124 THE CREATIVE INVESTMENT TEAM
days) consists of creating an agenda of topics, all of which relate
to the general theme, and scheduling times for the topics to be
discussed. The people who originally suggested the topic are asked
to be the conveners of that session, which means that they take
notes and provide a summary report of what ideas were discussed
and any action steps decided on.
Does it work? (A good left-brained question!)
I asked this question of Harrison Owen when I met him in the
spring of 1998. He was conducting a training for Open Space
facilitators at St. Mary’s Retreat Center in Mundelein, Illinois. I
found him walking in the woods, smoking a cigarette, staring at a
buck a few hundred yards away. When I spoke to Harrison, the
buck looked up and gracefully bounded out of view.
“So, are there any success stories from Open Space events?” I
asked, wearing my skeptic’s hat.
“Depends how you define success,” he said. This is a typical
response from an NFP personality. Sometimes I think “NFP” stands
for “No Firm Positions.” Other times, I’m convinced it stands for
“Not for Profit.” Either way, Open Space has been used for many
purposes, from corporate initiatives to the reorganization of a major
religious denomination. But I was interested in the kind of success
that lions could relate to.
“Corporate success. Getting the job done efficiently and saving
money,” I answered.
“Sure,” he said, finishing his cigarette and tossing it aside. “Coca
Cola at the 1996 Olympics in Atlanta. They spent several months
constructing their exhibit booth, which would entertain about 5,000
people each day. Then the Olympic committee saw it and praised
it so highly that they asked Coke to move it to center stage. The
problem for Coke was that it had taken them over six months to
design and build the booth. And at this point, there were only about
eight weeks before the Olympics. So, the booth that was built over
a period of months to host 5,000 people, now had to be redesigned
and rebuilt for ten times that number of people in less time. The14-25 ware 124 1/19/01, 1:13 PM