I was asked to bring something a little different to a planned meeting – something that would create more engagement and the opportunity for more decisions.

The meeting started traditionally enough with a series of presentations providing the common information base for the issue at hand. We held off on much discussion after the presentations.

At the end of the presentations, we invited people to propose topics for discussion and built the agenda for the rest of the meeting.

It was not a familiar process to some of them but it was fun to see the results. Some long standing issues were confronted in a collaborative way yielding what appear to be some breakthroughs for them.

Open space is a very powerful method in group facilitation.