I was just putting together some materials for an Open Space training workshop I’m doing in Prince Rupert, BC on Friday and I compiled three useful approaches to facilitating action planning in Open Space. The first is my own version of moving to action, the second is Diana Larsen’s approach to prioritizing ideas by impact and energy and the third approach is Jack Martin Leith’s approach to project planning, which he blogged here. The three are in an easy to download .pdf. Enjoy. UPDATE: I would be remiss not to point to Lisa Heft’s site, where she dilligently collected …
|A question to ask always is whether or not your conversation design is breeding possibility or impossibility. Are we asking questions that look at what is possible, that look at overcoming our fears, or are we looking for things that emerge out of fears. And example of the later is when clients ask me to design conversations around proposals or presentations. It seems to happen most commonly with government clients that they want to ask a variation of a question like “What do you notice is wrong with our proposal? What are we missing?” Now it’s not a problem to …
From our Art of Hosting gathering that concluded here on Bowen Island today comes a great line from my friend Christie Diamond: “Conversation begins before it starts, continues after it ends and doesn’t always involve words.” Brilliant, because once you understand THAT, you embark on the path of mastery. Update: Dave Pollard has posted a nice harvest of his learning at our gathering.
The thing about working as a facilitator and helping groups become acquainted with their own brilliance is that you really want to be able to leave a group once it can take care of itself. For me, my consulting practice is as much about building capacity as it is about doing work. Viv captures this beautifully today: So those of us working as facilitators are demonstrating how to tap into the wisdom of a group of people. How to hear what they are saying, build on each others’ ideas, and create solutions. The world needs a lot of …
I was working with a group yesterday that was making a number of small decisions as they worked their way through an agenda. The meeting was semi-formal and my role as facilitator was mostly to hold space and draw attention to process where appropriate. I let the group talk, asked questions from time to time and noted the decisions that they had made. As I was observing this group working, I noticed something interesting about their process. Frequent readers will know that I use the diamond of participation often as a map to organize and design meeting processes. …