romy shovelton emailed today, from her farm in wales, asking about mixing open space and appreciative inquiry. it turns out i have a pretty good story of such mixing, from grassroots to new national government, that i’d been meaning to update here.

on my third visit to nepal, i helped convene and facilitate a third open space event there, this one a first national summit for peaceful development. the first two meetings were a classroom presentation/demonstration of open space technology, for about 20 students and faculty at kathmandu college. the second was a city-wide event, organized on the success and with the skills gained in the first session, looking at the 20-year future of kathmandu.

at this second event, i made a point of having side conversations with as many of the 40 participants as i could, suggesting that we might do 4 days the following year, two days of open space, followed by two days of ost training. this was a model we’d used elsewhere and i thought it could give the depth of experience needed to accomplish the things that were being discussed for the next 20 years in kathmandu.

when i contacted my colleagues about returning for a third visit, they began organizing the event we’d discussed the previous year, with some important changes. it was to be four days, but it would be national in scope. it would be held in open space, but it would be based also on AI principles and the 4-D process. it would include training, as well, on both ost and ai.

i never would have believed it was possible, but my nepali colleagues never thought otherwise. so we did four one-day open space events, one on each of the four D’s, the first one shortened by opening speeches, the last one shortened by a grand closing ceremony that included gifts and acknowledgements and official thank yous in addition to the usual comments in a circle. the middle days opened with ost training observations and closed with evening sessions on how to do AI. we also started a blog that they used for several years.

since then they have had second, third and fourth national summits, sometimes in open space, sometimes with appreciative inquiry facilitated by ai originator, david cooperrider.

along the way, in the midst of the sometimes violent maoist resistance, a 6000(?)-year old landmark gate was destroyed in an explosion that also destroyed part of one of the organizers’ homes. the village where this happened was devastated by the loss, but this organizer emailed me almost immediately, saying that they were planning an open space to talk about rebuilding gate. i don’t know if that event ever formally happened, but having it there as a possibility in such a moment is surely worth something.

and now, after a fifth summit event just held in january, this one also in open space, and run totally on their own, without outside facilitators or consultants, they are planning a sixth national summit — this one for the 601 members of the soon-to-be-elected “constituent assembly” that is the budding solution to more than a decade of political, sometimes armed, in-fighting, and the governmental structure that will replace the ages-old nepali monarchy. the sixth summit will seek to infuse the new government with open space and appreciative inquiry.

I woke up this morning thinking about public schools, career path, and teaching… specifically, brain rolled around with the possibility of getting certified to teach school, while body rolled around with the possibility of breakfast. (This isn’t exactly new, I’ve been an educator at heart since my Outward Bound days, nearly two decades ago.) But then this comes in the morning emails:

Dear Friends,

I’ve decided to offer myself as a candidate for the Waters LSC as a community representative. I have been at Waters since 1991 when I enrolled my son Jamal here. I was elected as President of the first LSC and held that position for 5 years. I went back to school (NEIU) and received a interdisciplinary degree in Education, Ecology and Neighborhood Studies.

We partnered with the Center for City Schools at National Louis University and began an intense and well supported period of professional development for our teachers. That first LSC learned that education could be an amazing, rich, challenging, and joyous experience for children. It all depends on how a school teaches and what its philosophy of education is.

Parents were invited to workshops to let them experience what this educational vision was about: collaboration, sharing, valuing each voice, going beyond text books to original works and sources, opening the doors of our school and its classrooms to allow the community in, and the students out into the world.

We learned that the arts, real work, and world experiences, could be combined with the core disciplines of literacy, math and science, to give kids a rich, multifaceted education. We were a local, poor, low-scoring, no-special programs school that decided that our kids were an amazing gift, capable of great achievement.

The 1990s were an amazing time of partnering, support, experimentation and growth. Our scores rose steadily. But our school paid more attention to other more meaningfull assessments: student writing, problem solving, ability to work with others, recognition of “other intelligences”, and projects, projects, projects.

Since 2000 our schools have been under a barage of mandates to test, to teach to the test, to reduce student assessment to a series of data points. We need, as a community, to educate our selves about what is “best practice” in education, and support it in our school. We have to produce a countervailing pressure in order to protect our kids, teachers and administrators.

I am known at Waters mostly for my work in ecology. But, the ecology program was an outgrowth, a sprout and flowering of the ideas planted in 1991. It is what every parent wants for their child: the best, most rich learning experiences in a caring and safe community.

Let us hold on to this vision and learn together.

Mr. Lucky
(Pete Leki)

I’m inspired and wondering again, fully awake and a little bit hungry, for something other than breakfast. Maybe I should have been more specific last week in updating Inviting Leadership. Inviting Community might should have been Inviting Education.

An old client recently shared some thoughts on their progress since we ran an executive leadership summit together, in open space:

…we have indeed leveraged open space a couple of times since and most recently with the 120 odd manufacturing managers to great successes… Our journey has been interesting… although we are grappling with the same issues we have taken many of the principles to heart… Our learning is that the solutions are time consuming and need to be debated and internalised. We have kicked off numerous such discussion with integrated solutions… but the work is still nascent… not everyone is yet at the same stage…

Time consuming, yes. Need to be debated, ongoing. Integrated solutions AND still just getting started. This, to me, is the great learning in Open Space: Organization as Conversation. So many people simply talking to each other is the real lifeblood of all those org charts, spreadsheets and plans. So Open Space works because it lets us invite new focus and energy in the big conversation that already is the organization.

i woke up the other morning thinking about “those special interests.” pretty scary, eh? specifically, thinking that obama’s frequent promises to do something about “those special interests” should be traded in for promises he can actually keep: he should be promising to “turn up the volume” of ordinary voices in Washington.

this he can prove. this he has demonstrated. in stadium rallies. literally, a million donors. an active community blogosphere. person-to-person phonebanking and door-to-door campaigning instead of robo-calling. the marvel of his campaign is that he’s got so many people involved. his “solution” doesn’t need to be invented… it needs only to be repeated.

he doesn’t need to change the system, he needs only to keep inviting more and more ordinary american voices into the system — and we will change that system. it’s an additive process, an inviting leader inviting more and more leadership, that addresses problems without attacking them directly.

this is how inviting leadership works. it adds and invites more and more of what is good and working, brings more and more people into the conversation. that is enough. their new energy, new ideas, and new connections immediately move the system in ways that naturally (even if slowly) replace and resolve the old ways and problems.

“turning up the volume” on what’s good and working seems a stronger position than “battling the special interests” and “changing the system” — in this election, and in every organization and leadership situation i can remember. they say people resist change, but who doesn’t like to be invited? this is, i think, why this campaign is working.

earlier this evening i saw an army veteran named cheryl, in tacoma, washington, post on the obama community blogsite a request for help in writing her own iraq story, in support of the story senator obama told in the debate last week.

i was impressed that she posted her phone number, and challenged by her obvious determination to get her story into writing. i paused… and then called this perfect stranger. i left a message, hung up, and wondered what would happen next.

in the meantime, i wondered who she was. clicked on her profile page. noticed that i didn’t have a profile, so started to fill that in. some minutes later, the phone rang.

we’ve had a bit of a chat now, and she’s got a bit of a line on the start of her story. we’re looking forward to chatting again tomorrow or the next day about what she comes up with — because she’s determined to get her story out.

THIS is what i think is so remarkable about this campaign, that people can connect in these simple ways. that people are so determined to give to this movement, willing to ask for help, and willing to offer to strangers.

this is why i think the deepest structure of this campaign is different. it is already supporting the way so many of us wish our government could be: of the people, by the people, and for each other.

i don’t think of it as supporting a candidate as much as being a member of a community, same as i am an active member in other LARGE communities. this one just happens to have as its purpose the future of the united states government.

chris corrigan’s been out tuning the bass notes, the buzz or the spirit, in organization. i would tune his story a bit and say the buzz, the bass note, is pulsation. i think he’s right, it’s not culture. but it’s also not deeper than culture. it’s before culture.

i agree that it rises not from organization purpose, but purpose does matter. the buzz in organization arises out of personal purpose, and desire, in the context of organization. but it’s not personal purpose. and it is not spirit.

its the connection, the pulsation, the spark across the gap, between purpose — what i want — and spirit — all that is. the bass note is not the purpose, the driving force, but it’s not the deeper field of spirit either. it’s the mutuality of the two, together and distinct.

open space works because it invites people to spark across the gap, to renew the pulsation, between the personal and organizational, between solid and spirit, between purpose and passion, between learning and contributing, between what they want and what they are willing to do about it.

the bass note is not any of these things… it’s the space and the movement, the sound AND the silence between them, together AND distinct.

so, to make open space the operating system in any organization is (simply!) to refine of the annual strategic planning meeting into the pulse of (each of) the people. that’s why it takes practice, especially personal practice.

finally, it’s not that leaders *should* do this practice. it’s simply that those who do practice invitation, opening space, are easily and immediately recognized as leaders.

Julia Butterfly Hill asks What Is Your Tree?

After meeting with Jean Russell, Michael Maranda and Julie Peterson all afternoon, I think Inviting Neighborhood Leadership is my tree. One of my trees?

My understanding of Inviting Leadership has been evolving and unfolding for at least 10 years now, but it’s only in the last year or so that I’ve come to call it that in my teaching.

Here are my cryptic notes about teaching it now, after Jill turned my old teaching model upside down. She did that just before we went to India and Nepal for a month, so this newest approach was cooked while travelling and retreating in those places.

Maybe you can appreciate the order and flow of the pattern, even in these brief notes. Maybe you can see how the parts inform and support and each other:

Day One - Inviting Practice: Embodying Well-Being

-pulsation: simple morning somatics practice, renewing and refining
-density: intro to levels and layers of energy and awareness
-mutuality: intro to holding two states/positions at once
-resting and integrating: how the learning sinks in
-text: somatics exercises (selected)

Day Two - Inviting Leadership: Opening Invitations, Hosting Action

-living in the middle of order and chaos (survey of personal and spiritual practice)
-holding space for multiple states (learning/contributing, passion/responsibility, facilitator/group, etc.)
-working in open space (planning, facilitating, harvesting, sustaining)
-mechanisms for supporting all kinds of meeting and modalities (hybrids and others)
-text: inviting guide (18 pages)

Day Three - Inviting Organization: Evolution at Work

-evolution at work (opening everything)
-opportunities for evolution (new dimensions, levels)
-implications of evolution (new structures, sensations)
-leadership in evolution (body, ground, results)
-text: inviting organization paper (15 pages)

And if this is all too cryptic, suffice it to say that in these three days we move from moving bodies (observable), to moving meetings (meaningful), to moving whole organizations (powerful). What we do as bodies on day one, is extended into meeting groups on day two, and leveraged into ripples throughout whole systems on day three. If you’re curious what it all means, give me a call — or host a three-day!

Chris Corrigan shared this from an Art of Hosting conversation, linking back to the four-seasons view of Inviting Leadership Practice that we’ve developed over the last few years…

This reminds me of the “four karmas” in Buddhism, which describe how one acts skillfully, as an expression of compassion and in accord with the natural order. The correspondence isn’t exact, but I can see the same general direction flowing through your four categories. Which makes sense if we are talking about the same reality. There’s only one, after all!

The first karma is “pacifying” which is also about opening a space or portal of awareness, and taming the ground by clearing away any negative energies. There is no distinction between inner and outer in this sense. Or you could say, it is all inner. Or all outer. So opening and clearing one’s mind is expressed in how one relates to the environment or situation, and vice-versa. Pacifying is represented as a circle.

Then comes “enriching” which is a square, reminiscent of a square hearth or the foundation of a house. So something about cultivating the earth, drawing out the richness, generating something or letting something emerge and develop.

Third is “magnetizing” which is represented by an open half-circle, which invites possibility, play, communication, wealth, power. This is karma of leadership.

Fourth is about action. If the frame of reference is how you work with obstacles, this one is called “destroying.” i.e., you don’t cut until you have first worked with the other three. If it’s about how you take action in the world, this one is about accomplishment. This is a triangle.

I think it’s cool to see how aligned these patterns are.

In a related Shambhala system, there’s also a post-action piece, which is the letting go after the stroke or the cut. Opening up again, which is suggested by your arrow in the middle. Coming back to wide open space and wide open mind.

Easy to imagine the first one as a circle, an “oh!” that is Opening. The second as the square piece of paper that is posted as Invitation. The third, half circle, as the bowl space of Hosting. And the fourth, the triangle, as the spear of Action. Leading back to “oh!” and Opening. Nice.

I’ve just posted an updated edition of my Inviting Guide for the practice of Open Space Technology. This version makes some relatively minor refinements throughout, but also includes a new piece on writing the theme of an event.

If it weren’t for the long coaching conversation I had over lunch today, I might be worried that I’ve just about written myself out of a job. I think this new version is pretty good… AND I’m grateful there are still people around who would rather pay me to meet and eat and work with them than to wing it from the text. There’s more to practice than pixels!

Two years ago I worked with Phil Cubeta and some others to create something we called The Giving Conference. Since then, at least two Omidyar Network member conferences, something called Recent Changes Camp, staff meetings in Rio de Janeiro, and a bunch of other things have happened as results. Now there are conferences trying to happen in Thailand and Chicago.

Phil offered the following in the Thailand planning thread. This is why my facilitation of Open Space Technology is morphing into a larger practice of Inviting Leadership.

…the secret to a good open space is the invitation and also the invitation list. “Whoever comes are the right people,” but be sure to invite the right people. Go for broke would be my suggestion. Go for significant potential funders, political leaders, media, civic leaders, nonprofit professionals, thought leaders, moral leaders and religious leaders. Ask yourself who can convene these networks. Go to those “mavens” and enlist their support in not only emailing or writing the key people, but actively and personally inviting them.

The real work of open space is in networking networks together. That has to be done as the pre-work before the invitation goes out. In fact, the invitation will be drafted and redrafted, negotiated if you will, by each of the co-conveners as they insert phrases of important to their networks.

Michael Herman and I did this together three years ago for the Open Space on Giving. Our invitation was ultimately gibberish, because so many people pulled it in so many directions as a precondition of their inviting their networks. But the revision process led to their buy-in; and their personal invitation, not the words used, but their willingness to invite people over the phone, is what got the key players there. So treat the words as flypaper. Get key mavens stuck in the glue. The more they struggle with the the words the more involved they become, until the exact words no longer matter.

Phil and I worked by email two years ago, and lots of phone time. We traded 37 different drafts, many of them major revisions, of the invitation. We went round and round with words, but around a core purpose: Giving. And that is what’s been sustained and sustaining everything since then, that core purpose, in so many different languages. It’s just great to see so many ripples from something so simple as one short “invitation.”