Earlier today I attended the kickoff planning meeting for the Sacramento chapter of the Organization Development Network. Pamela Dungan, who convened the meeting, began by describing the Open Space Technology format that would be using for meeting. The focus for the meeting would be “rekindling our network.” In her opening, Pamela described how the chapter had formed and faltered several times over the past few years. I thought that was an important issue to address, so I proposed a session to identify what factors sustain a group, and what factors lead a group to falter.

We filled three flip charts with ideas about what sustains a group. Here are some of those ideas.

The group is run by peers. One woman in the session told of a group that lost its energy and commitment when it elected a board and the board began to make decisions in ways that condescended to the rest of the group. At one meeting, the board sought input from the group, then physically retreated to the back room to make its decision in private, leaving the rest of the group sitting in the main meeting room to wait for the decision.

The group uses effective, open processes, to which the members are committed. The group the woman spoke of, above, had neither effective processes nor its members’ commitment.

People are committed to the group purpose. I was fascinated by how we elicited this factor. One man described his experience as a combat flight commander in Viet Nam, in a group which put much energy into sustaining itself. One of the key factors that made the group sustainable was that each member of the team hated what they were doing, but each one acknowledged the necessity of doing it. As we talked about his experience, we realized that part of the group’s sustainability came from its official purpose, and part came from the emergent, unofficial purpose of coping with their shared hatred and guilt at the nature of their work. And it may have been the unofficial purpose that most strongly held the group together as a group.

The group attends to its maintenance. I have seen groups become so focused on their task that they neglected their identity as a group. One or two people become so wrapped up in the work that they don’t notice that everyone else has lost energy and drifted away. One way to attend to the group’s maintenance is through Temperature Readings, a simple format developed by Virginia Satir.

The group wants to continue. Test now and then: Do we really want to sustain this group? The flip side of this is to allow the group to dissolve when its energy has dissipated. Continuing a group out of habit and inertia is discouraging and draining. Sustaining the group is easier, and more meaningful, when the group has made the conscious choice to continue.

The group surprises itself. This came up at another session, after we’d finished the “sustaining a group” session. A number of people expressed that it is important that a group have ad hoc, spontaneous contact now and then, in addition to their regular schedule.

As I write this, I realize that Consultants’ Camp, the group I wrote about in my other entry today, sustains itself in all of the ways I’ve described above.

Camp is a strongly peer-run. Most of Camp’s decisions are made by the Camp Leadership Committee, which consists of every Camp member who wishes to attend. We make our decisions by unanimous consent, a process to which we are deeply committed, and which we have tested on numerous decisions on which members were initially strongly divided.

Each member is fully committed to Camp’s purpose of sharing, learning, and support.

We reach out to each other in many ways, and continue to find new ways to reach out, between our yearly conferences. We invite each other to our homes. We schedule parties when a member from Europe visits the United States. And one time we mourned the tragic loss of a new member and celebrated her life.

We repeatedly reconfirm our desire to continue the group. The key way we do this is that each year, we elect a board to handle some of the group’s business between meetings. Like all of our decisions, the election is by unanimous consent. If we can not reach unanimous consent, we do not have a board. And if we do not elect a board by the end of a yearly conference, Camp is dissolved as a group.

I’m surprised by what I’ve written here. When I started writing, I had no idea that I would write about Consultants’ Camp. Now I can see, once again, why Camp is such an important part of my life. Camp embodies the principles that the ODN meeting identified as sustaining factors. This year’s Consultants’ Camp will mark our seventh year as a self-sustaining community.

Experiment: Think of the groups you’ve been in. Some were more sustainable, and other less. What factors make the difference? How do your present groups fare against those factors? Which of your groups would you like to make more sustainable? What can you do about that?

Over the past few months, I’ve been hearing more and more about Open Space Technology, a simple and powerful way to organize meetings and conferences. Open Space Technology encourages passion, commitment, and personal responsibility, and taps the capacity of a group of passionate, committed, responsible people to self-organize to address complex issues.

A few months ago, the Extreme Programming mailing list had a brief conversation about Open Space Technology. Wanting to know more, I asked people who had experienced Open Space Technology to share their experiences. My friend Cem Kaner said, “Dale, you already have lots of experience. Consultants’ Camp is Open Space Technology.”

Consultants’ Camp community of consultants who meet yearly in Mount Crested Butte, Colorado to share ideas and support. Consultants’ Camp was started in 1988 by Jerry Weinberg. I first attended in 1995, and Camp is now the one event that I most look forward to every year.

I’ve always loved the format of Camp, which I’d thought was unique. Two or three dozen consultants come together on Saturday evening with no pre-defined agenda. Our first task is to decide what topics we want to address over the coming six days. Each person with passion for a topic proposes a session, and, often, checks to see whether other members have an interest in the topic. A session might be a topic that the convener wants to teach others, or a topic that someone wants to learn more about from others. A session might be an learning exercise that someone wants to test, or a sticky problem with which someone wants help. Sometimes people see synergies between two or three proposals, and consolidate them into one. Other times, someone is stimulated to split a topic into two sessions, so that we can delve into the details of a complex issue. After we have proposed all of the sessions, we quickly (in about five minutes) fit them into a schedule of time slots and meeting places. The entire process of creating the schedule takes about an hour and a half.

Several years, I have wondered, before arriving at Camp, whether we’d have enough interesting topics this year. I need not have worried. Every year, my biggest challenge is choosing among the two or three fascinating and helpful sessions scheduled in each time slot.

The day after I’d asked people on the Extreme Programming mailing list to share their experiences, and the day before Cem replied, I read “Opening Space for Emerging Order,” an article by Harrison Owen, the originator of Open Space Technology. Several weeks later, I read Owen’s book Open Space Technology: A User’s Guide. Owen’s writings confirmed what Cem had said. Consultants’ Camp is an example, with minor variations, of Open Space Technology,

Earlier today, I had my first experience of Open Space Technology outside of Consultants’ Camp. A number of people took the initiative to revive the dormant local (Sacramento, California) chapter of the Organization Development Network (ODN). Today, 45 of us held our first planning meeting, using Open Space Technology as the format. This was a two-hour meeting, and I was intrigued to learn how Open Space Technology would work in such a short timeframe.

The meeting was wonderfully energizing. In 15 minutes, we created an agenda of nine half-hour sessions, focused on such topics as training, OD and music, mentoring each other, sustaining a group, and engaging the spirit at work.

One of the principles of Open Space Technology is that whoever comes is the right people. The one law of Open Space Technology is The Law of Two Feet: If you aren’t getting what you need from a session, use your two feet to move to a more productive place. These two tenets ensure that the people who attend any session are passionate about the topic, and take responsibility for their own learning and participation. In this ODN planning meeting, as in every Camp session I’ve ever attended, passion, commitment, and responsibility combined to create a great deal of energy, and at the same time a great deal of respect and mutual support. I left the meeting energized and excited about the Sacramento ODN.

Given my experience today, I am starting to see the possibilities for using Open Space Technology in organizations. For example, Open Space Technology would be a very valuable way to begin a process improvement effort. I’m imagining that it would be a wonderful way to kick off a technology project, bringing together every stakeholder who has passion for the project. I can see possibilities for defining an organization’s strategy and vision, or for planning a re-organization.

I highly recommend Harrison Owen’s book Open Space Technology: A User’s Guide. Though no book can give you a vivid experience of the power and simplicity of Open Space Technology, Owen’s book does describe how to make Open Space Technology successful.

Experiment: Attend or convene a meeting or conference based on Open Space Technology. In what ways could you adopt or adapt Open Space Technology to your organization’s or team’s work?

Every now and then, I hear someone say, “People resist change.” Most of the time, the person say this has made some specific proposal, to which some other person has responded by resisting. Other times, one person is saying this to console another who is experiencing resistance. “People resist change” is offered as a kind of explanation. Why are those people resisting? Because people resist change.

How discouraging! If it’s true that people resist change, what hope could I possibly have for any proposal? Yuck.

Fortunately, it isn’t true. That is, it isn’t universally true that every person always resists every change. For example, there’s a good chance that right now you are reading this article in the hope that you will learn something new and useful. You’re not resisting change, you’re seeking change.

Each of us resists some changes, accepts some changes, and actively seeks out yet other changes. Our preferences for which changes we will resist, accept, or seek differs from one person to the next. We might resist a change at one moment and welcome it at another time, in another situation.

If what I’m saying is true, if each person resists some changes and not others, if each person might resist a given change at one time and accept the same change at another time, what makes the difference? What leads a person to accept or reject a particular change at a particular time?

I’ll leave the answers as an exercise for the reader. I offer the following experiments, from which I’ve learned a great deal about how people decide which changes to accept and which to resist.

Experiment: For one week, notice everything that anyone asks you to do (in whatever form, including demands, suggestions, advice, and so on). Which things do you choose to do? What are your reasons for choosing to do those things? Which do choose not to do? What are your reasons for choosing not to do those things? What patterns do you notice in your answers?

Experiment: Ask a dozen or more people the following questions:

• Think of a time when someone asked you to do something and you chose not to do it. What were your reasons for not doing what the person asked?
• Think of a time when someone asked you to do something and you chose to do it. What were your reasons for doing what the person asked?

What patterns do you notice in people’s answers?

Experiment: Tell me (either privately or by posting a comment below) what you’ve learned from these experiments. (Note that I’ve just made a request of you. What are your reasons for doing or not doing what I’ve asked?)

Sometimes when I propose a change, someone says, “We can’t do that.” I’m not always sure what the person means, because “we can’t” could mean a number of things. It might mean, “We’re not able to do that.” It might mean, “If we were to do that, something bad would happen.” I don’t always know, from the context of the conversation, what “we can’t” means. I want to know, because that will help me understand how to respond appropriately.

Sometimes I have a hunch that “we can’t” means “something bad would happen.” I check out my hunch by asking, “Do you mean that something bad would happen?” When my hunch is right, the person typically responds by telling me what bad things they expect. Sometimes I need to follow up by asking, “What do you think would happen?”

The answers tell me about the person’s expectations. I can compare those expectations to my own to decide what to do next. Many times, the person points out a consequence that I hadn’t anticipated, and that I, too, see as likely now that the person has pointed it out. When that happens, I need to adjust or abandon my proposal. Sometimes, the person’s expectations differ from mine in some ways. When that happens, I want to have a conversation about what expectations we share, and where our expectations differ. Learning the person’s expectations gives me a way to start that conversation.

Sometimes my hunch tells me that “we can’t” means “We’re not able.” In those cases, I ask, “What would stop you?”

Again, if my hunch is right, the answers tell me about the person’s expectations. Sometimes those expectations are about the context. Perhaps there is some obstacle that would prevent people from doing what I’ve proposed. Perhaps my proposal requires some resource or support or permission that the person does not expect to acquire. Sometimes the expectations are about people’s abilities. Perhaps my proposal requires some skills or knowledge that people do not have.

The person’s expectations gives me some possibilities. Can we remove the obstacles, or learn that they will not be obstacles after all? Can we test whether those unavailable resources are really necessary? Can we find a way to acquire the resources after all? Can we find a way to help people acquire the needed skills, or to implement the proposal in a way that requires only the skills and knowledge that people already have?

When I don’t have a strong hunch about what “we can’t” means, I’ll ask either, “Do you mean that something bad would happen?” or, “Do you mean that something would prevent us from doing that?” The answers give me a clearer idea of what the person means by “we can’t.”

Whatever “we can’t” means, my general approach is the same: Discover the person’s expectations, compare them to my own, acknowledge the similarities, and try to reconcile the differences.

Experiment: For one week, notice each time you say “I can’t” or “we can’t.” In each case, what does “can’t” mean? Does it mean “unable?” Does it mean “something bad would happen?” Does it mean something else? What expectations lie behind “can’t?” What patterns do you see in your answers.

Experiment: For one week, notice each time other people say “I can’t” or “we can’t.” Ask questions to discover what does “can’t” mean? Does it mean “unable?” Does it mean “something bad would happen?” Does it mean something else? What expectations lie behind “can’t?” What patterns do you see in the answers.