[OSList] The OST Game

Mon Oct 7 12:25:51 PDT 2013

Dan - Using the word, "game" as you do, I guess it sort of works with OS,
but I do confess a certain feeling of cognitive dissonance, which I suspect
may be shared by some of my colleagues. In any event, it certainly would not
be a word I would use. But that doesn't mean a great deal. However, when you
say, "Leaders choose to play OST. Or not," I do feel called upon to say
something like... Oh Yes? 

Some people refer to the "Game of Life," but it is scarcely a game you
choose to play (or not). Not playing is called suicide, I think, and while
some people do make that choice it is not a choice that most folks would
considered good, useful, or positive. It is more like canceling all choices.
Out of the Game, so to speak.

I feel rather the same way about OS, and for all the same reasons. OS for me
is not a process we choose to do or not do - quite simply it is what we are
--  Self organizing, and OS is only an invitation to be ourselves fully and
purposefully. We can chose to be ourselves with distinction, despair, or
something in between --  but so long as we remain on the planet in some
viable form, we got no choice. We are what we are, what we are. Put a little
differently, OS is not something new and different, it is just a small name
change for what has been around for quite a while: life.  I guess you can
call it a game, but somehow that seems to miss some of the nuances.

Harrison 

Harrison Owen

7808 River Falls Dr.

Potomac, MD 20854

USA

189 Beaucaire Ave. (summer)

Camden, Maine 04843

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 Daniel Mezick
Sent: Sunday, October 06, 2013 8:31 PM
To: World wide Open Space Technology email list
Subject: Re: [OSList] The OST Game

Michael,

Thanks for your reply; I like this conversation. 

My current beliefs summarized:

1/ The culture of the org is a game. It is goal-seeking, it has rules. It
delivers feedback. It is opt-in, because you can quit the org. (See
www.TheCultureGame.com)

2/ OST is a pre-fabricated meeting format with excellent game properties. It
is well formed. It is optimized on manifesting up-spirit, as described in
the SPIRIT book. Spirit is a topic beyond the scope of this thread

3/ Leaders choose to play OST. Or not. If the Facilitator stays true to OST,
the leader opts-in-or-opts-out to occupying the Sponsor role and actually
going all the way with OST (self-selection, all issues on the table). This
amounts to opting-in to play the OST game.

4/ Org culture is a game. Games in orgs are nested. Thus a meeting is a
small finite game bounded by time and space inside the org's wider
culture-game-space. Orgs contain collections of meetings. As a general rule,
most meetings reflect the containing ambient culture; authentic OST meetings
are a notable exception. An OST meeting has at least the potential to change
the culture in the culture-game-space of the org. 

5/ There is no 'real' and 'game' distinction. All real work is a game. The
real work and the meeting are one and the same: games.

However, the game of the org (per McGonigal) is not well formed. Goals are
unclear. Rules are not uniformly applied. Self-selection gets "managed".
Spirit gets dampened. Meetings are not opt-in. Disengagement becomes a
rational response and a grave consequence of the poorly formed game. Etc.
OST has none of these warts. It's a good game, one that's fun to play.

www.gaminghappiness.com

On 10/6/13 2:28 PM, Michael Herman wrote:

what your quoting suggests to me, dan, is a distinction akin to what i've
already shared about tools/techniques versus practice.   

in another message you've suggested rules, feedback etc, and defined ost as
a game.  what i hear harrison saying in the quoting here, though, suggests
that organization is the game.  

My current belief: The culture of the org is a game. It is goal-seeking, it
has rules. It delivers feedback. It is opt-in, because you can quit the org.
(See www.TheCultureGame.com)

ost is a strategy, a style of play, a gambit, or something inside of that
game.  

My current belief: It's a meeting. Good meetings are well-formed games
according the McGonigal definition found inside the book REALITY IS BROKEN,
page 22. 

it's a way we choose to play.  (when i go look it up to be sure, i think
when you're calling ost a game, i think gambit might be the better word.)

My current belief: Yes, leaders opt-in to occupying the Sponsor role and
actually going all the way with OST (self-selection, all issues on the
table)

this helps explain, at least to myself, why calling open space itself a game
seems too small.  it seems to remove open space from the larger context, and
in doing so, the practice loses it's reason for being.  it never exists on
its own, for it's own sake... always we "do it" for some purpose.  the
chasing of that purpose is the game.  if we make open space a game, we give
up our license to comment on the larger game that is organization, software
development, or whatever.  in other words, my sense is that if the
languaging of these things makes ost a "game" and
organization/software/whatever is "real" -- then ost becomes significantly
limited in what it can do to change what i see as the real game, the bigger
field of play.

My current belief: Games in orgs are nested. Thus a meeting is a small
finite game bounded by time and space inside the org's wider
culture-game-space. As a general rule, most meetings reflect the containing
ambient culture, authentic OST meetings are a notable exception.

i don't know this for sure, but this is my hunch.  it also may be that this
story works better in software circles, where the actual work, much of it
done by people glued to computer screens, looks more like some kinds of
gaming.  this context would make the split between real work and gaming less
pronounced.  

My current belief: All real work is a game. However, the game is not well
formed. Goals are often unclear. Rules are not uniformly applied to all.
Self-selection gets "managed". Etc. 

i'm all for it, if and wherever it works.  and my guess is that it doesn't
translate immediately, cleanly, and effectively to all kinds of work.  but
then again, almost story does translate easily and effectively to every/any
context.  

m

--

Michael Herman
Michael Herman Associates
312-280-7838 (mobile)

http://MichaelHerman.com
http://OpenSpaceWorld.org

On Sun, Oct 6, 2013 at 10:44 AM, Skye Hirst <skyeh at autognomics.org> wrote:

I guess I want to play in this "game".   Feedback implies mechanistic
processes that have been identified through cause and effect responses.
This is where we get into trouble.  Life is not machine like,  in any way.
It is complex and not complicated as a set of gears and cogs can become if
there are too many trying to interact.  However processes of living require
new metaphors to capture or even point to the "game" of living process where
each entity and combination of entities initiate to form a group,
organization or society and have formed to "experience satisfaction" or find
effective actions separately and together.  The constraints emerge from what
the individuals and the collective discover as useful temporary rules of the
moment - they can take habit if they are useful beyond the moment.  Some
where in the process someone decides to "name"  the rule, the process and
everyone nods in agreement to call what they have shared in common by "that
word" (i.e. jargon) Then someone else comes along who perhaps was not in the
experience and take up the name and they pass it along as the "rule"  that
must be the container for that process and try to create the same process
starting with the rule instead of the initiating impulse to come together.

Well I think you can see an ephemeral organic process that is ever changing
gets bogged down with words,  the names and with labels, however useful they
may be for a bit. GAme on,  as they say,  yet,  all I'm suggesting is that
we stop trying to name, and control with naming a process beyond anything
but pointers we can use to share a common experience - each of us forming it
each time uniquely with both particular and universal operatives. Unique to
the entities in the forming circle,  the space time event forming the circle
and so on and so on

On Sun, Oct 6, 2013 at 10:41 AM, Daniel Mezick <dan at newtechusa.net> wrote:

Hi Harold,

In THE CULTURE GAME book I make the radical/heretical claim that culture is
a game...and every meeting...a game.... and in fact every interaction... is
a game. 

In the book there are examples that support the idea that all meetings are
games. 

According to this theory, if OST is a type of meeting, then OST is a type of
game. 
Games have: Goal, Rules, Feedback mechanisms, Opt-in Participation.

The OST Game:

The Goal:
Explore the Theme-Question.

The Rules:
1 Law, 4/5 Principles, some defined Roles, a few other suggestions. A
supporting slogan...

The Feedback Mechanics:
Continuous, rich feedback via all of the senses, in real time for each
individual and group-as-a-whole.

Opt-In Participation:
YES

By these measures, OST is a beautifully designed meeting-game.

Here is a specific quote from your message, below:

"But I'd never heard anyone describe Open Space Technology as a beautifully
designed game before." 

The reality is that Harrison mentions the word [game] when discussing High
Play & High Learning as it pertains to self-organizing social systems... it
shows up in the book Wave Rider. OST encourages a social system to reach
higher levels of self-organization...Hmmm.

Here is the quote (emphasis added...):

"...High play is the antidote to dogmatic thinking & therefore an essential
companion to High Learning. It is also fun. In 'X" Company,  PLAY is
strictly prohibited, for after all there is work to be done and it is always
very serious. Even worse, PLAY, almost by definition, is out of control-
which is what makes if fun. Can you imagine anything worse than PLAYING A
GAME where the results are already known in advance? Boring! "
-H.O., Wave Rider, page 132

On 9/4/13 6:23 PM, Harold Shinsato wrote:

Dan,

Thank you for forwarding that interview. I've worked with your interviewer
Amr Elssamadisy before in Dr. Christopher Avery's "Leadership Gift" program.
Great to hear his voice. Thought he did a great job bringing forward your
insights.

It's hard for me to express how deeply your thinking aligned with what I see
as the essence of Open Space, and what I feel emerging in my own psyche and
that in the collective when we spoke and I got to be present at your session
in Nashville at Agile 2013 last month. I continue to find your material to
be a critical piece in helping bridge the Open Space and Agile communities -
something Peggy Holman called "Sister Communities" at the World Open Space
on Open Space in St. Petersburg back in May.

I'd heard your thinking before and it continues to astound me the relevance
and power in getting these two communities to work together.

Open Space truly is the "secret sauce" making possible successful Agile
adoptions. The science behind this awareness goes deep. The timing of it
feels like perfection. You seem to be getting just the right audiences to
engage with this idea. And what you posted earlier in terms of a framework
for adoption involving interspersed Open Space events to help promote agency
and engagement - very exciting. Very simple. Truly elegant. And phrased in a
way the holders of the bottom line can "get it".

What's new about your stuff?

Perhaps it's been mentioned before - but here are some points I find most
critical.

1) The Mandate. Perhaps Open Space Technology came out of Organizational
Development (and Organizational Transformation). But most attempts to
transform the organization that I've seen have been "rolled out". Kind of
like a steam roller. It's definitely mandated. You went into great depth in
your Agile 2013 presentation how Mandated Agile goes fundamentally against
the values and principles in the Agile Manifesto. Open Space can help us
bring back the original thinking of the signatories of the Agile Manifesto.

2) Games and engagement. Jane McGonigal's book "Reality Is Broken", and the
whole arena of Gamification, has become a focal point of driving home ideas
from positive psychology, and is also driving many huge wheels of industry
(and dollars). Because getting people excited about using your products is
important. Getting employees excited about contributing to your products -
also critical. But I'd never heard anyone describe Open Space Technology as
a beautifully designed game before. This perception I think plays directly
with the TOOL versus PHILOSOPHY debate in our community.

3) Agency. This might have been a significant idea as well in Paolo Friere's
book - "The Pedagogy of the Oppressed". Without people feeling like they
have some say in how they apply their blood, sweat, and tears - engagement
is not going to happen. Open Space is a critical way to nurture agency in
people.

I'm so thankful that you've started posting on the OSList and I look forward
to how things unfold. From what I see you saying, and how I see people are
hearing you, it seems as if we're on target for a much more explicit chapter
in the relationship between the Agile and Open Space "sister communities".

    Thanks!
    Harold

On 9/4/13 2:37 PM, Daniel Mezick wrote:

Here's a 16-minute video that explains the crisis of disengagement in Agile
adoptions, and how the time to act was yesterday, and how Open Space can
help...
http://www.infoq.com/interviews/dan-mezick-qcon-new-york-2013

-- 

Daniel Mezick, President

New Technology Solutions Inc.

-- 
Harold Shinsato
harold at shinsato.com
http://shinsato.com
twitter: @hajush <http://twitter.com/hajush> 

-- 

Daniel Mezick, President

New Technology Solutions Inc.

(203) 915 7248 <tel:%28203%29%20915%207248>  (cell)

Bio <http://newtechusa.net/dan-mezick/> . Blog <http://newtechusa.net/blog/>
. Twitter <http://twitter.com/#%21/danmezick/> . 

Examine my new book:  The Culture Game
<http://newtechusa.net/about/the-culture-game-book/> : Tools for the Agile
Manager.

Explore Agile Team Training
<http://newtechusa.net/services/agile-scrum-training/>  and Coaching.
<http://newtechusa.net/services/agile-scrum-coaching/> 

Explore the Agile Boston  <http://newtechusa.net/user-groups/ma/> Community.

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-- 

Skye Hirst, PhD

President - The Autognomics Institute

Conversations in the Ways of Life-itself

www.autognomics.org

@autognomics 

New Phone Number:
207-593-8074

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-- 

Daniel Mezick, President

New Technology Solutions Inc.

(203) 915 7248 (cell)

Bio <http://newtechusa.net/dan-mezick/> .  <http://newtechusa.net/blog/>
Blog.  <http://twitter.com/#%21/danmezick/> Twitter. 

Examine my new book:   <http://newtechusa.net/about/the-culture-game-book/>
The Culture Game : Tools for the Agile Manager.

Explore Agile Team  <http://newtechusa.net/services/agile-scrum-training/>
Training and  <http://newtechusa.net/services/agile-scrum-coaching/>
Coaching.

Explore the  <http://newtechusa.net/user-groups/ma/> Agile Boston Community.

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