On the OSLIST, the list for Open Space Technology practitioners, a conversation about using Open Space Technology as part of the design charette process elicited this story from Zelle Nelson in North Carolina:
My experience with Open Space and an architect/design project is actually from a project I worked on with BP in Scotland. The 60 person business unit I was working with was moving from one part of the building complex to another (most would agree the space they were moving into was the worst space in the building). I started with an Open Space Visioning meeting where in addition to the usual markers and paper for Open Space I added magazines (design, nature, home furnishings, etc.) a big roll of paper, scissors, and glue. I invited the group to talk about what they envisioned the ideal work space to be and to cut out pictures from the magazines, use words, and pictures to create a collage of what the new space might feel like.
We took this collage, along with the results from the Open Space and shared this with the architects and designers (the designers/architects were invited to be at the visioning Open Space) assigned to the project. Some incredible ideas that I could never have thought of on my own, along with the many concerns about moving to “the worst space in the building” were folded into the design process which also took into account budget constraints and site needs/requests.
The design team then came back with a design for the new work space (which included skylights and a “yellow brick road” gleaned from the first Open Space). We took these sketches/blue prints and went back into Open Space with cut out furniture options and pencil and paper. Each team then looked at the areas available and filled in the design details specific to their needs. Conversation and negotiation took place between the different teams and a consensus design was reached.
The final result was an exceptional work space that was loved by the business unit and the “worst space” in the building is now considered the best place to be.
Along the way, I worked with individuals and teams around learning how to create places that work for them instead of trying to fit into someone else’s design. I gave them, tools and a language to find the best mix between personal and team needs.
This is a brilliant application of the process and continues in a long line of stories about Open Space being used to design everything from pavillions to shoes to aircraft doors to landscapes. If you want to know more about Zelle’s work, visit the website of her company Know Place Like Home
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This is a classic example of intrinsic motivation:
My daughter is six years old and she is learning to read. At night we have been reading her The Hobbit and she has declared that it is the best book ever written. She is keen to read have more Tolkein read to her, but we’re wary of reading Lord of the Rings to her at bedtime. It’s a little gory for her age right now.
Last week, my daughter confessed to her grandmother that she was secretly teaching herself to read so that she could read Lord of the Rings by herself, without us finding out about it.
Naturally, I am doing nothing to dissuade this! She is indeed teaching herself to read (she is a homelearner, so no school for her). And she is starting to show a rather indiscreet interest in someone called Frodo.
That’s what it’s all about. Learning from the inside out.
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Jim McGee points to a great post from Jevon McDonald on the price of silence in organizations, and what to do about it. Opening up communications starts from the bottom:
A change in the prevailing culture of an established organization cannot come from the very top-down approach that is being reevaluated. It must come from people, like Harry in our previous story, who will lead by example. Facilitators and early adopters are key to the success of personal publishing in your organization. By bringing key figures into the picture, such as Presidents, Vice Presidents, and prominent people within departments, on board early on, the real need for openness and communication will be understood by the rest of the involved community.
Our new focus must move from the problem to the person. Much like Harry, we must empower people (or allow them to empower themselves) at all levels of our organization. By recognizing the power of discourse, we can encourage all levels within the hierarchy to speak freely. When �“Breaking the ice�” becomes a cultural norm, a powerful new way of working emerges. No longer are we stuck in a world where we can�’t act creatively.
Creating a space where this kind of interaction can take place becomes a high priority. The problem with this type of change is that a Memorandum regarding a corporate cultural change would be the antithesis of itself. We must foster this change carefully, in a safe and comfortable space for everyone.
This is one of the reasons I love using Open Space Technology within organizations or in communities where there are people who have been traditionally disenfranchised by the power structure. Open Space opens up the agenda for passion from everyone involved in the enterprise and creates conditions where new ideas which challenge the conventions can be put forward in a constructive manner. Having leadership on board means that change can be created from the seeds that live in everyone who want to improve the present and seek a better future.
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Howard Rheingold blogs Wes Boyd, the founder of Moveon.org who recently spoke about the power of self-organization:
We got involved in the run-up to the war in Iraq, and that’s where our big growth happened. People were disturbed about the rush to war. When the political establishment is not addressing people’s concerns, that is when the Net can afford a way for those people to come together. A little more than a year ago, we said that we’d done petitions and lobbying congress — should we try advertising? We asked for $35,000 for an ad in the NYT. In 48 hours, $400,000 came in. We ran an ad about ‘let the inspections work.’
Then the war happened. During that period, our list grow to around 1.3 million — it tripled during the run-up to the war. All these people came together originally around an issue. We wanted to know if they were interested about other issues. We asked how people felt about the budget and tax cuts, and we did an ad about a school in Oregon that had a blood drive to raise funds. While leaders in Washington were used to getting a few dozen comments about media consolidation issues. People were passing email petititions aroung the Internet about the proposed FCC rule changes that would allow even greater consolidation of media ownership, so we raised the issue and raised hundreds of thousands of dollars in days, so we very actively engaged in issues, helped citizens meet with members of Congress and Senators, who were very surprised at the numbers of citizens who were coming in to talk about FCC rules, which had previously been followed by small numbers of media owners and policy wonks. We ran an ad featuring Rupert Murdoch about media consolidation. We enabled hundreds of thousands of communications to Congress, which responded.
The Internet is a powerful tool for connecting people who are trying to live in truth, self-organize campaigns and connections to express that truth and crack holes in the armour of complicity that surrounds the status quo.
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Moving up a nice set of thoughts from my comments. Dave said:
Democratic growth may lie somewhere between the enlightened individual (ie “the truth if known is not the truth”) and the solid political framework, say the constitution. Some where in our ability to open our myths to their own energies, not to end the myth, but to accept it as myth…truth’s origin..turtles all the way down so to speak.
The need for solid political systems, stability if you will, begs the pattern to transcend the solid/comprehensible vs. fluid/transformational.
Dave…feel free to contribute observations like that anytime. I’ve been really taken by the notion of truth, and how we generate it and how we agree upon it. Springing out of Ken Wilber’s map of the world, the ideas Dave is throwing out live within the subjective and inter-subjective realms. In other words we’re talking about truths that arise from our lives as individuals, driven by intention, and our lives as subject negotiating a set of relationships with others.
In the realm of the individual, our truth emerges as integrity, sincerity and trustworthiness. This is the subjective truth that underlies our individual acts of intention that make up the basis of “living in truth” I think. These are the things that cause us to be “good.” In the realm of the collective, this truth, in intersubjective space emerges as cultural fit, mutual understanding and rightness…a shared sense of justice, a story codified in things like constitutions, laws and cultural norms.
These are both stories; stories we tell ourselves about what is true and what is good. Notably this kind of truth completely excludes the notion of “objective truth,” in other words, that which can be measured without participating in its execution. How do I know I have four apples? I count them.
This is notable because the subjective truths, the good and the true (in Wilber’s terms) are truths that only exist if you participate in them. You must generate that intentional truth that refuses to participate in a totalitarian regime. You must get into conversation with people to understand how things fit culturally, what the law should say and so on. The very nature of these truths is active, participatory and dynamic.
To simply sit back and accept the measured approach (pun intended) is to give up responsibility for the truth, and to become complicit in the system that generates that truth from outside of its subjects. In other words, a totalitarian regime, to whatever degree, rests its truth and power in the objective and in objective sides of things: it determins the social order and it regulate behaviour. It has no interest in the lively world of personal intention and shared and living culture. Giving in to this is suicide for the soul. The way out, as Jefferson, Gandhi, Havel and others have pointed out, is to activate the subjective and intersubjective truths.
In other words, freedom and power works on a use it or lose it basis. One cannot have freedom simply by buying the message that one has it. The system that tells you you have power is exactly the system that has disempowered you. One must do more than simply accept the fact that one lives in a democracy. One must activate the truth.
And activating it, in whatever social structure, be it society, community or organization, animates power with the truth of subjects, and leads to a world that is open to the fresh and liberating breath of living in truth. It brings creativity and individuality to collective activity and illuminates dark monochrome structures and ideas, which, in totalitarian regimes, blanket the spirit and cloud out the light.
Too airy? Perhaps, but I am more and more convinced of that fact that colonization is actually the gobbling up of subjective and intersubjective reality by those that wield the tools of measurement, observation and metrics. The deep effect of losing the richness and life of the subjective world, is an oppression that runs so far down that people may not even be aware of its effects. The fact that liberation has come to mean control over the ways in which societies are governed and measured proves this to a point. If we simply take over the objective world, without activating the subjective, we are only prolonging the struggle, instead of winning the war.