Dear Debi S. Saini,

I'd like to take a stab at your question from the perspective of a physicist.

One of the themes that seems to run through physics is the identification of conserved quantities, energy, momentum, "good" quantum numbers etc. The theme may be summarized "What are the invariants?" what does not change?

I have some experience as a participant and as a facilitator with Future Search Conferences (Weisbord & Janoff, 2000) Open Space Technology (Owen, 2008), Participatory Scenarios (Lisa Kimball & Douglass Carmichael) and Fishbowl Conversations.

Fishbowl conversations might be characterized as a "lite" version of the first three.

What the first three seem to have in common (the invariants) are:

1.) Gather a diverse (diagonal slices through the organization, the stakeholders or the system) representation IN THE ROOM. This is the hardest and most important part and requires the most work with the client. It is important to include stakeholders from outside the system, for example, suppliers and customers if the client is a manufacturer.

As participants enter, they should pass a large sign that they cannot fail to miss. It contains a FRAMING QUESTION that the design team has formulated for the two-day process. The framing question may also appear in the invitation materials and be displayed in the room.

2.) Keep them there for two days.

3.) Use the first day, with everyone in their group (i.e. executives at one table, engineers at another) and have some process that works through the history to get to the present.

4.) Have a great facilitator and supporting team.

5.) Have people leave a little upset and confused at the end of the first day with an iron clad PROMISE to one another to return for the second day. This is key. Your client (management) must support this. There is no avoiding the risk, whether by the facilitators or the participants, that some participants will not return. It is critical to have management support. If management wants to cut the schedule to one day, and if the facilitators and production team agree, this suggests that neither is committed to the need for change or to the process enough to produce lasting change. An honest facilitator or consultant will decline a one-day reduction in many instances.

The participants pass the FRAMING QUESTION on their way out. It may occur in their consciousnesses in a very different way than when they arrived. For example, if the question captures some future aspect of the enterprise, it may appear even further away, even less possible, than when day one began. This is to be expected (though it is not guaranteed) and it signals a deeper level of engagement, one indicator that core issue(s) have been unconcealed and engaged, perhaps for the first time. Thus, what occurs like 'retrograde motion' can, in fact, signal real progress. The facilitator may choose to prepare and condition the participants for this, depending on his/her sense of where the room is at the end of the first day. He or she may encourage them, for example, to sleep with the framing question, that this is a normal part of the process, and that they do not have to "solve" anything. Let sleep (the subconscious mind) begin that work, which will continue on the second day.

6.) Rearrange the tables. On the second day, each table contains one engineer, one executive, one manager, ... etc. - a microcosm of the system.

7.) The facilitator chooses processes that move the microcosms through the creation of a new future. Write a mission statement and a vision statement if appropriate.

8.) An accountability structure is created. Who will account to whom within the participants for follow-on meetings?

9.) Divide into teams. Write goals, mission statements, etc. leadership positions.

10.) Choose (vote with your feet) what team to lead or belong to. Perhaps by listing team name and goals on paper posted on a wall. (Teams that no one leads or joins naturally don't happen.)

11.) Schedule team and whole-group meetings.

12.) Acknowledge. Adjourn.

The Future Search Conference, Open Space Technology and Participatory Scenarios all seem to differ in the order of the processes and the specific exercises the facilitator goes through, for example, constructing a 10 meter paper time line of the history of the organization versus writing a history of the organization on the first day. That suggests that the processes are not what is important, what is invariant, rather, that what is important is the SHARED EXPERIENCE that leaves people related to each other, related enough that they return the following day when they are left squarely facing a hard problem at the end of the first day.

Reading the books by Weisbord and Owen may be helpful, but, ultimately building lasting change is a creative process that cannot come from a book. Authors may naturally come to over explain their own tools and techniques and underemphasize the importance of who they are being when they lead their events. After all, their tools and techniques and processes are concrete and out in front of them, and who they are being comes from inside and is implicit and invisible. It seems to me that the most important thing is to be open to that new future that may speak itself for the first time and to all the risks that any future brings.

Finally, to answer your question, YES, any one of these can be a powerful way of engaging a whole system and instantiating a whole system change process. Maintaining that process to its fulfillment is another matter altogether. These three at intervals can help, but more will be required. Perhaps Intentional Revolutions: A Seven-Point Strategy for Transforming Organizations by Nevis, E. C., Lancourt, J., & Vassallo, H. G. (1996) will help.

Mark Frautschi

Res. Prof. Saini,

While not going in the technical aspect of ‘open space technology’ as a method of managing change, taking some cues from Indian Scriptures like ‘Srimad Bhagwat Gita’ I shall correlate it with the concept of ‘time’ as a method of managing change. Change management is more a behavioural aspect and less a technical issue even if the change is of technical nature. To my mind, to manage change we should give reasonable time to foster ‘change readiness behaviour’ in the person/situation. In fostering of ‘change readiness behaviour’ time has a critical role i.e. we are giving ‘open space’ for adaptation which may smoothen ‘change management’.

Dear Mark, Thanks a ton for your explanation of the term OST.It is quite close to what I had in my mind. What I had thought did not include stakeholders outside the system; like you have included suppliers and customers, etc. But I am sure the OST is broad enough to include all these variations, I believe. Your comprehensive explanation would be of great help; thanks for all your time in this elaboration., Thanks to dear Dr Punia too for your sharing your thinking on the subject.

Dear Debi,

Thank you for your kind words. I am interested in OST and similar processes as a subset of improvement processes. I believe that it is useful to describe OST as a first order improvement - what's the process for improving what we do? (Except for organizations where these are routine, of course, where these would be "normal" and therefore a zeroth order improvement.) I would rank these with communities of practice (CoPs), for example. (See Lave and Wenger-Traynor, 1991.)

I am, of course, following the outline of Douglas C. Engelbart, who also described second order processes, where one applies a Type-B (first-order) improvement to the PROCESS of improvement. Here one improves the improvement process itself. He describes networked improvement communities (NICs) as an example. These could be thought of as a Type-B (first-order) improvement applied to a community of practice. Finally, he goes one step further which is to network the improvement communities, themselves, into networks of networks. He calls these Meta Networked Improvement Communities or MetaNICs. What continues to amaze me is the Engelbart conceived these Type-C (second order) improvement processes as part of his research on augmenting human intelligence in 1962.

I was privileged to meet him in the last decade and a half of his life.

Perhaps his work will provide a framework (as it has for me) to understand other improvement processes and how these relate to producing irreversible organizational change. I note that I am still very much a beginner at this. I used to refer this to "sustainable" or "lasting" organizational change. That's a contradiction. The point is not to improve and freeze to protect the improvements. What's important is to keep improving, to keep moving forward.

I have written a draft monograph on the question "Why are there still so few women in the mathematically intensive fields?" In the middle third of this book, I apply the models I develop in the beginning toward irreversible change through acculturation (where possible) and awareness building (where not). I have collected much of what I know (and that included a lot of which I barely know or am only dimly aware!) in this middle third. Initially I needed only to establish the plausibility that my model could have practical applications. However, as the writing progressed, I continued to collect and organize modalities, and the initial twenty I needed to establish plausibility has grown to over four hundred.

If you would be interested in reading and commenting on this or any other part of my unpublished manuscript, I would be honored to receive your comments and would consider all errors, omissions and other mistakes or improvements you would suggest to be golden gifts. If you would be interested, please let me know.

Dear Debi,

I realized I left out an important piece of the work of the design team, the framing question. I have added this to my original posting.

I salute you, Mark, for your passion and doggedness in searching answers to your problems through OST. I am so sure, you will definitely realize your goals. My very best.