Harrison Owen’s The Power of Spirit: How Organizations Transform (San Francisco: Berrett-Koehler, 2000)

Owen, an Anglican Priest and civil rights worker, extends his meeting management tool ‘open-space technology’ to more broadly treat organisational transformation. The process begins with anyone who wants to come sitting in a circle (with ‘open space’ between), and then allowing the group to set the agenda related to the central concern (e.g. a church’s future). Owen says in 15 years he has consistently seen groups achieve amazing results in just 2-3 days; processing grief, expressing anger, sorting priorities, restructuring, and letting fresh vision emerge. This is an application of chaos theory, suggesting that the disequilibrium that chaos brings is an essential condition for life, learning, innovation, and – strange as it may seem – organisation.

The resulting InterActive organisations are characterized by chaos, high learning, high play, appropriate structure, and genuine community. Stories and myths are central to cultivating ‘Spirit’ and counteracting ‘soul pollution’: ‘When people hear the story, become part of the story to the point that the story is them, Spirit tends to soar and all the rest is just icing on the cake.’ (p.171) So Owen describes a process for interviewing 10-20 people, collecting common stories, telling them (warts and all), burying some, and celebrating those that describe the organizational ethos. He says it is amazing what his two questions unearth: ‘What is this place and what should it be?’

This is a scary process for managers who are used to modern Pro-Active control and strategic planning, but for brave new leaders it offers some guidelines for cultivating the sort of innovation, synergy and vibrancy that churches need.

Darren Cronshaw