One of the hundreds of Open Space Technology Principles posters I have used in my time, this one from an Art of Hosting training in Minnesota in 2012, and designed by a team member.
NOTE: I edited the title of this to make it clear that I’m not calling Harrison a “shaman,” but rather trying to correct a meme that has been going around which has appropriated his work.
There is a post going around on the internet called “The Four Laws of the Shaman” or the “Four Laws of Spirituality.” The four laws are ascribed to some unknown shaman or some exotic culture like “Indian spirituality” or “Native American wisdom.” You can visit the links I’ve provided here to get a sense of the text. And, of course, this stuff is all over Facebook, where it gets shared endlessly. The earliest reference to these “Four Laws of a Shaman” I could find is from a Facebook page in 2011.
This kind of thing always gets my hackles up because it is possible that these sorts of sayings are attributable to a person who may be a specific teacher in a specific spiritual lineage or tribal community. Erasing their voice is a kind of colonization, so please don’t share these kinds of unattributed nuggets of wisdom unless you can quote a source.
In this case, however, the source is not a tribal elder from an exotic locale, but is Harrison Owen from Maryland, USA and the “Four Laws” are actually the original four principles of Open Space Technology. Here is one version of these “four laws of a shaman” from the posts:
- “The person who comes into your life is the right person”
- “What happens is the only thing that could have happened”
- “Anytime it starts is the right time.”
- “When something ends, it ends”
Anyone familiar with this blog or Open Space Technology will recognize right away that these are the original four principles of Open Space Technology, to whit:
- Whoever comes is the right people.
- Whatever happens is the only thing that could have.
- Whenever it starts is the right time.
- When it’s over, it’s over.
(And there is a fifth principle that was added within the last decade or so which says “Where ever it happens is the right place” but I’m old skool and the truth is I forget that one all the time)
The original reference for these principles is Harrison’s “Open Space Technology: A User’s Guide, first edition” originally published in 1992. The principles and the law of two feet are outlined in Chapter Five, pp 68-74. Before that, these principles were articulated in the late 1980s and published in the original set of notes Harrison wrote about the process sometime in 1987 or 1988. You can find that document at the worldwide archive of the Open Space Technology community of practice.
Harrison is incredibly generous with his work, and you can find much of his out-of-print work available at the Harrison Owen Library at openspaceworld.org. There is a library of his papers there too.
Sometimes, it is asserted that Harrison got these principles from a Liberian village. This isn’t true. Harrison did a stint in the US Peace Corps in the 1960s and documented village life in Liberia while working on community projects. You can read a beautiful photo essay of his observations in “When the Devil Dances” at the Internet Archive. He never claimed to see Open Space in action there. Rather, he was taken with how the community addressed a complex agricultural issue, and he cut his teeth on designing participatory processes in that work, which is documented in some detail in The Practice of Peace.
The Organizational Transformation conferences he helped run in the early 1980s (documented here) were the first use of the method, specifically at OT3 in 1985. His story of how he came to develop and use the method with many others is documented in his many papers and books, especially Expanding Our Now. He has been interviewed countless times, done TEDx talks and is always up for a chat, so if you want to hear the story from the horse’s mouth, you have abundant opportunity to do so.
Harrison is an incredible guy, a deep river of experience and knowledge. His folksy manner and his constant exhortations to simplify one’s facilitation practice don’t come close to giving the full breadth of his life’s work its due. He is a priest, a theologian, a scholar of Near East religion, myth and culture, a former bureaucrat, community organizer, consultant, teacher, and author, and his whole life has only partially been about Open Space. I’m pretty sure he wouldn’t describe himself as a shaman but he was an important mentor in my life. He was the first person to introduce me to complexity theory, to spirit in organizations and to the dynamics of self-organization which transformed my facilitation practice.
So. The next time you see these “shaman’s laws” shared in your circles, feel free to bring these receipts and give Harrison his due.
In this video, Harrison Owen discusses the chaos that is disrupting the order we take for granted and begins to create a new order and a different world. Harrison has been saying much the same thing for his entire career, starting with his dissertation on Aramaic and associated mythologies and cosmologies. He has been a long-time student of the dance of chaos and order, and his development of Open Space Technology came from this lifelong inquiry.
i encountered Open Space first through an event that was hosted by Anne Stadler and Angeles Arien in 1995, and I met Harrison for the first time in 1998 at a one-day session at Simon Fraser University where he sat and taught about chaos and order, self-organization, organizational transformation and Open Space just through telling stories and sending us into a little bit of Open Space. Harrison’s work ignited two major threads in my life’s work: the facilitation of self-organizing dialogue processes, and a fiery curiosity about how complex systems work.
This talk opened a recent gathering of Open Space facilitators on the Power of Love, Not Knowing and Open Space. These are the stories and insights Harrison has been sharing for his whole career. What I love about him is his embrace of the fundamental simplicity of working with complexity and facilitating Open Space. It’s mind-boggling to me (and him) why people seem so predisposed to make Open Space far more complicated than it needs to be. We understand why: it’s about losing control and being unable to deal with the discomfort of uncertainty. Fear, power and ego come into play, and people lose the ability to act resourcefully.
It’s lovely to watch him teaching and encouraging people to do the simple things well and get out of the way of the work that groups of people can do.
Enjoy this video. He’s been a mentor and an inspiration for me for 25+ years. We do indeed love you, Harrison.
The first time I ever experienced Open Space Technology was at the International Association of Public Participation Practitioners in Whistler, BC, Canada in 1995. It changed my life, to be hosted by a small team of beautiful facilitators who took a standard conference and opened space for the 400 of us to spend a day in deep practice, conversation, and community together.
The team was Anne Stadler, Angeles Arrien and Chris Carter. What an introduction to Open Space. I can still remember Anne lighting a candle and placing it at the centre of a huge concentric swirl of chairs. I figure I owe my path in life to the graciousness of Anne’s opening and invitation to Open Space. Over the past 28 years – for half of my life so far – that one experience has set me on my course, and I am forever grateful that I made the decision to go to that conference.
Anne died yesterday at age 92.
We have lost an Elder, a steward, a mentor, and a friend. Someone who always had our backs, someone who never wavered in her support of those who were dedicated to making the world a more humane, creative, and life-affirming world. She called this the “radiant network.” I feel so blessed to have walked a little on this journey alongside Anne’s wisdom, grace, and fierce support.
An interesting rabbit hole was opened for me thanks to Tim O’Reilly’s cheeky claim that the German naturalist Alexander von Humboldt created the “unconference” in 1828.
Through a link on the OSLIST provided by Rolf Schneidereit I’ve just read Humboldt’s opening address at the “Meeting of German Naturalists and Physicians” held over several days and several locations in Berlin during September of 1878.
The invitation was to break down barriers between scientists from multiple disciplines to explore diverging opinions and ideas. As Harrison Owen did a century later when reflecting on his development of Open Space Technology, Humboldt drew his inspiration from the natural world for a conference that was primarily based on the exchange of oral ideas in small groups, across disciplines, in dialogue. Here are some remarks from his opening address:
The terms naturalist and doctor are therefore almost synonymous here. Chained by earthly ties to the type of lower structures, man completes the series of higher organizations. In its physiological and pathological condition, it hardly presents a class of its own. Anything that relates to this high purpose of medical studies and rises to general scientific views belongs primarily to this association. As important as it is not to loosen the bond, which embraces the equal exploration of organic and inorganic nature; yet the increasing size and gradual development of this institute will make it necessary to give section-by-section more detailed lectures on individual disciplines, in addition to the communal public meetings to which this hall is dedicated. Oral discussions are possible only in such narrower circles, only among men, who are attracted by equality of study. Without this kind of discussion, without a view of the collected, often difficult to define, and therefore contentious bodies of nature, the frank intercourse of truth-seeking men would be deprived of an invigorating principle. also to give more detailed lectures about individual disciplines in sections. Oral discussions are possible only in such narrower circles, only among men, who are attracted by equality of study. Without this kind of discussion, without a view of the collected, often difficult to define, and therefore contentious bodies of nature, the frank intercourse of truth-seeking men would be deprived of an invigorating principle. also to give more detailed lectures about individual disciplines in sections. Oral discussions are possible only in such narrower circles, only among men, who are attracted by equality of study. Without this kind of discussion, without a view of the collected, often difficult to define, and therefore contentious bodies of nature, the frank intercourse of truth-seeking men would be deprived of an invigorating principle.
Humboldt, Alexander von: Speech delivered at the opening of the meeting of German naturalists and physicians in Berlin, September 18, 1828. Berlin, 1828. p. 7-8.
So I don’t know that Humboldt invented the “unconference” as O’Reilly claims, but it is certainly an interesting early record of break-out groups being used to discuss findings and ideas in the spirit of Open Space and current good dialogue practice.
A few months ago, I was immersed in teaching complexity within the framework of the Art of Participatory Leadership program (AoPL). Essentially, AoPL is the application of the Art of Hosting within leadership contexts, extending beyond traditional facilitation and hosting scenarios. With a strong emphasis on personal practice and the use of complexity tools, AoPL encourages a deeper exploration of the connections between the Four Fold Practice, complexity, and dialogic containers – topics I’d previously addressed in my chapter for the book ‘Dialogic Organizational Development‘. My recent revisit to these subjects has sparked fresh insights.
In one of these sessions, a spontaneous thought emerged: “Leadership is all about managing interactions to get results.” This notion, inspired by Dave Snowden’s idea that culture is the product of interactions within a system, made me reflect upon the history of my own fascination with containers.
Throughout my life, I’ve found myself drawn to the concept of containers, primarily, I believe, due to an aversion to controlling interactions between people. This leaning was what initially attracted me to open space technology as an empowering meeting process. It didn’t dictate how people were going to interact, but instead provided conditions conducive to fruitful and creative connections. It left agency with the participants rather than centralizing control with the facilitator – something I’ve always preferred to avoid. Open Space is built on the ideas of self-organization and is therefore a natural method to use in complex environments, to invite groups to organize around important conversations and ideas for which they have the energy and agency to host.
This interest in open space led me to the realm of complexity science and various writings on self-organization, including work on networks, emergence, and community organizing. These concepts strive to vest power in the hands of those actively involved in the work, a principle that resonated deeply with me and steered me towards anthro-complexity and the application of complexity science to human systems.
It was in this field that I discovered William Isaacs’s seminal book on dialogue. Isaacs was among the first to describe the dialogic container in the context of organizational life. This deepened my interest in the topic, leading to my connection with Gervase Bushe in the early 2010s. Our collaboration eventually resulted in an invitation to contribute a chapter to the book he was editing with Bob Marshak, a key text in introducing dialogic organizational development to the world.
Interactions, containers, patterns, and emergent outcomes are all characteristics of complex systems. Both Snowden and Glenda Eoyang offer valuable, and different, insights into how constraints create conditions for emergence. However, the lesson that resonates most with me is the idea that, in complex situations, we can only work with the constraints to increase our chances of creating beneficial patterns.
This approach to working with containers and constraints can be challenging and risks verging into manipulation, especially when massive amounts of power and data are involved, such as in large social media companies. There is an ethical imperative to maintain transparency when working with constraints, a principle fundamental to this work.
In my chapter for Bob and Gervase’s book, I discussed the Four Fold Practice as a guiding framework. It helps leaders focus on four key patterns that make conversations meaningful, while also nurturing an environment that fosters the emergence of these patterns.
This practice grew from the observation that presence, participation, hosting, and co-creation are essential elements of meaningful, productive conversations. Importantly, these patterns should not be imposed but rather fostered through well-crafted containers.
Rather than dictating “be present now!”, we can shape spaces where presence naturally occurs and feels appreciated. Instead of compelling participation, we aim to cultivate processes that promote deep engagement through authentic and impactful invitations.
The same principles apply to hosting and co-creation. We shouldn’t impose facilitation roles onto individuals; instead, we should craft environments in which people comfortably host each other on various scales – from open-space, world café, circle to intimate one-on-one interactions.
Similarly, forcing people into co-creation isn’t the right approach. Instead, we must provide them with the necessary tools, conditions, constraints, and challenges to stimulate collaborative creation and achieve desired outcomes.
I strive to uphold these principles from the Four Fold Practice in every facilitation – to create conditions where the patterns of presence, participation, hosting, and co-creation naturally emerge.
This exploration into the realm of leadership, complexity, and dialogic containers has been a journey of discovery, reflection, and evolution. My fascination with containers and how they impact interactions, outcomes, and ultimately culture within a system continues to grow.
The intersection of complexity and leadership in the context of dialogic containers is a rich tapestry of insights and practices that can greatly enhance our effectiveness as leaders, facilitators, and change-makers. The journey is ongoing, and the learning never stops.
How do these reflections resonate with you? I’m thinking of writing more on the idea of containers, and would welcome your thoughts and questions about the topic.