How to drasticly reduce meetings with internal OpenSpaces

About 5 minutes read.

In traditional organizations you need to schedule a meeting if you need a decision, want to talk to someone, share knowledge within a group… whatever. To gather people in one room is difficult and often just a demonstration of power (?as your boss I can make you sit in that room for 2 hours!“). Meetings are normally poorly prepared, not moderated, badly timeboxed and don’t meet expectations.

All in all one can say: Normal meetings are no fun!

And taking a look at leaders in the corporate world shows that their calendars are full of meetings. Their days are full of no fun!

But how to get rid of all those meetings and create lots of hours for valuable work?

Decentralize authority

When deciding to create an agile organization we decentralize authority and thereby reduce meetings, as decisions can be made where they are needed: Within the operational teams of experts.

Learn to offer authority, learn to invite with OpenSpaces

Terminology first: You might like to read about OpenSpaces, Barcamps and Unconferences to get more familiar with these words. I will only use the term OpenSpace. In this case Open Space means: An open whole-group event with content provided by the participants.

An OpenSpace relies on invitations. It starts with inviting for the event itself.

A Sponsor is needed

As a sender of an invitation you need the authority to gather people and/or solve a problem. This is the reason why a sponsor from the top of the hierarchy within command & control organizations is needed. This sponsor has to invite or to clearly hand over this authority to an other host.

How to create a good invitation

• The host defines a reason or a goal for the event. It might be knowledge sharing, solving a problem together or any other reason meet.
• Along with the invitation comes authority plus some constraints or boundaries to clearly see what this event is about and NOT about! These borders create a defined space, which is needed in order to have something to fill in a self-organized way.
• What’s in for you? Invited people need to know how they will profit from investing their time and brainpower. Let them know what will happen with results or how you will track progress.
• Yes and No are valid answers to an invitation! This is about opting in and working with people willing to dedicate their time. Yes and No is indeed data and it is up to you to interpret and learn.

Invitations will show that you respect and trust others, that you are serious about the ?why“. You show that you are willing to work with engaged people and provide a plattform for them.

OpenSpaces lead to Inviting Leadership

Now people gather for a reason and learn to feel why this is important to them. They learn to formulate their own questions and needs and they learn to speak up and invite others to talk about their questions and needs.

• They learn that only the right people are showing up.
• They learn to prioritize and use their feet to follow their interests.
• They learn that someone they wanted to be there might choose not to be there.
• They learn to accept a ?no“.
• They learn to work with the willing.

Now imagine all meetings in your company would be based on invitations? Sounds radical? Or just unusual?

It is a good idea to have a regular OpenSpace in your company in order to train this.

You need about 2 experiences to get comfortable with OpenSpace

Your first OpenSpace will feel strange: Maybe you thought you were obligated to attend, even though you could have opted out. There is no agenda, just an empty schedule on the wall. You were scarcely asked what matters to you and now people expect you to propose a session? When will it begin and when will it end? What will happen with your invest of time here? Will it be worth the effort?

Most people are interested and skeptical the first time but at the end of the day it will be a positive experience.

Your second OpenSpace means excitement: You are there, which means you decided to go there, you opted in! Your first experience showed what you can do different this time. You feel safer as you know the structure and are aware that it will work. You decide to be more active and care even more about your needs and interests.

Next step: Reducing meetings with regular internal OpenSpaces

It is amazing! I have seen it in two companies: An internal OpenSpace for two hours every two weeks! The whole crew of 60 to 100 people now knows that there will be the chance to get access to the brainpower of everybody every two weeks.

Lots of questions and decisions can wait a few days. Its super-convenient to just go to the OpenSpace and pitch the session in front of all participants. There will be enough people interested in your session to solve the challenge - and if not you still collect valuable data! Why did others not opt in to your proposal? Can you change your invitation? Or were there just other more urgent questions in other sessions?

We also managed to pull all communities of practice, tech-talks, brownbag-sessions and lean coffees into the timebox of the OpenSpace. The result was a drastic reduction of meetings (nearly only scrum-rituals left) and lots of time to do work.

Some good practice for regular internal OpenSpaces

• Train OpenSpace! It needs about two experiences until participants get comfortable with this form of human interaction.
• Leave titles at the door and try to create a container of safety and trust, so everybody can speak up and be engaged. That includes accepting when someone declines your invitation.
• Collect some topics in advance so people know interesting matters will be addressed. A good place for that is the coffee machine and the smokers corner.
• Be sure to have some people take care of the event. There will be a hype in the beginning. Then a loss of participants and then it gets normal. It’s ok to be frustrated if people do not accept your invitation - but even if only 20% of your colleagues show up - they are just the right people!
• Work only with the people willing to commit, but ask the others what they need to accept your next invitation.

Hope this helps, please share your experiences. Feedback is very welcome!

Alexander Krause (November 2019)

(A big ?thank you” to Lilli & Emma for helping me with all these english words ;-)