Guiding Principles and One Law
In his User's Guide, Harrison Owen has articulated "the principles" and "one law" that are typically quoted and briefly explained during the opening briefing of an Open Space meeting. These explanations describe rather than control the process of the meeting. The principles and Owen's explanations are:
- Whoever comes is the right people ...reminds participants that they don't need the CEO and 100 people to get something done, you need people who care. And, absent the direction or control exerted in a traditional meeting, that's who shows up in the various breakout sessions of an Open Space meeting.
- Whenever it starts is the right time ...reminds participants that "spirit and creativity do not run on the clock."
- Wherever it happens is the right place ...reminds participants that space is opening everywhere all the time. Please be conscious and aware. – Tahrir Square is one famous example. (Wherever is the new one, just added)
- Whatever happens is the only thing that could have ...reminds participants that once something has happened, it's done—and no amount of fretting, complaining or otherwise rehashing can change that. Move on.
- When it's over, it's over ...reminds participants that we never know how long it will take to resolve an issue, once raised, but that whenever the issue or work or conversation is finished, move on to the next thing. Don't keep rehashing just because there's 30 minutes left in the session. Do the work, not the time.
Read more about this topic: Open-space Technology
Famous quotes containing the words guiding principles, guiding, principles and/or law:
“For the child whose impulsiveness is indulged, who retains his primitive-discharge mechanisms, is not only an ill-behaved child but a child whose intellectual development is slowed down. No matter how well he is endowed intellectually, if direct action and immediate gratification are the guiding principles of his behavior, there will be less incentive to develop the higher mental processes, to reason, to employ the imagination creatively. . . .”
—Selma H. Fraiberg (20th century)
“Parents must not only have certain ways of guiding by prohibition and permission; they must also be able to represent to the child a deep, an almost somatic conviction that there is a meaning to what they are doing. Ultimately, children become neurotic not from frustrations, but from the lack or loss of societal meaning in these frustrations.”
—Erik H. Erikson (20th century)
“[The sceptic] must acknowledge, if he will acknowledge any thing, that all human life must perish, were his principles to prevail. All discourse, all action would immediately cease, and men remain in a total lethargy, till the necessities of nature, unsatisfied, put an end to their miserable existence.”
—David Hume (1711–1776)
“Every formula which expresses a law of nature is a hymn of praise to God.”
—Maria Mitchell (1818–1889)