[OSList] Sponsor Orientation - a conversation summary

[Brendan McKeague]

G'day folks and my very best wishes to all of you heading towards, or already arrived in London for a fantastic WOSonOS. 
Although currently 'planting' in Brisbane this week, using the time-tested sparkling combination of AI and OS with a wonderful high performing team of 'alternative educators', I'll be with you over there in spirit....

I'm attaching a summary of a meeting I had with a first-time sponsor of an OS meeting. In this particular context (about addressing concerns around workplace safety), it captures much of the discoveries of my experience and the wisdom gathered from you mob of generous co-learners, about the multidimensional nature of OS.   In addition to feeding back the meanderings of our conversation, it also provided the Sponsor with a useful language frame for explaining and justifying (to the higher-uppers) the introduction of an 'unknown and therefore risky' process within a rather conventionally-structured organisation.   

Cheers
Brendan


From our conversation today, it seems to me that key alignment criteria  in choosing Open Space in your context are:
Complexity - diversity in people and workplace environments
Urgency - the stats are heading in the wrong direction
Future focused - about creating a different future than 'business as usual' which is no longer acceptable
No single solution - no-one/single entity knows how to solve this problem - requires collaborative engagement
Invitation - those who care about addressing the issues are invited, not forced, to come along.

In this situation, we have a high alignment with the use of Open Space which provides an embodied experience of:
connecting passion (the care factor) with responsibility (the action factor) around a declared theme (languages as the question in the invitation)
self-organisation - enabling people to follow their passion and join with others attracted by similar interests
self-directing - opportunities for claiming leadership, initiative-taking, surfacing creativity, inspiration and innovation
divergence (smaller, self-selecting and fluid interest groups) and convergence (whole group focusing in on action outcomes)
emergent outcomes - arising organically out of the interaction between passionate people who are prepared to take responsibility for what they care about
shared leadership - everyone who attends is invited to be a leader in their own areas of interest
transparency - there is no preset agenda, no-one is 'in charge' on the day and a genuine space is provided for true collaboration to flourish
Hope this is useful in some way to provide context for model selection and outlining the underlying concepts that support the structure of an Open Space meeting. 

Happy to provide further info if required and I'm looking forward to a wonderfully surprising experience!



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