[OSList] celebrating 30 years of Working With Open Space Technology
Tova Averbuch
tova at tovaaverbuch.com
Wed Apr 6 02:22:06 PDT 2022
בתאריך יום ג׳, 5 באפר׳ 2022 ב-18:01 מאת Birgitt Williams via OSList <
oslist at lists.openspacetech.org>:
> Dear friends and colleagues,
> this month I am celebrating 30 years of working with Open Space
> Technology. What a grand journey it has been, giving me a vehicle to be of
> help to leaders and their organizations...while simultaneously growing me.
> I benefited a lot from in depth four day trainings in OST with Harrison,
> attending, co-sponsoring seven training sessions in Canada. I continue to
> facilitate in the ways that we were originally taught, with adjustments
> made to adapt OST for the online environment. I refuse to facilitate an OST
> less than four hours, with sessions never less than one hour.
>
> My two favorite experiences of being a participant in OST meetings: the
> first OSONOS in a hotel near Dulles airport in which just over 30 of us
> gathered to explore our learning with OST and the excitement of
> participating in what was then pioneering work with organizations. The
> second of my favorite experiences was the Expanding Our Now event in Oregon
> in the mid 90's sponsored and facilitated by Harrison Owen and Anne
> Stadler. Five full days within an OST container, exploring and
> accomplishing ways to expand our now. Again, about thirty of us came
> together, from a number of countries, with profound experiences within
> which each of us experienced personal transformation and the expansion of
> ourselves, and the expansion of our NOW. We who gathered understood that
> the bigger our NOW, the better we facilitated. The power of a multi-day OST
> is not often the current offer...however, it is powerful beyond what can be
> imagined.
>
> In those early days, I experimented with how short an OST meeting could be
> while still retaining what I believed was valuable about OST. Four hours
> was the shortest I would go...and in those days I did so as a means for
> following up from a multi-day OST for the purpose of moving topics forward
> that had been prioritized from the multi-day OST. At the time, I believed a
> short (ie 4 hour) OST was valuable only after a multi-day OST in the
> organization. I believe that OST was initially devised for multi-day
> meetings.
>
> I also experimented with frequent OST meetings in the same organization
> ie: monthly. The story goes that the first two monthly OST meetings were
> loved by our staff and Board as the newly preferred way to have our
> monthly meetings. At the third meeting, I sat and said to those gathered
> (about eighty people) that they need what to do so please post their
> topics. Everyone stayed seated until someone said "we know what to do,
> however, there is something important in this opening that you do that
> helps us to determine what we want to post and to get on with it. We need
> you to do the opening. It is not sufficient to tell us that we know what to
> do." And so I learned that the opening, even with a well seasoned group,
> gave benefit from the ritual and was to be included. At the fourth monthly
> meeting, as I entered the room, a staff member stood up and said "we don't
> want to do these kinds of meetings anymore. We come up with all sorts of
> ideas for going forward but after the fact, we find out what the barriers
> are to taking action and it is very disheartening to us". We sat together
> and talked this over. Two gifts emerged from this. The first was the
> concept of the 'givens', providing the shape of the OST meeting (defining
> the playground to which people were invited) by clarifying beforehand any
> non-negotiable barriers. Once we worked out the givens together, we
> successfully had years of OST meetings. The second gift was the emergence
> of another meeting method Whole Person Process Facilitation (WPPF),
> designed to be used in between the OST meetings to examine what had come
> out of the OST meeting and what would move forward into action..and how. By
> alternating OST and WPPF for our monthly meetings, more actionable items
> moved forward than would have moved forward with OST alone. And the
> participants, with the addition of the givens, and the bi-monthly OST/WPPF
> meetings were well satisfied that we had a new way of working...during
> meetings and then into the daily life of the organization.
>
> My favorite examples of facilitating OST meetings is difficult to narrow
> down. One that stands out as dear to my heart is for Saving Newborn Lives,
> a global project of Save the Children USA. Representatives from eighteen
> countries participated in the OST that evolved into the strategic plan and
> was a significant part of their organizational transformation from a
> research program to a service delivery program.Another one that stands out
> is an OST for the exploration of issues and opportunities for housing hard
> to house marginalized people. In our Regional government at the time, the
> idea of one-third of the spots designated for the homeless themselves was a
> big challenge resulting in skepticism about it all working, one-third of
> the spots were for government, and one-third of the spots were for
> non-profit organizations. The people were in genuine contact with one
> another, and a lot got accomplished, much to the surprise of many of the
> participants. I heard just last week that one of the task forces developed
> from that OST is still active and has been making a big difference for
> almost thirty years in getting marginalized people housed. A testament to
> sustainability of results from a single OST meeting.
>
> If you know me, you know that I was attracted to the genuine contact that
> is experienced in every OST meeting...genuine contact with self, with
> other, with the collective, and with Creator/Spirit/Creation/Conscious
> Energy. I developed the Genuine Contact Program and way of working, with
> Working With Open Space Technology as one of the essential modules of this
> program
>
> I appreciate the journey, the blessings inherent in the journey, the
> miracles I have witnessed with OST, and its role in my life,
>
> in genuine contact,
> Birgitt
> [image: Picture]
>
>
> *Birgitt Williams*
> *Senior consultant-author-mentor to leaders and consultants *
> *Specialist in organizational and systemic transformation, leadership
> development, and the power of nourishing a culture of leadership.*
> www.dalarinternational.com
>
>
> >> Learn More & Register
> <http://www.dalarinternational.com/upcoming-workshops/> for any of our
> upcoming workshops here.
>
>
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