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.

Last Fall, we did a one-day summit event in Open Space to help establish a central Ohio contribution to the national Leave No Child INSIDE movement. Nice to see them growing the KidsAndNature weblog we started with the conference notes. This is my current favorite example of how to keep the Spirit of an Open Space meeting alive and working.

Recognizing that creating a universally meaningful logo graphic for such a diverse group would be difficult, we opted for a flicker badge of four photos, pulled from a kids and nature tag at flicker. This means that the logo actually shows what they mean by kids and nature. It’s able to be displayed by any member organization, the main criteria for membership being that you’re helping to spread the word, or really the vision, embedded in the photo badge. And anyone with great pictures of kids and nature can add them to the tag group, and thus add their view of kids and nature to the emblem and the sites of every member.

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 met Prabu Naidu in Singapore in 2002, when I responded to 9/11 by going literally around the world teaching Open Space. Prabu was host as well as participant in the Singapore workshop. Now he’s teaching for himself and sent this report on his latest work in Tehran:

On 4th February 2008 some forty producers and managers from the radio division of the Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting (IRIB) converged in one of the studios that was the venue of an Open Space Technology (OST) session to discuss on the theme “Radio Management in Iran”.

The participants who came to the session - based on open invitations announced on banners throughout the studios - had a desire to contribute to the future of Radio in Iran, they came, enjoyed the collegial networking and contributed ideas and thoughts.

The Open Space was facilitated by me. The event was co-sponsored by the Freidrich Ebert Stiftung and IRIB.

In the full day session, six concurrent market place discussions were held over two time slots of one hour each. There was deep conversations and many ideas generated on the theme. During the action planning; six key ideas were voted to be worked on next and six leaders accepted the responsibility to take the ideas to the next step.

The next day on 5th February 2008, a smaller group of ten participants in the morning and another ten in the afternoon attended a training session on Open Space so that they will be equipped to conduct Open Space sessions on their own in the future. These participants had also attended the full day session the day before. The participants intend to use Open Space to engage their own staff as well as their listeners in improving their programmes and services.

The two-day proceedings were beamed live on the Internet for IRIB staff outside Tehran to follow.

This is the most amazing thing about the practice of Open Space. We never really know where it will lead, or turn up, next. Good to see such fruits still ripening, five years beyond the first plantings. Way to go, Prabu! And may the Iranian harvest be bountiful, as well!

I’m off tomorrow for Columbus Ohio, to open space for the Central Ohio Collaborative’s “Leave No Child INSIDE” Summit, part of a national movement in response to what Richard Louv has called “nature deficit disorder.”

I’ve built a blogsite for the summit and we expect to post proceedings, after we get back from camp. Looking forward to a couple of days at Campfire camp, no computer, and I’m told my cellphone won’t work there either. Nice.

Theresa Williamson has been doing great work to find and feed positive things happening in the slums of Rio de Janeiro. Theresa and I met in Open Space a few years ago, and then we did a little phone coaching last year. Now she’s incorporated Open Space at Catalytic Communities. Way to go, Theresa! This is how it’s spozed to be, woven into the fabric of the work.

Thanks to Ted for pointing this out.

In the beginning, there was Global Chicago. Then the Global Chicago weblog, started three years — nay, four years ago (!) this month.

When I went to London for the better part of a year, it became Pea Soup. Then Small Change News grew up next to it, and eventually merged in. In the last two years, it’s flown under a number of headings, including various combinations of Inviting, Practice, and Leadership.

Recently, you may have noticed, it’s become Inviting Chicago, as my professional Inviting practice begins to settle into a new (and permanent?) home at the edge of the Chicago River. I continue to work nationally and internationally, with near-term focus grounded in updating an 80-year old classic Chicago bungalow.

In conversations about developing a new Open Space website, in Korean, Stanley Park shared this phrase — Mountain of Care — to describe Open Space. This describes so well what I aspire to in this blog, my professional practice, and now in this new house, that it feels just a bit silly that in four years of hacking about here, I couldn’t name it for myself.

Slowly, slowly… I get there. In the practice and in the house. Met with an architect yesterday. Blew up the budget. (!) Back to work… piling up Life and plans and things as Mountain of Care.

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.

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!

Corinne Nelson asked recently about how she and her husband might run their two-person business operations in an open space way. I rather enjoyed penning this answer…

I would say that it’s definitely possible to run and grow your business in open space, even with just the two of you. And, I’ll suggest that it might not *look* like open space to outside observers, i.e. there might not be a circle and facilitator and such. Or might there?

To see how this works, let what normally passes for open space technology, circle, invitation, marketplace, law of two feet and principles, bulletin board dissolve a bit. It’s enough, I think, if you each agree that you know some things, many of which can be listed explicitly, and don’t know many others about what might happen, most of which can’t even be named.

It’s enough, in practice, to list the things you know, about your needs, resources, interests, purposes, desires, and what might need to be done now about all of that. If there are open, unanswerable questions, probably they show up as ‘things to explore’, then list those too. Put the list of everything you know you want, think you have, guess you can or will do next, and might explore… all on individual post-it notes on a wall or poster or wherever is handy. Someplace that can stay visible and available for reference.

Then just have regular conversations in front of that board, as often as you find necessary, and whenever you don’t know what is happening or what to do next. The ‘question’, i think, that all these post-it note issues and topics and questions answers is this: What is this business and what should it be?

If you add new issues whenever you sit down together in front of this bulletin board, and keep notes every time you retire or resolve an issue… which might be through active development work, or might be when conditions change and some area posted for action or exploration just ‘falls off’ the wall… just make some notes, or don’t, but move it off to the ‘done’ pile.

As for involving clients or others, they need not be joining you in an ‘event’. They’re likely only needed for one or a few conversations. So ring them up when it’s time (whenever it starts is the right time) and chat about those few issues. They don’t need to know that they’re working in what you call open space. If you hire someone new, give them the pile of ‘done’ issues, perhaps some of which have notes on them. That is your training and orientation program, how we got here, from the beginning.

And this goes on, each of you and both of you sitting with, updating, reflecting, conversing, and resolving the issues on the post-its… until it’s over.

My business is just me, unless you count my wife as an advisory board, and this is how i’ve run my practice for many years, with the same ‘mind’ to my to-do list as I bring to any community bulletin board wall in any oepn space meeting.

In the end, it’s the mind we make, not the meetings. And when I get a chance to do a meetings with clients, it is really just sharing that mind and practice with them, even when they are several hundred people.

I might add here that even when I’ve worked inside of very large corporate organizations, this ‘mind’ and these practices have been effective — maybe even essential — for staying sane and getting things done.

Last September I ran into the people who make these cool (hot?) Sun Ovens. Turns out they have reps in Nepal, where I was set to do an Open Space training day in November. We made some connections and got the Nepali Sun Oven guys invited to come demo the ovens at the conference day, hoping that some of the community organizations attending would be good contacts.

The day of the event, I thought the Sun Oven guys spent most of the time out on the terrace, cooking up momos for the 40-50 people who came for the conference. Now they write to say that they haven’t heard back from any of the contacts they made on this day, but…

Everything is fine out here. It really snowed in kathmandu after 62 years yesterday, It was really cold, may be it was gift from the god as it was valentine’s day….Ha ha…
I really learned a great deal from the conference, me and my friend manish was there to attend the conference and we have used the open space technique in our office and it is really wonderful that we are comming out with wonderful ideas to boost up the sales of our products…especially the condom as you might not have yet known that i do the marketing of condoms imported from malaysia and also doing the marketing of Oxygen concentrators as well and i have been telling my friends about the conference and the open space techniques as well…

Yet another case of “whoever comes is the right people” … “whatever happens is the only thing that could have” …and “be prepared to be surprised.”