Self organiztion takes hold!
At the Leading Change conference today, the organizers were fretting this morning about a sit down lunch. We’re in Open Space, so the room is kind of chaotic. We weren’t sure how this would happen, so we carved a half hour out of the agenda, and let people know in the morning that we would need them to be out of the way while the room was getting set up.
But this is Open Space, and of course it was also about leading change. Eleven o’clock came around and the groups broke up and trickled back into the main room. Someone asked if they could help set up the room others joined in and in 7 minutes, we had transformed the room from a chaotic circle to a sit down lunch, complete with linen.
And then, lunch completed, we reversed the whole process and got back to work for action planning.
And to cap it off, the lunch was sponsored by The Co-operators. How cool is that?
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One of the little side gigs I have on the go with a few mates here in Halifax is called Cook. It is a blending of hosting work with a co-created meal. Until April, most of our Cook engagements were pretty tightly held… menus, etc. It worked quite well admittedly… but then something magical happened. During the Colour 2.0 session, we did a Cook event on the Friday evening. We had a commercial kitchen, a bunch of ingredients, and then we opened space. At that point, 40 people self-selected what part of the meal they would each like to prepare…. they grabed the ingredients… invented recipes… got everything ready… set the table…. ate together… and then cleaned everything up! Very cool. I think there is a real place for this in many Open Space sessions.
That is too cool Carmen. At one of the places I sometimes host practice workshops on Bowen Island there is a commercial kitchen that we use. We have a great caterer that feeds us, but I’m sorely tempted to try this next time, at least for one meal. Thanks for the story.
Let me know if you wanna give that a shot… I can hook you up with Joanne Macrae – she’s the brains behind Cook logistics, food procurement, etc. – she could offer a bit of guidance if you feel it would be helpful.