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)
“They are the guiding oracles which man has found out for himself in that great business of ours, of learning how to be, to do, to do without, and to depart.”
—John Morley [1st Viscount Morley Of Blackburn] (1838–1923)
“The chief lesson of the Depression should never be forgotten. Even our liberty-loving American people will sacrifice their freedom and their democratic principles if their security and their very lives are threatened by another breakdown of our free enterprise system. We can no more afford another general depression than we can afford another total war, if democracy is to survive.”
—Agnes E. Meyer (1887–1970)
“It seems to be a law of nature that no man, unless he has some obvious physical deformity, ever is loth to sit for his portrait.”
—Max Beerbohm (1872–1956)