Options Place (Open Space Technology)

Liberate inherent action and leadership in groups of any Ssze

Five Structural Elements

1. Structuring Invitation

What burning questions or key topics do you want to explore within our theme? Let’s build an agenda together.”

2. Space and Materials

• An open wall with a large blank agenda, called a Breakout Board
• Chairs arranged in small groups around the room, one station per session in each round. [Breakout rooms for each session.]
• Sticky notes and flip charts for each station [visual collaboration space with digital sticky notes].
• Microphones for a large group.
• Simple Rules for Options Place to display.
• Preparing the Breakout Board: Estimate that three in ten participants will post a session (e.g., there will be about fifteen sessions for fifty participants). Include enough slots to accommodate one to three rounds of concurrent sessions, estimating fifteen minutes per session with two-minute transitions in between.
• [Preparing the Breakout Rooms: The number of breakout rooms will depend on the number of topics and rounds. For example, if a group generates fifteen topics, set up eight rooms for the first round and eight rooms for the second round. Label them with the session names.]
  

3. Participation Distribution

• Roles include host [tech host], session leaders, and participants.
• Minimum group size is ten.
• Everyone is invited and has an equal opportunity to contribute.
• The “Law of Two Feet” governs the participation of all attendees in the various sessions. It says: “Go and attend whichever session you want, but if you find yourself in a session where you are not learning or contributing, use your two feet!”

4. Group Configuration

• Small groups
• Whole group
• Groups of various sizes self-organised around agenda topics

5. Steps and Time Allocation (see the image uploaded in Attachments!)

Intro: Share the structuring invitation. Establish a purpose, theme, or shared challenge for the meeting. (1 min.)

Create the Agenda: Participants create an agenda for X rounds of sessions that are Y minutes long. To propose a session, they write the session title and their name on a sticky note and place it on the Breakout Board. (5–20 min.)

Individual Agendas: Participants choose which sessions to attend, following Simple Rule 1: If you find yourself in a session where you are not learning or contributing, go somewhere else! Session leaders prepare their stations by writing the name of their session, their name, and the LS they will use on a flipchart. Encourage everyone to jot down important notes, next steps, and key recommendations or actions during the sessions. (5 min.)

Attend Sessions: Participants move to their first session. Signal when it is time to move to the next session. (one to three sessions of ~15 min. each; 32–50 min. total).

All-Together Sharing: Everyone returns to plenary. A few participants debrief on the structure and share notes and next steps from the sessions. (10 min.)

Taking it online

Options Place works online with no major adjustments. Allow participants to choose their own breakout rooms. If self-selection isn’t an option, a tech host can manually assign participants.

Why? Purposes

• Generate action and build energy, commitment, and shared leadership
• Address intractable problems or conflicts by unleashing self-organization
• Make sure that ALL of the issues that are most important to the participants are raised, included in the agenda, and addressed
• Make it possible for participants to take responsibility for tackling the issues that they care about and for what does or doesn’t happen

Tips and Traps

• To get started, we recommend reading Open Space Technology: A User’s Guide by the founder of Open Space, Harrison Owen. All the elements to try Options Place (Open Space) for the first time are included and described very clearly.
• A compelling challenge and attractive invitation are key requirements.
• Write up the entire proceedings in a single document, completed and distributed/shared immediately during the meeting.
• The facilitator should introduce the Law of Two Feet, Four Principles, and the mechanics of Open Space in a seriously entertaining fashion.
• As the facilitator, notice when you form a judgment (about what is right or wrong) or an idea about how you can help, then “let it go”: do one less thing!
• A meeting without the Law of Two Feet—namely, one where the agenda is created by the participants but people are not free to attend the session of their choice—is NOT Open Space!

Riffs and Variations

• Reopen the Breakout Board for a second round or schedule longer rounds for deeper work.
• For small groups, try the “Lean Coffee” method: cover multiple topics altogether in fast-paced, seven- to ten-minute sessions.
• String together with Celebrity Interview, Appreciative Interviews, and/or TRIZ before you start Open Space and with 25/10 Crowd Sourcing after closing.
• Other forms of Open Space are called unconferences and BarCamps.

Examples

• For management meetings of all stripes
• Read “Turning a Business Around” in Part Three: Stories from the Field. Alison Joslyn launched a business transformation by inviting all employees to a three-day Open Space meeting.
• Read “Inventing Future Health-Care Practice” in Part Three. Chris McCarthy uses Open Space to set direction for collaboration among the creative members of the Innovation Learning Network.
• Immediately after a merger, for bringing together all the employees of both companies to shape next steps and take action together.
• To share IT innovation prototypes and unleash collaborative action among widely distributed grantees.
  

Optional String

Develop ideas for sessions with 25/10 Crowd Sourcing and follow up with Purpose-to-Practice.

Attribution:

Options Place designed to fit in the Liberating Structures repertoire by Nancy White and Keith McCandless. Dig deeper by exploring Open Space Technology created by Harrison Owen, and Lean Coffee by Jim Benson and Jeremy Lightsmith.

Source: Liberating Structures