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.”

We did a second round of Open Space, 10am to 3pm, on the Entrance to Aspen on Saturday. Another 50 people showed up, reviewed the posters summarizing Wednesday’s conversations, posting another dozen or so issues. The focus was more squarely on asking the questions and bringing ideas that might “change the conversation” in the direction of resolution.

Where Wednesday had seemed to be focused on establishing positions, among perhaps a dozen or more different possible solutions, Saturday’s conversations were more about connecting and cross-pollinating. Several people remarked that they had changed their positions as a result of Saturday’s conversations. Skeptics from Wednesday offered that they were grateful and heartened by the quality of this second round.

Going forward, the City of Aspen will help keep the newly-spirited conversations going with a kit they call a ‘meeting in a box’ which will offer informtion, discussion questions, and citizen comment forms to anyone in town who would like to host a conversation on this 37-year-old question of what to do with the highway coming into Aspen. Then on April 12th, they’ll host and evening of keypad voting on questions that will be shaped by all this community conversing.

Saturday’s conversations were perhaps “less focused”, but that seems to be just what was needed for folks to soften their positions and start to listen and connect with others’ ideas and interests. After 26 ballot initiatives, this year might yet deliver real resolution to this question.

I worked with Claudia Haack on this one and together we wrote a nice set of finishing questions. These might be my new default set for closing circles. We asked participants to reflect on these things and then offer one short comment, maybe just one line, what might be their response to a friend asking “So what happened at that meeting, anyway?”

• What was your experience here?
• What are you taking away?
• What did you learn? Any a-ha’s?
• What was strange or different here?
• How might you/we keep this going?
• What new or next questions might make a difference now?

Meanwhile, I can also report that I skied all afternoon at Snowmass on Friday. Great snow, freezing cold (zero degrees, before counting the wind) outside, toasty warm in old hacker gear, no wrecks, but totally wore myself out. Some serious motivation for making body stronger this year.

This was the scene last night at the high school in Aspen, Colorado, in the first of two open space meetings to address a set of transportation issues that has generated 26 ballot initiatives in 37 years. This is the kind of space that you do the opening, unplug the microphone, and keep it with you, just in case. Participants posted 27 issues, which after combinations generated 18 working sessions. The Aspen Times (photo) and Aspen Daily News both had good things to say about our progess on their front pages this morning. We’ll have another round on Saturday.

In the meantime, today was my first time on skis in 10 or 12 years. Let’s just say that nobody skied the Greens at Buttermilk as hard as I did today! Hoping to make it a big Blues day tomorrow at Snowmass.

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.”

Doug asked me the other day about how I sort out body, soul and spirit. Here’s an answer I didn’t know I had until he asked:

in practical terms, i can find the edge of “me” that is my skin. everything inside is body.

then there is another layer, the energy of me. there are many layers, flexing and moving and shape-shifting all the time, but taken as a 3-D stack, they have a finite edge. everything inside of that edge is the space that i sense as “me” — and “mine.” i think of soul as this energy space, that extends sometimes quite far, and through time, and is ever changing its shape… but always i am making some story about how/why it is mine and what i think it should be or do.

beyond that edge, there is a wispier thing yet, a space that i find if i let attention follow the sound of the tingsha bells… and this space is bigger than my energy space, bigger than my story, boundless even. the bells are an invitation to relax into that, to relax the edges and efforts that are “me.” this space seems to be the ‘water’ we all swim in… and i’m inclinded to guess, swims through all of us, too. so this vast third space, all of stuff, all of space, all of awareness, all of everything beyond all of “me”, is what i think people are talking about when they say spirit.

sometimes we say, about open space meetings or other peak moments, that “spirit shows up”, i think that this means that some critical mass of people in the gropu, for some criticitacl mass of time in the event, relaxed their bodies and souls, their physical tissues and the stories and edges they each usually make around “me” and for some noticeable time, in some noticeable way, they were noticing that there is someting beyond those edges of “me” and noticing that they were all swimming in it, spirit, togetehr… so it’s not really spirit showing up… as them showing up and relaxing out into IT.

this might be another way to think about the gift of invitation, and open space. a chance to relax. “i’ve been invited,” we can think to ourselves, “they’ve asked me to join just as i am.” body rests just a little, on whatever ground we already have. story, and the efforts of mind that make it, rest a bit, too. we return from pushing to pulsing. breathe. now we can tap all of the vastness beyond our little isolated “me” selves, the whole soup of possibilities, in the direction of the next good thing.

maybe it’s only that we relax our little individual stories into the soul, the energy, the pulse of the organization, the spirit of the team, but even that is often quite something, to find and really feel the wave of organization, community, and fellowship carrying and supporting us as we go about our everyday work.