Designing for Open Space (and other large group facilitation methods)

Yesterday some very experienced Open Space Technology facilitators convened a session on Qiqochat to talk about how to get the “right” theme for an Open Space. My old friend Thomas Herrmann called the session and I’ve been reading the notes, which were posted publicly on the OSLIST. There is so much insight here. What they have grappled with is a perennial question for large group process facilitators. When you are choosing a question or a theme and crafting an invitation for these kinds of meetings the attractor has to be strong enough to catalyze engagement all over the room, but not so tight that you limit emergence. You are, in the parlance of complexity and dialogue, using a constraint to catalyze a container, the constraint in this case being an attractor.

This is critical work and essential to the success of a large group intervention because once the group is off and running, as a facilitator you don’t have much latitude to shift the course of things. I spend literally days working with teams on invitations, invitation processes and questions and discerning the real conversation before we get into the room. It never gets old.

Four key points stood out for me in the conversation. Here they are with some of my reflections.

“Have a question big enough that people have space to explore but not so big that people get lost in it.” Oft repeated wisdom from Harrison Owen that Peggy Holman shared with the group. The question should not only have space to explore by also a forward momentum. I am fond of saying that “Open Space is the fastest way I know of getting people to get to work on something.” She tells a story (captured in the notes) of designing an invitation that is worth repeating in full here:

A story when I was working with a group and part of the calling circle. I live in the Seattle area, it has stabilised a little but not great – it has an issue with homelessness. An organization called Impact Hub, Seattle – a place to support start up with a social purpose and has affiliates around the world. Located in Pioneer Square, ground zero for homelessness. Speaking with the Exec Dir and agreed we should convene around homelessness. One of the qualities I look for, like Harrison used to say, is to have a question big enough that people have space to explore but not so big that people get lost in it. Another is that a question be forward focused. Eg: Ending homelessness or fighting homelessness didn’t work. There wasn’t an immediate question to use. 

Typical approach I use is to think about who are the stakeholders, forming a microcosm of whoever is involved eg: formerly homeless person, social services, govt agencies. A group of 5 or 6 to get started. The question I asked, ” What is the “yes” in this for you?” What does the heart say? How do we tap that? Ask a question that touches both and do a talking circle. What’s the call that drew you here, aspirations here and what do you want to accomplish, if we invest the time? Listen to what each of them have to say. Seeds of the question will emerge. The art is taking the seeds and putting them together into a question. 

We ended calling it, “Mobilising the 3 Cs” – Community, Compassion, Creativity – it’s what people talked about.

Shifted the focus from just homelessness. “How do we mobilise, Community, Compassion and Creativity to end homelessness?”

Peggy is a beautiful writer, friend, mentor, colleague. Go read her work.

Convene a core team of people who have a stake in the event, and try to make it a microcosm of who will be in the room. That enables a higher level of diversity of perspective and experience and generates champions for the process. Especially when power dynamics are at play, having folks from all across the system involved in the planning is a critical way to generate the energy of participation. Because…

Open Space is more magic the more diversity there is in the room. At a recent event I did for the Giant Screen Cinema Association, we had folks that were the founders of giant screen cinema (and therefore pinnacles of achievement in their world) next to people who had only just come into this world of film, meeting with folks who were scientists and meteorologists and historians with ideas for films they wanted to make, connected to people who run giant screen theatres all over the world. The diversity alone was impressive but it was activated by the process that allowed anyone to convene a topic that was of interest to them. Turned out to be the best part of any conferences they had ever held and will be a regular feature of the conference going forward.

Put real need in the centre. One of the participants in the chat, Varshini Pichemuthu from Improbable, a UK theatre company that has used Open Space for nearly 20 years to convene the arts world, talked about how the questions they use name the urgency of the moment. This is another lesson that Harrison reinforced — that Open Space works when there is urgency, diversity, complexity and the time to act is now. This pearl of wisdom is why we centre so much participatory design on naming the urgent necessity in chaordic planning. It constantly surprises me how much the “leader” in the system thinks they know what the urgent theme is for an Open Space meeting, only to learn that the real conversations – the ones the people want to have – are far from that perception. An all-staff Open Space I did last year for a large Tribal government was framed by the leader as “wanting to get some good ideas from our people.” On the face of it that sounded good, but we didn’t have a huge diversity of voices in the planning process. On the day the conversations were less about new ideas and more about some really persistent and difficult dynamics in the culture of the organization, including relationships between Indigenous and non-Indigenous staff members, the demands placed on staff members who were also Tribal members vs those who were from away, who had fewer local responsibilities, and so on. The biggest conversation over the day was a rolling breakout hosted by staff who began organizing for a four-day work week. Fair to say that the leader wasn’t prepared for these conversations, but, on the day at least, she did express and interest in listening to and following up on some of the organizing that was happening.

Large group methods defy control. That’s a feature. That’s what makes them so powerful for confronting emergent problems and creating a container of time and space for a group to discover surprises. These surprises aren’t always easy to deal with, so it is important to creating a strong architecture before and after the event which can activate the energy of participation and support the momentum of the work. This is as much a part of the art of actually hosting these conversations. In fact I would say that this work IS the art of hosting these conversations. The facilitation is just the fifteen minutes of instructions you give to enable self-organization, emergence, creativity, conflict, encounter and meaning-making.