IngeniousPeoplesKnowledge

I met a consultant friend for coffee the other day. We spoke about the challenge of sustaining the momentum that a group of individuals gathers at an event aimed at coming up with ‘solutions’ in the form of ‘projects’ to achieve ‘transformation’. In other words: designing and realizing a future that is different from the present. How can we ensure that what a collective of individuals creates, designs and commits to, becomes a reality? We have the evidence: dozens of flip chart sheets of project plans filled with tasks, deadlines and names of those that are committed to fulfilling all of the above; participants leaving fully re-energized and enthusiastic; and yet, just a few weeks after the event the momentum that was gained in ‘tackling’ the common task at hand threatens to slow down to a virtual standstill…

My initial answer to the question of how transformative momentum is sustained was the following: momentum cannot be sustained through internal or even less external interventions, but rather sustains itself if the platforms for collective conversations are present and accessible to all within the organisation at all times, i.e. if the organizational culture is one of learning in which knowledge sharing and change management strategies become second nature and all members/employees learn and practice this way of thinking and engaging with each other. So training in such methodologies could be a very useful way of making an organisation ‘fit’ for ongoing transformation in a complex and rapidly changing world.

I attended a Peter Block Community Building event last week that has inspired me greatly and also raised a new question: What if the transformation of large numbers of individuals within a system (i.e. its members being trained in various knowledge sharing and change management methodologies) does not lead to an organisational culture that is conducive to ongoing transformation? How and when does momentum last?

And I might just have found an answer to these questions in the form of further questions.  How do you create a sense of community amongst a group of people? How do you connect them to a common task/bigger purpose? Because only when people feel that they belong to a community will they also care about this community that they belong to and that belongs to them (Peter Block). So people care about what they create (Margaret Wheatley), but they carry on caring about what they create because they belong to a community that at the same time belongs to them (and that they carry on creating). So when and how do such transforming communities emerge…?

Catherine Widrig Jenkins

Steve Song has started this fabulous Facebook group “Just Say NO to Crap Conferences!”. If you join the group, you take the following vow:

“I vow never to attend another poorly facilitated, talking heads, not enough interaction, powerpoint heavy workshop or conference ever again.”
Say YES to Bar Camps, Open Space, and Unconferences!
Your time is too valuable to be spent fighting with WiFi access so that you can check your email in a hotel in some exotic location while your life is clicked away, one powerpoint slide at a time.”

This has turned out to become an excellent excuse if I get asked to facilitate one of those poor quality conferences. I can now say to potential clients that come up with bad workshop instructions: “I’d love to facilitate your event, but I can’t since I cannot break this vow I have taken. So can we think about something different?”

Many of us experience our work, the organisations we are part of, our communities, even our countries and in fact the whole world around us as transforming at ever increasing speed. To deal with the resulting challenges we need an approach that involves all affected and interested parties with their experiences, insights, questions and wisdom.

Open Space Technology is such an approach. It supports organisations and systems of all kinds and sizes to utilize their inherent potential for self-organisation leading to high performance characterized by collaboration, cooperation, participation and broad leadership. It provides a framework of time and space in which everyone works on those issues they feel passionate about and for which they are prepared to take responsibility. Leaders, managers, consultants, students, group workers, community organisers, planners and everyone interested in the future of their organisations and communities will benefit from this workshop.

IngeniousPeoplesKnowledge is proud to host an Open Space Technology Workshop in South Africa in collaboration with the berlin open space cooperative (boscop) .

boscop members have facilitated several hundred Open Space events with groups ranging from 5 to 2108 participants in 30 countries worldwide. Their unique training design uses Open Space itself as the basic training process, which has been developed over the last decade through application in many Open Space Technology Trainings with participants from around the world.

Participants will thoroughly acquaint themselves with Open Space Technology (OST) in the workshop by:

• learning about the prerequisits of Open Space meetings;
• experiencing an Open Space planning session;
• experiencing an Open Space meeting under the title agreed on in the planning session;
• reflecting on the recent experience as a participant in another Open Space session under the title “Open Space on Open Space”;
• transferring their Open Space experience into first application steps in an Open Space action planning process;
• parallel “learning spaces” for self-organised learning providing books and articles as well as audio and visual resources on Open Space, and a “question & answer wall” to reflect on the current experience

The training design follows the Open Space process’ inner logic by placing experiential and self-organised learning at its core. The underlying principle being that “Open Space cannot be taught or studied, but must be experienced first-hand in order to be understood and remembered”.

IngeniousPeoplesKnowledge (I-P-K) is a Cape Town based consultancy firm that specializes in Knowledge and Change Management. I-P-K’s facilitation and coaching methodologies are based on understanding the complexity of living systems and social processes and are aimed at enabling synchronous learning amongst participants. We design transformative organizational processes that are inclusive and able to generate individual commitment towards a collective action plan: Open Space Technology is one of the approaches we use.

Read a short Background Document on Open Space Technology.

You will find all relevant booking details here below (click on “More…”). A more detailed training programme will be available closer to the time.

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