Rheinhard and Marianne
My starting point for all of this is what outcomes / outputs does he seek from the event he wants you to facilitate? I make a difference between outputs the agreements / words / documents etc that literally come out of a meeting. And the outcomes on the other hand are what impact he wants the event to have in other words how does he hope the world of the participants and the rest of his organisation will be different as a result of this meeting. Focusing on these two aspects and helping him to make the connection between them and the process you wish to use may help to sort things. It may be (despite all of us on here being advocates for OS) that he and his board are not yet in the mind space for open space. I think you need to be true to your principles and not call this an open space if it is not one. Call it a large interactive conference and then aim to push them a small amount to be a little more open and a little less controlling than your clients appear to be. Another famous quote (from George Santayana I believe) is those who forget the past are condemned to repeat it. He may feel he knows all the things that have gone wrong in the past but how confident is he that everyone else does. Has everyone learnt from past mistakes (and successes??) And I agree with Kerry (other post) involving others may well help. Although this person sounds very resistant to any influence. Or you could buy HR manager Fear of Flying by Erica Jong sounds like he might need it!! Hope this helps All the best Jon From: OSLIST [mailto:osl...@listserv.boisestate.edu] On Behalf Of VISUELLE PROTOKOLLE Sent: 10 June 2008 12:05 To: osl...@listserv.boisestate.edu Subject: Urgent Dear friends in open space, I ask for your help in a difficult situation, and need it within 30 hours from now. So if somebody has an open ear and some time to answer, we would be very grateful. The situation: since 10 years i have been accompanying open space sessions as a visual recorder. Now i have for the first time the chance to use open space in a project on my own. It is in the frame of a bigger project in a company of 6000, which deals with values, more customer orientation, more emotions within the company, as the board declared. We proposed an open space session of one day with some 80 representatives of the coworkers, because we want to make their situation and priorities visible, to bring the outcomes together afterwards with the aims of the board, to define the frame, the aims and rules and conditions of a project of about 2 years. We talked the method over with the representative of the client, a young, friendly hr-manager. He is curious, but a bit anxious, and under somer pression from the different board members. Now after some afterthoughts he declared, that he does not want an open space session in pure form, because he thinks the people are not ready for it. He is eager to end with some results he can control. His proposal for the workshop: at the beginning a board member and he will talk about the bigger project for half an hour, and show a little movie, in order then to ask the people for ideas and proposals for the definition of the longer project. He wants to avoid discussions about the mistakes and problems within the company (which he says he knows already), but to be more positive. He does not want to call the workshop open space, but offener raum, does not want to use the 4 principles (although some of their contents), but wants to use the law of two feet. When people are asked to bring their themes to the wall, he wants to moderate that himself, ask additional questions about why and how. Then he wants to walk through the groups and offer some moderation there as well. And in the end he wants to interview the people offering their outcomes to the plenum again. We are near the point to step out of the whole project. On one hand i remember discussions here in the open space network about moderations of the os - method, for which we are open, and can also follow some of the hr-managers ideas and doubts. But it has to stay a trustworthy method. For that i would like to hear what you can recommend us. We asked for a meeting with the hr-manager to get clear with his and our feelings, in order not to mix them with the methods and procedures of the project, and will have this meeting this week. The project came to the actual situation, as i see it, because at the beginning the hr-manager was very fond of us, proud to present us to the board, and start the project with us. Then we had two workshops, which ended with results, which did not fully fulfill his expectations, and he somehow withdrew his trust. We dont want to be victims of an infringement (i hope that is the right expression), of an unclear mixture of roles and responsibilities. We want to stay responsible for the methods we use. The results of the project so far in our view gave a realistic image of the situation within the company, which is not very open, but has a good chance to profit from the project. But it is important not to confuse the starting phase with the project, and not to expect final results bevor it even starts. Seen with open space eyes the outcome was the only one that could have happened. Now we want to clear our relations with the hr-manager on Thursday and Friday, and if we succeed develop the agenda for the coworkers workshop. For this second task we hope to get some help from you, as what to propose to him. Thank you for every response in advance reinhard Reinhard Kuchenmüller Marianne Stifel VISUELLE PROTOKOLLE® Kuchenmüller&Stifel tel +39-0566-88 929 www.visuelle-protokolle.de * * ========================================================== 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