OpenSpaceTechnology – Page 4 – Michael Herman's Blog (2003-2016)

May 27, 2006August 22, 2006

Not the Four Practices

Chris Corrigan and I have been refining our thinking and language for open space leadership. We have it down to four inter-informing and inter-supporting practices: Appreciating, Inviting, Supporting and Making Good.

While the practices themselves are each quite whole and robust, tolerant of description but not of disecting, that’s not actually how it is when we try to practice them as bodies. Incarnation is more discrete. On and off, in or out, dead or alive, male or female. More or less. Appreciating, Inviting, Supporting and Making Good.

So it occurs to me that naming their opposites, daring to notice their dual nature, one might say… could be helpful. Here are my proposals:

Analyzing, the opposite of Appreciating;
Protecting, the opposite of Inviting;
Fixing, the opposite of Supporting; and
Wasting, the opposite of Making Good.

These four meet two criteria for me. First, they are sort of obvious literal opposites of our four practices. More importantly, I have some felt sense of what each actually feels like. I can feel when I am doing them. This matters, because it means that I can feel when I’m not doing them. It’s great to notice when I am practicing well, but perhaps more important to be able to notice when I’m losing my way.

I can hear them, too, in the language of colleagues and clients. I know Appreciation gets things moving and I can hear others talk about the “paralysis of analysis.” I know that when people resist using Open Space Technology, they often explain their resistance in terms of protecting others. Or they attempt “modified open space” and speak explicity about fixing and improving the experience of their colleagues. And I hear people decrying business as usual as a waste of time, waste of money, and wasted chances to do good. So these are things I find in the territory, not theories I’m making up out of nothing.

I should add that it’s not that we should stop doing these opposite things altogether, but rather be more conscious of our habits, assumptions, and balance about these things. These opposites have their place and value. And they are all very well supported in western, industrial cultures. The new practices are not. So it’s the balance we need to reconsider, each of us personally, consciously, actively.

These four words aren’t magic, any more than the last four were magic — and I haven’t worked out the all the details. But somehow the marriage of these opposites, the rebalancing, or mutuality of them, allows us to handle in local, personal ways the enormity of what Dave Pollard and author Derrick Jensen are talking about?

Thoughts?

May 26, 2006June 1, 2006

Mutuality in Markets and Meetings

Bloomberg’s Caroline Baum sums it up the recent market movements pretty well yesterday:

Copper up, stocks down, bonds down. No, wait, it’s copper down, stocks down, bonds up. Can someone please help me get a handle on these inter-market relationships?

As I think about movements and relationships, in markets and in open space meetings …and organizations …and communities… I notice that I can indeed understand, or at least explain to myself, why things are happening. I can know, too, what is is happening now, and even what is happening next. The challenge is knowing what to do — because these two kinds of knowing, what is happening and why it’s happening — seem to happen in two different sides of brain or, perhaps more accurately still, in brain and in heart. Brain can’t really calculate what comes next. And heart can’t explain it.

What Julie Henderson calls “mutuality” is a practice in letting other(s) be as real to us as we are to ourselves. Chris Corrigan and I have been teaching Open Space and Inviting Leadership as the practice of being mutually aware of self and group, or self and organization, letting body be source of information about how I am as well as how “we” are. Today I’m remembering that this same sort of mutual awareness scales down, to where I can know what is really happening and why it is happening, simultaneously. When I can do this, I make better decisions, wise and kind, in markets and meetings.

What’s that you say, “Kind decisions? In the currency markets?” Ah yes, even in something as apparently solid, objective, measurable as trading, there is room for kindness. So easy to second guess oneself, destroy confidence, grow fear, lose focus and money and more. And, of course, it’s always dangerous to argue with a market.

May 25, 2006May 25, 2006

The Open Space that I Am

Alison Murdoch sent word yesterday of the upcoming Essential Education conference in California, October 2006. The announcement came with an invitation to volunteers for website maintenance. Later in the day, Julie Henderson asked about adding some photos to the Zapchen Somatics site. I said yes, both times, and then got back to work on updating the Imagine Chicago site for Bliss Browne. All of this after I talked with Rebecca Blazer and Marissa Strassel, walking them through the new weblog we are starting for the Chicago Conservation Corps. Late last night, I posted a note from Roq Gareau into the writing notebook, not yet public, where Chris Corrigan and I are developing our book on Inviting Leadership.

Depending on how you count them, I am working on eight to ten different websites, many but not all of them weblogs. Today, I can see them clearly as working conversations and overlapping groups of colleagues. It’s easy to imagine the lot of them as so many flipcharts and breakout groups scattered around a big meeting room. Some of them are sites of active documentation. Some of them don’t get much writing but do mark and hold a space for our meeting. A few of them have side conversations going on, a listserve or or sub-site, nearby. In all cases, I care about about the issues: education, philanthropy, community, environment, food, well-being — and the opportunities to connect these conversations with each other. It strengthens me to see that I am indeed walking my talk… noticing, inviting, documenting, and doing. Open Space Practice and Open Space World.

Between clicks on all of these websites yesterday, I got an urgent email from a friend and coaching client. “On my way to an open space client meeting. Need to talk, if you can.” It turns out that he’s been doing quite a lot of work in Open Space, and he mentions something about using it in more and more different places, and discovering that “it” can work in all of them. The way he said “it” really caught me and I see: “it” is “me”. Open Space isn’t an abstract or academic process. It’s personal. It’s me appreciating, inviting, supporting, and making good on the issues and opportunities that matter to me. We say that Open Space can work in so many different situations, and now I see that the real limit or caveat, the qualification that could be added is this: Open Space can work anywhere, on any issue, and with any people that I/you/we can genuinely appreciate. In other words, IF you can find some good in the situation, there is always some way to invite, support and make more of it.

May 23, 2006May 22, 2006

Transformative Mediation

The Institute for the Study of Conflict Transformation’s 2nd International Conference is coming up in September, in St. Paul, MN. The theme is Purpose Drives Practice: An International Conference on Transformative Mediation.

I’ll be presenting a workshop on Open Space Technology on the first day and will be a featured panelist in the closing plenary. I’m looking forward to a fascinating couple of days of connecting the Tranformative Framework and Open Space.

The transformative framework was first articulated by Robert A. Baruch Bush and Joseph P. Folger in The Promise of Mediation in 1994. Since then, transformative theory and practice has grown and is used in mediation, facilitation, and conflict management training all over the world.In the transformative view, conflict is primarily about human interaction rather than “violations of rights” or “conflicts of interest”. Conflict is part of the basic dynamic of human interaction in which people struggle to balance concern for self with connections to others. When this balance is upset, human interaction becomes alienated and destructive, simply put there is a crisis in human interaction.
Specifically, the occurrence of conflict tends to destabilize the parties’ experience of both self and other, so that each party feels both more vulnerable and more self-absorbed than they did before the conflict. Further, these negative attitudes often feed into each other on all sides as parties interact, in a vicious circle that intensifies each party’s sense of weakness and self-absorption. As a result, the interaction between the parties quickly degenerates and assumes a mutually destructive, alienating, and dehumanizing character.
For most people, according to the transformative theory, being caught in this kind of destructive interaction is the most significant negative impact of conflict. However, the transformative framework posits that, despite conflict’s natural destabilizing impacts on interaction, people have the capacity to regain their footing and shift back to a restored sense of strength or confidence in self (the empowerment shift) and openness or responsiveness to the other (the recognition shift). Moreover, these positive moves also feed into each other on all sides, and the interaction can therefore regenerate and assume a constructive, connecting, and humanizing character. The model assumes that this transformation of the interaction itself is what matters most to parties in conflict — even more than resolution on favorable terms.

Pre-Conference Workshops and Trainings will be held Sept. 15-16, 2006, and Main Conference Sept. 17-18. I’ll be presenting a workshop on the 17th and will be a featured panelist on the 18th. Conference Brochure or Online Registration

May 20, 2006May 19, 2006

Practice Receiving, Too

My friend Karen Sella, reflecting on the other side of inviting after our recent leadership practice retreat on Bowen Island…

My approach to open space—and life in general (sometimes this distinction seems irrelevant)—is about receiving as much as inviting—receiving what is offered; what wants to be received. Whenever I open space, I invite people to consider that each person in the space is a gift just waiting to be received. All we have to do is open our bodies, hearts and minds to receiving each other. If we do nothing else, that will have been profound—indeed, sometimes, that’s the most profound thing that we can do, a prerequisite for everything else.

She’s also just spiffed up her Luminalogue weblog. It’s one of those gifts just waiting to be received!

May 17, 2006

Lunch with Shilpa Jain

Today was a rare treat, lunch with my friend Shilpa Jain. Rare because she lives in India, Udaipur to be exact. Once upon a time we ran a few days of Open Space Technology training together, for her organization, Shikshantar, the People’s Institute for Rethinking Education and Development.

My favorite of all the stories we told today was of a week-long bicycle trip 14 colleagues did last October in India — without cash. They rode out, with signs, juggling gear, sleeping pads, jewelry making tools and no food on their bicycles.

The signs invited conversation. The other stuff was some of what they used to survive… by offering entertainment, cleaning, carrying, and other “body labor” along the way, bridging the gap between urban and rural people, and learning a lot about simple, human relations, economics, exchange, humility and power. I think the humility of the endeavor is most impressive for me.

Shikshantar is doing community work with zero-waste and organic urban gardening. I shared my new Nestworking experiment and Shilpa has connected me with somebody here in town working on community gardens.

Finally, Shilpa brought me a copy of Expressions Annual 2005, a journal recently published by abhivyakti.org.in in which Shilpa interviews me about Open Space. Dialogue, walking, film-making, cooperative games, and a piece by Juanita Brown on World Cafe are also featured this year.

Jill and I are hoping to meet up with Shilpa in Udaipur this Fall, but likely not for the next cashless bike/work tour. Guess we’ll just have to organize our own tour here in Chicago!

April 28, 2006August 22, 2006

Inviting Leadership

Back in Chicago now, after staying on Bowen Island a few extra days after the Practice Retreat to walk in the forest, eat some good soups at the Snug, and work with Chris Corrigan on the story of Inviting Leadership, the latter of which we’ve now distilled to…

Appreciating… the Positive Core in people, organizations and communities
Inviting… attention to options, needs and choices for the (shared) future
Supporting… structures that allow people and information to move and connect
Making… good on promise and promises, claiming responsibility for making decisions, changes, and personal contributions

The writing and teaching we’re doing around these are the latest retelling of what began back in 1998 as Inviting Organization and has shown up more recently as the Four Practices of Open Space.

Wondering now about retitling this blog Inviting Leadership, as that is clearly what I’ve been up to with much of my posting here over the last three years. Hmmm… maybe that’s a good way to mark the upcoming 3rd anniversary here, later this month.

April 14, 2006August 22, 2006

Four Practices of Open Space – Update

I’m getting ready for the leadership practice retreat I’ll lead with Chris Corrigan, on Bowen Island, April 18-20th. I’m thinking some more about the four practices of Open Space. Here is the updated view:

Opening Heart
Inviting Connection
Supporting Collaboration
Making a Difference

On a personal level, these practices begin with passion, perhaps even some sense of conflict. The key questions are about core issues, the heart of the matter, the center of the problem or situation, which is always me. What do I care about? What do I love? What do I want, for myself and others?

As heart opens, I can invite connection with others. I dare to attract attention. And I have attention of my own to give. What’s happening now? Who is here? What do they have? What do they want? What might we be together?

As invitations and connections are made, the next thing to do is support them. How do we stay connected? How do we learn, move, live, and work together? What rules, tools and structures will get in our way? What rules, tools and structures will support our collaborating?

Then, what is my responsibility here? Given some clarity about what I want, being connected with others, having some space and support, NOW, what will I do? How will I ground this energy I have? How will I use it to make a difference for myself and others? What actions can I now take? What changes can I now make?

I think I bring a fairly typical sort of “results” orientation to life. I work from a list of things I’ve promised (to myself, if not others) that I will DO. I want to see measurable progress and change and improvement in the world(s) that I live in. My mind and body are busy busy busy like everyone else. These practices seem to help orient me in all of that.

I come back over and over again, and notice… What am I doing now? Opening Heart? Inviting Connection? Supporting Collaboration? Grounding my energy in ways that make a difference? What have I been working too hard? What have I been ignoring? Can I focus on just one of these, for just this moment? Can I get back in the flow? Okay, now what? Do it. And come back again…

In our retreat next week, we’ll consider how we apply these practices as facilitators, particpants and leaders, in meetings, conferences, organizations and communities.

March 16, 2006March 16, 2006

Is Your Organization a Black Hole?

Some new physics research is suggesting that Black Holes in space could be the ultimate quantum computers. This New Scientist article explains that a controversial new study argues that nearly all the information that falls into a black hole escapes back out, in the form of “Hawking radiation,” that eventually evaporates them away completely. Originally thought to be too random to be useful, it is now acknowledged by Hawking himself that black holes do not destroy information.

The physics-speak in this New Scientist article is fascinating in itself, but also because it all sounds like organization and conversation to me — this great, invisible, gaping void that sucks up all the information it possibly can, originally thought to destroy all of that information, creating chaos, unless it was harnessed, controlled and directed.

What I’m hearing in the physics of organization is that the massive, invisible conversation that is the whole organization talking to the whole organization, every day in the normal course of business, devouring information, also radiating energy and effects, is also making fantastically complex quantum calculations. The challenge in outer space and open (organization) space seems the same: to decode the radiation coming out! As we understand how these things work, we will better understand what to put in them (invitations) to get the results we want.

Elsewhere, I’m working my way through Tor Norretranders’ User Illusion: Cutting Consciousness Down To Size, which posits that the Third Grand Unification Theory in physics will reach way beyond the unification of gravity with the other fundamental forces and connect theoretical physics as a whole with consciousness, meaning, conversation and the stuff of everyday life.

March 7, 2006March 7, 2006

Open Space Technology: Practice Retreat
April 18-20, 2006

I’ve been sharing the story of the essential practices of Open Space Technology with a variety of people in recent months, from facilitators and managers, to physicsts and software technologists. I’m pleased to say that the response has been surprisingly positive.

In April, Chris Corrigan and I will be leading a Practice Retreat to share our learning about the essence of Open Space leadership. The program is experience-based and serves all levels of Open Space, facilitation and leadership experience equally well. The practices are taught in the context of Open Space Technology, but will be immediately applied to all kinds of other work in organizations and communities.

Chris and i have been offering practice workshops together since 2002, but this is the first time we have offered a full three-day retreat together. It will take place on Bowen Island, near Vancouver BC. See the invitation and registration for complete details.

We would love any of you to join us, and of course, please feel free to share the invitation with folks in your network who might be interested.

March 6, 2006April 13, 2024

Opening Space After Attacks in Nepal

For three years, I have had the opportunity to work with peaceful development leaders in Nepal. In my last visit we did a four-day, national, Open Space and Appreciative Inquiry conference and training summit event. Most recently, the Maoists have attacked the village of one of the main leaders of the group. This photo is one result and the invitation below is another.

Namaste,
Now we are suffering from difficulties. our some pride were gone with palpa attacks. it was did by Maoist on January 31, 2006. now we are make a team for reconstruction. so we are appeal to all you to support us for reconstruction. we are going to Tansen summit for Imagine new tansen through open space technology. after that we provide you our master plan.
Appeal of NAINN
History, no matter where it is, the wealth of people of the whole world. A smallest unit of something can be a big insight in the future. It’s our duty to preserve and protect the identity of human civilization. In this context, Nepal Appreciative Inquiry National Network (NAINN) wants all to recall the destruction took place in Tansen, Palpa on 31 January 2006. The tragedy was not expected. The world runs in complexity and in chaos.
So it happened and now we all are bound to accept the damage. The attack form the Maoist destroyed a century long living history of Nepal. Asia’s biggest gate is lying on the ground with its seared body. Many historical and archeological things were engulfed with fire. The old building, which was supporting the government offices with pride, is now roofless, door less, windowless and with broken pillars. The surrounding is damaged as well.
But there is still hope. The structure is not completely ashed. The people of Tansen are not hopeless, we Nepalese people’s energy is not swallowed by the fire and bullets. We have hope that the Palpa Durbar comes into its original outlook within a very short time. It’s the dream of Palpali and whole Nepalese people. And we are sure that our dream comes true since we have the sympathy from national and international government, organizations, I/NGOs, supporters, people and all the well wishers.
A very good news to all of us is that a Tansen Reconstruction Team, led by Mr. Ram Bahadur Raut (National Chairperson of NAINN), has been formed very recently in Tansen, Palpa. It’s right time to contribute for the revival of the identity of whole human beings. Nepal Appreciative Inquiry National Network (NAINN) requests all National and International governments, NGOs, INGOs, Donor Agencies, people and well- wishers to make a contribution from your side so that Tansen Durbar can resurrect very soon.
A small drop of water, if collected from many, can fill a large pot.

March 5, 2006

MeshForum 2006 – Chicago, May 7-9

MeshForum is a conference on Networks – bringing together an interdisciplinary mix of academics, artists, business leaders and government experts for three days of learning and collaboration. Our mission is to foster the overall study of networks – across fields of industry and academia.

Confirmed speakers at MeshForum 2006 include Robert Scoble and Shel Israel, authors of Naked Conversations, and Manuel Lima of VisualComplexity.com, as well as a mix of academics and business people. We also hope to once again have experts from the Pentagon (Office of Force Transformation) and FEMA. On the third and final day, the format changes and yours truly leads an Open Space for speakers and audience members to break into small groups and work together on the discussions which have arisen out of the previous two days.

The goal is that MeshForum provides more than just a chance to present and hear great content, that it also provides a forum for interaction and collaboration, especially between people in different fields and industries. Register Now

March 2, 2006March 2, 2006

Inviting Employee Engagement

Mihalyi Csikszentmihalyi’s secret to maintaining flow:

The only solution to achieve enduring happiness, therefore, is to keep finding new opportunities to refine one’s skills: do one’s job better or faster, or expand the tasks that comprise it; find a new set of challenges more appropriate to your stage of life. Paradoxically, the feeling of happiness is only realized after the event. To acknowledge it at the time would only serve as distraction.

Recently, I’ve been working in the area of “employee engagement,” organizing “engagement summits” in Open Space, to invite deepening engagement with the most important business issues, following company-wide engagement surveys. This quote puts that work in perspective. Anything other than direct invitations into the most important issues and opportunities seems like so much distraction in organization. We need to engage in something!

via Chris Corrigan

February 16, 2006August 22, 2006

Heart Practice

I’ve written previously about the four essential practices of Open Space Technology:

Opening Heart
Inviting Attention
Supporting Connection
Grounding the Energy

When I first applied this view to my work, after 10 years of opening space, I found they made everything easier. I could do opening heart, during set-up. Then I could invite attention to start the meeting, and so on. One step, one task, one practice at a time.

In my latest facilitations, however, my learning progresses. I am finding that all I really need to do is the first practice, opening heart, and the rest happens almost automatically. This feels more like a river current carrying me and the rest of the event along.

I can see the other practices go by. I know that I’m doing them. And not doing them. At my best, they are becoming more like things that go by in a river, rather than goals or tasks I swim toward, accomplish, or do.

As I rest, relax, and open the space that we might normally refer to as heart, I find that the mental and physical state that arises leads naturally into the next thing, inviting attention. That attention allows supporting connections. Energy flows in and from the connecting and conversing, and automatically seeks ground in some tangible (real) action or product. And those actions and products, however large or small, become the foundation for deeper rest, relaxation and opening.

I find it easiest to start with heart and opening, but I suppose we can start anywhere, as long as we’re willing to be carried through all four seasons or dimensions of practice. If I can’t relax my heart, I can go back to past results, or back further, noticing whatever supporting connections I might have available. But more and more, it is the physical sensations of heart that tell me most clearly where I am, when is right, and what to do.

I’ll be gone on retreat for the next couple of weeks, resting in practice. Find me again here in March, or join us in April!

February 8, 2006February 8, 2006

In the News

Recent Changes Camp made news in Portland this past weekend, combining software and community development. The Oregonian ran these photos and a good article as well…

…some wondered aloud whether it would descend into chaos — or into some kind of hippie technology fest. “I really had no idea what to expect. I didn’t know whether there would be people with no shoes on and caftans or what,” said Mike Cannon-Brookes, chief executive of a Sydney-based company called Atlassian Software Systems, which designs wiki software.
A couple of people did come in sandals, and many wore jeans, but no one was burning incense. And once the meeting broke up into a dozen discussion groups, it suddenly seemed focused and orderly.

Good News Network founder Geri Weis-Corbley captured a great on-the-fly open frame movie of the event as well.

February 6, 2006February 7, 2006

Unimagined Capacity

I lunched at RecentChangesCamp with Jon Ramer and Jair. Our storytelling is well summed by this bit from Jair’s site:

You have — within you — the fuel to thrive and to flourish, and to leave this world in better shape than you found it. Sometimes you tap into this fuel – other times you don’t. But the sad fact is that most people have no idea how to tap into this fuel or even recognize it when they do. Where is this fuel within you? You tap into it whenever you feel energized and excited by new ideas. You tap into it whenever you feel at one with your surroundings, at peace. You tap into it whenever you feel playful, creative, or silly. You tap into it whenever you feel your soul stirred by the sheer beauty of existence. You tap into it whenever you feel connected to others and loved. In short, you tap into it whenever positive emotions resonate within you. — Barbara Fredrickson, Positive Emotions & Psychophysiology Laboratory @ University of Michigan

Jon mentioned some conversations he’s been having with others about “Unimagined Capacity.” He tells remarkable stories of people discovering this unimagined power. It seems to me that we need more conversations about this. When was the last time you discovered some unimagined capacity in yourself or your people?

February 5, 2006

Gathering of Friends

can you join us on bainbridge island, off seattle, on thursday, february 9th? the theme of the day is practice. so far, we are expecting about 15 people for a full day of learning and connecting.

i’ve been thinking lately about open space practice in terms of opening heart, inviting attention, supporting connection, and grounding the energy. i offer that as some slim subtext. anything that falls into one or all of those buckets is fair game and the rest of the plan is all open space.

email if you’d like to join us. we’re doing a simple, potluck and pizzas sort of lunch.