Dear John (and all), This "whatever happens..." thread reminds me of the first point at which I "got" OST a few years ago. As an extremely slow learner, I only had my first "aha" in understanding OST/os at my 10th (!) time facilitating a meeting, a strategic planning session for an NGO doing innovative work with at-risk youth.
In the closing circle, just about everyone expressed disappointment, sadness, dissatisfaction, or dis-something. And, in hindsight, perhaps because many of them were trainers and facilitators themselves, they were sophisticated enough to know that their feelings had nothing to do with my performance, nor the process, and had everything to do with them and the state of their organization. They had seen themselves in the mirror and didn't like what they saw. Shock and anger on the grief cycle. Six months later in a follow-up meeting I saw an entirely different organization. It had more of a buzz, it had established procedures for more (appropriate) accountability, heck the offices had a new, fresh look! This experience has since informed how I often explain "whatever happens..." in the invocation: We have the opportunity to consciously perform at our very best because the conditions have been created to take responsibility only for what we love. And right now we don't know where we will be at the end of the conference. We don't know what we will be feeling. Experience does show that sometimes for something new to be born, we have to let something die. And we may feel sadness...We have never gathered before quite like this, nor we will gather like this again. And since you are here today perhaps this gathering is the most important thing in your life right NOW. We are the ones we have been waiting for... On language To back-translate from Russian how I've translated this principle into English it would sound "Whatever happens, happens." And yes, Harrison, I don't think it's about descending into the rabbit hole of semantics. My personal preference is to keep the principle (or "fact of life," as it were) as much in the present tense to invite an expanded now. On culture Somewhere I read, if I recall the wording correctly, that the only place where Appreciative Inquiry has not been known to work straight off has been in Haiti. Why? Because apparently there is so much fatalism as a consequence of a difficult history that it is a stretch to think appreciatively. Perhaps, then, it's a matter of speaking directly to the fatalism with which this fact of life might be understood and to frame it in a way that invites not only the inevitable fatalism (but more consciously) but also something that engages the hearts and minds of participants? On new wording I hear something like "oops, I fell face first into a patch of fresh cow dung in "learn and move forward." I hear less space for celebration - the most common condition in my experience of OST- in "learn and move forward." Might "learn..." invite more of a sitting with regret? Other interpretations are possible too, I imagine. And I'm sure everything works. Because as you reminded us, John, the spaceholder is the real tool here, the words are secondary. warmly, raffi San Diego, USA talesofatoy.blogspot.com skype: raffi_1970 ra...@bk.ru, raffi_1...@yahoo.com p.s. congratulations on your facilitation at the World Bank, John! Thank you for the openness, the pictures, and the story. Would've loved to be a (ghee-)fly on the wall (or at the table)! * * ========================================================== 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
