Author: Michael

My earlier posting on Open Space Practices has been updated to include the following distinctions…

1. Being Open-Hearted: The vehicle is experience in body (heart, perception); the product is care, a sense of personal passion.
2. Telling Visionary Stories: The vehicle is invitation (literally, “please join us…”); the product is organization, a sense of focus, future, and desired direction.
3. Offering and Holding Space: The vehicle is organizing space (elbow room and open markets); the product is inviting, a sense of support and opportunity for movement.
4. Grounding: The vehicle is direct and personal responsibility (action); and the product is peace, or satisfaction.

Hoping this helps put a sharper point on the newer, briefer, telling of the Practices story.

BlawgThink2005 ended with a conversation with NetCentrics’ Jeffrey Phillips about a new product they are bringing to market now. IdeaBank is a central, web-based database for ideas, large and small, so willing to accept new ideas that it even has it’s own email address. Once ideas are entered there, the system lays out a series of steps for developing, evaluating and deciding what should be done with each idea. It’s all actively password protected, so only the right people see the right ideas.

Seems simple enough. Sweep all kinds of ideas, spreadsheets, proposals, down to sticky notes, from technical R&D to creative flashes and suggestions, into one place for purposefully rigorous consideration — and action. But how do you get such a system started? How do you replace a massively complex, organically distributed, and obviously inefficient — but existing — system with a simple, effective and centrally accessible — but brand new — system? Daunting, but not impossible, I think.

But first, tell me one thing: Is Innovation a technical process that can be mapped and automated, or a social process that must be nurtured and cultivated? Can Innovation be implemented or only invited and supported? And what kind(s) of Invitation are required to bring so many diverse views and practices of Innovation together into one new format? Is it enough to invite the data? I’d guess not. But how to invite the people? And how many does it take to tip the new space into active and productive use?

IdeaBank seems as good a tool as any for the technical task. Open Space has taught us much about Inviting the people. Want to Invite Innovation?

Sometimes people tell me “…we’re just not ready for Open Space…” followed by stories of unenlightened leadership, restrictive rules, and scarcity of resources. My response is usually the most polite form of contradiction I can muster. Here’s a good example, from my friend Lisa Heft, of why I always disagree with such comments:

…I attend the annual prison health fair at several prisons, where I set up a circle of chairs so people can just talk and converse and ask questions about absolutely anything that is important to them. Because that is health, too. So this last time I had the pleasure of hosting an all-day talking circle. Or maybe I should call it a listening circle?

It’s the closest thing to Open Space I can get – in prison you cannot do anything that an onlooker (say a guard looking down from a tower or across a prison yard) might interpret as chaos. Therefore, so far I cannot set up a delightful-chaos-of-Open Space situation. But I can do one circle, that lasts for a day, that goes wherever anyone wants it to go.

My disagreements with comments about “not ready” in no way doubt your assessment of how things are in an organization. Rather, I want to stretch the definition of Open Space (from tool to practice) and point out the real potential for productive openings, large or small, in any sort of organization.

Chris posted this from Pema Chodron, which I like so much that I’m reposting the whole of it. In terms of Open Space Practices, Chris links it to the Offering/Holding Practice. You’ll see that Pema also makes reference to open-hearted.

“Here is an everyday example of shenpa. Somebody says a mean word to you and then something in you tightens— that’s the shenpa. Then it starts to spiral into low self-esteem, or blaming them, or anger at them, denigrating yourself. And maybe if you have strong addictions, you just go right for your addiction to cover over the bad feeling that arose when that person said that mean word to you. This is a mean word that gets you, hooks you. Another mean word may not affect you but we’re talking about where it touches that sore place— that’s a shenpa. Someone criticizes you—they criticize your work, they criticize your appearance, they criticize your child— and, shenpa: almost co-arising.

At Gampo Abbey it’s a small community. We’re thirty monks and nuns there. You have a pretty intimate relationship there, living in community. People were finding that in the dining room, someone would come and sit down next to them and they could feel the shenpa just because this person sat down next to them, because they had some kind of thing going about this person. Then they feel this closing down and they’re hooked.

If you catch it at that level, it’s very workable. And you have the possibility, you have this enormous curiosity about sitting still right there at the table with this urge to do the habitual thing, to strengthen the habituation, you can feel it, and it’s never new. It always has a familiar taste in the mouth. It has a familiar smell. When you begin to get the hang of it, you feel like this has been happening forever.

Generally speaking, however, we don’t catch it at that level of just open space closing down. You’re open-hearted, open-minded, and then… erkk. Right along with the hooked quality, or the tension, or the shutting down, whatever… I experience it, at the most subtle level, as a sort of tensing. Then you can feel yourself sort of withdrawing and actually not wanting to be in that place.

This reminds me that our work around the quadrants is a pulsation from Open-Hearted (inside, individually), then doing our best to maintain our opening even as we are seeing and hearing (and ultimately saying) things in the organizational world, then bringing those things out as organizational openings (space for others, offered and held), which we try to sustain even as we take specific actions. So we are ultimately practicing open-hearted offering, even as we are seeing, hearing, and doing things in the world. It makes for a full day.

Last night was one of those “go to bed, have an idea, get up and get a pen, go back to bed, get up again with the next thought, go back to bed, puleeease can I not have another insight, oh good I do see now that I’ve got enough of it staked out that I can sort out the rest in the morning, maybe now I can finally sleep…” sort of nights.

For some time now, Chris Corrigan and I have been thinking about how to talk and teach about the Practices that are at the heart of Open Space Technology. An early version of Open Space Practices lives in my wiki notebook. Last night I got a more rarified and practical spin on them:

1. Being Open-Hearted… not just the act of opening, but the practice of being that way, resting in that state. The tool here is experience, our own life experience. The workshop conversation is about the life experiences that have opened our hearts, in gentle or devastating ways — and how we’ve managed to maintain various states of openness, in spite of everything. The vehicle is body (heart, perception); the product is care, a sense of personal passion.
2. Telling Visionary Stories… not just any storytelling, but the practice of speaking of our visions, of putting words and giving voice to the scattered data, fuzzy patterns, and blurry sensations we have of what we want and what might now be possible. The tools here are maps and languages. Every department, team, family and function has its own set of words and pictures to hold them together. The more languages we know, the bigger and broader the story we can spin, the more people we can invite. The workshop conversation here is about Inviting Organization, a map and language for maps and languages. The vehicle is invitation (literally, “please join us…”); the product is organization, a sense of focus, future and desired direction.
3. Offering (and Holding) Space… the offering is important, no push, no grab, just letting what we have, our attention and our space, be there for the taking, for the use and support of what wants to happen in front of us, and all around us, within the circle of space that we circle and name as “us” and “our time together.” The tool(s) here are structures, but specifically those structures that support movement, rather than restrict it. Rules, if you will, that say what we can do, rather than what we must or must not do. Shapes of organization that create, and offer, choices. The workshop conversation is about space and support for movement. The vehicle is Organizing Space (open markets); the product is inviting, a sense of support and opportunity for movement.
4. Grounding… making it real. making it touch, as impact, and imprint, a difference. and making touchdowns. score! making tracks, traction, and action. taking the steps, in the space, aligned with the vision, as guided by an open heart. showing up. on the ground. The tools are actions, steps, or perhaps gifts. The workshop conversation might be about gifts and giving. Assets and Exchange. Self and Others. Ground. Ground that is bigger, less theoretical, more sensational than Common Ground. More like Ground of Being. Which brings us back to the first practice, and how we are being… Aaaahhhhh….. The vehicle is direct and personal responsibility; the product is peace, or satisfaction.

Chris will be teaching some version of these later this month in Vancouver. After that, I might just have to fly out there so we can sit together and write this all down in a short book. In the meantime, here is another installment of that volume, a brief guide for… Inviting Movement in Organization.

UPDATED: Nov 15 2005, noted in italics.