More organizations than ever are struggling with fast change, complexity, uncertainty, and their answer, almost every time, is to plan more: more procedures, more coordination meetings, as if the world could be tamed with a better spreadsheet. What I keep noticing is the opposite: the more I try to plan, the less adaptable I become, and in a world that moves this fast, adaptability is exactly what matters.
I saw this confirmed again at WOSonOS 2026 in Eindhoven: give people room, and they arrive at better ideas than anything I could have planned for them in advance. No agenda forcing that, just people gathering with a real drive to change something.
What history teaches
I went through the proceedings of World Open Space on Open Space myself (1994-2025), with AI support for searching and clustering. What comes out of that is remarkable: the four principles of Open Space have not changed in thirty years. [Source: OS94, OS96, OS97, OS99, OS06, VOS15, WOS25]
Management fads come and go, Six Sigma, Holacracy, agile-washing, and these four sentences still stand: whoever comes are the right people; whatever happens is the only thing that could have; whenever it starts is the right time; when it is over, it is over. Not because they are a management trick, but because they describe how self-organization already works in complex systems: you cannot manage a forest like a machine, plan a market like a factory, or coordinate a group of motivated people like robots.
Why this works, and why it feels frightening
The beauty of these principles is that they regulate themselves. They build a system in which people decide for themselves where to put their energy, in which good ideas draw attention while weak ones die a natural death, in which timing comes out of the process rather than a Gantt chart, and in which closure feels like completion rather than “we had to stop.”
But this asks for leadership, not the kind that plans and controls everything, the kind that dares to trust and dares to let go. A PowerPoint about “agile transformation” or “self-managing teams” will not convince anyone. What it asks for is different: living the principles myself, daring to say “I don’t know where this leads, but I trust the process.” That is frightening. It feels exposed. And that is also why it works.
I have clung to an agenda myself, out of fear of letting go. That happens when a client says: this is not enough for me, I expect clear results. In that moment a facilitator needs to stand firm and say the process will simply be followed as it unfolds. What I have learned is that firmness does not come from the Open Space itself, it comes from the preparation. If I have not clearly set the boundaries, the so-called givens, with the client beforehand, that doubt inevitably comes back during the session itself. And that is not what you want as a facilitator: in that moment you just need to stand your ground.
You already do this at home
Here is a question I keep asking myself: why do I behave so differently at home than at work? At home, I do not organize a family gathering with a project plan. I say: come at seven, bring something good, we will see where the evening takes us. And what happens? People talk, ideas surface, someone starts singing, someone else clears up without being asked.
At work, I often act as if that is impossible, as if adults suddenly cannot take responsibility anymore, as if a meeting is needed to discuss when the next meeting should be. The four principles say something else: give people time and space, and they find their own way there. That is not naive hippie idealism; that is how complex systems behave. A body self-organizes. An ecosystem self-organizes. A market self-organizes, with every problem that comes with it, and still better than central planning.
Who this works for
These principles do not work everywhere. They work when there is a real drive behind the gathering, not “management told us to,” when the conditions are right, room, time, safety, and when leadership dares to trust. I see them work for managers and leaders who want to let go without losing control, for transformation leads who can see the old approach no longer holds, for foundations and associations with committed members, for non-profits trying to do more with less, for large movements that need cooperation without hierarchy, and for public bodies that truly want to involve citizens. It works in companies too, but only once you stop managing change and start hosting it.
What you can do now
You do not have to run a five-hundred-person Open Space right away. Start small: next time you sit in a meeting that could have been an email, ask what would come up if there were no agenda at all. Watch what happens, watch who speaks up who normally would not, watch where the conversation goes once you stop steering it.
Or smaller still: watch your own reaction the next time something does not go as planned. Panic? Irritation? Curiosity? That tells you something about how much room you actually give to self-organization.
A self-regulating system
What still surprises me, even after years of facilitating, is that the principles are enough. There is not much more to do than create the space and name them. It behaves like a self-learning system: good ideas gain attention because people invest time in them, weaker ideas fade because people use their two feet, and the “right people” are whoever, for whatever reason, gives this topic priority. That holds whether everyone agrees or not: people can talk about what matters without anyone deciding in advance what counts as important.
And that is the beauty of it: you do not have to choose between structure and freedom. The principles give you structure. They are stronger than they look at first glance.
I facilitate Open Space and help people work together without traditional hierarchy.
“Don’t push the river, it flows by itself” — a line from the WOSonOS 2011 proceedings that has stayed with me.