The open space · format 2 of 3
The idea
storm.
One woman puts something open on the table — «I am thinking of changing jobs and I don't know where to start» — and the circle throws out options.
It is for when what she needs is alternatives, not experiences. If what she needs is to be heard, this is the wrong format.
It carries the most delicate rule in the whole method, which is why it has a page of its own.
One of the three formats of The open space, the seventh block of a circle session. It is not used on its own: you choose between the three when that block arrives.
The rule the format rests on
Ideas are said into the air, not to her.
«Someone could look for a person who has already made that change» is an idea. «You should look for someone who has already done it» is advice. It is the same sentence and it is not the same thing: the second person turns an option into an instruction.
It is the easiest rule to break without noticing, and the one to watch.
Its four rules
No judging
No idea is evaluated while they are coming out. Not «that won't work for you», and not «that one's great» either.
No debating
The women proposing do not argue with each other. If two ideas contradict, both go in.
Never aimed at a person
Into the air, in the third person or impersonally. Never «you should».
She does not answer
She does not have to justify why an idea will not work. She writes it down and that is all.
How it runs
- 01She sets it out · 3 minutes
What she is trying to decide and what she has already ruled out. Without telling the whole story.
- 02Ideas · 20 minutes
Into the air. The guide cuts off any idea said to her in the second person and asks for it again, into the air.
- 03She chooses · 2 minutes
She says which ones she is taking. She does not say what she is going to do, or when.
When NOT to use it
- When she is not asking for options but to be heard. That is «what weighs on us».
- When she is stuck on a question underneath rather than on what to do. The clearness committee is for that.
- When the group already has a settled opinion about what she should do. There the idea storm is advice in disguise, and everyone knows it.
Where it comes from
Brainstorming as a group technique is Alex F. Osborn's (Applied Imagination, 1953), and the first two rules come from him: no judging and no debating. The third one — never aimed at a person — is MQHD's, and it is what makes the technique compatible with a circle.