{"id":519,"date":"2005-11-14T14:10:10","date_gmt":"2005-11-14T19:10:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.michaelherman.com\/wordpress\/?p=519"},"modified":"2005-11-14T14:11:11","modified_gmt":"2005-11-14T19:11:11","slug":"not-ready-for-open-space","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.michaelherman.com\/wordpress\/archives\/2005\/11\/14\/not-ready-for-open-space\/","title":{"rendered":"Not Ready for Open Space?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Sometimes people tell me “…we’re just not ready for Open Space<\/a>…” 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<\/a>, of why I always disagree with such comments:<\/p>\n

…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?<\/p>\n

It\u2019s the closest thing to Open Space I can get \u2013 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. <\/p><\/blockquote>\n

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. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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 … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “Not Ready for Open Space?”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":88889,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,22],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-519","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-open-space-technology","category-practice"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.michaelherman.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/519"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.michaelherman.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.michaelherman.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.michaelherman.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/88889"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.michaelherman.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=519"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.michaelherman.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/519\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.michaelherman.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=519"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.michaelherman.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=519"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.michaelherman.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=519"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}