 The Idea: Open Space offers a process for decision making that is the exact opposite of that used in most Western organizations: A collective understanding emerges from conversations, and individuals are then entrusted to decide what should be done.
One of the things that really struck me in my recent conversation
with Chris Corrigan about Open Space meeting protocols, Appreciative
Inquiry ("discover pattern, dream/envision, design, do") and the Four
Practices ("opening, inviting, holding/making room, acting/practicing")
was how it turns the hierarchical business model of doing things on its
head. In business, the decisions on what to do are usually made by a
few 'experts' (executives, specialists etc.) and then those decisions
are carried out (if they know what's good for them) by everyone else.
Here's how Chris & Michael explain the process of acting using Open Space: "It is the
personal and individual (I, me, my) pursuit of the good that we invite,
in the space that we provide." The knowledge and understanding that prompts the decisions on what to do come from collective activity, and the decision about precisely what to then do is entrusted to each individual. The individuals who are (if the process has gone well) inspired to action have the context
to know best what exactly should be done in their own area, community,
job, or situation. In business, the 'experts' cannot hope to have the
Wisdom of Crowds (all of the individual knowledge and context of
everyone affected), and hence are prone to make wrong, even
dysfunctional decisions. The frustrated, untrusted employees are forced
to implement these decisions, or quit, or, as more often happens, find
'workarounds' that allow them to implement what they know really needs to be done without too obviously ignoring the instructions from the top.
The result in business (as I keep saying) is that things are the way
they are for a reason -- and usually the reason is that the
knowledgeable employees have brilliantly found a way to do what needs
to be done while still appearing
to be conforming to the relatively ignorant and often counterproductive
instructions from the boss. It doesn't take new employees long to catch
on to this incongruity between what actually happens on the front line
and what the manuals, directives, plans and organization charts would
have you believe are happening. In fact the whole new field of
'cultural anthropology' in business entails spending enough time to
study this incongruity, and gently and sheepishly report back to the
executives, experts, specialists and consultants the perfectly good
reasons why their advice and instructions are being ignored.
Only a few organizations (Semco and WL Gore
are reputedly among them) actually use the Open Space approach to
run their operations. This is, after all, scary stuff for
executives who get paid to make good, tough decisions. Yet most tribal
communities (other than those that have been coerced into using Western
governmental structures) have used the Open Space approach successfully
for tens of thousands of years. In Open Space cultures nobody tells you what to do.
Why do our business, social and political organizations ignore this
obvious wisdom? Is it arrogance on the part of the executives? Is it a
means for 'experts' to justify their large salaries? Are line staff
complicit so they can always say they were just following orders when
things go wrong? How and why did the mistrust and disempowerment of the
front lines arise? Is it because modern organizations, public and
private, are just so big they have become unmanageable, and
command-and-control is hence a charade to avoid acknowledging the
endemic reality of inefficiency, disconnectedness, distrust and chaos
in big organizations, to their customers and other stakeholders?
Diagram above: The 'classic' decision-making process, adapted from NASA.
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