Meetings reflect the basic operating system of a group of people. In organizations where power dynamics are heavily at play you will see lots of meetings chaired by those with the power. In flat organizations, circles and open space events are probably more the norm. Communities meet in all kinds of different ways, but essentially a meeting is a good way to make the operating system visible.
A great deal of the work I do involves helping organizations and communities shift to more participatory meeting processes. It isn’t always easy, and today I had one of those days when the stars didn’t quite align in a way that created the magic. I needed to return to a default setting for the group, because they weren’t prepared for such a massive shift in how they were meeting. To have gone on would have been to alienate them and prevent real work from getting done. So we had to shift on the fly, change our hosting styles and reconfigure the room and the process architecture to enable people to be comfortable enough to dig into difficult content. It is a tough call and a fine line to walk but flexibility, curiosity and willingness to learn will help you as a facilitator stay present to the group’s needs, which is after all, of primary importance.
So what if you want to change that operating system? What if you want to tinker with the DNA of a meeting process? What does it take?
In my experience it takes a lot of work up front and not just in the planning phase. You also have to change the WAY you do planning. If you are trying to move from a top-down, command and control meeting style to something more participatory, here are a number of factors to pay attention to:
1. Create a core team that learns together. This is a basic tenet of any systems change initiative. A core team stewards the change and creates the shift. In doing so they also embody the change, which means that they have to be reflective of the whole in their composition and willing to learn together about new ways of working. Successful core teams in my experience spend equal time learning, building relationships and working together. They are made up of a variety of people with a variety of experiences and interests and the very best teams contain people who are willing to stretch, perhaps host part of the meeting in a way they have never done so before. The core team become the designers, champions and leaders of the change, reflected in the way they approach the shift. They don’t simply hire a facilitator and give orders: they host. They have a stake in the outcomes, and they believe in change.
2. The invitation is a process. I’ve written about this before and it is crucial: invitation is not a thing that you send out over email – it is a process. It includes conversations with key potential participants, it is an iterative process of learning, refining, communicating and listening. It involves writing something, creating web presences, making phone calls, taking people out for coffee. If you haven’t gone out for lunch with at least one potential participant as a part of your invitation process, you aren’t doing it right! Short changing invitation will result in poor preparation for participants and perhaps even a rude surprise when they arrive and see that you have changed everything. Too much change all at once to the unprepared can be shocking.
3. Participants have to want it. Successful shifts in meeting culture come in part from participants who show up because there is compelling work to do AND because there is a promise of a new way of working. If people show up just to do the compelling work, they aren’t going to want you to monkey with their meeting process too much. Creating that frame of mind in participants is a time consuming process but it pays huge dividends in shifting a culture of meeting. This is a key plank in the invitation platform and shouldn’t be dismissed.
4. If you don’t get it right the first time, don’t fight it. Learn from mistakes. If you get a world cafe set up and the group rebels, take a stand for the work, not the process. The worst kind of facilitators are those who let their attachment to process stand in the way of good work getting done. Instead of forcing yourself on people who “just don’t get it” get out of the way and help them do the work that they are hungry to do.
Systemic change does just happen because you have a good theory and some smart ideas. It happens because you have sensed the timing and offered the right things at the right time. I’m not saying that we should shortchange people either and simply offer them comfortable options, not by any means. But a system’s tolerance for challenge is a sensitive thing and walking the edge comes with high stakes. Learning how to do this is a lifelong skill.
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Harrison Owen periodically restates his invitation to the world to not only join in Open Space but to go as far as you can in Open Space and see where it takes you. I feel like my work of late has been about this in many ways, and Harrison’s recent post to the OSLIST came at just the right time for me. Here is what he says:
A long time ago a good friend, Ralph Copleman, was to be found in the middle of a large circle of peers dressed in a flowing cape and repeating the words, “Everything is moving, Everything is moving.” Odd to say the least and some doubted Ralph’s sanity. Some still do, but that image has stuck in my febrile brain ever since – and as time has passed it occurs to me that Ralph had it precisely right: This is an energetic cosmos. The problem arises when we (and that includes all of us some of the time) desperately want everything to stop and stand still. So desperately in fact that we have created a mental image of our environment exclusively populated by static things which include everything from mountains to super nova along with the oddments of our life like professions, chairs, relationships, organizational structures, corporations, countries and empires. Unfortunately this mental image is a radical illusion, one might say delusion. Ralph is right. Everything is moving and what we perceive as stable structures are but the momentary, slice in time, freeze-frame constructs of our imagination.
Heresy? Psychobabble? Advanced esoteric insight? – None of the above, I think. As a matter of fact, Ralph’s observation is nothing but a short (poetic?) version of the (now) standard scientific understanding of the nature of the cosmos. Starting with the Big Bang it is all flowing energy, albeit now clumped in momentary configurations – but still flowing energy for all of that. Scratch any rock hard enough and its essential nature comes through – a whirring bunch of quarks and neutrons doing the cosmic dance. Doubtless my physicist friends would take issue with my phrasing – but not, I think, with the core message. Everything is moving.
So what does all this have to do with the price of eggs? Or for that matter – Open Space and our role as facilitators and consultants? A lot, I believe.
Starting with Open Space which is many things to different people. For some it is a Large Group Intervention. Others might see it as an aberrant phenomenon peculiar to a cultish few. For myself Open Space is a trial ride in the flow of life which has a lot of similarities to my boat.
My boat is smallish in size (32 feet) but definitely larger than the average punt. She is very seaworthy and shares a common heritage with the local Lobster Boats here in Maine. We have many visitors, most of whom have never been on a boat such as the Ethelyn Rose. When you walk on board, things look sort of familiar. Chairs for sitting, a comfortable nook for dining, and even an oriental rug on the floor – excuse me, sole. If you look further there are the standard amenities such as a shower and commode, all sequestered in their separate quarters. Even a complete landlubber will feel more or less at home.
But the moment we leave the dock the world changes – apparent stability yields to constant motion. Everything is moving even if it seems to be staying in the same place! In the harbor motion is minimal, but the moment we clear the breakwater marking the harbor entrance the experience can be radically different. Sea swells from the open Atlantic Ocean take us up and down in distances measured in yards, and should we have a good cross wind the surface chop adds an interesting side to side motion. The Ethelyn Rose is right at home, but some of our visitors have a different impression. And navigating in these conditions is a definite learning experience. Even a simple walk through the main cabin can be a challenge. Hand holds that you had carefully plotted at the start of your journey suddenly changed position relative to you as you made your way. What was up is now down and who knows what is happening in between. Interesting, and as they say, It ain’t Kansas.
Most people meet the challenge and after a few educational bumps to various parts of their anatomy they learn not to fight reality. No matter what you may have thought you were going to do, the only useful option is to go with the flow. And the next level of learning is that when you do that well (flow) you can actually arrive where you need to be. Wonderful! Sounds a lot like Open Space.
We start in the static stability of a circle. This may seem strange to some, but there is a place for everybody and everybody finds a place. A familiar and enduring structure for sure. Then it happens. The circle crumbles in bits and pieces as people come to center, announcing their passions – only to be briefly restored as they return to their seats. However the restoration is but momentary. Shortly everybody leaves their seats to join a chaotic gaggle at the wall. So much for static structure, and it goes downhill from there.
Ebbing and flowing, groups form and reform all without benefit of the standard constraints essential for orderly organizational life–or so we might have thought. Pre-arranged agenda (sometimes called Mission, Goals, Objectives) is nonexistent. The Schedule might be posted but never followed – things start when they start. Assigned participation is nowhere to be found, and yet the right people show up. And to make things even worse, the air is filled with buzzing and flutters as Bees and Butterflies do their thing. Madness! To be sure there may be a few people who are utterly flummoxed as the hand holds they may have expected (see above under “Ethelyn Rose at Sea”) disappear . . . or reappear in unexpected places. Their condition is not helped, for should they ask what to do the answer is likely to come back as a question – What would they care to do?
A trifling few will lose heart and head for the shore – perceived stability. But the vast majority, as we have seen over the years and around the globe, will be totally captivated by the moment, and a smaller group will experience that moment as total exhilaration. They are doing what their prior life experience taught them could not be done – seriously and intentionally going with the flow. And rather than being rank hedonism, the experience proves to be massively productive and fulfilling. Doing well and good – and feeling great. A hard to beat combination.
And then we come to Monday Morning. Back to reality, as they say. But is it? The truth, I believe is rather different. They have experienced reality and come to the edge of shedding illusion/delusion. In the words of friend Ralph, “Everything is moving” – and this is now a fact of life to be savored and enjoyed. No longer a terrifying unknown, it is to be affirmed and embraced. Not without a few “white knuckle” moments to be sure – but infinitely better than hanging onto the (illusory) rock of stability.
So what about us – those privileged folks who have accepted the honor of opening space in people’s lives? Short answer: Invite our guests over the edge. Please note I did not say, Push them over the edge.
Crafting this invitation is always a matter of personal style and must come from the heart. The invitation I have in mind never appears on a piece of paper (or the electronic equivalent). It arrives in our personhood – who we are and how we present ourselves, which is to say, from the heart. Not to be confused with a gushy valentine or formulaic presentation, the invitation manifests in our simple presence, revealing our own acceptance and joy in the moving flow of life. Without words we express the swimmer’s call: Come on in, the water is fine! Of course you have to be in the water for that call to have any credibility.
It is perhaps easier to say how NOT to create this invitation. First off, it is not a matter of rational argument and presentation of facts. Most people already know the facts at some level, and I think the case could be made that it was “rational argument” that has gotten us into the bind we experience. Given the “fact” of a moving, changing world which can be very uncomfortable, it is quite “rational” to define that world in terms of controllable static chunks that may be contained, or better, bent to our specifications. This has led us to such wonderful things as “Flood Control” which works until such time as Mother Nature and Old Man River decide to take a different course. It turns out that The River is not a static, definable thing but part of a vast ever changing system. Effective Flood Control would require close management of the Planet’s atmosphere to say nothing of the cosmos beyond. Good luck!
Also under the heading of “NOT to be included” are well intentioned efforts to sugar coat the pill, as it were. Which is to say that we might propose certain limitations that will restrict the possibility of change in Open Space. Some of us have called these “givens” but so far as I can tell the only given is change itself. And to suggest otherwise is not so much to violate the “Spirit of Open Space” but rather the essence of the cosmos itself. Ralph had it right: Everything is moving. In this context, Open Space Technology is a minimal consideration.
I am by no means suggesting that our invitation look like the back panel of some medication listing every possible adverce reaction, if in fact unexpected change is such an adverce reaction. And truth to tell I find the appearance of unexpected change in the midst of an Open Space to be one of its (OS’s) most delightful consequences. I also think that it is important to note the OS is not the engine of change. It simply provides the space for change to show up and the cosmos (or whatever) takes care of all the heavy lifting.
For me an invitation to Open Space is an opportunity to include friends and strangers in the deepest experience of (my) life. It has little to do with selling a product, doing a process, excersizing some sort of professional competence – although there are doubtless elements of all of that. Fundamentally it is my invitation to experience life at its fullest in which chanagability is not the enemy to be suppressed but rather the rich tapestry of an evolving future. I don’t make it, I can’t predict it – but I can participate both as a sojourner and a co-creator. Stuart Kauffman speaks of being “At Home in the Universe.” That is my elemental experience, and I am always looking for playmates.
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Alex has a great post today on his Top 5 reasons to celebrate mistakes at work. I’ve been hearing lately from many clients about the need for us to loosen up and accept more failure in our work. The pressure that comes from perfection and maintaining a failsafe environment is a killer, and while we all demand high levels of accountability and performance, working in a climate where we can fail-safe provides more opportunity to find creative ways forward that are hitherto unknown. So to compliment Alex’s post, here are a few ways to create a safe-fail environment:
1. Be in a learning journey with others. While you are working with people, see your work as a learning journey and share questions and inquiries with your team.
2. Take time to reflect on successes and failures together. We are having a lovely conversation on the OSLIST, the Open Space facilitator’s listserv about failures right now and it’s refreshing to hear stories about where things went sideways. What we learn from those experiences is deep, both about ourselves and our work.
3. Be helpful. When a colleague takes a risk and fail, be prepared to setp up to help them sort it out. My best boss ever gave us three rules to operate under: be loyal to your team, make mistakes and make sure he was the first to know when you made one. There was almost nothing we could do that he couldn’t take care of, and we always had him at our backs, as long as he was the first to hear about it. Providing that support to team members is fantastic.
4. Apologize together. Show a united front, and help make amends when things go wrong. This is a take on one of the improv principles of making your partner look good. It is also about taking responsibility and having many minds and hearts to put to work to correct what needs correcting. This one matters when your mistake costs lives. Would be nice to see this more in the corporate world.
5. Build on the offer. Another improv principle, this one invites us to see what we just went through as an offer to move on to the next thing.
6. Don’t be hard on yourself. You can’t get out of a pickle if you are berating yourself up for being there. I find The Work of Byron Katie to be very very helpful in helping become clear about what to do next and to loosen up on the story that just because I failed, therefore I am a failure.
Now these little lessons work in complex environments, like human organizations, not mechanical systems so before you jump on me for having unrealistic expectation for airplanes and oil rigs, just know that. Having said that, dealing with the human costs of airplane crashes and oil rig explosions requires clarity, and being wrapped in blame and self-loathing is not the same as being empathetic and clear.
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I’m a sucker for principles, because principles help us to design and do what is needed and help us to avoid bringing pre-packaged ideas and one-size-fits-all solutions to every problem. And of course, I’m a sucker for my friend Meg Wheatley. Today, in our Art of Hosting workshop in central Illinois, Tenneson Woolf and Teresa Posakony brought some of Meg’s recent thinking on these principles to a group of 60 community developers working in education, child and family services, and restorative justice. We’re excited to be working nwith these principles in the work we’re doing with Berkana Institute. Here’s what I heard:
1. People support what they create. Where are you NOT co-creating? Even the most participatory process always have an edge of focused control or design. Sometimes that is wise, but more often than not we design, host and harvest without consciousness. Are we engaging with everyone who has a stake in this issue?
2. People act most responsibly when they care. Passion and responsibility is how work gets done. We know this from Open Space – as Peggy Holman is fond of saying, invite people to take responsibility for what they love. What is it you can’t NOT do? Sometime during this week I have heard someone describe an exercise where you strip away everything you are doing and you discover what it is you would ALWAYS do under any circumstances. Are we working on the issues that people really care about?
3. Conversation is the way that humans have always thought together. In conversation we discover shared meaning. It is the primal human organizing tool. Even in the corridors of power, very little real action happens in debate, but rather in the side rooms, the hallways, the lunches, the times away from the ritual spaces of authority and in the the relaxed spaces of being human. In all of our design of meetings, engagement, planning or whatever, if you aren’t building conversation into the process, you will not benefit from the collective power and wisdom of humans thinking together. These are not “soft” processes. This is how wars get started and how wars end. It’s how money is made, lives started, freedom realized. It is the core human organizing competency.
4. To change the conversation, change who is in the conversation. It is a really hard to see our own blind spots. Even with a good intention to shift the conversation, without bringing in new perspectives, new lived experiences and new voices, our shift can become abstract. If you are talking ABOUT youth with youth in the process, you are in the wrong conversation. If you are talking about ending a war and you can’t contemplate sitting down with the enemy, you will not end the war, no matter how much your policy has shifted. Once you shift the composition of the group, you can shift the status and power as well. What if your became the mentors to adults? What if clients directed our services?
5. Expect leadership to come from anywhere. If you expect leadership to come from the same places that it has always come from, you will likely get the same results you have always been getting. That is fine to stabilize what is working, but in communities, leadership can come from anywhere. Who is surprising you with their leadership?
6. Focus on what’s working, ask what’s possible, not what’s wrong. Energy for change in communities comes from working with what is working. When we accelerate and amplify what is working, we can apply those things to the issues in community that drain life and energy. Not everything we have in immediately useful for every issue in a community, but hardly anything truly has to be invented. Instead, find people who are doing things that are close to what you want to do and work with them and others to refine it and bring it to places that are needed. Who is already changing the way services are provided? Which youth organize naturally in community and how can we invite them to organize what is needed? What gives us energy in our work?
7. Wisdom resides within us. I often start Open Space meetings by saying that “no angels will parachute in here to save us. Rather, the angel is all of us together.” Experts can’t do it, folks. They can be helpful but the wisdom for implementation and acting is within us. It has to be.
8. Everything is a failure in the middle, change occurs in cycles. We’re doing new things, and as we try them, many things will “fail.” How do we act when that happens? Are we tyrannized by the belief that everything we do has to move us forward?
9. Learning is the only way we become smarter about what we do. Duh. But how many of us work in environments where we have to guard against failure? Are you allowed to have a project or a meeting go sideways, or is the demand for accountability and effectiveness so overwhelming that we have to scale back expectations or lie about what we are doing.
10. Meaningful work is a powerful human motivator. What is the deepest purpose that calls us to our work and how often do we remember this?
11. Humans can handle anything as long as we’re together. That doesn’t mean we can stop tsunamis, but it means that when we have tended to relationships, we can make it through what comes next. Without relationships our communities die, individuals give up, and possibility evaporates. The time for apologizing for relationship building is over. We need each other, and we need to be with each other well.
12. Generosity, forgiveness and love. These are the most important elements in a community. We need all of our energy to be devoted to our work. If we use our energy to blame, resent or hate, then we deplete our capacity, we give away our power and our effectiveness. This is NOT soft and cuddly work. Adam Kahane has recently written about the complimentarity of love and power, and this principle, more than any other is the one that should draw our attention to that fact. Love and power are connected. One is not possible without the other. Paying attention to this quality of being together is hard, and for many people it is frightening. Many people won’t even have this conversation because the work of the heart makes us vulnerable. But what do we really get for being guarded with one another, for hoarding, blaming and despising?
We could probably do a full three workshop on these principles (and in the circle just now we agreed to!). But as key organizing principles, these are brilliant points of reflection for communities to engage in conversations about what is really going on.
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My twitter friend Durga pointed me to this article from Euan The Potter.on the Japanese aesthetic concept of “Wabi sabi”
Etymologically, “Wabi sabi” is based on the root forms of two adjectives, both of which are generally translated as “Lonely”. “Wabishii” however focuses on the object which is lonely, where as “Sabishii” focuses on the absence which makes the object lonely. The principal of “Wabi sabi” is therefore; Beauty reduced to its simplest form, and that form brought to a peak of focus by its relationship with the space in which it exists. That is to say, the presence of an object and the presence of the space interacting to strengthen each other.
The idea that space has presence is not new. Two and a half thousand years ago the Greek philosopher Parmenides proposed that it is impossible for anything which exists to conceive of anything which does not exist and that therefore even the space between objects “exists”. This remains in modern English as the concept that “I have nothing”. In Japanese however, it is grammatically impossible for “Nothing” (Nanimo) to exist (aru). “Nothing” (Nanimo) must be followed by “Is not” (nai). The idea of the presence of a space was therefore revolutionary.
To take it one step further, a tea bowl, being a vessel, is defined by the space it contains. It is not the pot which is important, but the space. In the tea bowl it is therefore possible to have the object (Wabi) and the space (Sabi) interacting within the same pot.
I think it is fair to say that, as in the art of tea, the art of hosting works with this idea to create both containers and spaces that provide the conditions for generative activity. It’s an elusive concept, the idea of creating beauty from things that aren’t really there, but that is why we call it an art, and when it comes off well, you can feel the strength of a well held container and the quality of the enclosed space.