In 1990 I was introduced to Open Space by Anne Stadler and Harrison Owen. The more I learned, the more interested I became in the process.

In 1992 I was introduced to a not-for-profit, environmental education program called Sound Experience.

Before long, the organization and the process became intertwined.

Sound Experience is an environmental education program operated on the platform of the 83-year-old National Historic Landmark Schooner Adventuress. The focus on the environment and the challenge and responsibility it represents, along with the challenge and responsibility of sailing the historic schooner have blended to create an unique team-building and leadership experience for participants. The utilization of Open Space in organization practices has extended that experience to staff, volunteers, and board.

The founders of Sound Experience were determined to bring learners into the environment they were studying. They chose the historic schooner as a platform for environmental education and the choice proved to be serendipitous. The boat immediately demonstrated its ability to function as a metaphor for the earth: sailors found themselves living in a closed system with limited food, water, and fuel and even more limited space for waste. All decisions related to life on board and sailing in Puget Sound have a clear effect on the ecology.

The parallels between experience on the schooner and learning in Open Space are fascinating.

On board Adventuress, participants are crew. Every morning and evening, crew musters in a circle on deck. Anyone who has something important to share can do so. Plans are made for the day’s voyage and the work of sailing and maintaining the boat. Each day closes in a similar circle and the crew shares reflections, insight, and learning from the experience of working and living together. Most importantly, the crew takes responsibility to teach and learn about sailing, to care for each other’s safety and to develop stewardship of Puget Sound and all the earth’s waters.

In Open Space the circle also offers the possibilities of the day and the reflection on its learning. In my own experience as a facilitator, the success of the process is assured by taking a lesson from Angeles Arrien: first, show up; then the responsibility of each participant is emphasized, along with the obligation and the joy of speaking the truth and paying attention to what has heart and meaning.

Essentially, its the same on the boat.

The charm of Sound Experience and Adventuress is, in part, the charm of volunteering to show up and do work that has heart and meaning. The boat is and has been where the heart resides. Volunteers were willing to do extraordinary things to maintain connection to Adventuress. Scrape the hull? Sure. Pump out the sewage? No problem.

The problem resided away from the boat…in the office and on the board.

I joined that board in September, 1993 and the feeling at its meetings could not have been more different from the boat. Over time I learned some of the reasons. An exciting start-up in 1988 was followed—too soon—by the purchase of Adventuress. The transaction, initiated in 1991, imposed a second start up on the young organization. The terms of the mortgage—interest only with an enormous balloon in six years—were simply impossible. The obligation began to wear on board and Executive Director.

In retrospect, it seems unavoidable that the Executive Director would look to hire more people to solve the problem. He couldn’t possibly solve the problems himself…and those volunteers clamoring to be on the ship seemed disconnected from the issues at hand. With the board nodding agreement, he hired a volunteer coordinator, then an office manager, then a development director. The problems grew.

By November of 1993, the Executive Director was talking about his desire to "transition out" of the Director’s role. But he and Sound Experience were stuck. He couldn’t imagine a new role or new work for himself. Neither he or the board could come up with a plan for transition or a reasonable organizational plan. By Spring of 1994, the organization’s debt had increased by nearly $60,000 and the frustration and anxiety around finances was also increasing. The boat and the program, however, were working.

By this time I had some small successes of my own facilitating Open Space. It seemed to me that it was time the process and the organization met formally.

In May, Anne Stadler conducted Sound Experience’s first Open Space meeting. The invitation to the meeting went out to staff, board, and three or four volunteers. All were asked to "bring their passions and interests to plan new structures and systems for working with the boat, volunteers, the board, and the public." Essentially, the whole organization was fair game. The full administrative staff, several crew members and those volunteers were among the 27 people who gathered at the Marine Science center in Poulsbo, Washington.

That meeting, with its kinship to life on Adventuress, was the pry-bar that began to unstick Sound Experience. Everyone present came as a volunteer. They brought passions and ideas and the Open Space process gave permission to voice them. We learned there were people who weren’t stuck. A program coordinator came to the meeting with an organizational plan to share. People asked and board members answered questions about finance and debt. Speaking the truth as we knew it, we agreed that a transition was needed and a work team was formed.

The process felt almost as productive as it was painful. Still, it was just the beginning.

Looking back, I think that Sound Experience had developed a habit of avoiding pain by avoiding the truth. By avoiding the truth, the organization was able to avoid taking responsibility. The first open space ended that paradigm.

Other interventions followed. It took courage on many people’s part to continue to tell the truth. That was especially true when the truth was that we couldn’t maintain the size of staff we had developed. Taking responsibility meant doing all we could to help the departing staff members to find other employment. We were at least partly successful in that.

Speaking from the heart and telling the truth had many implications for Sound Experience. Conflicts in the board—long below ground—began to surface. In September, the Executive Director resigned.

Seeds sewn in Open Space began to bear fruit. The Captain enlisted board members and volunteers in a successful effort to find less expensive and more permanent winter moorage for Adventuress. The program coordinator who’s organization plan had been a key to open discussion was named acting Executive Director. In November the boat and the office moved to Port Townsend. A challenge grant was on the table to reduce the increased debt by 60% and a budget was approved for 1995 at 60% of the 1994 level.

Telling the truth extended from the organization’s close circle to its potential funders. Historic donors met the challenge grant, but with great difficulty that brought an end to some of those traditional funding sources. Small victories were achieved by way of some successful new grants. The Rathmann Family Foundation took a hard look at good intentions and past performance and voted with their hearts. They became a bellwether for Sound Experience.

Our new Executive Director worked at manic level with the seasonal staff and the organization’s systems. She initiated a review process with a strong "Open Space" spirit. The educators and crew helped to design a new staffing system that shared education and crew responsibility and made more use of volunteers: at once eliminating a staff division and reducing the number of paid positions required to operate quality programs and honoring volunteers for their contribution. There was little resentment because the staff took responsibility for the change and the change worked.

As the year progressed we started talking about how the "Adventuress feeling" might transfer itself to the broader organization. Eventually we agreed on a real community meeting…another, much larger, Open Space to which we would invite the larger community. It was agreed that the meeting would precede and replace most of Sound Experience’s annual board retreat. We invited the usual suspects…board, volunteers, and crew, and added a wider community of support, including the community of Port Townsend, suppliers, donors, and program participants.

On a November Saturday in 1995, more than 80 passionate people—including our founding Executive Director—showed up, spoke from the heart, and took responsibility for change they said they wanted in Sound Experience.

People gave voice to their passions, spoke their truth and took responsibility for the work they said should be done. Organization history and transitions were honored, plans were made, work was ready to start. We produced a 24 page document of notes and recommendations from the meeting and published it to everyone who participated. As a result, everyone attending had a blue-print of the plans and dreams for Sound Experience’s future. It was a blue-print to begin work to increase the diversity of the organization, raise $10,000 in memberships, make assessment of the organization and the program a priority, look at our educational program for improvement and delivering on our promise, improve our marketing, pay for Adventuress, strengthen our commitment to youth programs, focus on maritime skills, create and carry out fundraising events, make Sound Experience more visible with publications, and pay special attention to food on board the ship.

Work had, of course, been under way already. Because of the leadership provided by our new Executive Director and the seasonal staff, Sound Experience finished 1995 at break-even…a history-making and precedent-setting achievement for all of us. Further achievement was added to the ledger as more than 80 percent of the initiatives begun in Open Space 1995 saw completion in the following year. We increased our diversity in both Board and seasonal staff. We reached out to organizations that serve physically challenged adults and at-risk youth. We exceeded our membership goal. We surveyed participants, parents, volunteers and crew for an assessment of each program. A group of experienced volunteers became part of a new volunteer training team. We produced three great events earning more than $7,000 and we began a campaign to pay for Adventuress by "selling planks." We raised $35,000 in capital funds. And that’s just the tip of the achievement ice berg.

Perhaps a greater achievement, was the affirmation of Open Space principles that the organization had begun to realize. In Open Space meetings, in the office, and on the boat, we began to realize how thoroughly compatible Open Space was to the vision and mission of the organization. Open Space gave a name to our leadership and stewardship of the vessel and the environment. Show up. Speak from the heart. Tell the truth. Be responsible. Communication was remarkably clear among volunteers, participants and staff.

The lesson we were slowest to learn now seems to have been the most obvious. As our founding president stepped down and I stepped into the leadership role, he named it. Our board was suffering from something totally incompatible with Open Space. Obligation rather than enthusiasm reigned. Many board members were what he called "reluctant volunteers."

In 1996 we surfaced that issue. We looked at our operating needs and laid out our best estimate of a board member’s "average" responsibility to Sound Experience and we told the truth: we wanted no reluctant volunteers!

There was a significant shift in the board. New members came to the 1996 Open Space. The appropriateness of our Open Space organization style and responsibility-based actions was clear. The new board self-organized their meeting and self-managed their process. They welcomed our clarity about fund raising needs and the organizations goals. They took on the tasks of the board with enthusiasm, even scolding me for not being as optimistic as they felt appropriate. They self-organized committees, made commitments to the work ahead, and approved a new budget—slightly higher than 1996.

One month later, another hurdle was crossed. We finished our second year in the black

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--Sound Experience is a Washington State non-profit corporation and a Federally authorized 501(c)3. For more information or to learn about contributing, call 360 379-0438 or find us at: www.soundexp.org

--Jan Gray, M.S., is a communication and organization development consultant working out of Seattle, Washington. She is also a principal of "Good News/Good Deeds" a civic education project to promote "Citizen Effectiveness in the Age of Electronic Democracy."