[OSList] celebrating 30 years of Working With Open Space Technology

Wed Apr 6 02:29:17 PDT 2022

Dearest Birgitt
Congratulations on this festive university! Thank you for celebrating and
telling your story here. Adds your unique wisdom and perspective to the
ever evolving story of OST and the OS community OD practice, how we live it
and how it changes us fundamentally. Thank you for being and inspiration,
 a teacher and a road companion in life and practice since 2001

With much love and appreciation
Tova Averbuch

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
>
>
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> upcoming workshops here.
>
>
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