What an Open Space actually produces
An Open Space mostly produces exchange. Concerns that would otherwise stay in the corridors, and ideas nobody had written down yet. Sometimes concrete improvement initiatives come out of it, but that is not the rule. Anyone expecting a list of decisions will be disappointed; anyone who wants to know what is alive in their organisation gets more than they asked for.
What people hope for
Clients usually hope for three things: buy-in, decisions and energy. That expectation is understandable, because it is how the method tends to be described.
The energy generally arrives. The decisions do not, unless you organise them separately. And buy-in is not the output of a day but a consequence of how you handle the output.
Why exchange is not a lesser outcome
In transformation programmes I supported, in banking and the public sector, the same thing happened every time. People put topics on the board that never come up in official meetings. Doubts about the direction. Practical obstacles that do not exist on paper. Questions everybody has and nobody asks.
That sounds like little, and it is a great deal. A transformation rarely stalls on strategy. It stalls on the hundred questions nobody asks officially, which therefore land nowhere. Having those questions asked out loud once, with the people who decide about them in the room, changes what becomes possible afterwards.
When initiatives do emerge
Sometimes more comes out than exchange. Someone picks up a topic and carries on with it. That happens more often when two conditions are met.
The first is that the people with authority are in the room. A session about an obstacle produces an initiative when whoever can remove that obstacle is part of the conversation.
The second is that it is clear beforehand what happens with the harvest. Groups can sense whether they are working or taking inventory.
What repetition changes
In one digital transformation I ran the Open Space repeatedly, across 2020 and 2021. That changes the equation.
In a one-off session the harvest is the end point. In a series it is a starting point: what was a concern in one session can be an initiative already under way in the next. Participants know they will see each other again, which makes picking something up more appealing.
Daniel Mezick has worked this pattern out under the name OpenSpace Agility, where experiments run between two Open Spaces and the next session inspects what worked. I do not work to that method, though it explains why repetition yields more than a single day.
So what can be promised
To a client I promise that the topics genuinely at play will reach the table, and that the people doing the work decide which those are. I do not promise decisions, because the organisation makes those and that requires a different form.
That is a more modest promise than you will read on most websites. It is also the only one I can keep.
The gap I run into myself
On a public sector engagement in 2024 I facilitated the interactive part of a day for local authorities. I do not know what happened with the outcomes afterwards, because I was not involved beyond that day.
That happens more often than facilitators admit. You have a good day, you hand over the harvest, and then you disappear. Whether it led to anything, you never hear.
It is why I now discuss follow-up during preparation. Not because I want to extend the engagement, but because a day without an agreement about what comes next is a day whose result nobody knows.