Working well together in large groups
HOW to make Planning&Design processes more inclusive, creative, self-governed, effective and enjoyable?
Making a great plan... together! 4 key process challenges >>> Response: 1) How to engage with many
...Propose meeting formats that
different people early on and
are specifically developed for
throughout the process?
interactive working in large
2) How to generate consensus on
groups.
complex issues, where there might be
...Be transparent, encourage
winners and losers?
passionate debate, make
3) How to provide great
decisions and stick to them
opportunities for learning
(mostly), enjoy yourselves and
from each other?
visualise.
4) How to enable people to build trusted relationships, generate a
...Facilitate all three learning types (seeing/listening/moving
sense of ownership, with a clear mandate things around) for future actions?
...If you do all of the above, it might happen quite naturally.
MetaPlanning... ... has been around since the 1970s. It works well for diverse groups because it makes use of all three learning types: Seeing/ listing and moving things around. 10 to 200 participants can work together. Large boards, large sticky cards, thick pens and other bespoke facilitation material from Neuland is used to enable open dialogue, foster balanced debate and effective group working. The records of every part of the process are recorded on the boards and walls. The minutes of a MetaPlanningRoom Session are simply the photos of the large boards and walls populated and validated by participants through-out the session. MetaplanningRoom sessions provide a big canvas for an open, interactive and collective brainstorm. Followed through properly, it paves the way for well documented, consensual decisions owned by many and generated by a diverse group of stakeholders. Trained facilitators are at hand to steer the group or groups through the agreed process. One key aspect of Metaplanning is the use of large cards by all participants. Every idea and thought has the same ‘weight’, no matter who wrote or drew it. This is critical in groups with different kinds of knowledge and social standing to facilitate a balanced and often surprising new depth of dialogue. Through the course of a session (1hr to a series of
Play, explore and improvise!
days), all happening in one room, a landscape of ideas, issues, opportunities, options, actions and decisions evolves and is visible to all.
Fishbowl Session... ... is a dynamic alternative for a panel discussion for audiences large and small. A participant at the Event Camp 2010 summarised it as follows: “Having sat through far too many sessions that use conventional set ups, I found this more collaborative set up quite refreshing. For those of you who have not seen fishbowl dialogue in action, it is much like it sounds…a circle of 5-8 chairs are placed in the centre of the room facing each other (this would be the fishbowl) and 2-8 (depending on the size of your audience) rows of chairs are set up to radiate out of the fishbowl. People who volunteer or are selected to sit in the fishbowl have a dialogue or provide points of view on a selected topic. One of the fishbowl chairs is always left empty – this way if anyone from the audience wants to join the discussion they seat themselves at the empty chair (and someone else gets up to free up a chair). The idea is the moderation is kept to a minimum and the constantly changing fishbowl participants drive the dialogue.
Play, explore and improvise!
I found this technique to be a great way to tap into the intelligence of the audience and build content for a subject around the needs, challenges and experiences of that crowd (at least the ones who participated in the fishbowl).”
World Cafe gathering... ... was developed by Juanita Brown and is shared all over the globe (www.theworldcafe.com). It finds its power in an informal setting of a cafe-house style set-up. This method taps into people’s incredible ability to share stories that matter to them. Paper table cloths are employed to develop and record ideas, thoughts and action points. After about 20-30 minutes, everybody but one person moves to a new table as ambassadors and the conversation continues. The person staying builds links between the different stories. The last round of conversations brings the original group members back together. The task is to synthesise discoveries and to share them in a whole group conversation. A plan of collective actions emerges. The mind-set that has made World Cafe such a success for large and diverse groups is to: - Focus on what matters - Contribute your thoughts - Speak your mind & heart - Listen to understand - Link and connect ideas
Play, explore and improvise!
- Listen together for insights and deeper questions - Play, doodle, draw - use the table cloth - Have fun!
Open Space... ... puts participants in the driving seat. Open Space works for groups from 25 to over 2000 people. Open Space processes have taken place in more than 160 countries around the world. Well prepared and facilitated by only one experienced person, Open Space processes create environments for change, deeply rooted in self-organisation as a means to make "more of what works". This fabulous format is most distinctive for its initial lack of an agenda. It’s the participants that create the ‘right’ agenda. The organising and creative force here is the passion of individuals for an idea/issue/solution. Harrison Owen discovered this force and identified 4 principles & 1 law to support this self-organising and highly effective way to create momentum for change. And in this spirit, people join groups for as long as they feel they can add to the conversation after that they move on. That the "Law of Two Feet". It turns the gathering into a dynamic network of cross-pollination between many informal workshops. The 4 ‘principle’ or ‘positive attitudes’ of Open Space are:
Play, explore and improvise!
1.
Whoever comes is the right people...
2.
Whenever it starts is the right time ... Now is great!
3.
Whatever happens is the only thing that could have ...Excellent!
4.
When it's over, it's over... All done. Well done. Let’s move on!
Make the Future... ... stands for a whole set of techniques that tap into the stimulating and inspiring power of playing&making. Imagine hundreds of people literally building models of a new or improved street, neighbourhood or city using lego type tools linked to a simple spreadsheet showing number of homes, shops, schools etc. Every game has rules. The facilitator explains the rules and provides every team with an aerial map, design principles and ‘building material’ and off they go. The game is on. At the end of the design session a market place for all models is put together, explained by design teams, critiqued and (possibly) voted on. This interactive process can/should be supported by professionals that freely offer their advice to all teams in case tricky questions come up. It is important to prepare and equip an event properly with 3D props, ideally working to scale. However, never underestimate the ability of people to imagine a place in the future even if the vision is expressed by a model built with day-to-day items such as sugar cubes, peas and other delicious things you’ll find in a well stocked kitchen!
Play, explore and improvise!
WE know that you might be able to
without ...
BUT
MAKE a great plan
working well together with many people all the time ...
we also know that you can
plan
only
when working well together
Have a look at our website
DELIVER a great
with
many people from the
(www.imagineplaces.co.uk)
outset.
or contact
Angela (angela@imagineplaces.co.uk) if you need support in getting started.