Second Example: Large Scale events.

OK, large process. I call this “table scenarios”. Its a way to set up and legitimate a longer term planning and change process.

Imagine that we have a day with the top 200 plus 100 as a few slices to the front lines (its important for the group to realize how much status does not impact on performance in the scenarios).

Preliminaries. Meet with the top management team. Get their support for this day being the first step in a scenario - strategy - organization restructuring (if necessary) - infrastructure process. Also make sure to find out what other groups are meeting on futures, planning departments, staff associations, whatever. They need to be recognized, and if possible met with, so they don't feel bypassed, but enhanced. Often it takes time to discover these groups. At first the senior managers will "forget" that there are any.

Scene: people arrive at 8:30 for coffee and continental breakfast, seat themselves at round tables of eight throughout a large ballroom or equivalent (for three hundred that is close to 40 tables. This process seems to scale well. I've done it with as few as three tables - six people each, total 18, to 300). A few staff people can urge them towards the front tables, and make sure the tables are full, and this gives a fairly good mix without people being able to group in normal work groups.

I have the president or CEO open with a few words about "This is the beginning of a new approach to planning and thinking about our future. We will use the output of the day as input to [describes in a few sentences an architecture agreed upon with the management team. It can be fairly vague, to be filled in later.] I look forward to the day.

Facilitator: (speaking to whole group from podium, microphone). OK. Take a piece of paper and write on it the two most important events in your personal life, and the two most important events in you career life. (note here in OD97: no other introduction here. The craft of this is important. Ask me questions about it in responses here)….now put them in chronological order. (takes four minutes)(during this, people keep looking at me).

OK, now read them around the table to each other. Treat it as a listening exercise, just take it in, no comments, no questions. If you have written something you don't want to share, jus change it (this tells them that they control their presentation. Never have to do this again) (takes about 8 minutes). (during this people focus goes off me and onto the group).(the purpose of this part is to dissolve the organization and their roles in it, and we end up with a group of compassionate human beings bathed in the complexity of human lives.)

OK, now turn the paper over and write down some major event or trend you think will have a major impact on society. (two minutes). Now, read them around the table to each other. (about ten minutes, I have to watch closely and maybe push the last few groups with "two more minutes".

OK, now here comes the hard part where you really work. Each table should chose three of the eight events, assume that they have happened, and write a story of how the organization responds over the next three years. Put it on a flip chart sheet (several are flat on each able, along with a handful of colored markers) and be prepared to present it to the group in 45 minutes.

(there may be questions that indicate that the table has  missed that the events have already happened and that its one story about a response.).

(They always self organize. I give no instructions. )

At the end of forty five minutes I start putting table numbers up with postits on the wall behind the podium large enough to be seen. I have always three numbers up (chosen in random order). This is enough warning for them to get themselves to the front without my having to tell them, but not so much lead time they can keep working at the table knowing they have the time.) "When you are done tape your sheets to the wall starting over here. . and finishing over there, so we surround the room when we are done. "

They almost always spontaneously take about five minutes. Its possible to do about 20 tables by noon. That's enough. Just tell the others to put up their sheets.

When this is done, the group will be amazed at the quality of future thinking, the relevance of the stories to the organization, and management will be awed by how ready people are to recognize there is a disconnect between present operations and future needs. A new social contract is present in the room.

They go to lunch.

When they come back, the tables are gone, and we have a circle, or several concentric circles, depending on number of people, and do a standard open space, around the question "given the morning, what are the issues and opportunities for the organization?" There is time for three short sessions and a return to the circle (I am assuming you know how open spaces are run, if not, ask) Each group should have a reporter and suggest next steps for their topics.

The reporters are responsible for entering their notes as an item in a conference that becomes (part of) the implementation space going forward over the net few months, in a way agreed upon with the top management team. The management team in turn agrees to use the output of the day as the basis, the reference point, for future scenarios work and planning.

I worked on integrating open space, scenario, search (I learned it in the Fred/Marilyn Emory version), and motivated by the RTSC stuff. Using the scenarios gets at where people are smart, and it brings in heart and critical awareness. At lunch as I write this I sat with a group of business people who talked a bit stupid about their company, but get them on what might be the future of their stock portfolio and they get real smart about a huge range of factors.

I've also been concerned about how to give clues to a group prior to open space that more is at stake and some apparently closed boundaries are actually open. the scenarios seems to help do it. (I can argue the other side, that the purity of open space saves time, but this is my current choice of the most efficacious way to legitimate and start a process that can be implemented.)