>meeting. On the first day all topics are posted 
>on the bulletin board, people decide themselves 
>when these topics are discussed in which 
>breakout room. I have four timeslots on day one 
>(maybe 2 more on the morning of day 2), the 
>convergence/nest step action planning  fase is planned for day 2
>
>I have the following questions:
>1)           Are all topics discussed once in 
>one of the timeslot on day one or can a topic be 
>discussed in 2 (or maybe even four) timeslots, 
>which effectively is inhibiting other people’s topics to be discussed.
>2)           are all timeslots meant to be used 
>for new topics or is there a moment when 
>participants decide which of the topics 
>discussed in the previous timeslots are to be 
>discussed in further detail. Or to put it in 
>other words, is there only one moment for 
>convergence (prior to action planning) or can 
>you also narrow down the topics in an earlier fase?
>3)           Is is it advisable (or not) to have 
>board members (who will not participate in the 
>OST meeting) to be present when the results of 
>convergence/action planning is presented back to the participants?
>
>I’m afraid i’ve used more than 150 words, but 
>still hope for an answer (or 2) J
>
>Kjnds regards,
>
>Jeroen ermers
>
>
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