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Paul,<br>
<br>
Thanks again for your series of posts. <br>
<br>
In the book THE CULTURE GAME there is a chapter "Be Punctual" <br>
<br>
There is also a chapter, "Open The Space", which of course includes
the principle "Whenever it starts is the right time."<br>
<br>
Oversimplifying here, I think most times, most groups in a meeting
are doing either dialogue, or deciding, or are in some kind of
transition from one to the other, along a gradient. <br>
<br>
I currently believe:<br>
<ul>
<li>In deciding-mode, punctuality can (and often must) be
tightened up. </li>
<li>In dialogue-mode, punctuality usually needs to be relaxed to
allow (much) more emergence.</li>
<li>The property of punctuality is a configurable design property.
With it we can assign a range of say, 1 to 10 where 1 is
"totally loose" and 10 is "totally strict." </li>
<li>How punctuality is configured all depends on the design goals
for the experience under consideration.</li>
</ul>
<br>
<br>
<div class="moz-cite-prefix">On 10/30/13 6:55 AM, paul levy wrote:<br>
</div>
<blockquote
cite="mid:CAAnJsbDris6vF1EOaqHCgFEwa71n+jfXBwUCrgc4VVqxCpesHA@mail.gmail.com"
type="cite">
<div dir="ltr">Sharing one more of three. Your comments and
insights most welcome...
<div><br>
<div>warm wishes</div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>Paul Levy</div>
</div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>
<br>
</div>
<div>We can become trapped by all kinds of dogma in our lives.
One of them is start times. Businesses clock people in and
out and there are sanctions for poor timekeeping. We grow up
with school timetables and many of us probably remember
being told off or even punished for being late to class.</div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>In music, if the orchestra doesn’t start together, the
music will not sound pleasant! Yet, in purely improvised
jazz, anyone can start. We join in as and when.</div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>In open space, we are encouraged not to get hung up over
time. When it starts is when it is meant to start. The dogma
of starting on time is a dogma of forcing. It becomes
another imposed structure. It might turn out we all do turn
up for a session bang on time and start bang on time as
well. Or it might be that some pre-start chit-chat turns out
to be just the buzz needed for us to start a little later.</div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>The start time of an open space session is not set and
imposed. The start time in the agenda is an intention at the
time the session is offered. “I’d like to offer a session on
Time Management in the Red Room at 11am. The time set is
experienced as true at the time it is set. And, already the
world has changed; we have moved on, the narrative may shift
significantly. One session may over-run and the follow-on
session may wait for those people, or may not. The right
time emerges out of the need of the moment.</div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>This can and does free us up. It offers the chance to be
lazily late, or to simply allow the time to start to emerge
as needed by the situation. What stops this principle
descending into a lazily, chaotic programme? According to
Jack Martin Leith, one of the few people who has ventured to
critique open space, it all comes down to awareness. At an
open space event there is a collective responsibility to be
aware of the reason the Open Space event was created and
also of the other people attending: “I believe that each
participant should maintain awareness of these outcomes
throughout the conference. This awareness should extend to
the conscious use of time and space, such as starting
meetings on time (because people are aware that time is
limited) and not letting them overrun (because they are
aware that other people need the space).” (Reference, with
case examples, here - <a moz-do-not-send="true"
href="http://www.jackmartinleith.com/more-effective-ost-and-rtsc/">http://www.jackmartinleith.com/more-effective-ost-and-rtsc/</a>)</div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>Start time should never be a rule; it is more of an
impulse. It’s often remarkable how, on reflection, allowing
the start time to “show itself”, is often viewed afterwards
as just the right time to start.</div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>This doesn’t come easy to those addicted to structure,
those who need to know what lies up ahead in the fixed plan.
It comes easier to those who like to go with the flow, who
like to improviser, and also those who are lazy and also
those who are relaxed. Different cultures treat start times
differently and open space conferences that involve a
meeting of different cultures can really show these
different views and behaviours in action.</div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>“Whenever it starts is the right time” isn’t an
invitation to be lazy with time, nor to never agree a start
time and stick to it. It is an invitation to view start
times as emergent.</div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>A group or community, in open space, can often sense
together when something needs to start. And that isn’t
always the time stated in the programme.</div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>When we live by the principle “whenever it starts is the
right time” in open space, we give permission to others to
flow in their own way. We give them space to be, and in
doing that, we also give the community space to be an, as a
result, space for possibility opens more easily. There’s
another side to this coin: When a group meets in a circle
(physical or symbolic) or a conversation or to do work
together, a collective responsibility can form. The group
becomes an organism, even as it is made up for individuals.
The group can find, often without words, the right time to
start. One person can take the needed in-breath, and then we
all start to sing. Sometimes we all breath together. This is
captured beautiful in the words of philosopher, Rudolf
Steiner:</div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>“A healthy social life is found only, when in the mirror
of each soul the whole community finds its reflection, and
when in the whole community the strength of each one is
living.”</div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>So, the right time to start can be born from one person’s
impulse, from the nod between two people, or even from the
synchronicity of the whole group.</div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>There’s a lovely paradox here that many open space
facilitators have failed to understand. Some people hold
firmly to a start time and attempt to uphold it. They create
a dogma out of the start time. And this is also fine. If an
individual manages to persuade or even cajole an entire room
into starting at a fixed time, then this is the right time
to start, if the people in the room follow that lead. Along
the line of “it starts when it starts” and “it starts in
exactly three an a half minutes” are all kinds of people,
will impulses and skills of assertiveness. To impose the
principle as a rule that excludes time fixedness is as bad
as excluding the principle itself. So some sessions will
start just as planed earlier in the day, down to the last
second and others won’t. And both are perfectly lovely.</div>
</div>
</div>
<br>
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<br>
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