Dear fellow space-holders, Today's story goes back a few years. I recall Chris Corrigan (hi Chris!)'s words from a thread from the Genuine Contact listserv (and maybe here) called "the Tao of Marketing" where he elaborated about how if you want to "sell" OS the best and most logical way of doing that is by offering an experience of that.
So, it is curious for me, Chris, when you wrote recently about your doubts of making it to the Holy Grail of working with companies. Yes, there are many reasons why companies may not be ready for the real control that OST offers, but I have been holding your wisdom for a few years now. And I admit, I have still rather FIV+ (flatland immunodeficiency virus positive) thinking to want to sell OST... The other pre-piece to this story is that in the course of informing people around Moscow about the upcoming OSonOS, I have visited many professional clubs for corporate trainers, HR-managers, and consultants. And it has been almost painful to sit through these meetings where experience non-sharing is called experience sharing. Not much os. Hence the idea of OZZON, which had its first meeting today. OZZON, a quirky abbreviation for "Zona orgzdovorya" (Zone for organizational health) in Russian, is my project aimed at bringing organizational health into the mainstream in Moscow. Like most ideas that I imagine will work it is very obvious: if we want to talk about organizational health, people need to have an experience of it. And to have a holistic experience of it, you need to bring together all those who are part of the system/organism. OZZON, then, is a regular monthly space inviting corporate trainers, consultants, coaches, HR-managers, and anyone else with the passion for this topic to exchange experience of organizational health. Today was a planning meeting, to see what should OZZON be. It was advertised widely, many people said they wanted to come. And at the time the bells rang, we had a grand total of 4 (four)! Did anyone promise that it would be simple to live according to "Whoever comes..."? Nope, didn't read that anywhere. I had put a lot of love and energy in organizing it. Too much perhaps? And along the way unexpected and pleasant pieces of support. One trainer helped me conceive this graphical invitation http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/6164/1604/1600/proekt%20ozzon.jpg We had one HR-manager, two corporate trainers, and a representative from an online HR-resource (a subsidiary of a local equivalent of Berrett-Koehler books). The online resource was very keen on advertising the event and intend on putting up a mini-report post-event. I experimented for the first time in participating while facilitating. It was great to experiment in a low risk setting and see that mixing those roles does warp the space. Before formally opening the space, I gave a little introduction about myself and qualified my opening by explaining that the language I intend to use will not only be adult language, but also childlike and adolescent language: organizational health and balance, I explained, is too serious a matter to leave only to adults. I forgot to say, however, that organizational health is so simple that really it's child play. Then, I explained that the serious part of my presentation would begin now: To give a definition of organizational health we need to first answer the question, "Why am I on planet Earth?"- a question we all answer, I imagine, whether or not we are philosophical. My best guess at age 36 is: "To have a ball (lots of fun), learn hard, and be of use." If we take that as a given, then, my the job of organizations be to serve that purpose? If so, might the definition of organizational health and balance be- the ongoing experience of high play and high learning in organizations?. We did a fill-in-the-blank hangman game to guess "high play and high learning". The winner got a plastic crab. Then I said the nonserious part of the presentation would begin: Went through Marv Weisbord and Sandra Janoff's learning curve- how society solves problems. (and explained, that while I think Marv and Sandra are great fun people, Future Search is kind of like creating a Harley Davidson and Bentley hybrid, creating a bicycle out of the hybrid, adding solar-cells, make it run on gas. And then exclaiming that it works it works in wonder.) Then went on to Ken's 4 Quadrants and how we confuse the Internet with progress. And that lower-left quadrant is having a very hard time playing catch-up with lower-right. And that we probably can't talk of rapid progress right now, but rather that we are falling behind, going backward at a frightening pace. And that the job of orghealth is to reinhabit the lower-left. I also talked about how with the rise of lgit's in the late 80's a first tombstone was placed to the still lucrative forms of non-work (work=fun; so, as a Jo Toepfer says, "if it ain't fun, it ain't work.") called training and consulting. After which I opened the space- And the group of four generated some 10 topics which they sat and discussed leisurely without taking a break for 4 hours- They discussed- - the application of western HR technologies in Russian and their successful adaptation - developing a culture of responsibility - which trainings work - staff evaluation - and many other things. I think some of the discussion highlights for me were:] 1. A discussion on responsibility. I have been wondering what responsibility is recently. And here we found ourselves talking about the apparent culture of irresponsibility in Russian companies. I offerred that we break this down. We got: "indifference, what if-ness, carelessness, dependency," and a number of other juicy qualities. This got me thinking that the first OZZON meeting should have the topic: Indifference, carelessness, freebe-ism, dependency- impeccable irresponsibility as the unique path of Russian companies to responsibility: issues and opportunities" It also got me thinking about how much of our discussion focused on what's wrong with Russian business. It was pleasant to see eyes light up when I suggested maybe we'd get a lot more information if we asked ourselves, "What's right with Russian business?", growing that appreciative core (I'm looking forward to the Moscow AI learning workshop here in June). 2. Service- i have been wondering what service is recently. And OZZON's first meeting gave an answer= it's the ability to say thank you to Spirit and creation for the opportunity to share my original medicine with a much smaller group than I expected. We all learned today, we all enjoyed ourselves. And we were all stretched beyond our comfort zone. Here are some flickr highlights. http://www.flickr.com/photos/81882819@N00/154163370/ http://www.flickr.com/photos/81882819@N00/154163394/ reflection of four org'l archetypes in closing http://www.flickr.com/photos/81882819@N00/154163157/ participants http://www.flickr.com/photos/81882819@N00/154163086/ http://www.flickr.com/photos/81882819@N00/154162833/ http://www.flickr.com/photos/81882819@N00/154162770/ Hats off to Spirit! In iodized granularity, raffi * * ========================================================== [email protected] ------------------------------ To subscribe, unsubscribe, change your options, view the archives of [email protected]: http://listserv.boisestate.edu/archives/oslist.html To learn about OpenSpaceEmailLists and OSLIST FAQs: http://www.openspaceworld.org/oslist
