Open Space Stories

• In 1991, US West used OST for a 3-day, 175-person labor-management summit meeting to resolve escalating contract conflicts, avert a major strike, recover from a damaging flood, and prepare themselves for telecom mergers and the buildout of the internet. Labor pushed for the meeting, but both sides were well-served by the results.
• AT&T fast-tracked 10-months of design and planning work into ONE 2-day contractor summit when they were offered the opportunity to build their pavillion in the center of the 1996 Olympic Village in Atlanta. Twenty-five contractors came into the meeting with lots of difficult history and a blank page to design from. They produced a superb design, a full set of working drawings, and managed to have quite a bit of fun in the process.
• Some years ago, TransNet?, the national transportation company of South Africa used OST to help build community connections and lay the groundwork for cooperative business activities in the midst of post-apartheid confusion. One meeting brought 300 senior transportation executives together. Another gathered 80 community choir leaders.
• At a time of similarly-intense confusion and conflict, peace activists and organizers in Jerusalem and Palestine are working together to bring people together in Open Space.
• Rockport Shoes held a 3-day, 300-person company-wide strategy conference in one of their warehouses and stumbled onto a couple of brand new product lines that netted $18 million in their first year of sales. The idea came from the security guard and made the previously quite skeptical CFO very happy.
• The Agile Software and Extreme Programming movement is encouraging a whole new way of software development that looks very much like OST. The marketplace wall becomes a table top with 3x5 cards, breakout groups become pairs of programmers, and morning and evening news sessions become 'stand-up' meetings between programming iterations. This new approach delivers working software every two weeks instead of every two years!
• Wesley Urban Ministries in Hamilton, Ontario, adopted OST as the basis for organizing and managing their whole, 100-person staff. Over the next 3 years, they increased services delivered by 50%, with no added resources. On top of that, they had turnover of exactly 0%, in an environment known for high stress and burnout.
• In one of many OST events at Boeing, engineers used OST to streamline operations and simplify communications across the myriad groups responsible for designing and building pressurized airplane doors. The conference was run simultaneously in Seattle and Wichita, it's two major door-assembly sites. Another conference brought the full array of human resources functions together to synergize efforts on "people issues."
• In Racine, Wisconsin, 35 young people (ages 12-20) gathered for one 4-hour, afterschool conference in Open Space. As a result of that meeting they initiated a youth art newsletter, a downtown, lakefront skateboarding park, and the largest YMCA Earth Service Corps chapter in the country. They called themselves 'Youth Action,' used OST at all their meetings, and eventually ended up introducing OST to young leaders from all over the USA.
• In the midst of post-911 budget cuts and other major change issues, Peoria School District 150 held a 3-evening, 200-person summit meeting to create a community-wide vision and set new priorities for revitalizing their inner-city schools. The meeting was well-covered by local broadcast and print media, the 100-page proceedings was publicly available via the District's website, and the top priorities identified on the third evening became the working agenda for their new superintendent and school board.
• The school district in Fairbanks, Alaska (covering an area the size of the entire state of Connecticut) held a 2-day, 250-person conference on 'Becoming a Peacemaker.' Half the participants were students in the middle and high schools (ages 13-18) and all participants had some experience with mediation and conflict resolution. The kids did exceptionally well in Open Space and one high school student led a series of four breakout sessions to create an entire suicide prevention program for the middle school students. The statewide suicide prevention hotline was up and running within weeks of the conference.
• The 'Peacemakers' conference in Fairbanks was followed by a 2-day OST training and practice workshop, attended by about 60 youth and adults. Six months later, they reported that they were holding 1-3 OST meetings per week, in and around F airbanks.
• At Ridgeview Medical Center in Minnesota, a physician administrator has been leading a series of OST meetings, attracting 30-50 people to each session, in order to catalyze and support a hospital-wide, cultural and operational shift to 'patient-centered care.' The series started with one meeting organized to find 50 days of working cash.
• One year after it's founding, The Crossroads Church, in Kansas City, Missouri, invited their entire congregation into Open Space in order to establish strategic direction and set operational priorities for the coming year. They now run an annual 'direction-setting' retreat which is attended by almost all parishoners and in which they dissolve, review, re-establish and re-populate their entire operating committee structure.

These "Open Space" Stories are courtesy of  Open Space World, an online wiki of Open Space resources.