[OSList] The Question

paul levy via OSList oslist at lists.openspacetech.org
Sun Jan 31 08:11:04 PST 2016


This was my attempt at this a while back. It still feels relevant to
Daniels's question...

best wishes

Paul Levy

Open Space Technology opens space. That might sound a bit strange, or even
a bit obvious, but bear with me.  I’ve said that for a reason.

In the Open Space Technology community of practitioners and fans I’ve
encountered over the last twenty years, there is a strong behavioural
pattern of not changing the first and original version of Open Space
Technology. Harrison Owen called it a technology – it is a way of doing
something that does this: opens space. SO why change it? If it ain’t broke,
don’t fix it.

Open Space Technology, as you’ll find it taught today, is just about
exactly the same as it was back in the ’80s.

Now, back to “Open Space Technology opens space”. What on earth does that
mean?

It opens space for a conversation. It opens space for self-organised
exploration of an issue of importance to a community. It opens space for
getting things done. And often a hell of a lot of things do get done from
an Open Space event.

There sits a group in a circle, and when the space opens and they
self-organise, using the minimal structure of the Open Space Technology
process (marketplace, principles, rules etc), all kinds of stuff then
bursts into the physical space from the previously hidden world of Spirit,
(Or Potential, if you prefer), realising all kinds of action in space and
time. In other words, practical, useful and usable action results. Open
Space Technology has achieved that again and again and again and again and
again and … (insert tens of thousands of ‘agains’ here). No, it really has.

So, as I said, Open Space Technology er… opens space.

Over the years, this hardly changed technology has added a new principle,
and tinkered with the wording here or there. Anticlockwise “walking of the
circle” has crept in, and the odd talking stick has popped up, and an
Eastern gong brings back attention to the circle. But, at its core, Open
Space Technology is a technology that has never had (nor, according to its
fan base) needed, an upgrade.

Indeed, whenever an upgrade has been suggested, the elders in the Open
Space movement tend to sigh knowingly and then kindly offer “Aw, shaddup
and open some space already!”. If that sounds like a generalisation, I
invite you to read the Open Space discussion list over the years and you’ll
find plenty of evidence of “don’t change a thing”.

Suggestions for change will come and go with the passing of mortal
facilitators, but Open Space technology is either as timeless as love, or
will pass away, unchanged, in its own good time.

At recent OSONOSes (What is THAT?, I hear you ask – it’s an Open Space
meeting ON Open Space!), I discovered that a lot of people like the fact
that Open Space Technology is largely still below the radar of mainstream
organisational intervention and meeting theory. It quietly piles up its
tally of successfully opened spaces without much care for detailed research
into its practice and efficacy. It lies largely outside of journal based
scrutiny, and, most of all, it lies beyond innovation and tinkering with
its own process. Yet at two recent OSonOses I met a significant number of
people who do adapt it, change it, innovate it, and they still find that,
not surprisingly – space still opens! They feel as bit sad that its a
golden field of practice that doesn’t seem to want to lovingly question its
foundations. As a result, what should have been a changing, organic
building, has turned into a temple that moves only its pot plants around.

Yet space still opens. Of course it does. You see, Open Space technology
opens space. But so do a bunch of other gorgeous and eloquent processes.
And sometimes (and I heard more than a few stories confirming this),
dogmatically unchanged Open Space Technology limits the opening of space.
The officionados would claim that it is never Open Space Technology that
limits the opening of space, but a bunch of other factors. It’s the
sponsor’s fault, or the facilitator should have done X or Y differently.
They usually sigh at the facilitator and say “Get over it, and just stick
to the knitting”.

This is all very (annoyingly) general, I know. But I’ll keep to that and
see if the generality resonates with anyone reading this for now.

I’ve written in detail, elsewhere on this site, how and why dogmatic use of
Open Space Technology can inhibit and limit the opening of space.

I do believe there are archetypal elements in Open Space Technology that
are pretty timeless or, at least, standing up pretty well in terms of
relevance and applicability, to the test of Time’s passage. Archetypes tend
towards timelessness.

In Action Learning, for example, reflection on action is a pretty timeless
archetype. As Action  Learning has evolved into a range of approaches, that
core concept of the “learning cycle” of conceptualisation, experimentation,
action and reflection,  seems to stay relevantly at the core of all the
diverse developments. Yet how we do action learning has changed wonderfully.

In dialogue work, as another example, the importance of active listening
remains and pervades, even as the field of practice widens.

In Open Space technology, the archetype of the circle remains and has a
deep living quality, wherever space is opened. Equally, the spirit (if not
the wording) of the principles remains vibrant and relevant. The notion of
self-organisation sits at the heart of the natural world, and is a core,
timeless quality of opening space. But “Breaking news”, and “Marketplace”
and even the role of the facilitator, are not as fundamental as many of the
elders think they are.

At the OSonOses (including the World one) I met people who thanked me for
challenging the status quo (which wasn’t in any plan of mine going in).
Some said they didn’t feel they could challenge Open Space Technology at
these events, nor share alternatives or share stories of how they has
changed it in practice.  I myself got some hate mail from an Open Space
elder a few years back when we ran an OSonOs exploring “Beyond the dogma”.
I’m not sure how true it is that there’s a norm to stick to the technology
like glue or feel like an outsider. It’s a big shame if it is true and if
it becomes true at the WOSonOs in Florida in 2013. There’s certainly
nothing formal to stop healthy challenge and questioning, but quite a few
people pointed to a norm that exists in the Open Space Technology
community, that critique marks you out as a kind of “misery guts”, even as
a betrayer of a lovely elderly gentleman. Basically you are pooping on a
party that is so benevolent is lies beyond that poop.

Open Space Technology, in its classic form, opens space. Often, and
beautifully. But it isn’t the only “technology” that opens space, nor is it
always the best or right one. Also it isn’t only technology that opens
space. Art also does it. Often, when a facilitator is truly in the moment,
in an ego-free state of service to his or her community, space opens and
NEW approaches emerge, sometimes beautiful hybrids of Open Space
Technology, sometimes tiny adaptations, sometimes entirely new fusions,
versions, forms. Sometimes something entirely close to Open Space
Technology “escapes” into our practice entirely afresh, especially when we
have forgotten it!

At the heart of all these approaches I believe is nearly always the circle,
the principle and love of self-organisation, the creative urge towards
getting things done, and also a kind of acceptance of the rightness of who
is there, where we are, whatever happens and also, the love of freedom to
flow in and out of the open space as needed. These are the archetypal
qualities that have led to Open Space Technology being so powerful and
enduring.

But there is no need for chapter and verse, no need for the technology to
be so rigid in its core design. What is important is that potential that
wants to be realised can find its way to space that has opened for it.
Fractured communities that come together into circles and then
self-organise into smaller circles, before reforming into bigger ones
again, always linked to the strength of that “holding circle” can use the
circle to achieve amazing things, notably synergy, where we are more
together and where the circle gives us shared inner and outer focus.

“Whatever” is more important than any Open Space Technology Dogma. But not
the whatever of laziness and indifference. This is the whatever of
emergence, of the space that reveals, the circle that opens into
possibility and then turns possibility into free choice, and free choice
into committed action in and upon the world.

So, I’ve discovered there are now two overlapping (uneasily) communities,
There is the Open Space Technology Community, employing a technology that
Harrison Owen could have tried to patent or copyright but didn’t, but has
instead offered it freely to the world, trusting its beauty and success in
the world, to leave it unchanged and used as needed in the world. Then
there is a larger community which is the Open Space community that uses the
classic version of the technology but also adapts it, and also uses other
methods, all of which, more or less, open space for self-organisation, for
conversation and action. I think it’s a pity, and also a bit of an emerging
tragedy that those at the core of the Open Space Technology Community (by
no means all of them) are not more open to change and innovation from that
wider community, to be enriched and inspired by it. Because of this, the
Open Space Technology community now has its own underground where people
ARE questioning its fundamentals and morphing it, but aren’t sharing that
openly at its events nor on its discussion lists. When they do, there tends
to be a benevolent and parental closing down by many of its supporters to
just leave things as they are and put faith in the version that is never in
need of an upgrade.

Sometimes space needs to open without any stated principles, without any
structure-polemic, no matter how minimal and well meant. Sometimes space
needs to open with few if any words.  Sometimes space opens better in the
language of the community and not the language of Open Space Technology.
Sometimes space opens better through artistry, not technology.  Sometimes
space opens without the need for a physical circle, and sometimes even
without the need for a facilitator. Sometimes space opens with Open Space
Technology in its original form.

But sometimes that form becomes a wall. The stories where Open Space
Technology has failed to open space tend to go unreported, part of a
collusion of niceness. Those stories are there to be found, but they are
below the radar of the community that has confused blanket positivity with
the grittier, messier mission of Open Space to bring beauty to the world.
Avoidance of our pain is often both fatal and ugly.

Open Space Technology, when it becomes ossified, becomes arthritic. When a
facilitator doesn’t just DO Open Space Technology, but becomes open space
in their own inner activity, they will sense what needs to be done, not out
of dogma, but out of the present needs of the situation. Often this
situation will call for a traditional use of Open Space Technology. But not
always.  Sometimes we need to open space. And it is beautiful that there
are so many ways to do that.

What am I suggesting? I’m suggesting it might be time for Open Space
Technology to open the trap door – the trap door to its own beautiful
critique. It needs to look more warmly and openly at what is growing
consciously below its own radar. And it isn’t about defending the first
technological model from a position of elder wisdom. It’s about inviting in
the younger ones, the new generation. If Open Space Technology lies beyond
an upgrade, then let that view survive a healthy Popper-esque conversation.
But in 2012 I met some truly wonderful people who have upgraded it anyway.
They are the right people, in the right place, at the right time, who dance
with two wonderful feet into the future. Be prepared to be surprised by
them.

Something tells me it isn’t quite over yet, Harrison Owen!

Welcome to the open space community. It loves Open Space Technology. But it
loves so much more too.

(Original article appeared here:
https://rationalmadness.wordpress.com/2012/12/05/open-space-technology-and-open-space/
)



On 28 January 2016 at 17:55, Daniel Mezick via OSList <
oslist at lists.openspacetech.org> wrote:

> What is Open Space Technology?
>
> --
> Daniel Mezick
> Culture Strategist. Author. Keynoter.
> (203) 915 7248. Bio. <http://www.DanielMezick.com/> Blog.
> <http://www.NewTechUSA.net/blog/> Twitter.
> <https://twitter.com/DanielMezick>
> Book: The Culture Game. <http://theculturegame.com/>
> Book: The OpenSpace Agility Handbook.
> <http://www.amazon.com/OpenSpace-Agility-Handbook-Daniel-Mezick/dp/0984875336>
>
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