Now What?

some reflections following a conversation this week with a client, about what to do now that they are several weeks past their first open space meeting, an annual/national sort of managers gathering:

if we make open space a “process” or worse yet a “special process” and focus even casually on it being somehow magic, radical, new or otherwise different, then we make all the benefits, the passion, clarity, movement and results of the “program” unattainable until “leadership” convenes or allows a repeat of the “event.” it tells people that they have to go back to being smaller, in whatever box or bottle they habitually stuff themselves into in order to get along in an “organization.”

if, on the other hand, we understand that open space is just an expanded version, deeper, more focused, more fluid perhaps, of what we already do all the time, it tells people that they should continue to feel good, move freely, and keep maximizing their own learning and contribution. if we remember and remind, in official and casual ways, that open space is common and normal: inviting, conversing, and documenting, it gives people permission to be as caring, engaged and responsible as they can be.

caring, engaged, responsible — these are the things that we can explore, invite, and celebrate in every interaction, every time we pick up a phone or a keyboard. in this way opening space is not just a process. it’s also a posture. a doing and a non-doing(being). it’s the things we do to run a meeting and the way that we are with people everyday. i’ve long suggested “inviting” is a useful way to think about this because it let’s me straddle these to ways. it’s a thing i can do, but it’s also a way that i can aspire to be.

the real practice is the effortless pulsation between the two. at our best, these two appear as one, in the same way that some of lifes most amazing moments arise out of surprisingly ordinary circumstances. when it happens, it seems so easy. when it’s not happening, it can seem completely impossible. but when all else fails, it’s enough to keep asking each other “what matters most right now?” and restart the conversation and action from there.

The Myth of “Too Big to Fail”

John Hussman exploding the myth that even our biggest banks are too big to (let) fail, in his weekly letter today. This gets past basic employment numbers to the core of the Occupy gatherings should be about. This is the as yet mostly unstated battle, between bondholders and budget cuts.

Look at Bank of America’s balance sheet, for example. Reported assets are $2.261 trillion. Against that, liabilities to depositors amount to less than half that, at $1.038 trillion. Add in $239 billion for securities that they are obligated to repurchase, $129 billion in trading account and derivative liabilities, and $155 billion for accrued expenses. Now you’ve covered counterparties, as well as vendors or others who might have invoices outstanding. Even then, and you’re still only up to $1.561 trillion of the liabilities. The remaining 31% of Bank of America’s liabilities represent obligations to its own bondholders and equity of its own shareholders. This is well beyond what is sufficient to buffer any loss that the company might take on its assets, while still leaving customers and counterparties completely whole. To say that Bank of America can’t be allowed to “fail” is really simply to say that Bank of America’s bondholders can’t be allowed to experience a loss.

What “failure” really means is that bondholders lose money, and the operating part of the institution is taken into receivership, sold for the difference between assets and non-bondholder liabilities, and recapitalized under different ownership. Often the only thing that customers and depositors notice is that there is a new logo on top of their statements.

Now take a look at Citigroup’s balance sheet. Reported assets are $1.956 trillion. Against that, liabilities to depositors again amount to less than half of that, at $866 billion. Add in $204 billion in repurchase obligations, $209 billion in trading and brokerage liabilities, and $73 billion in other liabilities, and you’re still only up to $1.352 trillion. The remaining 31% of Citigroup’s liabilities, again, represent obligations to its own bondholders and equity of its own shareholders. Again, to say that Citigroup can’t be allowed to “fail” is really simply to say that Bank of Citigroup’s bondholders can’t be allowed to experience a loss.

You can do the same calculations for nearly every major financial institution in the world. The amount of bondholders and equity coverage varies somewhat, but in virtually every case, bondholder and shareholder capital of these institutions are more than sufficient to absorb any losses without the need for public funds, provided that the objective of government policy is to protect the people and the long-term viability of the economy, rather than defending the existing owners, bondholders, and managements of these institutions. Make no mistake – that choice is what the oncoming crisis is going to be about (See An Imminent Downturn – Whom Will Our Leaders Defend? ).

But who are those bondholders? They include corporate investors, pension funds, endowments, mutual funds and ordinary investors. And all of them willingly take a risk in order to reach for return. As do stock market investors. And if the risk doesn’t work out, none of them should look to the government to fire teachers, lay off social workers, underfund the National Institutes of Health, cut Medicaid, and print money (because until the Fed sells its Treasury and GSE holdings, it has indeed printed money), just because they take their risk in a different type of security.

convening power

what i’ve called the practice of invitation, harvard business school’s rosabeth moss kanter highlights here as “convening power.”

The best CEOs do it. Effective entrepreneurs do it. Middle managers who become change agents do it. Individuals with passion do it. Weak leaders are too timid to do it. On September 20-22 former President Bill Clinton is doing it.

Hold those scurrilous thoughts. “It” is convening large groups to tackle big issues and commit to action.

The Clinton Global Initiative (CGI) models the use of a widely-accessible but still-underutilized power in any sector or company: convening power. As leadership shifts away from hierarchical decisions-at-the-top-slowly-cascading-downward, to social networks and self-organizing, knowing how to use convening power becomes critical.

…On a small scale, that’s what meet-ups do. They are self-organized vehicles for finding out who has the interest and capabilities and then getting something moving. Women’s networks have started in many companies just because someone decided to host a breakfast and identify areas for problem-solving.

On a bigger scale, this model is used by courageous CEOs to morph the 15-person management committee into a 1500-person leadership cadre that comes together in one place, in fluid subgroups, to define issues and commit to solutions — like John Chamber’s strategy meetings at Cisco. In another case, a company in trouble convened 35 top people for a leadership conference; post-turnaround, they convened 350. With 350, much more work was done on the spot, including policy changes and action commitments fully embraced by those who would implement them.

Sounds an awful lot like Open Space and Inviting Leadership to me.

From Growth to Efficiency?

What comes after “growth?” Jeremy Grantham suggests it’s “limited resources” or what I’d translate as “resource efficiency.” He suggests that the shift we’re making now might be as big as the Industrial Revolution. In a world where so many observers are talking so much about what is ending and collapsing, his is a refreshing view of what is emerging, of what comes next. via this NYTimes Magazine article.

As big chunks of the world as we know it are downgraded and dissolving, this seems a useful view to organize what comes next — in personal and organizational life. In terms of the Inviting Organization story, efficiency seems to invite and require a return to purpose. Resource efficiency would seem to be the process of not doing, using, spending anything that isn’t directly supporting Purpose, in every situation and context. So it would seem that in all contexts, purpose will be more important than ever. No longer good enough to go farther or faster in the same old direction, now we’ll have to go most efficiently, which implies that we also have to know something about the right direction. Hmmm…

the essence of invitation

“i’m going, because it matters. come with me. we need you.” this is, to me, the essence of invitation.

harrison owen reported recently, via the OSLIST, on a conversation with a woman who was in the middle of the tahrir square action earlier this year. they concluded that the tahrir event(s) had all the deep qualities of open space, and none of the official trappings, no facilitator, no flipcharts and markers. i thought, yes, that’s true, save one: invitation, lots of individual invitations, that must have sounded just like “i’m going, because it matters. come with me. we need you.”

this might be the best working template for invitation that i’ve yet discovered. there is the integrity of the leader going first, committing first. there is the statement of an issue or opportunity that really matters. it’s personal and active and voluntary: come with me. and it points out beyond control, to what the leader can do only with the help of others: we need you.

harrison’s point was that open space is naturally occuring, and i would say that’s true… because invitation is naturally occuring. facilitation and flipcharts? not so much. but invitation… is.

garden space report

growing veggies is a lot like running open space meetings. there is the smallest of plans, a short flurry of set-up and seeding, and then a lot of picking up cups (weeding) until the documentation (harvest) shows up. oh, yes… and the mystery of it all. now, apparently from nowhere, the first reports of the season are coming in.

in the last two weeks we’ve eaten arugula, spinach, kale, mesclun (though most of it mysteriously failed, despite two plantings and two different seed companies), radishes, chives. strawberries are mounding against a row of collards that are almost ready to eat. second planting of radishes went in today, plus parsley, lavender and some more basil. tomatoes started from seeds are looking like they’re going to do fine and we have twice as many of those as we really need. broccoli is looking doubtful at the moment, but may yet surprise us. corn, beans, purple cow peas, and acorn squash all went in today, too. that should be the last of the topics to be posted, until we give the meslun another, late-season, try. can’t wait to read more of the reports.

inviting business

euan semple muses today about what to call our new way(s) of doing social-media-powered business. He suggests the term “literate business.” my response:

my dad used to work in public relations for ford motor company. along the way he wrote things like the marker at henry ford’s birthplace and materials that went out to every ford shareholder, sometimes speeches, too, i think. when i was learning to write in grade school, he told me “the last thing you do when you write, is write.” think, feel, sense… sort… write.

literate doesn’t fit for me. i always go back to the dictionary on these things, to have a look at the old shape of these things. literate: scholarly, learned. but what you’ve actually described seems more reflective than literate. then i wondered about articulated, annotated, and examined. the unexamined business is not worth…?

and then i come back to the stuff i started working on 10+ years ago, this story of “inviting organization.” perhaps what you’re talking about is “inviting business.” (see InvitingOrganizationEmerges for the full story.) in essence, these new tools and practices you’re talking about are for actively inviting new business, and simultaneously require the thinking, feeling, sensing, and reflecting that must inform our actually being inviting, connecting people.

for me, “inviting business” captures all of the inner, subjective, and aspirational AND all of the outer, objective, and technically practical (practice-able) dimensions of personal practice, collaborative work, and business organization today.

radical radish

and the oneseedchicago.com winner is… swiss chard. topped radish and eggplant in this year’s voting. we planted radishes two or three weeks ago, already coming up. kale, collards, spinach, mesclun, arugula, too. doesn’t leave a lot of room for the chard. the accidental non-conformist strikes again.

what makes open space training work?

a question came up today, on the OSLIST, about the design of open space training programs, and what the leader could do to make them “work.” this was my contribution to that conversation:

thinking back on the trainings i’ve attended, hosted, designed, and led, the single most important criteria is not what we as ‘trainers’ or ‘teachers’ bring. rather, just like in any other open space (cuz what we’re really doing is just opening a space for learning and exploration of open space itself), so just like any other open space, the thing that matters is the complexity, diversity, urgency and passion that comes in with the participants.

to increase or at least encourage these things, i used to ask early and often for them to bring real situations to work on and wrestle with. then during the sessions, it seems important to keep looking for those situations… not only where “ost” might be used in a meeting, but where each participant may have encountered open space somewhere else in their lives. open space is. and we find ourselves casting about in it from time to time.

how have we handled those times? how can we understand and learn from our responses to those moments? when have we been able to do nothing but “be with” one or more others in their work or even suffering? and as we turn these stones over, the thing we do is help folks understand that it’s all part of normal life, rather than something to be fixed, avoided or otherwise controlled. so we don’t so much as teach open space, but suggest that it’s normal, and useful… then it’s easier to deal with some of those complex, diverse, urgent, passionate meeting situations.

for a while i led training programs with others, and soon found myself callling them “practice workshops” and “practice retreats,” inviting as actively as possible participants to step across the line, between observing open space and actually diving in, or noticing that it is indeed everywhere around them. for some years, the way i’ve extended this is to give up the ‘program’ altogether and work one-on-one with people who want to learn the practice. that’s what i ended up doing inside the ‘program’ anyway.

my one requirement in the one-on-one work is that people bring one or more real situations, so that i can point out the many options and they can make real choices between those options. i think they learn the options better when they examine them all in the face of choosing one. so next time, they will again have all the options to consider, and perhaps choose differently because the situation is different. but mostly what this does is maximize the concentration of “reality” and minimize the spectating and ungrounded theorizing that sometimes bubbles up in training conversations.

the most important condition for learning open space would seem to be a willingness to be in it, in work, in life. if students are willing to make that leap: learning happens.

the longest-lasting bubbles ever?

this is just silly. and perhaps the longest-lasting dish soap ever.

more than six years ago, i was working in a meditation center in london, yes that london. washing dishes and cooking lunch for groups using our meeting space. mind got to really wondering about how dish soap works. so i googled it, studied up, and blogged it.

fast forward to this year and that old post is still pulling in 1 to 3, and sometimes even more, visits per day. so i googled again ‘how does dish soap work’ and discovered that my old post is the number one source for the answer. how silly is that? and look at all the places i’ve bested on this most important of questions… wikipedia, google answers, yahoo answers, science canada something or other.

see, you really do need just a little squirt.

Egyptian Youth in Open Space

In the turbulent times following the Egyptian uprising and Mubarek resignation, a group called the Egyptian Youth Federation has begun convening youth leadership forums in Open Space, around a theme of Egypt at the Crossroads. Every so often something like this pops up in the world and makes me proud to be playing on the team, and working in the community, that I am. They’ve written an excellent invitation (which I also archived in my InvitationWriting page), and from the pile of photos and notes posted on their Facebook wall, had just the sort of high-performance experience you’d expect in Open Space. Seems Egypt at the Crossroads II is now in the works, as well. Go team!

Regional Economic Communities

My friend Tim Reeves, in Munich, has been working on something called Regional Economic Communities. I’m just starting to explore his ideas, but I’m intrigued because he (and co-author Anna-Lisa Schmalz) seem to be articuting something quite new. At the same time, it rings a bit like a conversation I had ten years ago with friends in India, about the wisdom and utility of many overlapping languages spoken there. It seems to me that the “solution” for which many are fishing about will have something to do with overlapping wholes, reflecting a world that is layered and connected rather than simply delineated and divided. Given my long history with Open Space, I appreciate the emphasis on renewing the mechanism of personal responsibility, as well.

Why we need Regional Economic Communities

The egocentric world-view is not viable in the long term, because its picture of the world is incorrect. This is because the basis of ones own life is shared with and made by countless other beings, or in the case of resources there is only a finite amount available. The egocentric view ignores these facts. It demands more than would be sustainably possible and thus destroys its own basis for life. We don’t need to look far to be able to see that humanity is moving fast towards such a fate.

The only attitude which is able to survive in the long term is that which puts the well-being of the community of all beings on this planet foremost, actively cares for them and takes responsibility for this goal.

A global way of thinking leads to local action. The Regional Economic Community was devised to put these insights into practice. It consists of a Community of Participation and Ownership (CPO) and a barter community which builds upon it. It invites all the citizens within the region to step back fully into personal responsibility, in both economic and interpersonal respects, and provides the tools required to do so.

big weekend in the garden

big cold weekend in the garden, actually. just finished openlands.org‘s eight week BUGs (building urban gardens) course and couldn’t wait to get out there, even in 30-very-few degrees. so i spent the weekend moving and rebuilding a raised bed, turning and spreading compost, trying out the new leaf vac/shredder, fending off peach tree borers, and digging the concrete i broke up two years ago out of where the new fire circle wants to have grass planted. another few days and the grass will be seeded, the first of the veggies, mostly lettuces and cooking greens, will be planted in the raised beds, and tomatoes and a few other things finally started inside. we live in so many short-cycle routines. it felt great to get out and working on this big annual cycle, and to have had the gardening season expanded by all that i’ve learned these last eight weeks. reminds me of sailing out of atlantic harbors, getting out past the chop and into the big rolling ocean.

the inviting organization emerges… at TED

wow. it’s not every day you get to hear a TED talk validating ideas you wrote up 10+ years ago.

back in 1998, i wrote a paper called the inviting organization emerges, suggesting that a fast company magazine cover story was wrong: the new strategic question was not “how digital is your company,” but had gone beyond that, to “how inviting is your organization?” getting the question right mattered because everytime it changes, businesses need to rethink their answers, in terms of talent, customers, speed and finance.

home sick this week, trying to ease my (very literally) feverish mind, i stumbled upon a lisa gansky TED talk about the future of business. it seems that what i was calling “markets” and “marketplaces,” she and others are now calling “mesh,” “sharing” and “platforms.” specifically, she says, “platforms = invitations” and notes the success of apple, facebook, netflix, zipcar and others in the last ten years. she makes my 1998 paper look pretty good.

B-Corps to Support Responsibility

A heartening development in corporate law, that allows corporations to be more responsible, not just talk about it. Via ChicagoREgen.com

Maryland and Vermont have passed Benefit Corporation legislation with similar legislation on the table in Colorado, Hawaii, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Virginia. In these states, Benefit Corporations, unlike traditional corporations, must by law create a material positive impact on society; consider how decisions affect employees, community and the environment; and publicly report their social and environmental performance using established third-party standards.

From a company’s point of view, the new law empowers directors of Benefit Corporations to consider employees, community and the environment in addition to shareholder value when they make operating and liquidity decisions. And, it offers them legal protection for those considerations.

return of the blog

just skipped the last five or more versions of wordpress. the latest just rocks. and the upgrade, even skipping so many versions, was surprisingly painless. now i just need to clean up the style a bit and pull a bunch of the rest of this site into it the new platform. it looks like blogging (and the rest of the site) might be fun again.

Inviting Democracy

NYTimes reporting this week…
Few Americans have heard of Gene Sharp. But for decades, his practical writings on nonviolent revolution — most notably From Dictatorship to Democracy, a 93-page guide to toppling autocrats, available for download in 24 languages — have inspired dissidents around the world, including in Burma, Bosnia, Estonia and Zimbabwe, and now Tunisia and Egypt. Full story

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