[OSList] OST evaluation and medecine wheel

[Diane Gibeault]

Hello
Christine and every one,
 
Congratulations Christinen for holding your breath during the opening. You demonstrated what it means to hold space by trusting the group and the process and sure enough, participants did what they chose to create.


I also offer the medicine wheel for the learning
/debriefing stage of OS events but I am torn on the two approaches described in the
thread of this discussion. 
I love the interesting reflection exercise (in pairs,
on the quadrant of their choice, with notes left in relevant quadrants in the
centre of the circle) that Thomas Herrmann described. 
My instincts go more
often though in the direction Michael Pannwitz described: sticking to a closing circle
with a talking stick, no questions... “it seems that leaves
"remembering" (as in contrast to "learning" or
"teaching") to surface well”.
 
I generally prefer to stay in this intuitive,
remembering and feeling mode of the closing circle which allows for rich and
rare expression of deeper and touching thoughts that are so the glue that makes
relationships and ideas stick. This also allows more incubation and taking some
distance before going into an analytical mode where conclusions are structured
to bring a picture of where things have moved.  
 
On the other hand, with the pair reflection on site, the
organization is benefitting from everyone throwing in their unique perspective about
what they see, instead of only getting that of the leadership team after the
event.  
 
An alternative to get this feedback from the whole after
the event and to go even farther, is to invite every section of the organization to hold a (15 minute)
medicine wheel reflection, within each work team in the days that follow the OS.
They can keep the discussion going for as long as they wish to. It becomes another
opportunity for team building and for advancing a shared vision. The pooling of
the teams’ findings is another rich source of information for decision-makers
and those carrying follow-ups to the OS meeting.  
This may not work as well in groups that are
not an intact organization, but there is nothing that a little imagination
can’t fix. 

Diane
 

________________________________
 From: christine koehler <chris.alice.koehler at gmail.com>
To: OSLIST <oslist at lists.openspacetech.org> 
Sent: Friday, December 6, 2013 7:57:44 AM
Subject: [OSList] OST evaluation and medecine wheel
 


Dear all

After reading several posts here discussing the medecine wheel, I decided to use it as an evaluation tool for an open space I did recently with 100 managers. As it was really helpful and productive, I would like to thank you and to tell you the story 

The open space itself had not been so easy to do, as it followed the report of a diagnosis that showed the many problems faced by the management in this organization. And it was tough to hear, for all of them. So after listening to the diagnosis,  the open space started with a loooong silence. And inbetween each topic there was again a looong silence. I could see the director and members of the planning commitee turning white or sweating. Yet we ended up with 12 topics. 2 slots of discussions, very intense. They discussed the real problems. 
Then I opened space again for action planning. To tell the truth, I was scared that they would not dare support actions. But they did : 10 topics, for which, except one, several people jumped in, and that covered 90% of the diagnosis. (probably the 10% left dealt with a category of people who were not there for quite complicate and administrative reasons).

Yesterday, when I did the evaluation with the planning team, I explained quicly the medecine wheel and have them reflect about what they learned for each quadrant. What surprised me is that they did not answer about the process they experienced the day of the event, but about the organization. In a very short time they pictured a very clear, realistic yet optimistic image of their organization. It was great. 
The result is that they all commited to continue working together to support the action plans for the coming months, although they had accepted the "job" only because it was a one-time commitment.

And for the fun part, one of them told me "it looks like you guided us through this like a shaman" ;)

Christine 




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