| from Berrett-Koehler's
"At Work" Publication
Open Space brings together people who are ordinarily separated by functional boundaries and stovepipe mentalities. Like many other traditional companies, Boeing has reengineered, downsized, restructured, and flattened its organizations. It has also begun to transform its bureaucratic "stovepipe" culture. During this process of change Boeing has used several technologies designed to support large-scale systems change. These technologies bring the whole system together at one time; typically, a cross-section of people representing all levels of the organization. The approaches span a continuum measuring how much responsibility is given to the participants, ranging from a very controlled agenda with a known outcome, such as Dannemiller/Tyson's Large-Scale System Change Model, to having the participants create an agenda with no known outcome, such as Open Space Technology. Open Space has provided value within Boeing by bringing together people who need to work together to provide a product or service. It opens space by providing a forum for everyone in the system to take responsibility and to have a voice and be heard. The results have been practical breakthroughs, as well as new networks and newfound communities of action. Michael Lindfield, an organization development consultant at Boeing, characterizes a key benefit of the Open Space experience at Boeing as "a call to community." Open Space brings together people who would not ordinarily come together because of functional boundaries and stovepipe mentalities. Natural communities of engineers, software programmers, and technical support staff need to interact within their own disciplines, but they also need to wander and freely associate with other groups to achieve success for the company as a whole. Open Space Technology helps groups to self-organize and work together on a common purpose. For example, we held one Open Space where all of the groups working on "people issues -"employee benefits, EEO, wellness, childcare, diversity, flextime, and the like -were called to community to look for synergies, as well as redundancies, in their efforts. These issues had not been approached in a systematic or integrated way across the company, and a major outcome of the event was the mapping of activities and inter-dependencies. This opened up space for a network of relationships across the system, providing the foundation for the coordination and communication that had been missing. As a result, organization structure is no longer getting in the way of gaining access to needed resources. In another instance, the "product owner" for the pressurized doors on all airplane models had two months to develop a strategic plan. This was a new function created to integrate production processes across models; until this time, the producer of each airplane door had acted independently, and there was little in common among doors on the different airplane models. My client wanted to determine how to streamline operations and simplify communications across the system. People throughout the value chain for the door system -internal and external suppliers, engineers, material people, customer reps, mechanics, production support -convened Open Space simultaneously in Seattle and Wichita, two major sites for building doors. The ideal is to have the whole system in one room, but this was not economically feasible. Simultaneity was the next best option because each site was working on the same issues and shared data via the Internet and teleconferencing. Each site held its own sessions. In addition, some sessions crossed sites via teleconferencing. Participants self-organized into cross-functional teams and focused on how to build the best possible doors for airline customers. The summaries from each session were compiled into proceedings at the end of the second day and made available to participants at the beginning of the third day for prioritization and action planning. This work of creating the strategic plan was done by the people responsible for carrying it out. To date, there are only a handful of consultants in Boeing who
facilitate Open Space, and it is not yet used consistently in situations
where it would make a significant difference. But more and more opportunities
to use Open Space are appearing. For example: - Acquisitions of new companies
often lead to culture shock, which harms performance. How might we meld
the cultures of McDonnell Douglas, Rockwell, and Boeing? - As the rate
of production increases and we implement new production initiatives, how
do we keep producing a high quality product? - As we implement new production
strategies (including lean manufacturing and make/buy) and change the way
we build airplanes, how do we prepare managers for this new environment?
What culture changes are needed to support these changes?
Paul Gleiberman is an internal organization development consultant at
The
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