| The
Context & Finding The Best Response
Our
Twelve-Year Experiment
Key
Concepts
Annual
Reports
Haitian
Organizations using Open Space and Reflection Circles
What
American Know-How Has To Learn
and other stories
Open
Space Approach
Reflection
Circles
(Touchstones)
View
"Circles of Change: a quiet revolution in Haiti"
Photo:
D. Morel |
Beyond
Borders' Twelve-Year
Experiment
Twelve years ago, two organizations were formed: Limye Lavi,
a Port-au-Prince-based Haitian foundation, and Beyond Borders,
a Philadelphia-based nonprofit organiza-tion. Central to their
founding principles was a commitment to a non-hierarchical,
liberating structure at the staff level. It was determined
from the outset that responsibility would be tied to interest
and commitment rather than to job titles, and that decisions
would be reached by consensus, not imposed. From the beginning,
Limye Lavi and Beyond Borders used a form of Open Space for
their meetings.
The collective experience of Limye Lavi and Beyond Borders
has demonstrated several things:
* People who are freed from command-and-control authority
must assume greater responsibility for their work and for
their personal development.
* These people must also develop greater self-confidence and
a stronger sense of self-determination.
* They are then less likely to replicate command-and-control
types of behavior.
* Leaders who witness the positive results from these new
practices are apt to integrate them into their own behavior
as well.
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