Open Space
= facilitation method
History
Harrison Owen:
"Open Space Technology, as a definable approach to organizing meetings has been in existence for somewhat more than a dozen years. Truthfully, I suspect it has been around as long as Homo sapiens has gathered for one purpose or another, from the days of the campfire circle onward. It is only that our modern wisdom has obfuscated what we already knew and have experienced from the beginning. But that is getting somewhat ahead of our story.
In 1985, eighty-five brave souls, or there abouts, gathered in Monterey for The Third Annual International Symposium on Organization Transformation. The first two iterations of this continuing international event (we are now at OT16) were organized in a most traditional manner. Papers, panels, and all the rest. But the consensus of participants was, that despite monumental planning effort extending over a long time, the real excitement came in the coffee breaks. Which of course weren’t planned at all. And so the Third International Symposium was going to be different.
And different it was. At the point of arrival, the participants knew only when things would start, when it would conclude, and generally what the theme might be. There was no agenda, no planning committee, no management committee, and the only facilitator in evidence essentially disappeared after several hours. Just 85 people sitting in a circle. Much to the amazement of everybody, 2½ hours later we had a three day agenda totally planned out including multiple workshops, all with conveners, times, places and participants.
Observably, the operative mechanism was simplicity itself. As each person determined that they had some area of exploration they would like to pursue, they would write a brief description on a small placard, announce their topic to the assembled group, post the placard on the wall and sit down. When no further topics were posted, the original proposers determined the time and place for meeting, and anybody interested in a particular topic signed up. That was it.
For several years following, the annual symposium was conducted in a similar fashion. The only real difference was that more people came and it took less time to get organized. It seemed like the most natural thing in the world that 150 (or more) executives and consultants should sit in a circle and organize a multi-session, three day meeting in less than an hour, with not a single argument. If anybody gave it a thought, which I doubt, this miraculous occurrence was probably attributed to the outstanding nature of the assembled group.
And then, in 1989, Open Space escaped. Within a period of less than a month, Open Space was utilized with two vastly different groups in widely separated areas. Polymer Chemists from Dupont wrestled with the future of Dacron in the USA, followed immediately by a group of scholars and executives in India considering the issue of Learning in Organizations. It both cases, everybody sat in a circle, identified what had heart and meaning for them, and collectively organized a multi-session gathering in less than an hour. Something rather strange was taking place.
In subsequent years, the space has continued to open. At this point, the experience described above has been replicated literally thousands of times on all continents with groups ranging in size from 5 to over 1000. Participants have come from Fortune 500’s, third world villages, religious communities, governmental agencies, and whole towns. They have been rich, poor, educated and not, labor and management, politicians and people… and all of the above. And in each case that I know of Open Space appeared to do the job.
“Doing the Job” begs for further specificity. In the case of Open Space, it means (at the very least) that diverse, often conflicted groups up to 1000 people, manage hugely complex issues in minimal amounts of time, with no advance agenda preparation, and little, to no, overt facilitation.
Typically by the conclusion of a gathering, the following promises have been kept:
1) Every issue of concern to anybody had been laid upon the table.
2) All issues were discussed to the extent that anybody cared to do that.
3) A full written record of all discussions existed and was in the hands of all participants.
4) All issues were ranked in priority order.
5) Critical “focal issues” had been isolated and Next Step actions identified for their resolution."