Deconstructing the Open Space

An “Open Space” is a process for helping an organization’s members to collaborate in order to develop insights and plan for change. It is sometimes used as a tool for Agile transformation.

I have participated in one such Open Space event, so I am not an expert on the idea, so bear that in mind. But I have some deep concerns about the approach, which is the reason for this article. Please consider this food for thought.

The idea seems quite powerful: bring people together. Don’t provide too much structure - just enough - and stand back. Let them self organize and see where it leads. In theory, great things will come from this, and people will feel like they have been on a journey together, creating a unified sense of purpose.

Generally an Open Space is followed by a period of action, perhaps many months, during which people put into practice the strategies or learnings that they developed during the Open Space. At the end of the action period, there is another Open Space, to retrospect, and perhaps to try again.

As an introvert, chills went down my spine when this process was first described to me, circa 2012. I knew by then that I did not fare well in unstructured settings - that I was almost always out-talked by fast talkers, and that there was not sufficient opportunity to share my thoughts in writing, which is my strength. But I went into the Open Space with an open mind.

It was a disaster. It started out pretty well, in that lots of the issues that we had were identified, but then we ended up dot voting, and all of the intelligence about cause and effect was lost. We ended up with a set of unactionable detached ideas. Further, I was never able to voice the insights that I have about Agile transformation - I was indeed out-talked at every turn.

What happens for me in a group of people is this:

1. There are some exchanges between people.
2. Something someone says causes me to start thinking.
3. The exchanges continue.
4. After a few moments, I finish thinking; I then listen to what people are saying now, and the topic has changed.
5. I try to get a word in, but can’t. If I feel the point that has been missed is really important, I will raise my hand to get people to listen. I then start to explain my thoughts.
6. I get a third of the way through my explanation, and someone interrupts, and then someone else responds to them, and a rapid-fire discussion takes off, ignoring me. I was not able to finish my explanation, and so what I started to propose is misunderstood, and incomplete, and so it is quickly dismissed.
7. I feel frustrated, and so I retreat, and go into a listen-only mode.

This is how it has been for me my whole life. It turns out that this is a common pattern for introverts. According to Noa Hertz, a neuroscientist and neuropsychologist postdoctoral fellow at the University of Pennsylvania, introverts fare better with “asynchronous communication enabling them to think and research an area without the pressure to respond immediately”.

That is why I do much better - really well actually - in one-on-one discussions: because I can pause for a moment before each response and no one will jump in before I have finished.

And so whenever I hear that I am scheduled to be one of “a group of people who will self organize”, I get very anxious, because I know that for me it means that no one will listen to me - that I will be disempowered, ignored, and underutilized, and that the fast talkers will take charge. The worst situation is when there are a few fast talkers in the group: they will form an inner circle and completely dominate.

I am not sure that an Open Space has to be that way; perhaps the one that I was in was not run well. I have discussed the Open Space idea with many people since I participated in one, and so I felt I understood what was involved, but recently someone challenged me on that, so I got a Kindle copy of The Openspace Agility Handbook, by Daniel Mezick et. al., and read it. My worst fears were confirmed: in the book they make a number of assumptions about human interaction which are definitely false, and which favor extroverted people.

An Open Space - at least as they describe it - is an extroverts paradise, and an introvert’s worst nightmare.

For example, the book says (page 8), “Freedom allows for exploration and experimentation…” But it leaves out something that is very important for introverts: that freedom should also allow for private thinking, at one’s own pace, away from distraction - something that is not available in an Open Space, unless one wants to leave the setting and miss the very important activities that are taking place. One is forced to operate in “real time”, which is not how introverts work.

The book says that “participation in the Open Space event should be completely voluntary”. But that creates a filter: people like me will not want to attend, because they have learned that in events like that, they are disempowered. So the event will tend to be populated by people who all have a shared way of working, mostly to the exclusion of introverts.

The book then says that the attendees should “go deeper than that, reaching firm conclusions and recommendations…”

But introverts - and probably most people - need time to reflect on their own in order to reach firm conclusions.

Learning is a process as follows:

1. Obtain new information.
2. Match that information against one’s mental model, to find differences or gaps.
3. Ask questions to try to fill the gaps.
4. Think deeply, in order to modify one’s mental model in a way that incorporates the new information, checking every corner of the model, to make sure that there are no new inconsistencies. That process takes time, and focus. It is not done well with others present, and it often happens after hours - “in the shower” as people like to say.
5. Repeat - until all the new information has been obtained, and one’s revised mental model has no discernible inconsistencies.

Thus, to “go deeper than that, reaching firm conclusions”, one needs to think offline for a time, perhaps days. By then the Open Space event has concluded. So how can people be expected to develop lasting and correct deep insights and firm conclusions in such a short lived event?

The book describes the operation of an Open Space, and says that “two or three folks may be asked to volunteer” to summarize what was of significance to them and what they propose to do. But it is a rare introvert who will volunteer to do that in front of a large group. So again, the process favors extroverts.

The book describes the role of the “sponsor”, who is presumably an executive who feels that the Open Space is needed. But It appears that the sponsor is not involved in the process except to state the theme and provide encouragement. Yet the sponsor is likely accountable (e.g., to the CEO or the board) for the eventual business outcome.

So here is the problem with that: What if the Open Space outcomes are ones that the sponsor thinks are wrong? What if the discussions that occur lack the insights that the sponsor has, about the business environment, or risks or other things? What if the sponsor has unique expertise that is needed to come up with the insights that are needed?

Is the sponsor just supposed to accept the outcome, whatever it is? People often don’t know what they don’t know. The sponsor might have industry experience that is rare. Yet the sponsor is not a contributor in the actual idea exchanges of the event.

Elon Musk comes to mind. I have seen videos of how he works. He gets in front of a room of engineers and says, “How are we going to solve this problem?” He drives the discussion, soliciting ideas, and helping the group to talk it through. He is in charge, but he is helping them to synthesize; and he proposes his own ideas as well. After all, he has a perspective that no one else has: going to Mars was his idea, and after years working the problem, he has the broadest and most integrated view of everyone.

To not utilize his ideas and his perspective would be a monumental mistake.

So it seems to me that the Open Space approach removes the extremely important element of intellectual leadership, replacing it with a socialistic “workers know best” model that is just as bad as the old “managers know best”.

In The Innovators, Walter Isaacson describes how the famous physicist John von Neumann facilitated meetings of engineers who were building a computer for simulating the extremely complicated physics of a hydrogen bomb. From p. 107, “Pacing in front of a blackboard and ringleading the discussion with the engagement of a Socratic moderator, he absorbed ideas, refined them, and then wrote them on the board. ‘He would stand in front of the room like a professor, consulting with us,’ Jean Jennings recalled. ‘We would state to him a particular problem that we had, and we were always very careful that the questions represented fundamental problems that we were having and not just mechanical problems.’ ”

The Open Space book continues to say that “people will self organize” to do this and that, as if that is just the most natural thing in the world, which it is - for extroverts. Introverts, in contrast, want a structure in which their voice will be heard no matter how softly they say it. They don’t want to “self organize”, which - in their experience - means to be disempowered.

And then there is the process for proposing ideas to discuss. One is supposed to “propose a topic and add it to the Marketplace” - a bulletin board. But what if you know that a topic is essential, but others do not know that? The “marketplace” sounds like an idea popularity contest. That is, the process for selecting ideas is not based on a thoughtful vetting and reduction of ideas, but instead is a kind of vote - and we see how well that works in our elections.

The book goes on and on with unsubstantiated claims, such as that an Open Space produces a “rapid and lasting Agile transformation” - what is the evidence for that? - and the claim is made that work should be “like a game” because everyone likes games? Uh, no they don’t. Many people - mostly introverts - prefer intellectual activity over games. I personally hate games - board games, computer games, any kind of game. Friends of mine feel the same way. It is not an outlier attitude. But my casual observation has been that extroverts tend to love games - they like to be in a group of people playing a board game together, laughing and shouting and interacting. So again, the book makes assumptions that are biased toward extroverts, and makes no attempt to substantiate the assumptions.

But the most egregious flaw in the whole Open Space premise is when the book says (page 9), “The group must be interested and committed”.

Why? When one brings a group of people together, that is a great time to introduce the problem, and get them to understand why change is needed. Instead, an Open Space assumes prior commitment; but if people are all committed already, the battle is mostly won!

Getting commitment is the hardest part of change. I know because my wife is a behavioral therapist, and getting her patients to realize that they need to change, and to commit to change, is what takes her years of therapy sessions with them. Once they are committed, it is generally a matter of just working the process.

What a disappointment. The Open Space process, as described by this book, is massively tilted to favor and empower extroverts, at the expense of the quiet thinkers in the organization.

Or perhaps I misunderstand the whole process. Again, I am not an expert in Open Spaces. I attended one, and I read a book, and I have heard stories about them and discussed my concerns over the years with people who advocate for this format for collaboration, which takes face-to-face collaboration to a far edge extreme.

Or perhaps I do understand them, but there is a better way.

Perhaps the idea of an Open Space can be saved. Perhaps there is another way to structure it, so that introverts would be empowered, and on an equal footing with the extroverts. I am not going to speculate what that might be - but I think that it deserves some thought, because we need both extroverts and introverts. The Open Space process might work well for extroverts; what works for introverts? Can the two be bridged? Might there be a single process that empowers both?

I don’t know, but that seems like a worthwhile challenge.