Certain facets of Open Space Technology are used for creating and transforming high performing teams, and this can apply to lean facilitation as well:
- Once, when facilitating a value stream mapping team, we were called out of the room to participate in a survey.
- Thinking this would likely end in disaster, an hour later the team had proved that thinking to be totally flawed.
- The team had gone through the Storming stage and was already Norming! We could not believe how quickly the transfer of ownership moved from the facilitator to the Team, and how well the team took charge of their own progress.
- From that point on, we used this method each time a new team starts to create a value stream map.
Please share your thoughts…
What happened during the hour to bring the team thru storming to norming? Was it an hour long open space??
Hello Lyna. The team quickly realized that they were in control. Calling on their leader last helped, and the biggest ah-ha was when the leader picked a topic for the team to work on and posted it on the board — and then no one voted for it! Talk about a powerful message back to the leader.
The other thing that helped the team was each person could choose to lead an improvement, and the others were asked to offer some help. This created a sense of fairness and distributed the work evenly.
Lastly, when the team asked the leader for some enabling change, the leader got it done immediately. That drove the point home that this team was going to be effective, and that some good change was occurring. Any nay-sayers or late adopters were proven wrong during the very first meeting. From that point on, it was easy to gain enthusiasm. This team continues to do well today.
Thanks for asking.
Bob