Thanks Brendan for sharing This got me inspired to briefly share from an OS-meeting I facilitated a couple of weeks ago. The 7 major public organizations in a region of Sweden have decided to explore if they can create a "qualified training in projectmanagement" with special focus on intra-organizational cooperation.
The idea was to engage the Universities in this area to design and offer this training - in cooperation (walk your talk). After having one-to-one talks with the Universities they were a bit hesitating. Most didn´t really see a point in cooperating with others... I guess you have the same situation down under and in other places - Universities are always not that eager to cooperate. So I tried to explain that they´d better be open to outcome as we had only one full day of Open Space. The day was very interesting - participants pending between hopes and fears...lots of energy and good discussions. In the final out of 4 sessions all Universities were gathered in a discussion - a lot happened during that session. Before the closing circle the 20 participants were gathered in the circle and the important remaining questions were raised and dealt with. And just as the organizers had hoped one of the Universities took on responsibility to be the administrative part and invited the others for a follow up meeting to start the collaborative work of designing the training. Closing circle was very strong and the crowd was amazed at: * That all of us are gathered in the same room * That we´ve had open and respectful communication * That we went so far in one day - eager to go on... ...the story is still unfoalding. Warmest regards Thomas Herrmann -----Ursprungligt meddelande----- Från: OSLIST [mailto:osl...@listserv.boisestate.edu] För Brendan McKeague Skickat: den 9 februari 2007 06:12 Till: osl...@listserv.boisestate.edu Ämne: Re: Open Space -- A Quiet Revolution Thanks for the prompt Harrison - I've just had an experience that confirms the paradox... On the first half of this week, I was facilitating an Open Space Facilitators Co-Learning workshop at one of the local universities - about a dozen professional development/teaching & learning/training staff from within the university system - who had all signed up to come - most with some responsiblity for staff and organisational development - and the program went a bit flat on the second day and virtually fizzled out on day three - there could be many explanations for this - anxious to get back to work, upcoming start of the academic year (in Australia), they already learned what they needed, over-tiredness, hot weather and so on....who knows...those who remained to the end (six people) were really interested and convinced of the potential of OS to be used in their work areas. I then opened space for two days at the annual 'retreat' for senior leaders at a neighbouring university - it was pretty awesome walking the circle of 125 academics and administrators (more than half of them with PhDs) especially when I knew just how big a 'risk' the Executive team and the Organisational and Staff Development had taken in signing up to sponsor OST. As we know - when the question is right and the invitation appropriate, the right people show up and deal with it - and that is exactly what happened...the spirit and the levels of engagement were extremely high and, thirty topics and nine action plans later, it was declared the best of the four 'retreats' they've had so far....I was even offered a job by the Head of Psychotherapy who gave high praise to the 'therapeutic properties of this process' evidenced by, in his words, 'the positively healthy dynamics so unexpected in such a meeting of highly disparate interests'.... So - the mystery of the process unfolds yet again....and the profile expands... Cheers Brendan At 02:20 AM 8/02/2007, you wrote: >Right then and there I knew we were in serious trouble. If Open Space >somehow caste into question many (most?) of the activities and practices of >mainstream management, whole careers and reputations were in jeopardy. And >attempting to sell Open Space could obviously be quite hazardous to your >health, not unlike selling powerful space heaters to Ice cream factories. If >somebody actually bought the heater, and it worked - everything would melt. * * ========================================================== osl...@listserv.boisestate.edu ------------------------------ To subscribe, unsubscribe, change your options, view the archives of osl...@listserv.boisestate.edu: http://listserv.boisestate.edu/archives/oslist.html To learn about OpenSpaceEmailLists and OSLIST FAQs: http://www.openspaceworld.org/oslist * * ========================================================== osl...@listserv.boisestate.edu ------------------------------ To subscribe, unsubscribe, change your options, view the archives of osl...@listserv.boisestate.edu: http://listserv.boisestate.edu/archives/oslist.html To learn about OpenSpaceEmailLists and OSLIST FAQs: http://www.openspaceworld.org/oslist