TO: Larry Peterson, Peg Holman, Marcelle Bastianello, and Harrison Owen
FROM: Marlene Daniel SUBJECT: My attempt to make my voice present at the Open Space Research gathering later this week, a subject for which I have great passion and personal responsibility Please make this available as you see/feel/smell would be most useful. I have summarized my Ph.D. dissertation research on Open Space in 3 pages below. The first paragraphs may be useful, with modifications as you collectively see fit, for the Open Space Home Page Research blurb. What do you think? Conversation about this is invited. Please send me what gets generated at the gathering. I will miss seeing everyone. I am very excited about my work with clients that teaches me daily. Why Research on Open Space is Important in Learning to Be Organized Now The technological advances that pull organizations to continuously change also remove walls and boundaries, connecting us globally. In the Information Age of the world wide web, what it means to be organized must fundamentally alter. Research exploring Open Space as a culture is useful to redefine what constitutes being organized in a world characterized by interconnectedness and interdependency. In the old understanding of hierarchies, organizations were perceived as fairly rigid structures of domination and control, where the sum of the parts was understood to equal the whole. Research approaches consistent with this mechanistic world view also dissected components into parts to understand wholes. The first research on Open Space (Daniel, 1994) showed that Open Space could not be understood by dissecting parts. Instead, Open Space must be understood in terms of the whole context of multi-leveled natural order, as connectedness and interrelationships, as interdependence. This matches the view of life discussed by Capra (1996) as "the web of life", understanding living systems as interconnected networks. Therefore, my premise is that researching Open Space is useful to contribute to the growing body of knowledge that explores organizations as self-organizing living systems. Open Space also capitalizes on emerging trends today. Open Space introduces organizations to a simpler, more effective way of organizing that engages the fullest intelligence of all its people. Open Space employs people's desire to contribute, learn, and find meaning. In Open Space events people experience their organization as a place that can foster wellness, return people to the experience of wholeness, and help people experience themselves through their interconnected networks of concern. Over ten years of field experiences described by facilitators and client leaders demonstrate consistent outcomes from investing in Open Space events. Yet research on Open Space is important beyond "proving" that Open Space events exceed expectations for team building, creative problem solving, introducing cross functional teams, and strategic planning. This we already know. [And those that don't know this won't be convinced by anything that a biased group of Open Space facilitators construct.] Instead, research on Open Space is important to learn more about fostering continuous change in organizations. Ethics, passion, and compassion blend in Open Space. What organization today wouldn't benefit from being more open, resilient, and flexible? In the Information Age, success depends on an organization's ability to capitalize on emerging opportunities through learning new ways of working together. Greater flexibility and responsiveness in our organizations is critical to organizing for continuous change. Yet current models employed by organizations are organized for stability. It is counterintuitive to respond to the complex pressures on organizations today by letting go of control and opening space. By opening space, the creative leadership and inspiration critical to sustain high performance emerges. Research on Open Space could help us learn about patterns of networks, about organizations in far-from- equilibrium states, and about the interconnectedness of the system's components which results in feedback loops. The questions worthy of research dollars are the ones no one knows answers to yet, explored in a spirit of collaborative inquiry. Recommendation for Further Research: Replicating Marlene Daniel's 1994 Study I recommend that the following definition of Capra's for self-organization be used as the theory base to research the impact of opening space in organizations. Capra defines self-organization as "the spontaneous emergence of new structures and new forms of behavior in open systems far-from-equilibrium, characterized by internal feedback loops . . ." (Capra, 1996, p.85). The theory of self-organization claims that a constant flow of energy is necessary through the system for self-organization to take place. This theory could be applied to understanding Open Space events as an introduction into a novel culture, where ethnographic interviews would be conducted before, during, immediately following, and then 6 months after an event exploring broad questions such as: "What is happening here?" In studying organizations over time, researchers might learn to explain why in some organizations, the original open space event is a catalyst that transforms the organization while for other organizations the event is productive and a landmark, yet the organization goes back a few months later to a state of equilibrium. What is necessary to keep an organization in far-from- equilibrium states long enough to evolve fundamentally? An interesting research question that would indicate if the Open Space produced self-organization for the system might be: During and after the Open Space event as described by participants, does the organization create novel structures and new modes of behavior in the process of developing, learning, and evolving? If not, was the organization in a state of equilibrium before the event? Can Open Space be a way to shift an organization into a far-from-equilibrium state? Whatever is learned about Open Space applying the theory of self-organization will help organizations that have invested in change efforts such as Continuous Process Improvement (CPI) and Total Quality (TQM). Perhaps the reason so many of the expensive and long TQ implementation methods failed was that the cultural shift was attempted while maintaining equilibrium. The research project conducted by Marlene Daniel (1994) showed that participants of an Open Space event made new connections, shared information across previous impenetrable boundaries, and created innovative solutions to issues through exploring interdependencies and the inherent strength of wholeness. Effectiveness came from letting go of control, not seeking it, from sharing information, not hoarding and protecting it. Fear did not shape actions; passion and personal responsibility did. Since organizational change originates when people within the organization change their awareness of who they are, Open Space provides the necessary freedom and openness to enable people to learn and reflect. In interviews conducted before, during and after an Open Space event, participants described their Open Space experience as: being energizing, free, and open taking risks, acting with courage (not limited by fear) acting from personal responsibility respecting others; appreciating diversity as an asset sharing information across previous boundaries experiencing connectedness as one whole community expressing optimism about the future; that we are the ones to make the difference and we are all in this together Research Methodology Replicating Marlene's 1994 Rockport study, viewing Open Space as an initiation into a culture, would be useful in other sites with different facilitators. [Harrison was the facilitator for the Rockport study before doing any evaluation study using questionnaires.] From replicating the ethnographic study, the reliability and validity of a questionnaire would evolve grounded in the perspective of participants. Otherwise the research community may find questionnaires shaped by facilitators of Open Space as invalid. The questions asked determine what can be found. Average responses are not as interesting as outliers. Additional descriptive studies using ethnographic methods would allow participants to tell their stories in their own words, with less researcher bias. Benefit would be derived from the researcher consciously clarifying his/her stakes through the process of gathering data. Having more than one researcher present on site to observe and interview would add to the richness of the study. Multiple researchers could then triangulate, code, and label data following procedures in Miles and Huberman(1984) for data reduction, data display, and conclusion drawing. Grounded theory would be built from the thickly descriptive, contextualized accounts of life within Open Space. The broad question for the 1994 study on Open Space was: "What is happening in this Open Space meeting?" Additional questions framing the investigation were: 1. What actions and interactions occur? 2. What do these actions and interactions mean to the participants involved? 3. What patterns and themes emerge in these actions and interactions? 4. How does what occurs in this context compare to what participants found in their organization's culture before the event? Three months after? Six months after? 5. How does what occurs in this context compare to what is found in the literature on self-organization and on learning organizations? Summary I assert that organizations will need to finance research that helps them learn to be more self-organizing. The external demand for continuous change requires organizations to become more self-organizing, flexible, resilient Ðalways evolving towards greater authenticity, inventiveness, and effectiveness. By opening space, the creative leadership and inspiration critical to sustaining high performance emerges. Research on Open Space will make a unique contribution. I will make my research methods and data completely available to anyone seeking to replicate the original Open Space research study. Count me on the team to build a research base for our continued work with organizations. From osl...@listserv.idbsu.edu Tue Mar 10 12:20:06 1998 X-Mozilla-Status: 0001 X-Mozilla-Status2: 00000000 Message-Id: <tue.10.mar.1998.122006.0500.osl...@listserv.idbsu.edu> Date: Tue, 10 Mar 1998 12:20:06 -0500 Reply-To: OSLIST <osl...@listserv.idbsu.edu> To: OSLIST <osl...@listserv.idbsu.edu> From: John Dicus <jdi...@ourfuture.com> Subject: Life Cycle & Sustainability - An Invitation X-To: osl...@idbsu.idbsu.edu Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" I'd like to invite you to join a continuing in-person exploration into the concepts of stewardship -- how it might benefit both ourselves and our organizations. It's one thing to talk about stewardship, yet another to actually practice it and try to make the necessary shifts. This time around we'll focus on life-cycle and sustainability -- what it means -- how to achieve it. Some might think sustainability means continuing forever without change. More likely it means being flexible and continuing to adapt to make room for new life. Letting go is not easy. What needs to be carried forward? What do we need to leave behind? Twice per year we host an experiential gathering called "Experiences in Stewardship." It gives us the opportunity to learn while immersed in the complexity of the human experience. The learning has always surpassed what we could imagine going in, and these gatherings give us a chance to more fully understand what it means to work in the organizations we say we want to "create." We'll meet April 26-29 at Jiminy Peak in Hancock, MA. If you think you'd like to join us and help learn more about these important concepts, let me know. I'd be glad to talk more about this with you or send you some more information and a personal invitation. You can also read more at http://www.ourfuture.com. By Mary Oliver: To live in this world You must be able to do three things: to love what is mortal; to hold it against your bones knowing your own life depends upon it; and, when the time comes to let it go, to let it go. Thanks -- John Dicus -- John Dicus | Cornerstone Consulting Associates Providing Experiences In... Teamwork - Systems - Stewardship jdi...@ourfuture.com | http://www.ourfuture.com 800-773-8017 (in US) | 330-725-2728 (voice/fax) 2761 Stiegler Rd, Valley City OH 44280 **Join an Online Dialogue -- stewards...@world.std.com**