I am writing to share my first full-scale, solo open space event that took
place in the last two days.
It was a two-day, off site (at a tranquil, wooded camp site) strategic planning
retreat. All staff were invited to come. Of the 60 staff members, 37 came on
the first day and 20 remained for the 2nd day (due to various work commitments,
many couldn't do both days as we are a government contracted social service
agency.)
Words cannot describe the spirit and emotions that permeated throughout the two
days. I am getting overwhelmingly positive feedback and profuse "thank you"
from the participants. It created a tremendous bond for those who cared and
were able to come to celebrate our 10-year anniversary in creating social
innovation for children's mental health care, and to craft the agenda for the
next 10 years as we continue to "Be the Change We Wish to See in the World."
(This is our agency mantra and the theme for the OS retreat.)
Part of the reason for a smaller number of participants on the 2nd day was
because I didn't want people who couldn't come on the 1st day to just show up
on the 2nd day. However, one person who committed to coming on both days had
an unexpected client emergency to attend to. I made an exception for him to
come on the 2nd day. In order to prepare him, we asked him to read all the
discussion notes from the first day break-out groups. Our Newsroom was set up
for session conveners to type their notes right into our agency intranet
database. Therefore all notes were immediately visible to all staff (including
those who couldn't come) and also printed for the News Wall.
On the 2nd day, the "new" person, Rick, showed up having indeed read all the
discussion notes from Day 1. During Morning News, we welcomed Rick and
"initiated " him into the circle by sharing a lot of the positive energy and
people talking about how their night was "wrapped up" by the Day 1 experience.
As I opened the circle, the sponsor (my boss in this case) wanted me to go over
all the OS posters for Rick because he never hear the explanation. I said I
wasn't going to go through the "ritual" again, and figured how about we have
some volunteers to explain all the posters. With no hesitation, one person
stood and walked the circle as he explained the 5 principles (perfectly!); then
a 2nd person stood up to explain the Law of Two Feet; a 3rd person walked the
circle and explained the Bumblebee, and then a 4th person explained the
butterfly. Finally, everyone asked Rick to explain the last poster "Be Ready to
Be Surprised." Rick stood up,
slowly walked the circle and said matter-of-factly: "Be ready to be surprised
- you have to keep an open mind and do not have fixed expectations about what
ought to come." Everyone applauded. I found this variation of "initiating" a
new member quite engaging and fun.
Thank you Suzanne for being the support throughout the preparation and delivery
process. Your advice on allowing an one-hour break for lunch was right. While
it initially felt like there was too much "unfilled" free time in between
sessions (people are used to having back-to-back activities so having nothing
to do is hard), that free time turned out to be important for people to get
their notes into the computer. More importantly, people quickly learned to use
that free time to just relax, take a walk in the woods, or chat freely with one
another. Nobody was annoyed by the free time and they finally realized that we
were in a retreat. They began to call such free time "butterfly moments." The
OS lingo was used throughout the days as people described themselves
"bumblebeeing" from session to session. One statement I heard the most was "I
just had a butterfly moment with so and so..." meaning they just chatted with
someone incidentally by
the coffee pot. Free time turned out to be important in creating the feeling
of being both relaxed and productive in an OS event. In the end, people were
tired but happy and fulfilled. And the language helped create such a bonding
among the participants.
Thank you Harrison, thank you Suzanne, and thank you Karen Davis for opening
this door for me. And thank you to all the contributors on this List. I
borrowed a lot of good ideas from you all, including action planning and using
the balloons.
Chuni Li
_______________________________________________
OSList mailing list
To post send emails to OSList@lists.openspacetech.org
To unsubscribe send an email to oslist-le...@lists.openspacetech.org
To subscribe or manage your subscription click below:
http://lists.openspacetech.org/listinfo.cgi/oslist-openspacetech.org
