A few years ago, a client asked me to run a half-day lean (A3) workshop with her team. I knew my client and a few of her staff, but hadn’t spent time with the whole group before. And it turned out—neither had they.
As we did introductions and settled in, I noticed a few things:
- Several people were new to the team or the larger organization.
- Everyone was learning about their colleagues.
- There were urgent, unresolved, undiscussed topics.
After conferring with my client in front of her team, we quickly scrapped the morning’s plan. Instead, I guided the crew into lean coffee—a simple method for letting participants organize and run their own structured discussion.
And it was great. They got to talk about what they needed to. My appearance in their conference room had the important effect of bringing them together and letting their boss participate as part of the circle rather than running the show. They decided they needed to meet more often—which they continued to do, without my involvement. Success!
Two things made this possible.
- My client was willing to use the opportunity as soon as we saw it.
- I trusted this group to find its own way, using this principle of open space technology: “Whatever happens is the only thing that could have.” That’s because—see one, do one, teach one—I was lucky enough to have previously seen this put into action by another facilitator.
What the leader must do
In 2006 I participated in my first open space technology gathering—a three-day event hosted by Michael Herman. Watching the way Herman embodied the principles of open space helped me see how powerful it was at letting a group become itself.
Here’s what Harrison Owen’s Brief User’s Guide has to say:
It is the special function of the leader to raise the expectations of the group, and heighten their sensitivity to the opportunities at hand, whatever they may be. … The leader must truly trust the group to find its own way. … Any person who is not fully prepared to let go of their own detailed agenda should not lead.
In open space, the role Owen calls “leader” is really half host, half facilitator. Leadership arises from the entire group.
And this from John Fowles’ novel “The French Lieutenant’s Woman”:
I said earlier that we are all poets, though not many of us write poetry; and so are we all novelists, that is, we have a habit of writing fictional futures for ourselves, although perhaps today we incline more to put ourselves into a film. We screen in our minds hypotheses about how we might behave, about what might happen to us; and these novelistic or cinematic hypotheses often have very much more effect on how we actually do behave, when the real future becomes the present, than we generally allow.
All the time I spend planning for facilitated meetings—prepping agendas, arranging materials, booking rooms, gathering snacks and beverages—is critical to the “cinematic hypotheses” of how I imagine the day could go and the outcomes that might arise from it. It’s important to do this work.
And it’s important to be prepared to discard any such planning whenever a group arises and is ready to find its own way.
- In a better world, that would happen every single time.
- In our given world, we must encourage this arising wherever it is found.
Whatever happens is the only thing that could have…
as long as you get out of happening’s way.
Open space technology series:
- “Whoever comes is the right people.”
- “Whatever happens is the only thing that could have.” → now reading
- “Whenever it starts is the right time.”
- “When it is over, it is over.” (forthcoming)