Thanks to all who contacted me over the last couple of days to let me know my site was down. A little administrative oversight on my part, and to my great joy I discovered how many people near or far check in with what’s going on around here.
So thanks to all…we’re back in business, and no worse for wear.
Henryvlle, Indiana
I’m here at the Wooded Glen Retreat Centre in Henryville, which is in southern Indiana running an Art of Hosting with my mates Teresa Posakony, Tenneson Woolf, Tuesday Ryan and Howard Mason. It’s hot and humid here, punctuated by heavy downpours which feels as if the air is just wringing itself out. By contrats the rooms we are in are cold enough to hang meat, as Howard said, so it’s a little funny.
Prior to being here I was in Camden, Maine joining Harrison Owen and 40 Open Space faiclitators at a little Open Space on Open Space. I have lots to report on from that gathering, and I feel like just doing it in bits and pieces, so here’s the first set of notes, focusing on Open Space and life.
In Camden I joined with 40 or so Open Space practitioners from the US, UK, Canada, Australia, Sweden, Korea and Taiwan. Harrison Owen, in all of his eminence grise, hosted us beautifully, inviting us to explore the question of Open Space in our lives and in the world. There were some really juicy sessions posted and great connections made among friends new and old. It is quite remarkable to be in conversation with 40 people who, as one participant said, could step up and run a 500 person Open Space at the drop of a hat. It is a real privilege to be able to take a couple of days just to talk shop with people who have as strange a view of organizations, communities and work as I do. And it was especially lovely to be with a large number of people who have been close to Harrison for many years, helping him form and shape the practice of Open Space in the very early days. Open Space Technology was a very early and radical departure from facilitation theory and practice and it shone the light on new ways of looking at human organizations in the OD world. Many organizational development professionals who discovered Open Space in the eighties began rethinking their approach to OD, looking at organizations as living systems and looking at change with an entirely different set of eyes. Many of the folks who walked that path 20 or more years ago were in attendance in Camden, and it was a real treat to meet them and hear some of their stories.
What is interesting to me these days is the application of Open Space practice in everyday life, indeed, the tagline for this weblog sorts of states this as my overall learning mandate. Consequently, I took in sessions that had more to do with the Open Space life, and what I call the Open Space worldview rather than sessions about the process itself. For example, Suzanne Maxwell held a beautiful session on living with cancer stemming from the fact that she was informed of a positive diagnosis for breast cancer on the way to Camden. She came anyway, and opened herself to us, her fear and resolve and confusion and sadness palpable as she posted her session. I caught the end of the circle and heard stories of others who had lived with frightening health issues. What was brilliantly clear was that a life spent practising Open Space is solid training for facing the biggest fear in one’s life. I was reminded that everything we face is training; from a martial arts perspective, you train constantly in the dojang so that in that one moment, when your body is called upon to parse a moment into thin slices in order to defend yourself, you can find the resourcefulness there. The way Suanne opened and held space showed the expereince and wisdom that comes from a lifetime of working with oneself in the service of others is the training that is needed to deal with the fear and uncertainty of a big unexpected space being opened. How else could one deal with a cancer diagnosis except to open space?
On a similar track of exploring Open Space in life, Phelim McDermott hosted an interesting session on Open Space and love and relationships. It was another candid and open conversation that explored an Open Space worldview taken to interpersonal relationships. It was really great to meet Phelim and spend time with him He’s a remarkable person, a theatre director, Open Space artist and a generous soul. He showed a brilliant 15 minute time lapse film of a two-day Open Space held at the Battersea Arts Centre in London which stunningly captures the motion, flow and life of a group of people working in Open Space. We’re going to work to get it on the web soon.
[tags]openspacetech, osonos, harrison owen, phelim mcdermott, suzanne maxwell[/tags]
In the OSLIST discussion on circles and presence, I added some thoughts, which I thought I’d republish here…
My experience of the circle is first of all, that there has never been a group I have worked with – not business people, airplane engineers, entrepreneurs, government officials, community members – that hasn’t been just fine in a circle. No one has ever asked me not to set the room up a different way, although plenty of people have expressed their doubts that any of it would work.
I’ve also done OST in other formats as well, like lecture halls, semi circles and squares, and they seem to work fine, although it’s definitely ME that is more uncomfortable in those settings. I also think things don’t flow very well in general. It’s harder for people to get to the centre to put their issues up and harder to move around when there is a different geometry.
Still, I think sometimes facilitators might make too big a deal of the circle. We all know why it works, and that’s why we use it – as Harrison and others have said. But to discuss circle energetics, or ancient forms of human communication in the opening of an open space event can be distracting. But it isn’t the circle that is distracting, it’s how the facilitator shows up.
Presence is everything I think in this work. It’s really all we have to offer the group once the logistics are taken care of. We can show up and drone on and on about the topic and the energy saps. We can be bored and the group will get bored too. We can show up too excited and the group will eye us as a nervous puppy. Presence is many things, but at a core level it’s about rapport with the group and the topic. My own presence in open space tends to focus very clearly on the work at hand. I don’t tend to fill the group in on what’s “under the hood” of open space. Most of us don’t need to know how a car works in order to use it. How we hold space I think is what gives it the “granola” flavour. Or not.
Probably most of us know that open space “works” without a circle. The point is that, for all the disappearing the facilitator does, I think it really matters how we DO participate for the small amount of time we are before the group. Present AND invisible. I would say that the quality of our presence even transcends the geometry: I have seen terrible facilitators in a circle make a hash of open space. The good news is that, with a good invitation, the momentum of the group is nearly always able to overcome anything we put in their way.
For more on this ineffable quality, download The Tao of Holding Space.
[tags] openspacetech[/tags]
Here is a selection of interesting papers for your summer reading:
[tags]nature, sustainability, change, horses, Habermas, coffee, conversation, cosmology, big bang, human resources, Garibaldi, Matrix, Nick Bostrom, freeman dyson, robert crick, global warming[/tags]
Harrison Owen muses on circles, presence and Open Space on the OSLIST:
As I have listened to this conversation (a very rich one!) random thoughts came to mind – which may actually fit together? The first one went something like this. We speak, understandably, about “doing an Open Space” – but I suspect that may box us into a corner we need not be stuck in. “Doing and Open Space” implies that we are following a certain set of prescribed procedures, after all Open Space Technology is a method. This is true, but it may also hide a larger truth, I think. We don’t do an Open Space – we are an open space in which we and our fellows find meaning and purpose, or not. For some of us that space may be very constricted, and those lives tend to look pretty much the same way – narrow and locked into set patterns and expectations, which may even become comfortable, like old shoes. Others seem to occupy a much more commodious space in which change and possibility are constant companions and experiencing that novelty is a real high. All of us have the potential to expand our space, or maybe more accurately, to recognize and acknowledge the larger possibilities which could be ours. I think what happens in an Open Space event is that we are invited to consider those possibilities and make them our own, if we so choose. I once wrote a book, “Expanding our Now” (Berrett-Koehler) which attempted to make precisely this point. So we might more fruitfully understand that all of life is open space and an Open Space gathering is simply a moment in time/space when we are encouraged to go exploring. So it is not so much about “Doing an Open Space” as about being fully and intentionally present in the infinity of life space available – at least so far as we are able. Corollary to this would be that the Open Space event is not something strange, unique and different – it is just life. All of life is open space. We must choose whether that space is expansive or constricted for us.
Then I thought of a song I have always enjoyed, “All of Life’s a Circle,” sung by a favorite whose name has disappeared in a senior moment. You might think of this as variations on a theme. It is true that we may square the circle, bisect the circle (semi-circle), even go around in circles – those are choices which may be quite appropriate under certain circumstances. But that does not change the fundamental reality that all of life is a circle. A circle of friends, a circle of peers and colleagues, a circle of power and influence, a circle of life and death. We may attempt to reduce life to straight lines (“A career path”), sharp angles and squared intersections (the standard PERT chart and project management schema) or even get life in a box, a nice, neat rectilinear box. But at the end of the day, and indeed on every day, life will go its own way as a circle, the transformation of circles, the inter-connection and overlapping of circles, all contained in a larger circle.
Presence is our way of being in the great circle(s) of life. This may be a grudging presence, a distracted presence, a frantic presence, or something approaching a full, intentional, appreciative presence in which the infinite possibilities (good and bad) of life are acknowledged and engaged. To a certain extent the nature of our presence is a matter of choice, but no matter the choices made or the constraints encountered there is always the possibility of an expanded presence in the great open circle of life. I think.
And Open Space Technology? For me every Open Space gathering becomes an opportunity to practice our presence, should we choose to do so. On the surface it will appear that important issues are raised, problems solved, plans made, organization grown, products designed. All important, and for most participants probably sufficient to meet expectations, or not. But beneath (above?) it all I experience a practice of presence – becoming more fully engaged with our selves, our fellows, and our world. Just living more intentionally in the great open circle of life. Or something.
[tags]openspacetech, harrison owen, presence[/tags]
