Caterfly Blogs

Tag: Open Space Technology

  • Embracing VUCA in business

    Embracing VUCA in business

    Embracing the opportunities of VUCA in business

    Meeting Complexity with Complexity

    Never has there been so much complexity in our world. Running institutions is proving increasingly difficult due to the complexity they are operating under. Complexity appears to have a life of its own, making it more difficult for organisations to organise themselves sustainably.

    Or is it? Is our world really becoming more complex? Or isn’t it just that the methods we are using were never designed for complexity? Isn’t it that leadership in complexity requires a different set of tools, a different mindset, different ways of working? If so, wouldn’t it be better to change our methods and mindset, rather than blaming complexity?

    In this article, I want to give an overview of a few of the key thinkers and researchers who have been exploring complexity and uncertainty in a business organisational setting.

    The Consequences of VUCA

    Complexity is one of four challenges expressed in the acronym VUCA – Volatility, Uncertainty, Complexity, Ambiguity. The term VUCA was first used in US military, but has largely been adopted in the business world to refer to challenges which traditional leadership models find difficult to address. There is an ever-growing awareness that the methods and mindsets that have worked well in the past do not work in our “complex and uncertain” environment.

    Many who have studied different aspects of VUCA and ‘wicked problems’ have concluded that it requires different skills, structures, modus operandi, mindsets and organisational principles from those currently taught and practised. This is true in education, politics, business, communities as well as other societal institutions. It turns out our current leadership approaches are counter-productive, even harmful, to working with uncertainty and complexity. In trying to gain control of complexities, in trying to get a grip, our management methods are actually making things worse.

    Are uncertainty and complexity new phenomena? This is unlikely, indeed they have always existed – think of parents raising children, intricately complex and unpredictable, yet generally managed quite well by most. Or think of farmers and how they have to work with changing and uncertain weather conditions. Uncertainty and complexity are not new!

    While there is nothing new about VUCA (except the acronym itself), its omnipresence appears to be increasing probably due to, on one hand, external factors like globalisation, the internet and technological interdependence. And on the other hand, I would argue that the cumulative effect of applying the wrong management practices to complexity has exacerbated the challenges of VUCA, a bit like continuously trying to put out a fire with oil instead of water.

    The Problem with Management

    Applying dehumanising command and control hierarchical management methods over 100 years has progressively made complexity more complex. Ignoring or suppressing issues like the climate crisis, has led to the world becoming ever more unstable and uncertain, to the point now where the existence of many of our institutions is threatened, if not our whole civilisation.

    This is bad news for managers and executives in organisations because it requires a complete overhaul of how organisations are run. It is also bad news for politicians, as is evident from the way our Western democracies are breaking down, with politics becoming increasingly divisive and toxic. Education also needs a complete rethink, essentially because it is teaching the wrong skills and mindset.

    The ‘natural’ management response to complexity is to do more of what created it in the first place, i.e. to fight and bring it under control, to suppress it or to ‘fix’ it, rather than to accept and work with it. What complexity requires is the forming of a complete picture of an issue (symptoms), looking at it from various angles to identify the root causes (problems), from which new patterns can emerge. Because any individual is limited by the filters or lens he/she perceives through, this can only be achieved by including and integrating the perspectives of all the people affected. Yet this is precisely what our current management structures discourage ….. and so we throw more oil onto the fire.

    Retired business strategy and one of the earlier human complexity researcher Ralph Stacey, for instance, a mathematician who spent many years working with leaders in industry before returning to academia, concludes that most management activities in organisations, like annual budgeting, planning & control and strategy development are largely meaningless in an unpredictable world, and therefore a waste. Worse, he reports senior executives often know or intuit this, yet continue to endorse these wasteful activities simply because, like religious rituals, they maintain stability in organisations and minimise the anxiety that would otherwise arise when facing the abyss of uncertainty. While Stacey has elaborated a complex theory of complexity transformation, in order to address the disconnect he essentially calls for more wide-scale conversations in the form of what he called “reflexive inquiry”, the most complex of all complexities.

    So what can we do about VUCA? How can we respond to it? And specifically, rather than fighting or fixing complexity, how can we work with it to our advantage, how can we make it our friend, and how can we embrace VUCA? What follows is the research and thinking of VUCA researchers who work practically in the field within organisations.

    Cynefin

    If you have not come across Dave Snowden‘s Cynefin sense-making model you should definitely do so when exploring complexity. The Cynefin framework offers an easy-to-understand way of looking at complexity. Most complexity research is based on mathematics, computer science, biology and physics. The Cynefin framework is one of the earlier attempts to relate complexity to leadership, culture and organisational development, by exploring the human dimension of sense-making and decision-making.

    In the Cynefin framework there are four quadrants: Simple or Obvious, Complicated, Complex and Chaos. The suggestion is that all problems or challenges fall into one of these, each quadrant requires a completely different way of solving the problem, and this framework helps decision-makers decide what kind of thinking they should apply to solve a problem.

    Graphic showing the Cynefin 4 part model: Complex, Complicated, Chaotic, Simple

    Cynefin was conceived in an IT data management context. The framework cannot always be applied in non-IT contexts, so while it is useful conceptually there is more to complexity than Cynefin, and we should also explore other avenues. Many of Dave Snowden’s presentations have been recorded and are worth listening to, if you can get past his cynicism. The name Cynefin has an interesting connotation to complexity – it is the Welsh word for habitat, but refers to one’s place of multiple belongings (cultural, family, national, religious, geographic etc.)!

    Vertical or Horizontal

    Vertical cost management, which aims to reduce costs, actually achieve the opposite, they increase costs when analysed through the systems lens of the total organisational cost rather than just myopically at the particular activities which are being cost-managed.

    Uncertainty and unpredictability have ramifications for many of our management practices. It has been shown, for instance, that our practices of vertical cost management, which aim to reduce costs, actually achieve the opposite, they increase costs when analysed through the systems lens of the total organisational cost rather than just myopically at the particular activities which are being cost-managed. This is because they divert attention away from what really matters in business, customer satisfaction, to mere cost reduction compliance. Essentially one cannot ‘improve’ the whole simply by working on the parts, indeed that is often harmful, as Russell Ackoff has repeatedly emphasised, a point often missed by financial control.

    Cost management tends to increase ‘failure demand’, a term invented by consultant John Seddon in his Vanguard Method. Failure Demand (as opposed to Value Demand) is generated when not meeting real customer needs. The failure arises from cost management methods focussing on measuring the efficiency of response to (failure) demand, rather than on working on eliminating those failures in the first place. This is also a premise of Beyond Budgeting, as well as one of its derivatives, consultant Niels Pflaeging‘s Beta Codex (see his book Organising for Complexity). Likewise Toyota and Edward Deming already recognised this 50 years ago when they famously showed how, for instance, you do not improve the quality of a product by increasing the inspection at the end of the line; rather you integrate a horizontal zero-defect ‘customer’ mindset on the shop floor, using an ‘internal customer’ outlook and tools like A3-thinking. This has proven very difficult for Western organisations to apply, because it essentially means giving thinking power back to the workers, effectively making management as we know it ‘redundant’.

    VUCA Skills

    Switching to an educational setting, researcher Dr Theo Dawson has been exploring the ‘Lexica scale’ based on people’s innate curiosity and learning ability, and by implication organisations’ ability to learn and adapt, vital in a world of VUCA. Working with VUCA requires a departure from our traditional (Darwinian?) competitive, adversarial way of thinking taught at school and practiced in politics, the courts and business. She refers to developing specific ‘VUCA skills’. VUCA skills include

    • interpersonal skills (e.g. active listening),
    • perspective coordination skills (complementarity),
    • contextual thinking skills (shifting perspectives according to context) and
    • collaboration skills (inclusive decision-making);

    so, overall the ability to integrate and coordinate solutions collectively. This is a move away from ‘either-or’ thinking towards ‘both-and’ thinking. The inclusion of different perspectives, rather than their exclusion, is what is crucial here. Our Western democracies are falling apart, because the voting system excludes minorities whose perspectives are simply excluded and ignored. By continuing to teach adversarial debating and competitive achievement skills in education we are putting more oil on the fire – resulting in our society being increasingly divided and toxic.

    VUCA requires the integration and fusion of different perspectives, and not alpha heroes with all the ‘right’ answers. Our educational testing culture, however, does not allow for ‘not knowing’ – schools teach us there is always a right answer which we should know. VUCA skills, on the other hand, suggest we have to unlearn this habit of (pretending to) knowing the answer. What we should learn, instead, is how to respond to complex problems from a vantage point of not knowing, probingly approaching inquiry with an empty mind and humility; likewise we need to learn how to integrate seemingly polar opposite perspectives collaboratively.

    Like learning to drive or dance at first, acquiring these integration skills can initially feel rather awkward and ‘unnatural’, and we easily revert to the old prima donna habits taught at school. Some of the ways suggested to learn these VUCA skills include design thinking and practicing Sociocracy. We should take note, however, that one cannot learn integration skills by oneself, these have to be practised and refined in groups. We therefore need to create more Communities of Practice where people can hone these new skills. Except for side activities like team sports and school plays our education rarely provides opportunities for pupils to learn these skills – again, education needs reinventing.

    Rich Interconnectivity

    While it is important to work on individual and team / community skills at the micro-level, this is insufficient without also redesigning the system and culture at the macro-level. This is why the work of practical researchers like Prof Mary Uhl-Bien is important. Building on the huge knowledge base developed in the sciences Uhl-Bien explores the human application of complexity in corporations, a distinctly non-mathematical social technology application of complexity.

    Uhl-Bien defines complexity as ‘rich interconnectivity’. Interconnecting parts become complex when the parts interacting actually influence and change each other. She gives mayonnaise as an example in that once the egg and oil atoms start interacting they influence each other and change to a point where they cannot revert back to their original state, like a butterfly never reverts to a caterpillar. This happens in human interactions, whereby people influence and change each other unconsciously – like lovers being subtly yet irrevocably transformed after falling out of love from when they first fell in love.

    The richness in interconnectivity is generated by networked parts being as diverse in outlook as possible and being constantly evolving. So while intensive project teams can be deeply effective, for instance, they need to be complemented by another mechanism which magnifies exposure to a dynamic and ever-changing multitude of perspectives.

    Uhl-Bien’s team has researched many organisations and observed most try to manage complexity by controlling it. This is precisely what makes it worse. Complexity comprises many moving and interacting parts, and the best way to work with complexity is through complexity itself in what she calls Adaptive Space. What this means is bringing in intermingling constantly reforming and interacting networks of multi-perspectivity into conversation.  In an organisation, Adaptive Space sits in between the entrepreneurial / innovative system and the result-driven / operational system. This is currently missing in the structure of most organisations.

    Adaptive Space is created by letting the many interacting parts and networks move and intermix, thereby interacting more intensively, richly. This is what enables new ways or patterns to emerge. Most organisations tend to control or terminate such moving interactions and get people to stay in their place, in teams and silos, which has the opposite effect. Uhl-Bien advocates pan-organisational Adaptive Spaces with a strong focus on interchange and connectivity, using practices like Liberating Structures and the like.

    A key part in this process is the interplay between Linking and Conflicting. Without tension and conflict, there is no flame of interactivity, but this has to be combined with linking and connecting. It is this combination that sparks new patterns, new ideas, new thinking. Adaptive space should be a safe space where both conflicting and linking can occur. To enable such spaces, a new type of leader is required, which Uhl-Bien simply refers to as ‘Adaptive Leaders’. They have (or need to learn) their own special sets of skills, which are different from entrepreneurial or from operational leadership skills. As I see it the Adaptive Leader skills required are those of, in the jargon, ‘facilitative leadership’.

    So in addition to VUCA skills, what complexity calls for are deeper conversations that matter, or as Stacey says reflexive enquiry.  However Uhl-Bien emphasises the conversations themselves should be complex bringing in multifaceted, dynamic and undirected, so not just within existing teams, departments and silos, but across the different areas of an organisation. The Adaptive Space maintains a balance between the innovative spirit of an organisation and its operational stability so that both innovation and delivery can prosper while keeping the organisation adaptive and alive.  Richness of interconnectivity creates serendipitous cross-pollination of ideas and bring in a multitude of perspectives from different parts of an organisation intermingling, forming rich exchanges, and thereby meet complexity with complexity

    This rich interactivity and emergence is precisely what Open Space Technology thrives on as well! Open Space may appear chaotic and complex, but it takes complexity to work with complexity. Harrison Owen knew it all along.

    Conclusion

    In short, overall what VUCA requires are new individual and team skills of integration and complementarity learned in groups through Communities of Practice. At an organisational level, this needs to be combined with rich interconnectivity of interchangeable networks with a diversity of perspectives brought together in Adaptive Spaces. By applying this human intermixing interactivity, with everyone fully engaged meeting complexity with complexity, organisations should be able to embrace VUCA for the new emerging opportunities it brings.

  • Why do Organisations need more trained Facilitators?

    Why do Organisations need more trained Facilitators?

    What trained Open Space Technology Facilitators could do for Organisations

    Many companies suffer from a lack of cohesion and connectedness. Managers and staff alike generally lack a holistic view of their organisation in terms of its internal flow of energy and value creation. Most people in organisations do not have a full view of what goes on across the organisation, and the executives at the top may have an overview of the various departments, but generally have little understanding of what the issues are at the shop floor level.

    This lack of a multi-disciplinary and holistic view of their own organisation is manifest in the way departments and teams often work in very entrenched silo mentalities. Silos produce poor cross-departmental collaboration and pan-organisational coherence. The situation is particularly acute in Western companies where people typically specialise in one area of work and then stay in their field – if they do move on, they tend to go on to similar work elsewhere, changing company rather than changing type of work.

    This contrasts to Asian firms, in particular Japanese, where people are routinely rotated to different departments, irrespective of their specialities, typically in 2-5 year cycles, so that as they become more senior, irrespective of position, they gain a good understanding of how the company works and in particular are sympathetic to the various perspectives as seen from different parts of the organisation – in short they also become generalists with a holistic view of the organisation and its place in society, they are the bridges and glue of the whole.

    In the West we tend to put resources in tools like process improvements, particularly at a team level. Agile implementations and moves towards business agility are examples of current day efforts to improve team effectiveness, and thus the ability to add value for customers in a speedy, flexible and iterative way. Which is all great, but this happens at a team or section level, with ‘high performing’ teams often rewarded irrespective of whether their high performance is actually beneficial to the smooth operation of the whole organisation as a whole. This is like putting a high performing Rolls Royce engine in a Volkswagen Beetle chassis – this would prove untenable, the Beetle was never designed to cope with the power of the RR engine, the whole would crumble in the long run. Likewise interventions are usually isolated and do not tackle the challenge of getting the organisation to operate more effectively and coherently as one whole.

    Moreover, an organisation is only as effective as its weakest link, so concentrating resources on some priority teams while largely ignoring others, or while not considering how this might effect the whole, can actually dampen the overall organisational effectiveness. Even with balanced high performing teams there is often no engagement model in place that guarantees that all teams are operating in tandem towards the same purpose. One often finds teams competing with each other internally, or unknowingly duplicating efforts.

    So how could we get more pan-organisational collaboration, cohesion and innovation across the organisation, without switching to an Asian style rotation system, (which would take a full generation before its benefits became apparent, so hardly feasible)? What could we do to enable more pan-organisational coherence and collaboration, and for everyone to start thinking about their organisation more holistically? Why aren’t organisations putting more resources into developing such pan-organisational cohesion?

    There may be several reasons:

    • a general lack of awareness of the need for it (it is not on people’s minds first and foremost)
    • organisations having no experience in trying to achieve coherence
    • no knowledge or expertise within the organisation on how to do it
    • nobody knowing how to “plan” the thousands of conversations that would need to happen to enable pan-organisational exchange
    • likewise nobody in the organisation knowing, for instance, how to run large-scale participatory meetings, instead only relying speaker-centered conferences or motivational talks (which by nature are non-participatory)
    • No understanding for ‘unplanning’ conversations to engender serendipitous or emergent conversations
    • in a mechanistic view of the organisation open-ended chaordic interventions seen as a waste of time, with the bureaucratic command and control approach asserting itself
    • similarly innovation viewed as something best left to the ‘innovation specialists’ – unfortunately many a bright idea from staff, coming from a place of understanding the customer, gets sidelined with this attitude.

    Clearly we need pan-organisational models of engagement. These do exist. They can be found in practices such as Presencing Theatre, World Cafe, Appreciative Enquiry, Circle Ways, The Art of Hosting and many other participatory approaches also collated in Liberating Structures. The most open-ended and engaging approach of them all, however, which really allows genuine pan-organisational conversations that matter to emerge, is Open Space Technology (commonly Open Space), the structure used in ‘Unconference’, ‘Hackathon‘ and ‘BarCamp’ events. While there are many ways to run concurrent conversations, Open Space Technology does this particularly well at scale, and is ideal in larger organisations needing cross-departmental exchange at all levels simultaneously.

    Open Space Technology, commonly Open Space, is a method for hosting highly participatory, large group, whole-system collaboration based on self-organisation in which participants themselves co-create the agenda, experience and outcomes that matter to them. Click here to see our article What is Open Space Technology?

    The components of Open Space graphic

    Open Space Technology is described in more detail elsewhere. My purpose here is to encourage larger organisations to use Open Space Technology much more frequently and for them to hire or train a few internal facilitators who can actually run Open Space Tech events within their organisation. There is no reason why an Open Space Tech event should be a one-off occasion. If organisations want genuine agility in their organisations, then running Open Space events should be a regular occurrence.

    Open Space Technology has many benefits (see Beyond unConferences) but in the context of pan-organisational collaboration, innovation and coherence Open Space Technology enables cross-fertilisation of ideas and cross-collaboration across departments in a highly interactive environment at once on a massive scale. An Open Space event can lead collectively to a holistic re-energising of the whole organisation, creating conditions for the organisation to thrive organically. Moreover it can be a massive and long-lasting boost to staff engagement and morale, largely because deep conversations that matter to them can take place. These vital conversations are rarely had in organisations, and yet are hugely necessary for people within the organisation to flourish.

    The benefits of using pan-organisational Open Space Tech for organisations are:

    • it helps bridge departments, and thus breaks down silos, encouraging collaboration rather than internal competition
    • it stimulates over time a systems view of the organisation amongst all staff, thus facilitating constructive dialogue between different parts of the organisation
    • it shifts everyone into an ‘innovation mode‘ and elevates the creativity of the whole organisation; this enables complex problem-solving and disruptive innovation
    • it is a brilliant basis for invitation-based culture change
    • it represents a highly effective model of engagement, rejuvenating staff co-creativity
    • it enables expanded stakeholder dialogues to take place involving the wider organisation
    • it enables conversations to emerge which could never have been planned
    • it encourages the emergence of new ideas and concepts otherwise inconceivable
    • Its self-organising, autonomous and peer-learning format forms the basis for creating a learning organisation.

    Ultimately Open Space Tech enables thousands of meaningful conversations to happen serendipitously at scale and across the organisation that otherwise would never have happened and would have been impossible to plan, all within a limited time scale (1-2 days)

    So given Open Space Technology has so many advantages, why is it not used more frequently in organisations? What are the stumbling blocks? Some have already been mentioned earlier, but here are few as more:

    • it can be logistically demanding, the larger the number of invitees, the better, but also the more demanding it is to organise; Open Space Tech has no limit to size (other than the capacity of venue)
    • a general lack of awareness, or a perceived weirdness of the process
    • poor quality of facilitators (wanting to ‘manage’ the process, combine it or trying to ‘improve’ it)
    • unpredictable outcome can be scary
    • perceived costs (in fact Open Space Tech is a lot cheaper, but like a plane crash it sounds big when it happens)
    • for most managers not having a clear agenda feels rather frightening.

    Facilitator introduces an Open Space event. Martin GrimshawThis lack of a clear agenda (the agenda is created by the participants on the spot at the start of an Open Space Event) is probably the biggest stumbling block within commercial organisations, as managers and sponsors are often expected to state clearly what the anticipated outcomes of such a meeting should be (in order to justify the funding for it, for instance). Yet that is precisely the catch 22. Open Space Technology relies on emergence, serendipity and new creative solutions to whatever challenges brought the people together to the Open Space event in the first place. Agendas pre-define solutions, they pre-determine outcomes and as such they stifle emergence. The whole point of Open Space Technology without pre-set agendas is to enable issues to emerge which would otherwise never have arisen.

    Agendas kill emergence and thereby also stifle innovation and motivation. People feel caged in by (other people’s) agendas. Yet for managers coming from a mechanical view of business, “agendalessness” is most difficult to fathom. Managers will almost always want to interfere and include some agenda. It is ironic that in our times when leaders are crying for more staff engagement, collaboration, participation, accountability and innovation, they are also imposing more agendas, the very thing that kills all those virtues. Agendas create precisely those conditions which disengage people. The only agenda that works is one created by ALL those participating there and then, in the here and now, in a free market-place where people can opt in and out of the authentic conversations.

    To be blunt: As a manager you can either have engagement and innovation, or you can have agendas and outcomes, but you cannot have both – they cancel each other out. So if agendas and outcomes are what you want, fine, don’t use Open Space Technology, but don’t expect engagement and innovation either. If engagement and innovation are what you want, however, then you have to be willing to let go of any agenda, or rather let the staff and workers determine and deliberate their own issues.
    The Law Of Two Feet as butterfly wings and rainbow colours
    Annette Zera: The Law of Two Feet

    For this reason, it is important that some people in the organisation know how to run Open Space Technology events. In particular they need to fully understand the issues around invitations, agendas, co-creation and emergence. It needs people who can resist what many managers want, such as adding items to an agenda in advance. Because Open Space Tech meetings operate on the basis of opt-in invitation, people will only feel inspired to join a meeting, if it is about an issue that concerns them, is burning for them, and is not laden with pre-conceived solutions which do not address their perspective. Open Space Tech facilitators need to have a thorough understanding of the role of invitation (versus imposition) and the effect of agendas on the matter.

    There is a general need for organisations to have more facilitators and facilitative leaders, if organisations are to thrive (through innovation and collaboration). But they should also have an Open Space Tech facilitator or two at hand. While more general facilitators or organisational development practitioners are in a good position to introduce people-centric participatory next stage ways of organising and working to the organisation, there should ideally be someone who is specifically able to bring about a pan-organisational, cross-functional and holistic understanding of, and engagement in, the organisation through Open Space Technology. What is needed are facilitators who can bring about internal flexibility and agility by calling Open Space events at short notice, while also understanding the importance of creating a safe and transparent environment for emergence to happen, opening and holding the space.

    In the long run Open Space Technology can set some foundations for the organisation to shift from a mechanical command-and-control perspective to a more living, organic and responsive one, one able tocontinuously adapt and learn. Larger organisations should therefore have one or two internal Open Space Tech facilitators. Ideally organisations should be operating in a permanent Open Space Tech mode or mindset all the time, and having an Open Space Tech facilitator on board who can keep that spirit alive would be nothing but beneficial.

     

  • OpenSpace Agility, On Demand Workshop, London

    OpenSpace Agility™ with Daniel Mezick
    Workshop: On Demand, London+, U.K.

    Fragment of OpenSpace Agiligy (TM) graphic by Daniel Mezick
    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?

    Daniel Mezick 1Caterfly 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.

    Daniel is a well-known Agile coach, culture hacker, speaker, author of The Culture Game, and co-author of The OpenSpace Agility Handbook.

    In this workshop you learn
    • 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

    Handbook Cover

    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.

    Full details of workshop content.  Further reading and booking, see below.

    How OpenSpace Agility™ works

    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.

    Daniel Mezick OpenSpace Agility Agile conferenceIn 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 MezickDANIEL 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.

    The OpenSpace Agility process At a Glance.

    Caterfly Article: Invite staff to co-create change / OpenSpace Agility Handbook review

    Caterfly Article: Why Coercion Doesn’t Work

    Caterfly Article: The Problem With Change Management

    Caterfly Article: What is Open Space?

    Daniel Mezick’s website, blog and further details

    OpenSpace Agility testimonials

     

    Prices and booking

    • Standard: £790
    • Early Bird until 15 August 16: £590
    • 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

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  • Book Review: The Open Space Agility Handbook

    Book Review: The Open Space Agility Handbook

    Handbook Cover
    Book Cover

    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

  • Beyond ‘UnConferencing’: Fresh Uses of Open Space

    Tuesday 21 July 15, Victoria, London: Shift, a participant-led Open Space event
    Why aren’t organisations shifting? www.events.caterfly.co.uk

    Applications of Open Space Technology in 21st Century
    self-organising network organisations

    Open Space Technology (OST) has been around for almost 30 years, has been applied in 150 countries, with 300,000+ groups or events, involving millions of people having unique experiences through OST.  OST (Open Space Technology) has been used:

    • as a participant-led alternative to conferences (hence “unconference”)
    • for conflict resolution (in large scale peace deliberations)
    • for stakeholder dialogues in a variety of contexts and disciplines

    … and many situations involving deep discussions, where there is a burning issue, high levels of passion and no preconceived outcome.  OST works beautifully because it fulfils some of the conditions for participant engagement, such as connection, communication and meaning.  OST has also been used extensively for various intra-organisational purposes within organisations with huge success.

    Despite the successes, ZenLarge however, OST has rarely become mainstream practice within organisations.  This may be because it does not sit well with the planned, budgeted, command & control management style of most organisations.  Moreover OST does not create legacies, i.e. it does not lend itself to anyone taking credit for successful outcomes, because success is collective.  So  as Steve Denning of Forbes laments in his Drucker Forum 2015 blog “… despite almost a century of fine management writing …. about the humanist strand of management thinking that celebrates team and collaboration through respect for customers and workers as human beings  ……. , the ugly truth is that its lasting impact on general management has been limited.”  … so it is with OST, too.

    Nevertheless, over the last few years, as the nature of organisations has gradually been changing, or is being forced to shift through the internet and social technologies, so the demand for OST is on the increase.  As we see from some of the thriving pioneering new organisations (as described for instance in Frederic Laloux’s Reinventing Organisations), the definition and purpose of organisations are changing from linear, mechanical, predictability-based, controlled and top-down structures to fluid, organic, emergent, distributed and self-organising networks.

    These new organisations thrive on continuous reconfiguration, plasticity, responsive innovation, synchronicity, eco-centricity, co-creativity and mindful empathy.  They are self-organising (and continuously self-re-organising) iterative learning network cultures that are ‘wirearchical’, locally attuned and able to adapt to the prevailing fast changing, diverse and highly complex conditions.  All of which is not possible unless “led” bottom-up with all employees or members fully engaged and empowered, and with ‘teams of teams’ exploring and cross-communicating.

    teamsofteams

    It is in these new kinds of organisations that OST could become more common, especially where cross-functional alignment and coordination is sought. OST thrives on unpredictability, fluidity and complexity, where the more conventional interventions of “managing” all of the factors do not work. Assigning people to solve highly complex problems can be self-defeating, for instance, because the very selection predetermines certain outcomes which often turn out to be counterproductive.  OST on the other hand provides a platform for self-selection (opt-in),  cross border serendipity and self-organisation.  In particular OST is superb at enabling what MIT’s Human Dynamics Lab research has found to be one of the necessary ingredients for high perfoming teams: regularly exploring information outside one’s team and usual circle of colleagues. OST excels at holistic cross-functional interactions.

    As OST within organisations expands, so will the need grow for more skilled OST facilitators who are able to “hold space” without disrupting the interaction flow, and create “containers” within which authentic cross-fertilising exchanges and deep dialogue can occur.  They will also need to be able to create peer-based self-organising learning environments, which will form the source of an organisation’s client- or user-connectivity, iterations and innovations.

    OST is the face to face synchronous counterpart to digital networks and social technologies (as used in intra-organisational online networks).  While online asynchronous connectivity plays an expanding role in these organisations, people still need direct human contact and serendipitous interaction, and OST excels at this.  Indeed recent research at MIT’s Media Lab has shown that face to face communication far exceeds video-conferencing or email in enhancing team performance, so direct interaction will increasingly neeed to supplement digitalisation.  It is for these more organisation types or modes of operation that new applications for OST will emerge, all involving larger numbers of people from across different parts of the organisation coming together and communicating across borders.  Let me list just a few fresh applications of OST:

    • As a tool for bottom-up culture change, exploring new ways of working and interacting, establishing collective values and practices through experimentation and co-creativity
    • For strategy development, adjustment and alignment across the whole organisation (somewhat akin to Hoshin Kanri), with a stronger emphasis on implementation.
    • For R & D product/service design and development, periodic consolidation and synchronisation (possibly combined with ‘big room’ Obeya)
    • As a complex problem-solving tool, involving multiple stakeholders with diverse perspectives and no predictable solutions (a more self-organised version of S. Beer’s cybernetic Syntegrity)
    • As a way for organic organisational reconfiguration (bottom-up re-organisation) to respond to changing circumstances (rewiring team networks)
    • To enable cross-party collaboration, e.g. prototyping with designers/ developers, customers/users and producers/suppliers (horizontal feedback)
    • To create learning organisations through pan-organisational peer-based learning environments which are self-managed and self-regenerating

    Crowd wisdom accuracy james surowieckiFor many, if not most organisations today, a lot of the above may seem obscure, abstract and remote, far from the current reality.  In fact most organisations today are still run in a predict, command and control fashion.  At the same time, however, there is an understanding amongst leaders this needs to change.  Even though little has changed so far, some leaders are talking of an organisational paradigm shift.   Yet many of them have little clue how to go about this.  This may partly be because their leadership style stands in the way of culture change: as Einstein said, “you cannot solve problems with the same solutions that created them”.  Awaiting a generation change is probably not an option.

    My take:  Do not even try!  You cannot plan, command and micro-manage this shift.  Instead let the workers, employees and members of the organisation configure the change through emergence.  Give the organisation a platform for letting this happen.  Stand back, let go and let it happen.  This is exactly where OST can work its wonders.  Whatever emerges is the right thing to emerge.  Leaders should not try to be heroes and do it themselves, rather let the whole workforce authentically engage, experiment and co-create the shift together.  Let Open Space Technology do what it does best.  This is probably the most important application of OST currently needed – as a tool for organisational transformation and paradigm shift.  Let transformation happen. Let open space begin.

     

    See also What is Open Space?

    The Problem With Change Management

    Innovation and Kaizen

    Open Agile Testimonials

     

  • Thurs 20 – Fri 21 August ’15: Deep shift and radical innovation with Open Space

    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.

    Also: Fri 12 June 1 day, London, Unleash The People With Open Space
    Tue 21 July, unConference: Shift – Why aren’t organisations shifting?

    Eventbrite - Deep shift and radical innovation with Open Space

     #OpenSpaceTech

    Why?

    PageLines- Collectiveintelligencegroupinnovationlightbulb.jpgDo 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.

    Eventbrite - Deep shift and radical innovation with Open Space
    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.

    Eventbrite - Deep shift and radical innovation with Open Space

    Please contact us if you would like to hire us as facilitators, consultants or trainers.

    Caterfly Logo slogan urlMartin 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.

    Find out more about Open Space here – What is Open Space?

    Please click on subscribe for low volume training and new articles, and click on events for schedule.

  • SOLE – self organising learning environments

    SOLE – self organising learning environments

    Self Organising Learning Environments… and what it means for the future workplace

    Anyone who has come across TED prize winner Sugata Mitra’s Hole In The Wall computer experiment in India (see videos below) will realise that organisational management is not the only human activity facing a crisis nowadays, but so is education and schooling in its traditional forms. Both management and teaching suffer from the innate habit of its professionals wanting to micro-manage everything, wanting to command and control, indeed trying to control outcomes, rather than letting them emerge. Sugata Mitra calls for creating Self-Organising Learning Environments (SOLE), and his experiments have shown some surprising results.

    In SOLE “teachers” should not supply answers, but raise questions instead. It is not about making learning happen, but letting it happen. Too often the urge is for us to interfere. As Eton former headmaster Tony Little has said, not enough attention is paid to learning from peers; contending that what makes a school great is not good teachers, but creating an environment where learning can happen among peers. Peer learning is so much more powerful than is assumed, as the hole in wall experiments have shown; the problem is that this is also worrysome for managers and teachers alike: in SOLE they cannot control it, the learning happens by itself. Managers and teachers alike find it hard to let go.

    A similar self-organising principle takes place in Open Space Technology (commonly Open Space) meetings. Open Space is all about letting conversations happen, rather the making them happen through a controlled or moderated program. There is a marketplace of ideas, people group and regroup in a completely self-organised way and move around freely, thus maximising peer learning, peer problem-solving or peer co-creativity. Open Space merely sets the environment or the right conditions for deep passionate conversations to happen. Those who try to “improve” this seemingly unmanaged process, actually interfere and disrupt the natural self-organising, and all too often poor micro-management and controlling patterns set back in. The biggest challenge in SOLE, Open Space or other self-organising systems is preventing managers, teachers or moderators from interfering – getting them to just let go.

    “You cannot teach a man anything. You can only help him discover it within himself.” Galileo Galilei

    That self-organised peer learning works I can attest through personal experience. In the 1980’s I was working as language project manager / director of studies at Suzuki Motors HQ in Japan for the massive ‘technology transfer’ project, transferring Suzuki’s manufacturing and management skills (what was later termed Lean Manufacturing, Lean Management, or Lean by others) from its plants to partner Canadian company, CAMI Automotive in Ontario. The essence of Lean is that it is not just about the system employed, but just as importantly about the high level of responsibility delegated and trust accorded to those actually doing the work, the ‘workers’ on the shop floor. Our task was to train over 200 shop-floor team leaders in basic English communication skills and training skills, so that they could train 2,000 Canadian workers in those Lean skills (at that time practically no-one in the West knew what Lean was or how it worked). Toyota were also undertaking similar joint-venture projects at the time (e.g. Nummi, Derby) but took a different approach, sending hundreds of their managers across as expatriates to manage the plants. Suzuki did not have the resources to do that, moreover it had undertaken to operate the CAMI plant as a collaborative venture with the Canadian Automotive Union employing local managers right from the start of production, so it was paramount that the transition and training run smoothly.

    The problem was that the Japanese team leaders were highly skilled in the work, but had absolutely no foreign language skills (indeed they had never been abroad) and had essentially been school drop outs, with a clear distaste for formal schooling. The idea that they, at 40 or 50 years old, should suddenly go ‘back to school’ to learn a new language was utterly repulsive to them, and many had threatened to leave the company – they had already ‘given up’ before even starting.  It was clear that any more conventional form of language and cross-cultural training program was out of the question.  That is precisely why we, our company, were brought in at the time, as we had already had plenty of experience successfully running training programs for ‘blue-collar’ workers, particularly at Kobelco.

    “If you want to build a ship, don’t drum up people to collect wood and don’t assign them tasks and work, but rather teach them to long for the endless immensity of the sea.” Antoine de Saint-Exupery

    Our approach was unconventional. Instead of spoon-feeding elements piece by piece, we created a total physical context or environment and relied completely on the power of self-organised peer learning, using approaches like ‘Total Physical Response’, ‘Suggestopedia’ and ‘Structuro Global Audio Visual’ learning. These are all holistic and context driven in nature (which is how babies learn!), much like the computer in the wall. Without going into detail here, it was not what the team leaders had feared, and not only did they have great fun with the approach, they learned so much and quickly from the peer activities, that their attitudes and enthusiasm changed completely, to everyone’s delight.

    The second half of the 6 months program was devoted to developing the supervisors’ technical training skills, in English. Most conventional technical English courses would start by teaching an array of technical expressions and role-playing simulated situations step by step. We did none of that! Our program, called SPEC and developed by David Vale, consisted of an empty room, with walls prepared so that notices, posters, kanban etc could be stuck on them, a corner with a rich resource of source material (technical books, magazines etc, nowadays we would put computers, but they weren’t around in those days and neither was the internet!), and a marketplace of projects. Their job was to prepare their workplace training material in English and practice teaching it (practicing with each other). The only thing we gave them were a few guidelines and framework expressions for doing a presentation or running a training session (they had already learned training meta-language from previous TPR). They had 8 weeks with 4 hours each day together in the same room to get ready.

    Jigsaw puzzle handsEach day we started in a circle (everything we did always started and finished in a circle), and they would start by deciding what areas they each wanted to work on, and posted their information on the marketplace board. They then naturally grouped together according to their needs, they moved around to other groups as they needed to, and they prepared, organised and practiced with and from each other. We instructors did not interfere at all in this self-organising process, nor in the material they were actually working on. It was all entirely driven by them and our only role was as a resource person, answering questions and giving specific cultural feedback when it was requested. It worked beautifully. At the end they achieved their mission. I cannot emphasise enough how powerful self-organised peer learning can be, if the learning is allowed to emerge, rather than coerced (most teaching or training is trainer-led ‘push’ imposition rather than ‘pull’ emergence).

    At the time I had not heard of Open Space Technology (there was no internet), but when I later discovered Open Space I immediately recognized that it was exactly what we had been doing, but instead of in a meeting or conference context, ours was in a classroom learning setting. Instead of 2-3 full days of Open Space, it was 40 half days of SPEC, but fundamentally following the same self-organising peer-driven process. It is also the same self-organising peer-learning principle which plays in SOLE. The biggest challenge for me as the manager at the Suzuki project at the time had not been the initially very reticent learners – once they realised that self-organised peer learning could be fun and rewarding they were absolutely fine. Ironically the biggest challenge was some of the instructors on our own team – we had had to hire highly qualified instructors for image reasons (the clients wanted good bios and qualifications), yet I then had to ‘unteach’ them almost everything they had learned to do as instructors. Some took it up quickly, but others found it very hard indeed to let go and let be.

    I should add the project was highly successful. The subsequent training of the Canadians was so effective that most of the Japanese supervisors were able to return to Japan after just one year instead of the planned two years – the cost savings to Suzuki was enormous compared to the initial training costs. This new ‘bilingual’ team of trainers were then available for new assignments – they were subsequently sent on 2-3 year stints to Hungary, India, Malaysia, Thailand and eventually China, from which we see some of the huge changes from shabby box vehicles to modern cars in the new Skodas, Tatas and Protons. I would like to think that our Open Space / SOLE type of training contributed to the economic rise of Eastern European and Asian economies as a support mechanism, though l think that would probably be stretching it a little bit too far; after all they were all joint efforts. Equally I’m pretty certain it is fair to say that it would be wrong to assume that Open Space or SOLE had no role to play at all.

    The SOLE principle is also the one we are applying to Caterfly. For a transformation program or implementation of new systems to succeed it is imperative that all affected people are invited in to co-decide, co-learn and co-create the change together. This has to be free of manipulation and needs to be seen to be free of vested interest. The self-organising peer-learning nature of Open Space is ideal to start the leaning process, and let emergence work its wonders. Cocooning the coaching period between beginning and end Open Space events sets protective boundaries within which things can be tried out, played with and people can learn from each other. Caterfly is built on the idea of inviting people into the change process, rather than coercing them, and on the self-organising peer learning that emerges. You cannot control the outcome, the only thing you can do is give it some direction by the questions you ask.

    As the brilliant former Wharton Business School professor Russell Ackoff has said (BBC Interview with Peter Day): “Anyone who’s ever taught a course is aware of the fact that the one who learns the most is the teacher. So schools are upside down. The students ought to be teaching. You cannot teach unless you learn. The faculty ought to be learning, that’s what it knows how to do, it doesn’t know how to teach. The old fashioned Roman school house was a room in which student taught student – the teacher was simply a resource to ask for help, not someone who spoke at them, spurning out knowledge. We need to remake schools to be built around learning, instead of around teaching, and that’s a fundamental revision.”

    And so too it should be with management and leadership, I would say. Let’s apply the Open Space of learning and the SOLE of meetings to new leadership and its transformation!

     

    Sugata Mitra SOLE illustration
    Click to enlarge

    Further reading:

    Why coercion doesn’t work

    What is Open Space?

    Experience: Massive collaborative self-organised learning with Theory U

  • What is Open Space?

    What is Open Space?

    Image: Annette Zera: The Law Of Two Feet / Butterflies

    What is ‘Open Space’?

    Open Space Technology, commonly Open Space, is a social technology, a tool for helping people to rally around a shared challenge, with minimum obstacles and maximum efficiency. It is used to organise large meetings, gatherings, conferences, problem solving and summits in which everyone has the opportunity to participate on their own terms.

    Open Space is nothing new. The process was developed by Harrison Owen in the 1980’s and it has been applied countless thousands of times, in at least 135 countries, in a variety of ways, with groups of just a few people to several thousands, from hours to several days, and longer. However, the basic process and principles perhaps reach back into ancient human history.

    Open Space offers a clear framework for allowing us to achieve remarkable things. Open Space embraces complexity and chaos, yet it remains confoundingly simple while enabling creativity and productivity to flourish.

    The results can not only be dramatic, but its effect on participants used to the confines of careful planning, hierarchy, telling others what to do and being told what to do, can be transformative and enriching.

    “Everything the Power of the World does, is done in a circle.”
    Black Elk, in Black Elk Speaks

    Who is it for? What does it do?

    Open space events have many applications. The most obvious one is as an alternative form of a conference – a conference without speakers, where the participants’ heart-felt issues are at the centre of discussion. This form can be applied in a multitude of settings, wherever there is an issue people have a common passion about, in

    • communities
    • political gatherings
    • peace talks
    • neighbourhoods
    • research or
    • specialist areas.

    Open Space is a completely opt-in event, so invitations go out to many people and those passionate about the theme turn up.

    Within organisations Open Space can also be applied for more specific purposes.  Open Space can be used for:

    • product design and development (synchronisation)
    • strategy development, bringing in whole workforce
    • supply-chain issues, coordinating suppliers
    • redesigning the organisation, bottom up
    • innovation and prototyping, including customers
    • complexity problem solving using diverse perspectives
    • collective intelligence letting future emerge
    • inviting an organisational transformation process

    It is this latter application, inviting the relevant workforce to co-create an implementation or a transformation that our Caterfly Open Smart Transformation is concerned with.

    In all case Open Space is a way of inviting a larger number the workforce into the process, thus opening the space for a larger view of things, rather than leaving it to a few select people to manage.  This is particularly important where there are big issues at stake which ignite the passions of many people.  The self-organising aspect of Open Space enables any number of people to be involved efficiently and constructively.

    Open Space Events can be from 1/2 day to several days.  It should be noted, however, they are far more effective and powerful when run over 2 or 3 days.  This is because the first day tends to focus on current and past issues, and after a night’s sleep new ideas and energies are created which means the second and third (action planning) days are far more creative, and make use of the synergies of the minds present.

    How does it work?

    The basic process is counter intuitively straightforward:

    * Clearly define the challenge, and express it in a few words. This is what you are inviting participants to get enthused about.

    Photo: Stanley Park / World Open Space on Open Space 2009
    Photo: Stanley Park / World Open Space on Open Space 2009

    * Everyone sits in a big circle. A facilitator gives some basic instructions, then lets them get on with it.

    * There is no prepared agenda, just a big blank board with available time slots and areas to use. Participants are invited to articulate what they really want to know, share, discuss or work on, and co-create the agenda with whatever sub topics they want.

    * People then work out what seems most important, urgent or interesting to them, and go there. Some people will likely end up either flitting about from discussion to discussion, or getting a cup of tea and serendipitously having just the brain wave or interaction they need right there.

    * Through the event people share what they’ve done, thus building a kind of ‘collective consciousness’ of the whole shebang.

    * Toward the end of the event, everyone comes back together in a big circle and shares what they did, learnt, or what they want to happen next.

    * Usually all participants get an anthology of the summaries of each session, perhaps with a plan of action, or key outcomes.

    * Go home and let go, until the time comes to do something again.

    Turn up if you want to, do what feels important, let others do what they feel is important, let go and allow it to happen in whatever way participants conspire to make happen. 

    The reason it seems to work

    Leaders and facilitators allow people to work it out for themselves and get out of the way. No one is coerced, and no one has to be there. Opt-in participation devolves responsibility to individuals to choose to follow their passion.

    light bulbs sketched on chalkboard Many small ideas make a big oneThere are some basic principles to help people let go of trying to be in control, and embrace what is actually happening. A metaphor would be a surfer, who rather than trying to direct the waves, finds the right place to catch one and ride it.

    There is just one firm rule, known as The Law Of Two Feet, although it is more of a playful hint than strict instruction. The Law says that ‘if you are neither learning nor contributing, it is your duty to find another place to be.’ Rather than choosing a session and being stuck in it or feeling obliged, participants are encouraged to move around, increasing impact and efficiency for the individual, for each sub group, and for the whole.

    Rather than try to solve a problem with just one brain, perhaps the boss or a management team, or trying to engage numerous individuals over a long period of time, Open Space harnesses the creativity and skills of everyone, all at once. What might take a dedicated team many months, gets accelerated over a very short burst, and results in more brilliant solutions that no one could have predicted.

    Organising people is hard work and inefficient. Helping people to organise themselves is surprisingly easy, effective and energising. Meanwhile, it becomes easier for people to really engage, and those voices can be heard which often aren’t.  Open Space works particularly well where there is no known outcome, with very complex issues and where any form of pre-planning is futile as letting the future emerge rather than trying to control is essential.

    Relax nothing is under controlA part of how Open Space came to be discovered, was Harrison Owen’s experience while co-organising a conference. It took a lot of effort. People showed up, and sat passively in rows of chairs listening to experts. But when the coffee breaks came, the event came alive, buzzing with spontaneous conversation. The coffee break was the best bit. Open Space is an attempt to turn the entire experience into something like the coffee break. Some people started thinking of it as the opposite of a conference, and now the term unConference has become more common.

    Lastly, Open Space events can also be significantly greener, utilising human resources more than material. I often refer to them as ‘compostable conferences.’

    And that’s it.

    “There is no order without chaos.”
    Harrison Owen at TEDx, Dancing with Shiva: Are we working too hard? 

    Further reading and Videos:

    Wikipedia: Open Space Technology

    Harrison Owen’s Brief History of Open Space

    Open Space World resources

    How Caterfly is pioneering Open Space for Innovation and Kaizen or using it in organisations to invite cultural transformation

    Caterfly’s model is based on Daniel Mezick’s innovative Prime/OS™ model, using Open Space to adopt Agile working and more

    Chris Corrigan article, on using Open Space to solve complex problems

    Huffington Post Business article, Opening The Space For Innovation

    Martin Grimshaw’s Open Space Facilitator’s Checklist

    Open Space Facilitators around the world: Open Space World Map

    A large collection of video samples in Evocative Open Space Videos, especially the following 3 short videos give a good overview of what Open Space is and what it looks like in action:

  • Why coercion doesn’t work

    Why coercion doesn’t work

    Tuesday 21 July 15, Victoria, London: Shift, a participant-led Open Space event
    Why aren’t organisations shifting? www.events.caterfly.co.uk

    “People don’t resist change, they resist being changed.” Peter Senge

    As any parent knows, as soon as a child starts to develop a sense of identity, they start to assert their boundaries and free will by saying No.

    Human nature being what it is, we have an innate hardwired resistance to change and to being told what to do, that starts as children and generally lingers from thereon. Attempts to creatively and positively work with this phenomenon can be seen in alternative education, where teaching at pupils is replaced by self-led learning, encouraging autonomy and curiosity.

    Achieving Buy-in

    In the workplace getting others to do what is wanted of them, and getting them to engage, care and want it, is known as ‘achieving buy-in.’ It is the classic and everyday challenge faced by leadership and management trying to get staff to do stuff, and at its worst it feels like coercion. Attempts to lead organisational change are often met with cultural inertia.

    Throwing Unconscious Spanners

    I remember sitting in a team meeting many years ago and witnessing something that led to a profound insight that has stayed with me ever since. A member of staff, arms crossed and a look of consternation on her face, responded to the manager with something like, ‘Well, I never did really agree with that strategy we initiated fours ago.’

    That strategy was the manager’s, introduced upon staff who all nodded along and set about it with varying degrees of compliance, enthusiasm, disgruntlement or sabotage depending on how much they quietly thought it was a good or bad idea. That strategy probably worked to some extent without really catching fire, despite staff being paid to do what they are told and annual performance appraisals.

    I have seen this pattern repeated over and over. In the workplace, we commonly consciously or unconsciously throw spanners in the works of someone else’s well laid plan.

    Or as a friend told me recently, “I got an F in GCSE electronics because my project was made entirely of wood.” Which neatly illustrates to me the fallacy and depressing failings of coercive education.

    Consent is sexy, as they say

    “The ultimate weapon has always existed. Every man, every woman, and every child owns it. It’s the ability to say No and take the consequences.” It is what distinguishes us from robots.
    Hagbard Celine, The Illuminatus! Triology, Robert Shea and Robert Anton Wilson. 

    Rather than attempting to ‘achieve buy-in’, why not allow people to solve problems and draw up their own action plans? People tend to find solutions that they have helped to co-create more exciting, and once genuine or even enthusiastic consent has been reached, tend to set about the task with gusto. Participation doesn’t just work, it is more effective in the long run, and if harnessed well then multiple view points can lead to smarter decisions. Allowing people to set their own pace and write their own story, helps to dissolve change fatigue so common in organisations, where staff might be under a constant barrage of brilliant new ideas, at the mercy of merry-go-round leadership and consultants.

    Barriers and the Bottom-up Manifesto

    There are barriers too. We are habituated into patterns of behaviour that were often set early in life and reinforced in school and work for all but the more maverick and rebellious of us. We’re used to being told what to do. Working stuff out for ourselves can feel daunting and unusual. We tend not to be brilliant at collaborative decision making, and too often remain stuck in the competitive need to win, rather than seek the win-win. Tools that encourage self-organisation and ownership bring out the better in us, but also bring out the rest in us. Over time behaviour shifts, but habits are notoriously persistent.

    Self-propelled learning and problem solving also means that managers need to learn to let go of control, which can also be discomforting and even threatening. Positive results and an enthused workforce, however, soon illustrate the benefits of new approaches. Rather than well-intentioned directives cascading down the hierarchy to be met with indifference or the feigned relish of the easily replaced, how about asking staff to collaborate with leaders to find pathways that finally utilise their long ignored insight? Why not try introducing some bottom-up alongside the old top-down?

    Leaders and managers might just discover that the expertise they seek was hiding under their noses all along.

     

    See also: The Problem With Change Management

    Beyond unConferencing: New Uses of Open Space

  • Kaizen – rejuvenating your organisation

    You may also like our short piece: What is Kaizen? and our explanation of how Caterfly is pioneering the combination of Open Space with Kaizen: Innovation and Kaizen

    “A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.” (Lao Tsu)

    What does Kaizen mean?

    Kaizen means different things to different people. Some see Kaizen as part of the Toyota Production System, or the essence of Lean. Some have positioned Kaizen as the umbrella concept of Lean or Six Sigma. Others view it merely as a set of techniques or practices. Meanwhile, it is also seen as a leadership style or culture. Toyota see it as the “soul of the company”. To me Kaizen is a pan-organisational attitude and questioning mind-set, which fosters co-creative betterment.

    Source: Taivara

    Kaizen is fundamentally very simple. It’s nothing more than everyone (in an organisation) asking themselves a single question every day, everywhere they work: “What small step can I take to improve …. (whatever they are working on)?” The emphasis is on small, i.e. it is easy and immediate to implement. For example if you want to lose weight, reducing one lump of sugar in your coffee would be a small ‘doable’ step – as opposed to the big step of going on a full 2-month cruel diet. The Kaizen mind-set is so easy to explain, yet difficult to apply in many corporate settings.

    Kaizen is normally translated as ‘continuous improvement’, and indeed that is its effect, continuously improving the workplace, product, processes and so on, little by little. The literal translation of ‘kai’-‘zen’ is ‘good change’ (kai, kaeru = change; zen, yoshi = good), or change for the better. Indeed, strictly speaking the word Kaizen does not actually say anything about small or continuous. Masaaki Imai, who initially introduced Kaizen (as applied in Japanese companies) to the West further adds: Good change “by Everybody, Everyday, Everywhere” – and this is crucial, just little incremental steps but done by everyone regularly (continuously).

    Kaizen is not just about improving products or services; it is also about constantly improving processes (operations, standards, office workflow, production, efficiency, sustainability…..), indeed anything that may speed up, embellish, eliminate waste, simplify, reduce a step, remove toxins, fool-proof a process and so on. Kaizen is particularly useful in reducing human mistakes in routine work, by considering small steps that would prevent human errors recurring.

    We all sometimes do some simple Kaizen without knowing it, for instance in the kitchen we may move things around to make it easier to cook. Indeed we often treat our homes with a kaizen mentality in a way we don’t in the workplace. Where many people work in the same place, however, some form of standardisation is required; we cannot implement ideas willy nilly, it needs the consent of all affected. In a Kaizen workplace small Kaizen meetings are encouraged to consent to and implement these small changes – which are then also jointly celebrated, and periodically reviewed.

    “Take the first step in faith; you don’t have to see the whole staircase. Just take the first step.” Martin L. King

    Kaizen culture

    Organisationally Kaizen is about culture, a ‘Kaizen culture’. Kaizen has more to do with human encouragement and development (‘hitotsukuri’) than with improving the service or product of the organisation (‘monotsukuri’). It represents personal development, but not in the abstract, rather it is totally connected to the work being done. Put the other way round, although Kaizen is deeply connected to the workplace, its products and processes, it fundamentally celebrates the human side, the personal and professional development, of all the organisation’s employees.

    “Don’t look with your eyes, look with your feet. Don’t think with your head, think with your hands.“ Taiichi Ohno

    Tim Mojonnier

    Kaizen encourages improvements by everyone, everywhere, all the time. Everyone is involved in Kaizen activities, from the top of a company (role model) to the office or shop floor, where the work is done. A Kaizen culture forces managers to actively encourage small improvements, to listen to ideas, and to enable them to be implemented. Even where there is no immediate financial gain, if it improves the working environment, it helps create happy employees, increased motivation and more engagement, which in the long run are more productive. Everyone does Kaizen – a manager’s job is to create conditions so that Kaizen can happen, an innovation platform – absolutely everyone at all levels and stations is encouraged to think autonomously and creatively.

    This means all employees are listened to, appreciated and respected (and this ties in well with the Gemba philosophy of ‘go see, ask why and respect’). Contrast this to organisations where views of subordinates are ignored, with a “that’s not your job” or “we’re already taking care of that”, or even if they are heard, managers tend to then step in and interfere or micro-manage; this in turn irks staff and engenders an attitude of ‘why bother?’ or ‘whatever!…..’. Kaizen is practiced at every level of organisation, all are involved – a structured yet liberating approach.

    “A leader must lower himself like water and give credit to his subordinates. If he wants to take credit, they will leave him soon. If a leader frequently interferes with subordinates, they will protest. A leader’s job is to create an atmosphere in which they want to do (work) for themselves with enthusiasm and can fulfil their potential.” Lao Tzu, Tao Te Ching.

    Kaizen & innovation

    Kaizen is often contrasted to Innovation – representing the big steps, the big leaps, the mega ideas. Innovation is more dramatic and produces spectacular improvements (though not necessarily sustainable). Innovation and Kaizen can be compared to the hare and the tortoise, the hare being innovation running fast with big leaps, the tortoise little steps one step at a time. Both are required. Kaizen takes a far more long-term view, there are no immediate results and so it cannot be tied to performance targets. For that reason Kaizen is often ignored in the West. But like compound interest, invisible to begin with, the benefits are enormous in the long run.

    “Kaizen is like a hotbed that nurtures small and ongoing changes, while innovation is like magma that appears in abrupt eruptions from time to time.” Masaaki Imai

    Source: Masaaki Imai / Ofi Sofyan Gumelar
    Source: Masaaki Imai / Ofi Sofyan Gumelar

    Both Kaizen and Innovation must prevail: while it is imperative that everyone is involved in small incremental Kaizen activities to create a change-ready platform, sometimes outright disruptive innovation, out-of-the-box thinking, is also needed to avoid the situation of constantly improving the wrong things, e.g. out of date products – for example continuing to refine the fax machine is largely going to be futile. There is a potential danger to watch out for where Kaizen ends up stifling innovation – radicalism is sometimes also needed. Kaizen works well for performance-improving innovations (product upgrades) and efficiency innovations, whereas out of the box innovations are better suited to market-creating innovations.

    Innovation gurus sometimes argue that management should not be ‘bogged down’ by ‘petty’ minutiae of Kaizen. But there is a difference between taking an interest in other people’s ideas and micro-controlling them – Kaizen is about encouraging people to have ideas and take initiative independently in the context of the organisation’s aims, it’s not about managing those ideas top down! Yes Kaizen may be the petty cash, while innovation are the big notes. However petty cash is the bread and butter of innovation and if ignored or belittled, one risks stifling innovation, too.

    The issue is not about whether it is innovation OR Kaizen. BOTH should co-exist and complement each other. Kaizen and innovation are different sides of the same coin. It is not one or the other, both should be applied in a complementary way.   While innovation can achieve big leaps, what Kaizen does well is enable a plethora of small stress-free improvements in all areas of an organisation by all employees to emerge, and this sustains continuity and motivation of the whole workforce.

    Does Kaizen work outside of Lean?

    Kaizen appears to be difficult to implement in the West. We are trained to think in big steps, with big goals and big ideas. As managers we have to leave our mark or legacy, or so we think. Little steps are often not taken seriously, especially in organisational settings. This contrasts completely to the Asian spirit, coming from a Taoist / Confucian philosophy, as expressed in the saying:

    “A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.” Lao Tsu

    It is somewhat ironic then that Kaizen as applied in organisations was first articulated by the American W. Edwards Deming. He asked Japanese workers to think every day ‘what is one small step you can do to improve the product or process?’ – Deming was talking to the right people, they valued the small tortoise-like approach (whereas his ideas were considered largely irrelevant in America). The Kaizen questioning mind found a natural home and popularity in Japan.

    Kaizen later spread to the West via Toyota’s successful Toyota Production System (TPS), where it was implemented as part of Lean Management practice. Actually Kaizen is independent of Lean. Because of its association with Lean, however, it has not really found such a foothold in the West outside of Lean as one might expect. Nevertheless, Kaizen can be applied to any form of organisational platform, whether Lean, Agile, Conscious, sustainable or Sociocratic, as well as outside work in healthcare, family and self-development.

    “Grain by grain, a loaf. Stone upon stone, a palace.” (George Bernard Shaw)

    The tools

    So, what small step can you take to improve your product, your process, your life, your health, your wealth, your relationships, your ….? Kaizen applies both within work, organisations and personally in life. Coupled with Lean, however, Kaizen employs the same tools as for problem-solving, like the 7 quality tools, PDCA, 5-whys, 5-Ss (visual management), A3-thinking and Horenso (bottom up communication) etc. In larger organisations dedicated Kaizen teams are there to support the implementation of Kaizen ideas (to build little jigs etc.). But the most fundamental tool is the daily discipline, like exercising daily for 5 minutes, of simply asking the question what little steps can you take to improve the work – and this is encouraged by both superiors and peers.

    “Progress is impossible without the ability to admit mistakes.” Masaaki Imai

    Masaaki Imai / Kaizen Inst. India

    Because Kaizen ideas are small steps, they can be tried out, experimented with and further improved – and if in the end they don’t work as expected they can be dropped, all done in a playful tone. Experimentation is important: mistakes are not only allowed and unpunished, they are actively encouraged in a spirit of trying things out. Even where more experienced staff can see juniors, for instance, making errors, their job is not to stop them – on the contrary people only learn from their mistakes, so it’s important to let them ‘fail’, in the spirit of learning. Their only job is to contain the scale of the error, to avert major harm. In the Kaizen spirit of keeping things small, this is simple.

    Little steps are easy to enact and they eliminate fear (which is the enemy of creativity). Kaizen is well aligned to the plasticity of the brain, with multiple cells each doing a bit: neurologists call it mind sculpture. Asking the simple question of ‘what one small thing can I do to improve the work?’ trains the cortex in looking for solutions rather than blame. This promotes collaboration, team spirit, and a positive attitude. Consider the difference between ‘what little step can you think of to improve your workplace’ with ‘what major contribution can you make to improve the bottom line of company’ – the latter being fear inducing.

    “Confront the difficult while it is still easy. Accomplish the great tasks by a series of small acts” (Tao Tai Ching)

    Hurdles to Kaizen

    So why is Kaizen so difficult to implement in the West? Kaizen requires self-esteem (to overcome the urge to want to achieve mega-results by yesterday), optimism (belief that it will contribute to something larger at some point) and a common vision or purpose for Kaizen take you to. You cannot control the size of the result by controlling the size of the step – yet that is precisely what many managers try to do. Kaizen is possibly not suited to a command and control culture or a top-down business improvement culture; however, times are changing, and as leadership evolves and becomes increasingly distributed, so Kaizen will find a more natural home here too.

    Source: Art Of Work blog
    Source: Art Of Work blog

    Kaizen has often failed in the past, because:

    a) it was seen as a short term project, rather than a long-term platform, and thus dropped before it bore fruit,

    b) targets and KPIs were overemphasised, reflecting fear-inducing short-termism which stifled the longer-term benefits, and

    c) management only paid lip service to Kaizen, thus starving its potential.

    Kaizen needs to be supported at all level to succeed. Kaizen is a mind-set, and a mind-set cannot be imposed or mandated. But it can and should be encouraged and nurtured, and given the freedom to flourish.

    Kaizen and innovation, while different, are not exclusive – on the contrary they should work hand in glove. Everyone does small steps regularly, ideas build up on ideas with a compound interest effect, and innovation grows exponentially. Some ideas may grow large, but one cannot predict which idea might lead to a major breakthrough. Many big innovations actually did not come about by a ‘mega-aha’ in one leap; more often A has idea, this sparks a new idea in B, which in turn sparks idea in C, and all of sudden the accumulative effect becomes mega – even if the original idea A that set the chain off wasn’t all that good – nevertheless if A had not been allowed to linger, the subsequent mega idea might never have come about. So all Kaizen ideas initially should be treated equivalently.

    “Kaizen… is the key to Japanese competitive success.” Masaaki Imai

    When to apply Kaizen?

    So, when should Kaizen be applied? All the time of course. By everyone, everywhere. But Kaizen is also particularly useful after a failed innovation (to break out of ‘failure’ mode, back to basics), as well as after a successful innovation or transformation (to sustain its momentum and make further improvements on it – and to prevent stagnation or hubris). This is why Caterfly proposes applying Kaizen as the third phase of an implementation or change program (agile, sociocracy, EMS/SMS), making innovation strategy.

    Although Kaizen was formulated in Lean, as a philosophy it can be applied to life, family, healthcare etc., in all kinds of contexts. This is why I prefer to treat Kaizen separately from Lean, as a pan-organisational attitude of small ongoing innovations. Yes, Lean needs Kaizen, but Kaizen does not need Lean. I would argue that a Kaizen culture, however counter-intuitive Kaizen itself may appear for managers to implement, may be a better way to achieve change, engagement or innovation in an organisation, than many other interventions aimed directly at ‘change’, ‘engagement’ or ‘innovation’.

    Kaizen opens up communication, and enables an organisation to become more responsive and adaptable to a changing world. Kaizen is a platform for continuous change and improvement, change towards a better emergent future. It is a platform for engagement, putting the organisation in the right mind-set to swim swiftly in the natural flow of change.

    “Small is smart” Soichiro Honda