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Stories from the leading edge of highly functional and enjoyable workplaces – and making the transition effectively.
Caterfly is shortly launching a free low-frequency e-hub, pulling together helpful and insightful articles and practical support for anyone engaged in change in organisations, or wanting to transform the way their company works together.
Sharing what works – making work better.
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The Change Platform will focus on modern, smart approaches to introducing and maintaining major shifts in the workplace that are effective and manageable, both in the short and long term, as well as highlighting stories from those working in businesses that are already working brilliantly, or from those on the journey.
We showcase what lies beyond ‘Dilbert-esque’ workplaces, that are fulfilling, efficient, human and collaborative – and how to get there.
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We live in a world where a mechanistic, “machine” view of organizations has served for some time. The end of this era is upon us, and the transition to a living-systems view is well underway.
Organizations are more like living things than they are like machines. Without getting into all the details of “why,” this essay assumes the living-systems view is the more accurate view, the more useful view. The view that is actually closer to reality.
In the living-systems view, change is not “managed.” Instead of having a definite end point, the process of change is based more on encouraging a general direction rather than a specific, ultimate destination with a date attached.
Which brings me to the subject of this essay: discovering what is possible. For purposes of this essay, assume the organization under consideration has these properties:
The org is a business entity, organized as a corporation
The org is not focused on selling software. Instead it has a services or products that it sells.
Leaders (formally authorized) are contemplating the “change management” that may be involved in helping the entire org change in some way; presumably to become more effective.
The org employs at least one hundred people and may have thousands of employees.
The “formally authorized leaders” (hereafter, the “FALs”) are entirely well-intentioned even as they may be ignorant of certain fundamentals with respect to the conditions necessary for manifesting an adaptive, resilient organization
The people in the organization are for the most part quite familiar with the current cultural game, and are generally happy with the way things are. They know the expressed and implied goals, the rules, and how the overall culture works.
Given these assumptions, the completely normal pattern goes something like this:
Behind closed doors, the 100% well-intentioned FALs formulate a plan for change. This usually includes the “rolling out” of training, followed by some scheduled “coaching” with the help of highly paid consultants.
An announcement of intent is issued. This is usually in the form of some emails from the FALs to the organization’s employees. These emails from the FALs describe what is about to happen.
The program is initiated, usually with an immediate and pronounced uptick in everything that is being measured. This is reassuring- at least at first.
Typically, measurement is happening in a meaningful way for the first time. Before long the highly paid consultants are busy doing their work.
After a while, things start to wobble. There is some “murmuring” from the rank and file.
Not just the rank and file resist the change. Some people who are in authority also are uncomfortable. Their direct reports sense this vibe and adjust accordingly.
Those uncomfortable with the change do not simply vacate. Instead they serve to thwart the change by subtle moves intended to outwit, outplay and outlast the change issues from “on high.”
The budget for consultants is consumed, and they leave. Shortly after that, the “change” begins the process of reversion to the mean. In other words, a backsliding to the starting point.
Does this sound familiar to you? I certainly hope so. I have not told the whole story, but you get the idea.
After a time, the “coaches” and consultants vacate. When they do, the org reverts back to it’s previous state, or, at a minimum, heads in that general direction immediately. At the end, the org has spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on a “change management program” that never did actually work.
The Prime/OS approach short-circuits this by-now-familiar pattern of failure, by discovering what is possible. By helping the FALs figure out the immediate next steps via quick, short, actionable “loops of feedback” that provide rich data for input into leadership decision-making.
Prime/OS
Instead of putting down a bet of hundreds of thousands of dollars with far less than 50-50 odds for success, Prime/OS invites everyone affected to come and discuss the change.
Instead of following a monolithic “A-B-C” plan (typically the “framework” of a consulting firm,) Prime/OS invites everyone into the process of changing. And to write the new story. And be a character in this new story.
Instead of an edict or mandate from management, Prime/OS suggests a series of experiments to be inspected.
One of the goals of Prime/OS is to engage the people affected by the change. To do this, Prime/OS leverages the concept of invitation. Those who are curious and want to explore how to make change happen accept the invitation. Those who like things the way they are do not. In all cases, Prime/OS increases your chance of success by increasing the level of human engagement in the change.
Prime/OS increases the level of engagement in the process of changing and this is why Prime/OS actually works.
Avoiding the “Self Organized” Approach
The idea that self-organization and self-management are messy any chaotic is actually quite false. Groups of people who share a common purpose and organize around it are often called “self organizing systems.” This label assumes that people are the same as birds, insects and fish that “self organize.” This is not strictly true, and I therefore prefer the term “self management” when describing how people self-organize. Where people in organizations are concerned, “self organization” is in fact self-management.
Tremendous gains in productivity are possible when individuals and teams are self-managing.
Self-management is only possible when the people involved are making decisions. Decisions are what engages people, and decisions are essential if the group is to self-manage. Since self-management requires enough authority to make decisions, FALs often freak out at the notion of authorizing self-managed teams, departments and divisions. The assumption is that chaos will ensue.
In Prime/OS, the FALs to do not encourage chaos and do not give up “control.” Instead, FALs create the very conditions for self-management by clearly identifying and communicating the following:
The direction of the organization (an example might be “towards continuous improvement” or “towards more efficiency in operations.”)
The “guardrails,” or limits outside of which are considered out-of-bounds.(an example might be a set or principles, or a set of rules for action.)
Interestingly, the FALs in Prime/OS need to avoid defining the practices or “ABC” steps needed to get started. Instead, individuals and teams make decisions about the specifics. To encourage this, FALs stop well short of naming specific practices. If specific practices must be specified, these are presented explicitly and repeatedly as “experiments with specific practices for a specific limited time”, or “a trial period after which we will inspect results.” The “why” behind this is quite obvious: we need the people who do the work to be making decisions if we are to engage them. The entire hypothesis of Prime/OS (and OpenSpace Agility) is very simple:
Human engagement is essential for any change to be authentic, genuine and lasting.
Sometimes, the definition of practices cannot be avoided. The solution here is to frame the entire thing as an temporary experiment to inspected. The org will “suspend disbelief” and “pretend” during the temporary/experiment period, confident that we will then inspect the results. This framing-the-experience-as–an-experiment is a way to bring everyone into the story of “inspect and adapt.” This is the way to introduce the idea of a change. The hypothesis is that those who resist the change can in fact assure failure. Experimentation affords those who may resist, with the opportunity to speak their mind after getting some experience with the contemplated change.
A Practical Example for Your Consideration
Let’s take a practical example: say you are a formally authorized leader who is going to be introducing some pretty big changes to your organization soon. Let us assume further that specific new practices are the content of the change. Here is your solution:
Define a period of experimentation
Start in “open space.” Call an enterprise-wide, “all hands” meeting to air concerns and issues. Assure everyone that this is an authentic experiment- that is, one to be inspected, 45 to 100 days hence.
Do the experiment.
End in “open space.” Call an enterprise-wide, “all hands” meeting to inspect the results.
Use the wisdom harvested from this process to “go again” if necessary.
The alternative? Simply announce the change, fire everyone who disagrees, and hire new people who agree to the new “game change” you want to implement. There is only one problem with this: it is traumatic for your organization, and will result in chaos, negative emotional energy, and also poor results for years to come, before stabilizing.
A better approach is to view your leadership as cultivation and stewardship, rather than driving a vehicle or operating a machine. Your organization is more like a greenhouse than a train.
Summary
The Prime/OS approach actually works, if you define success as “reaching extremely high levels of engagement in the investigation of how to change.” It starts and ends in Open Space, a meeting that is optimized on creating the conditions for the highest levels of human engagement possible. A key hypothesis of Prime/OS is that for any lasting change to occur, the humans affected must be engaged. Prime/OS therefore encourages very high levels of engagement. And that is why it uses Open Space.
Prime/OS is very simple and can lead to much higher performance across the organization. But to use it, if you are a formally authorized leader, you must first believe that for any change to be genuine and lasting, the humans affected must be engaged in the process of changing.
Prime/OS is a tool for formally authorized leaders who actually believe this is true.
In response to the shock, division and disaray unleashed by the Brexit referendum, we feel it is essential to make space for people to come together. This is a participant-led ‘Open Space’ event, so the experience and discussions you have is up to you. But with many people distracted from fancy notions of reinventing work by very real and immediate worry, fear, anger, despondency this is your time to let off steam, ask big questions, get support and support others, or get constructive.
One thing seems certain: If it is true that many people have reacted to feeling ignored, impoverished and powerless, then making the workplace work for everyone, of making sure that everyone has a voice and can participate is more important than ever.
How can we respond? How we drive this movement forward? How can we help make work better for everyone? What can you contribute?
Thanks. In despair, in hope, and with determination…. see you there?
OpenSpace Agility™ with Daniel Mezick
Workshop: On Demand, London+, U.K.
Graphic (c) 2015 www.OpenSpaceAgility.com. . . . . All rights reserved; provided by permission of OSA.
Co-creating Transformation At Scale
Booking information below
Struggling to get buy-in? Brilliant implementation plan getting stuck in reality?
Caterfly is excited to be teaming up with Daniel Mezick, whose OpenSpace Agility™ method is the foundation of Caterfly’s model for introducing organisational change. Daniel has developed a new approach to creating an adaptive and customisable, collaborative culture shift at scale; for example introducing Agile, Lean, Kanban, Scrum or new ways of working, becoming more ‘responsive’, ‘teal’ or self-organising, implementing sustainability programs and more.
How you can create a culture of enthusiasm, agility and effectiveness in your organisation
How you can prevent resistance to change
Why on average 70% of change programs ultimately fail
What actually works, and how you can transform your workplace with proven tools that get the job done
How to save money by reducing coach / coaching days to get solid results and continuous improvement.
Why the power of invitation, co-creation and self-organisation avoids cultural inertia and change fatigue
How to harness latent ingenuity and collective-intelligence
How to invite the whole organisation to collaborative action using Open Space Technology
How to integrate and consolidate what’s already working well
Each student receives
A proven and repeatable method for rescuing faltering change initiatives
A very rich learning experience with colleagues from diverse backgrounds working in a highly interactive self-organising peer-learning environment
The OpenSpace Agility™ certificate of completion
Listing in the OpenSpace Agility-certified consultants list, on the OSA web site.
Membership of the private online group of certificate holders, for continued peer-development
A free copy of Daniel’s OpenSpace Agility Handbook
Who Should Attend
Leaders, managers, facilitators, consultants, coaches and anyone involved in process and culture change in organisations. Although the process has so far been used most for the adoption of Agile working, it is a tool for a broad and diverse range of contexts. Professionals familiar with Open Space Technology and tools for self-organisation will be interested to learn of new applications in the workplace.
In these times of rapid change and complexity, the triple-win of organisational culture is engagement, agility and effectiveness. Our framework will help you get there, together: a radically different approach to leading change, which is confoundingly simple and practical. The whole team or organisation is invited to co-creative change together, in a way that is more effective, manageable and genuinely long lasting, while reducing stress and change fatigue.
In place of change initiatives that rely on a disenfranchising mandate from above and a rigid, pre-planned roll-out, OpenSpace Agility™ approach integrates the power of invitation, leadership storytelling, iteration, self-organisation and game mechanics to achieve rapid, lasting and effective change across an organisation.
There is growing awareness that the reason many change programmes fail or do not work as expected is not because of the often quoted poor communications and people’s ‘resistance to change’, but because the people affected by the change are not asked, never mind invited to contribute to the change. Culture shifts and new ways of working cannot simply be imposed. What is needed is to invite all affected to co-create and customise change together, in a manageable and iterative way.
OpenSpace Agility works for one simple reason: it generates extremely high levels of engagement across your organisation. This engagement is essential to the success of your program, and no other method does this better than OpenSpace Agility.
Daniel Mezick
But how do you do that at scale? Surely this involves thousands of conversations and story rewriting across the organisation or department? Surely it’s an impossible and expensive task to get all the networks and collaborations connected without hampering the main operation of the organisation? Yet there is a way, using the principle of self-organisation in large scale gatherings, which not only achieves all these necessary cross-connections, but also produces positive synchronicity and serendipity, efficiently and with results that are staff-led.
OpenSpace Agility is a clearly structured, repeatable framework for introducing, reinvigorating and consolidating agility, lean and other collaborative forms of working in organisations. Daniel Mezick has created this framework incorporating ‘Open Space‘ events to invite all affected to drive collaborative transformation based on staff expertise:
a more human, engaging and participatory approach to leading change.
About the Main Instructor:
DANIEL MEZICK: OSA CERTIFIED TRAINER
DANIEL MEZICK is an author, executive and Agile coach, and keynote speaker. He is the formulator of OpenSpace Agility.
He is the author of THE CULTURE GAME, a book describing sixteen patterns of group behavior that help make any team smarter. The book is based on five years of experience coaching 119 Agile teams across 25 different organizations.
Daniel’s client list includes CapitalOne, INTUIT, THE HARTFORD, CIGNA, SIEMENS Healthcare, Harvard University, and many smaller enterprises. Daniel is based in Guilford, Connecticut, USA. Learn more and contact Daniel at www.DanielMezick.com.
Supported by UK facilitators Martin Grimshaw and Francois Knuchel – See the About US page.
Find out more
Full details of workshop content – This is an experiential workshop which is structured to demonstrate the principles of the approach it teaches, including using some Open Space Technology for participant-led learning and practice, adapted to your needs.
Individuals / not-for-profit: £690 Note: VAT is not applicable
Fees include all course materials and the book. They also include coffee breaks and lunch on both days, but does not include transportation, accommodation or dinner.
No charges for bank transfer payments upon invoice Invoice sent by email following booking, with charges removed. Reservation held for 1 week, booking completed upon payment by bank transfer (or cheque).
Payment by card now We regret that payment processing charges will be added.
In the unlikely event of any cancellation or if you need to cancel, full refunds will be made immediately until 2 weeks before, after which if you need to cancel then we will refund 50%.
This event is brought to you by Caterfly, a collaboration between Thriving Planet CIC and Transcultural Synergy Ltd
If you have (or can gather) a group of at least ten people who would like to take this course in London, or anywhere in the U.K., either in-house or as a public event, then please contact us to explore further.
Team: Daniel Mezick, head instructor, founder of OpenSpace Agility and Prime/OS,
with Martin Grimshaw and Francois Knuchel, hosting team.
Contact: events@caterfly.co.uk or call 020 7117 8648
Caterfly presents: a 1 day event exploring the need for transforming the way we work together, the move toward more collaborative, responsive workplaces, for businesses that place the customer at the centre, with respect for people and planet, the reality, complexity and barriers to change, and ways to move forward.
#OrgShift
Share. Learn. Connect: Building alliances for collective impact
Just as the combined efforts of the powers-that-be in the 16th and 17th Centuries were unable to halt the progress of Copernicus’ Revolution in astronomy, so also today’s big hierarchical bureaucracies, though seemingly all-powerful, will ultimately succumb to the power of a better idea for running organizations—better for customers, better for employees, better for managers, better for society, and better for the organizations and their investors.
Steve Denning, Forbes: The Copernican Revolution In Management
Have you ever been in an organisation where you were good at your job, efficient and productive, satisfied by what you achieved, hopeful about future prospects, respected in your expertise, and really feeling part of a good team? ……. and then all of a sudden, one day, out of the blue, you are told that some changes were going to happen; ……. and that a that a team of consultants were coming in to bring about these changes and introduce a new system (SAP, agile, lean………). This team then devotes time and energy explaining the purpose of the change, the why and how, and it all makes perfect logical sense, indeed the proposed changes are not dissimilar to changes you had proposed to your manager in the past. And yet, despite not disagreeing with the reasons for the change, your heart feels crushed, you somehow feel totally betrayed, utterly let down, completely undermined, leaving you shattered and dispirited.
Why? Because nobody in the organisation, none of your superiors, ever bothered to ask you. The changes touch on the essence of your work, and still you were not even consulted. Instead someone at the top decided this was a good idea, let’s bring in some change experts in to implement it, and the team of consultants, who know nothing about the operational side of the work you do, are brought in to tell you what to do. Why aren’t you, as a long-time loyal employee, dedicated to achieving the aims of the organisation, being at least asked about the matter, never mind consulted? Obviously you feel disrespected and undermined, but also angry – your self-esteem is under attack. Suddenly this new system seems alien to you.
While on reflection you would have been quite an enthusiastic proponent of the changes being proposed, because they were brought on over your head without your consent and without your views being heard, suddenly you feel estranged, and this new system appears alien. You lose motivation, you don’t want to be part of it, and you start silently resisting the change. Not because you disagree fundamentally or logically, but because of the manner this was done over your head. You were never given a say in the matter, nor a choice to opt in or out. You no longer feel respected and esteemed, you become cynical, and you, perhaps unconsciously, resist passively.
Consequently you are now branded a change resister, and it is deemed you need to be “managed” with care. You are singled out as a laggard and for now ignored. It becomes a double blow, not only do you feel betrayed and undermined by the initial imposition, now you start losing confidence, your professional competence is called into question, you no longer feel part of the team, indeed resentment becomes stronger and stronger, you no longer want to listen, and a vicious cycle builds up. Suddenly you are a serious resister, an enemy of change, you are no longer for us but against “them”. While the consultants work on the more amenable employees, you become “the” problem, and your survival in the organisation becomes questionable, gradually instigating fear and a destructive atmosphere.
And all because, initially, you were never asked. You were not invited to contribute to the new way forward, it was simply imposed on you from above. You feel alienated, because you were not invited to co-create the organisation’s future, and you no longer feel part of the team.
Not consulting, not listening to, and not inviting those who do the work, those closest to the products/services and the users, and those most connected to the processes that create value, not bringing them in into the change process, not inviting them to co-create the change, are all prescriptions for failure. They reflect distrust and disrespect of an organisation’s own people. And yet this scenario happens again and again, person after person, time after time, organisation after organisation. What a waste of good resources! What a waste of energy! What a waste of great talent!
The solution ‘should be’ fairly straight-forward, do exactly what’s missing: ASK! Invite the affected employees to co-create the change and thereby make it their own. Why don’t so many organisations follow this most basic of human leadership principles? Possibly a legacy of the command and control management attitudes of the last century? Possibly due to an inherent unconscious management distrust (and disrespect) of employees. Possibly due to lack of awareness of the inhumaneness of mandation, an unintended consequence of classical intervention. Possibly due to worries about having to “manage” large numbers of employees invited to co-create the change. And possibly simply, it has to be said, due to a lack of know-how – managers may know that engaging the workforce might be important, but they just don’t know how to go about it. The challenge is how to do it at scale.
This is exactly the issue and the know-how a new book just silently published recently seeks to address. It is called The Open Space Agility Handbook. It is written and conceived by Daniel Mezick, respected senior agile coach in the Boston area, author of Culture Games, together with a team of experts, Mark Sheffield, Deborah Pontes, Louise Kold-Taylor, Harold Shinsato and OpenSpace Technology founder, Harrison Owen. ‘Agile’, for those of you not from the IT or software development world, is a working practice applied by software engineers, derived from ‘Lean’, which enables software development teams to be much closer to customers and to respond to their needs nimbly, thus being agile. The practice is anchored in the Agile Manifesto.
This diagram is copied directly from the Open Space Agility website. and represents an overview road map of OSA used in the book.
While this new book focusses on ‘Agile’, it is really about organisational transformation. The title, The Open Space Agility Handbook, sounds pretty technical and unobtrusive. And in one sense that’s all it is, as the title says, it’s a handbook on how to adopt agile practices, using a double Open Space Technology frame. What the book’s title doesn’t betray, however, is the transformative power of its approach. On one hand the book is simply a step by step guide on implementing agile. On the other hand it presents a revolutionary approach to agile adoptions, and beyond, in fact it tackles head-on one of the key challenges of organisational interventions and change management itself. As innocuous as the book may seem, don’t be fooled by its simplicity. It describes a simple solution to one of the most difficult challenges of management, that of scaled organisational change.
While the handbook concentrates on agile only, the principles and philosophy behind the invitation approach is applicable beyond agile – you can replace “agile” with “lean”, “conscious” or “responsive”. The approach could just as easily apply to lean, teal, responsive, peer-to-peer learning, distributed leadership, conscious business, environmental sustainability, beyond budgeting, sociocracy and indeed any other form of organisational transformation. Thus whether you like agile or not, if you are involved in adoptions, implementations or transformations, this book is for you. Instead of mandating change from above, which leads to resistance or internal sabotage, the approach urges organisations to ask and invite the relevant work-force to co-create the change together, as a collaborative iterative effort, rather than imposing from above.
The approach is based asking those doing the work about proposed adoptions or change and inviting them to co-create transformation together, using a combination of Open Space Technology and standard coaching iterative methods, ….. and thereby avoiding the tremendous waste of talent and resources arising from the imposition of change. As the concepts of INVITATION (as opposed to directed or imposed), PEER-BASED SELF-ORGANISED LEARNING (SOLE) and CHANGE CO-CREATION become increasingly understood and appreciated in organisations, so this simple how-to book will find a growing audience in and beyond agile. The approach is completely in line with what the Stanford and London Business School guru Gary Hamel has termed the ‘change platform’.
This is a brilliant how-to book. It addresses the problem of resistance and poor engagement in agile adoptions and organisational change. Why is it, for instance, that the majority of agile adoptions, despite huge investments, fail? The approach presented resolves root causes and offers a completely fresh and novel way of implementing agile. And while this new book focuses on ‘agile’, it applies equally to organisational transformation overall.
The title, The Open Space Agility Handbook, sounds pretty inconspicuous and unobtrusive. And in one sense that’s all it is, as the title says it’s a handbook on how to adopt agile practices, using an Open Space Technology framework; a step by step how to guide on implementing agile. What the book’s title does not betray, however, is the transformative power of its approach. It represents a revolutionary approach to large scale agile adoptions, and beyond; it tackles head on one of the key challenges of organisational interventions and change management itself. As innocuous as the book may seem, don’t be fooled by its simplicity. It describes an elegant solution to one of the most difficult challenges of management, that of scaled organisational change. What’s more, it is completely fit for purpose in the age of distributed leadership, it follows the principles of opt-in and it walks the talk of self-organisation.
On the surface the book is for agile coaches, trainers and leaders wanting to implement agile into their organisations, using a scalable process of invitation and co-creation, rather than dilapidating mandation and imposition. The book describes in immaculate detail, yet in very clear easy to understand language, how this can be done. The book is supported by beautiful diagrams step by step in a highly practical way, with very easy to follow hands-on instructions. The diagrams all form part of a larger diagram representing the overall road map. As a guide it is beautifully presented.
On a deeper level it is far more than a handbook. While the book illustrates the how, it represents a fresh way of adopting agile. Although concentrating on agile only, the principles and philosophy behind it have ramifications beyond agile, and the book should appeal to a wider corporate audience, in fact to anyone seeking to introduce system change in an organisation. The approach could just as easily apply to the adoption of lean, teal, peer-to-peer learning, distributed leadership, conscious business, environmental sustainability, beyond budgeting, reinventing organisations or indeed any other form of organisational transformation.
But why do we need a different approach to agile, lean, teal etc adoptions, or to change management? Simply put, because the majority of agile adoptions, lean implementations or change management interventions don’t work (the statistics vary from 60% – 80% failure rates depending on how one defines failure, anything from simply not achieving expected results to catastrophic breakdown). One reason is that these interventions are mandated or imposed, without consulting those doing the work. This leads to unintended consequences of resistance at best, silent internal sabotage at worst.
In the case of agile those doing the work are software engineers, people who are both very intelligent as well as often introvert in nature: they resist imposed change, but do not articulate their views. Instead they either simply ignore directives (‘internal sabotage’) or walk away completely (and they can afford to). Corrective notions of “improving communications” and “achieving better buy-in” completely miss the point. What is needed is to invite the relevant work-force to co-create the change together, as a collaborative iterative effort, with everyone’s perspective valued.
How can one invite a whole department or even a whole large company to co-create change at scale? Through a process of self-organisation in a framed structure of iterations and experimentations, which fully engage the relevant workforce constructively in the process. This is achieved by applying the principles of Open Space Technology at the beginning and the end of the timed iterations. Open Space Technology is a self-organising large scale counter-intuitive meeting of minds format which has been tried and tested over the last 30 years in over 150 countries, always with great success. However, if you want to know the details of how it all works and how to do adaptions and transformations, read the book!
_____________________________________________
This review was originally posted as a review on Amazon on 17 Dec 2015
The art of hosting participant-led unConferences, solving complex problems, accelerating action, leading change in organisations, and hosting conversations that matter.
An experiential 2 day co-learning workshop: Brighton, with Martin Grimshaw and Francois Knuchel
* We regret that this date has been postponed – we are currently arranging a new date in October ’15 – please contact us to request a preference and early bird discount *
A very limited number of ‘pay-what-you-want’ tickets are available on application. You just need to tell us a dazzling (but short) story of why you think the world will be a better place for you being on the course.
Do you want a way to rapidly launch new projects, bring participation, engagement, equality and inclusion to your organisation or event? To harness collective ingenuity for problem solving? To lead transformation that is real and lasting? To drive innovation?
What?
Learn how to organise and facilitate gatherings using Open Space Technology, a method by which a large group of people can organise themselves into a conference, complete with agenda, break-out sessions, action planning and reports, with almost no preparation before-hand. Open Space allows each participant to do what they came to do, and can be a very effective way of launching large-scale change or responding to a looming crisis.
Who?
This workshop invites those who are new to using Open Space and those who already have some or even extensive experience of using it, to co-learn together, deepen our practice, and share our experiences of using it. In this 2 day workshop we will have the opportunity to experience Open Space as attendees commonly do, with space to reflect and to go deeper into designing an event as part of a broader programme.
How? This workshop will be run as an Open Space so that participants can learn experientially, while learning how to design, prepare and facilitate an Open Space event, including tips and tricks, likely issues that may be encountered, follow up and incorporating an event within a wider context or strategy.
What is Open Space?
Open Space Technology is a format for organising compostable conferences, unconferences, meetings, stakeholder engagement, BarCamps and CityCamps, with maximum efficiency and minimum time and resources. It is a form of ‘crowd sourcing’ which can be used to bring together a company or any group or organisation to focus on a specific problem or question. Open Space allows for participants to co-create experience, learning and solutions in a way that unlocks creativity.
Open Space is used by large companies, local government, community activists, and forward thinking organisations everywhere, from gatherings of 5 to several thousand people, from a couple of hours to several days.
Please contact us if you would like to hire us as facilitators, consultants or trainers.
Martin and Francois also use the Open Smart Transformation model at Caterfly to bring about deep and lasting transformation or problem solving in organisations with Open Space.
Caterfly in partnership with There’s Better Ways Of Working present:
The art of hosting participant-led unConferences, solving complex problems, accelerating action, leading change in organisations, and hosting conversations that matter.
Why? Do you want a way to rapidly launch new projects, bring participation, engagement, equality and inclusion to your organisation or event? To harness collective ingenuity for problem solving? To lead transformation that is real and lasting? To drive innovation?
What?
Learn how to design and facilitate gatherings using Open Space Technology, a method by which a large group of people can organise themselves into a conference, complete with agenda, break-out sessions, action planning and reports, with almost no preparation before-hand. Open Space allows each participant to do what they need to do, and can be a very effective way of launching large-scale change or responding to a looming crisis.
Who?
This workshop invites those who are new to using Open Space and those who already have some or even extensive experience of using it, to co-learn together, deepen our practice, and share our experiences of using it.
How? This workshop will be run as an Open Space so that participants can learn experientially, while learning how to design, prepare and facilitate an Open Space event, including tips and tricks, likely issues that may be encountered, follow up and incorporating an event within a wider context or strategy.
What is Open Space?
Open Space Technology is a format for organising compostable conferences, unconferences, meetings, stakeholder engagement, BarCamps and CityCamps, with maximum efficiency and minimum time and resources. It is a form of ‘crowd sourcing’ which can be used to bring together a company or any group or organisation to focus on a specific problem or question. Open Space allows for participants to co-create experience, learning and solutions in a way that unlocks creativity.
Open Space is used by large companies, local government, community activists, and forward thinking organisations everywhere, from gatherings of 5 to several thousand people, from a couple of hours to several days, even with little notice or preparation.
* A very limited number of ‘pay-what-you-want’ tickets are available on application. You just need to tell us a dazzling (but short) story of why you think the world will be a better place for you being on the course.
Please contact us if you would like to hire us as facilitators, consultants or trainers.
Martin and Francois also use the Open Smart Transformation model at Caterfly to bring about deep and lasting transformation or problem solving in organisations with Open Space.
More workshops and events: Going Deeper with Open Space (August, 2 days), Shift: Why Aren’t Organisations Shifting? (21 July). Click on events for details.
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Caterfly presents: a 1 day participant-led ‘Open Space’ event exploring the need for transforming the way we work together, the move toward more collaborative, responsive workplaces, for businesses that place the customer at the centre, with respect for people and planet, the reality, complexity and barriers to change, and ways to move forward.
Share. Learn. Connect: Building alliances for collective impact
Just as the combined efforts of the powers-that-be in the 16th and 17th Centuries were unable to halt the progress of Copernicus’ Revolution in astronomy, so also today’s big hierarchical bureaucracies, though seemingly all-powerful, will ultimately succumb to the power of a better idea for running organizations—better for customers, better for employees, better for managers, better for society, and better for the organizations and their investors.
Steve Denning, Forbes: The Copernican Revolution In Management
We live in a world where a mechanistic, “machine” view of organizations has served for some time. The end of this era is upon us, and the transition to a living-systems view is well underway.
Caterfly is excited to be teaming up with Daniel Mezick, whose OpenSpace Agility™ method is the foundation of Caterfly’s model for introducing organisational change. Daniel has developed a new approach to creating an adaptive and customisable, collaborative culture shift at scale; for example introducing Agile, Lean, Kanban, Scrum or new ways of working, becoming more ‘responsive’, ‘teal’ or self-organising, implementing sustainability programs and more.
In place of change initiatives that rely on a disenfranchising mandate from above and a rigid, pre-planned roll-out, OpenSpace Agility™ approach integrates the power of invitation, leadership storytelling, iteration, self-organisation and game mechanics to achieve rapid, lasting and effective change across an organisation.
