Open Space has been used extensively throughout the world, with enormous success. It was developed by Harrison Owen as a result of his experience in designing and delivering large conferences and observing people’s behaviour and the quality of their interactions at different times in the conference or workshop, plus his research and observations around the high effectiveness and motivation of self-organising, self-managing villages, groups and teams.
One of its strengths is its ability to unite very diverse groups and it thrives where there is conflict and/ or confusion or uncertainty. It is highly effective in moving people forward in organisations where there have already been major changes and where nobody yet knows the answer.
There is a broad theme for the workshop and a number of principles which are introduced at the beginning, to enable total empowerment and ownership. There is ideally a senior sponsor, whose role it is not to lead or influence all the discussions at the outset (although they may very well nominate particular discussion topics of their own), but whose role it is to set the tone of genuine empowerment, inclusion and importance of everyone’s views and contribution.
The two core concepts are passion (for the theme or parts of the theme) and responsibility. There is only ever one facilitator, no matter what the size of the group and the group members themselves co-creates their own agenda, conduct their own discussions, with several normally going on at any one time, take responsibility for capturing the discussions themselves, determine their own priorities towards the end of the event and create their own action plan.
It always seems to work and often unleashes tremendous enthusiasm and commitment, with far more being achieved far quicker than would be the norm because members of the group naturally volunteer to take their own areas of particular interest forward, along with other, interested people.