Sharing the Addiction

While I was skipping through some links from George’s talk, I came across this site by Chris Corrigan about what open space meetings were and how to conduct them. I think that this way of running a staff meeting would be so much more efficient! You wouldn’t have to sit listening to the viewpoints of others on topics that you don’t really care about either way. The people who ARE passionate about it could go off to discuss it while you could focus on another issue you do have an opinion on. What do you think of this model? I have taken this information directly from the site.

Open Space operates under four principles and one law. The four principles are:

1. Whoever comes are the right people
2. Whatever happens is the only thing that could have happened.
3. When it starts is the right time
4. When it’s over it’s over

The Law is known as the Law of Two Feet:

“If you find yourself in a situation where you are not contributing or learning, move somewhere where you can.

The four principles and the law work to create a powerful event motivated by the passion and bounded by the responsibility of the participants.

Essentially an Open Space meeting proceeds along the following process:

Group convenes in a circle and is welcomed by the sponsor. The facilitator provides an overview of the process and explains how it works.

1. Facilitator invites people with issues of concern to come into the circle, write the issue on a piece of quarter size flip chart paper and announce it to the group. These people are “convener.
2. The convener places their paper on the wall and chooses a time and a place to meet. This process continues until there are no more agenda items.
3. The group then breaks up and heads to the agenda wall, by now covered with a variety of sessions. Participants take note of the time and place for sessions they want to be involved in.
4. Dialogue sessions convene for the balance of the meeting. Recorders determined by each group capture the important points and post the reports on the news wall.
5. All of these reports will be rolled into one document by the end of the meeting.
6. Following a closing or a break, the group might move into convergence, a process that takes the issues that have been discussed and attaches action plans to them to “get them out of the room.”
7. The group then finishes the meeting with a closing circle where people are invited to share comments, insights, and commitments arising from the process.