OpenSpace Beta – Niels Pflaeging and Silke Hermann – Book Summary

This page summarises key insights about OpenSpace Beta, a book by Niels Pflaeging and Silke Hermann, which explored how organisations can change much faster than we usually think is possible. It describes a 90-day way of moving away from hierarchy, heavy management and slow change programmes, and towards small, self-organising teams that make decisions closer to the work. The approach is built around Open Space meetings, voluntary participation and trying new ways of working in real life rather than planning them for months on end.

The book in 3 sentences

OpenSpace Beta shows how organisations can change the way they work in about 90 days rather than over several years. It uses Open Space meetings, invitation instead of mandate and a protected transition period to move away from command-and-control management towards trust, transparency and peer coordination. Instead of running a change programme, it focuses on changing the conditions and letting the organisation reorganise itself.

Who should read OpenSpace Beta

Leaders and executives fed up with slow, expensive and ineffective change programmes

Organisational developers, agile coaches and transformation leaders

HR professionals seeking to move beyond bureaucratic control

Change agents who believe engagement cannot be mandated

Teams and departments frustrated by hierarchy, silos and slow decision making

Open Space as the foundation of OpenSpace Beta

OpenSpace Beta is built on Open Space Technology, the large-group facilitation method developed by Harrison Owen. Open Space creates the conditions for self-organisation by inviting people to work on what they care about, take responsibility for outcomes and move freely between conversations.

If you are new to Open Space, start with my practical guide to Open Space Technology, which explains how the method works, why it creates such high levels of engagement and how to run an Open Space event in your own organisation. This is not a side note. Open Space is the social engine that makes OpenSpace Beta possible.

Three key quotes

“Every organisation contains three structures, three forms of power, and three forms of leadership. Every organisation operates through three simultaneous structures. 1) The formal structure governs compliance through hierarchy and positional authority. 2) The informal structure governs relationships through influence, trust, and reputation. 3) The value creation structure governs real work and performance through mastery, peer recognition, and contribution.”

Most organisations only manage the formal structure. OpenSpace Beta reveals that real performance lives in the informal and value-creation structures. When leadership focuses solely on hierarchy, it governs obedience but not results. When leadership learns to steward all three structures, organisations move from control to coherence, from compliance to contribution, and from hierarchy to living systems.

“Mandating reduces engagement. Invitation and opt-in participation increase it. Engagement is essential for rapid and lasting Beta transformation. OpenSpace Beta, consequently, is consistently based on invitation, instead of mandating specific Beta practices. Prescribing practices makes no allowance for what people want, what they think, or what they feel. Prescription kills engagement. The intelligent and creative people who do the work will ‘check out’ and disengage.”

This is not a facilitation style choice. It is a design law. When work is prescribed, people stop using their judgement. They execute other people’s ideas. Responsibility moves upward. Initiative disappears.

Invitation does the opposite. It treats people as adults. It places judgement and responsibility where the work happens. People do not engage because they are told to. They engage because they choose to. And because they choose, they care. OpenSpace Beta works because it cannot force participation. It only works with volunteers. Without choice there is no ownership. Without ownership there is no transformation.

“The four basic properties of a good game (all of which have to be fulfilled) are: – a clear goal – a clear set of principles that govern the game and that are uniformly applied – the possibility to track the progress of the game and get feedback – voluntary, opt-in participation throughout the entire game. Games that do not meet these criteria are unattractive to people and cause them to withdraw. In conventional change processes, such withdrawal is often interpreted as ‘resistance to change’. It is not, however, resistance to change per se, but a reaction to incomplete or poor game mechanics.”

This dismantles one of management’s oldest myths: that people resist change. People do not withdraw because they are stubborn, lazy or fearful. They withdraw because the system they are asked to participate in makes no sense to them. It is unclear, unfair, opaque or compulsory.

Good systems work like good games. They have a clear purpose. They follow clear principles. They provide feedback. And participation is voluntary.

When these conditions exist, motivation is natural and sustained. When they do not, no amount of communication, incentives or pressure will make the system work.

Key takeaways

Change management is obsolete: Traditional change programmes assume organisations are machines that can be fixed through plans, schedules, and compliance mechanisms. OpenSpace Beta sees organisations as living systems with their own rhythms, relationships, and intelligence. Instead of controlling behaviour, it designs conditions for emergence: shifting change from something done to people to something people do together.

Transformation can be very fast: The idea that deep organisational change must take years is wrong. Slow change gives the old system time to defend itself. OpenSpace Beta works with a short, protected 90-day chapter. Old rules are suspended. New agreements are tried in real work. The organisation changes before bureaucracy has time to close ranks again.

Invitation replaces mandate: Self-organisation cannot be ordered. Engagement cannot be mandated. OpenSpace Beta is built on invitation. People choose whether to participate and what they will take responsibility for. Mandates create compliance. Invitations create ownership.

The Flip replaces incremental improvement: This is not about improving the old system. It is about replacing it. OpenSpace Beta flips organisations from Alpha to Beta. From hierarchy to networks. From control to autonomy. You do not make the old operating model better. You change the operating model.

Open Space is the engine of social density: Complex change needs dense interaction. Real conversation. Trust across boundaries. Shared understanding. Open Space creates this at scale. It connects people who normally do not meet and lets the whole system see itself.

Game mechanics explain engagement: People do not resist change. They withdraw from badly designed systems. Good systems work like good games. They have a clear purpose. Clear principles. Feedback. And voluntary participation. When these conditions are present, motivation appears. When they are missing, pressure and incentives do not help.

Public agreements replace hidden rules: In Alpha systems, behaviour is governed by invisible rules and informal power. OpenSpace Beta replaces this with visible, peer-owned agreements. What used to be hidden becomes public. Accountability becomes social instead of managerial.

Leadership becomes hosting, not managing: Leaders do not design the future state. They do not run the change programme. They authorise the space, protect the 90-day chapter and steward purpose. They host the conditions under which the organisation can reorganise itself.

Time-boxed external support prevents dependency: External support is deliberately limited. Coaches and consultants do not stay forever. The organisation must learn to carry the new system itself. Change that depends on experts is not transformation.

Self-selection creates real accountability: People own what they choose. Self-selection creates responsibility that no job description can produce. Ownership cannot be assigned. It only exists where there is choice.

Preparedness replaces planning: OpenSpace Beta does not try to design the future in advance. It builds readiness, sensing and learning capacity. The organisation becomes able to respond instead of trying to predict.

Cells replace departments: Silos are replaced by small, autonomous, purpose-centred teams. These cells own value creation end-to-end and coordinate with each other through real demand, not hierarchy.

Transformation is a rite of passage, not a programme: The 90-day chapter is a deliberate transition space. Old rules are suspended. New ways of working are tried. The organisation crosses into a new identity. This is not a project plan. It is a passage.

Betacodex

Most organisations are still run in a way that made sense for factories. Work is planned in advance, targets are fixed, budgets are negotiated, and decisions travel up and down a hierarchy. This works when the world is stable. It does not work well when work is complex, fast-moving or knowledge-based.

The BetaCodex describes a different way of organising. It sets out twelve connected laws for building organisations that can move faster, adapt more easily and rely more on people’s judgement instead of rules and approvals. It shifts organisations away from control and bureaucracy towards autonomy, transparency and shared purpose.

You cannot really combine the two models. At some point you have to decide how you want your organisation to operate.

The 12 laws and what they mean

1. Team autonomy – Connectedness with purpose, not dependency: Teams are autonomous and purpose-driven. They do not wait for approval or permission. They stay connected to customers, peers and purpose rather than becoming dependent on managers.

2. Federalisation – Integration into cells, not division into silos: The organisation is built from small, integrated, multi-skilled “cells” rather than functional departments. Each cell owns value creation end-to-end.

3. Leadership – Self-organisation, not management: Leadership means enabling self-organisation, not directing behaviour. Leaders steward boundaries, clarity and culture instead of supervising people.

4. All-around success – Comprehensive fitness, not mono-maximisation: Success is defined as overall organisational fitness, not the maximisation of a single metric such as profit, utilisation or growth at any cost.

5. Transparency – Flow intelligence, not power obstruction: Information is shared openly to enable intelligence flow. It is not hoarded as a source of internal power.

6. Market orientation – Relative targets, not top-down prescription: Teams orient themselves using relative targets, peer comparison and market reality instead of fixed top-down goals.

7. Conditional income – Participation, not incentives: Income is linked to participation and contribution, not individualised bonus schemes. This strengthens cooperation and intrinsic motivation.

8. Presence of mind – Preparation, not planned economy: Organisations focus on readiness, learning and sensing instead of rigid long-range planning.

9. Rhythm – Tempo and groove, not fiscal-year orientation: Work follows natural rhythms of value creation, not artificial annual budgeting and reporting cycles.

10. Mastery-based decision – Consequence, not bureaucracy: Decisions are made by those with mastery and proximity to consequences, not by hierarchical procedure.

11. Resource discipline – Expedience, not status-orientation: Resources flow to where value is created, not to where status or political power resides.

12. Flow coordination – Value-creation dynamics, not static allocations: Teams coordinate through real value flows and demand signals, not through central plans and static budgets.

Alpha organisations run on control —> Beta organisations run on capability.

Alpha manages behaviour —> Beta designs conditions.

Alpha depends on compliance. —> Beta grows commitment.

You cannot optimise Alpha into Beta. —> You must flip the operating system.

Five things you could do this week

1. Apply OpenSpace Beta at a team or departmental level: You do not need to change the whole organisation to start. Pick your team or department. Run a simple Open Space day. Ask people what needs to change, what rules get in the way and what they want to try differently. Agree to test new ways of working for the next 30 to 90 days. Keep it practical. Let the team decide how they want to make decisions, coordinate work and improve together. You will learn more from this than from any change programme.

2. Replace assignment with self-selection: The next time work needs doing, do not assign it. Ask who wants to take it on. Let people step forward. People tend to take responsibility for what they choose. You will notice that follow-through improves without adding more control.

3. Make one hidden rule public: Every team has rules that nobody ever wrote down. Things you “just don’t do”. Pick one. Say it out loud. Ask whether it still makes sense. If it does not, replace it with a clear agreement the team can see and refer to.

4. Remove one permission gate: Look for one approval or sign-off that slows things down but does not really improve the result. Remove it. Give the decision back to the people doing the work. Notice what happens to speed, quality and ownership.

5. Shift from fixing people to fixing constraints: When something is not working, resist the urge to correct behaviour. Ask what in the setup makes this behaviour likely. Change that instead. Very often the “problem” disappears on its own.

Like all of my book summaries, this one is written to help me absorb what I have learned and to share a glimpse of the ideas with you. It is not a substitute for reading the book itself. If the content here resonates, I encourage you to seek out the full text through an independent bookstore or your local library, and let the author’s voice speak directly to you. To learn more about the authors and their work visit their LinkedIn profiles (Silke Hermann & Niels Pflaeging) or their company website.

If this summary is useful, you may also like my guides to Open Space Technology, book summary: Community by Peter Block and book summary: Everyday habits for Transforming Systems by Adam Kahane

Sketchnotes:

Below are the sketchnotes that I made as I read the book. Done recently over the end of year break.