Novel action planning design

[Chris Corrigan]

Susan Lilley wrote:

> Hi Chris,
>
> I was looking forward to reading about your novel action planning design and
> how it worked out, but haven't seen anything on the list -- did I miss it,
> or has it not happened yet? I am facilitating an Atlantic regional meeting
> where I think it might make more sense for the action planning to happen by
> province, so I would like to hear how your approach turned out.
>
>

Oh Yeah...I did do that didn't I?

I have been REALLY busy of late, so apologize for not getting back to everyone
on this.

Okay..the story in brief...

Ran a 1.5 day OST conference (actually .75 and .5, but who's counting?) for 200
Aboriginal youth from across Canada who were meeting to discuss their priorities
for a National Aboriginal Youth Strategy.  The youth were selected from 6
national Aboriginal organizations.  The focus of the meeting was both to provide
input to government on the Strategy and to do some "in-house" planning for each
of the organizations --  give them a chance to set their own priorities.

Lots of politics and expectation from government, but all were overcome by
opening space.  In the end 41 groups met and reported.

The night before the convergence, I gathered one rep from each organization and
briefed them.  Their job was to facilitate the convergence by a) explaining how
people were going to use the dots and b) ensuring that topics that needed to be
converged were converged and c) making sure there were champions who could take
responsibility for action and move the process forward.  I told then that I was
going to give out these instructions anyway, and that they simply needed to hold
the space.  There were no questions.

The next day was a chance for the groups to prioritize, converge and action
plan.  I gathered all 200 in a circle and explained the process.

1.    Each group has their own breakout room to go to.  Within each room was a
flipchart with a grid on it. One box on the grid for each report in the
proceedings.

2.    Take a copy of the proceedings from the centre of the circle, and five
dots.

3.    Go to your break out rooms and spend some time reading the proceedings and
then indicate where your passion lies for moving issues forward by using your
dots.

4.    When the dot votes have been tallied, a facilitator from your organization
will call for champions to take responsibility for the top three issues.  She
will distribute report forms to the champions for you to capture your action
plans on.

5.    Meet in groups, the laws and principles apply, and work over your top
three priorities, strategizing about how to make them come to life within your
organization.

6.    Gather back in the plenary room after two hours for a report out.

We spent about an hour allowing the youth to report back to the plenary.

The overall effect was pretty positive.  It really gave some meat to the
challenge of leadership when we asked folks to strategize about how to make
their issues come alive.  Natural leaders emerged and took the bull by the horns
and a lot of confidence was in evidence.  This was more than just a gab fest on
a government strategy: these youth were set to go home and bring this stuff to
life.

A few complaints about the "stove piping" nature of the exercise.  Some youth
felt it would more valuable to have met in regional caucuses instead of
organizational ones, because the organizational caucuses reinforced the politics
of the adult world. On the other hand, many youth told me about how cool it was
to be putting their minds to the challenge of getting their adult leadership to
take youth issues seriously.

Another advantage of doing it this way was that Metis, Inuit and Aboriginal
women got to meet separately.  This is important because they all have quite
different issues from the larger Aboriginal community and also they have a
different way of meeting, especially the Inuit.  Their sessions were conducted
in Inuktitut which allowed for a proper expression of the cultural issues at
hand.  Also, they met together on all three issues, with different conveners
taking over, rather than breaking up into small groups.  Furthermore, Inuit
folks have a very high context culture, full of silence and reflection and
imbued with very very subtle body language.  Allowing them to meet separately
allowed them to do what they needed to do in the way in which they needed to do
it.

The organizational facilitators did a marvelous job...six really great and
promising youth, and the reports back to the main plenary were lively and
spirited.  Lots of humour and joking around even as we heard about plans for
raising the awareness around issues like suicide and sexual abuse.

In short it worked fine, primarily because I trusted the process and the people
to organize in a way that suited them.  We needed to allow more time than
originally scheduled, but this was no big deal.  I always pad my agendas with
tons of slippage for exactly this type of eventuality.  They ate lunch late, but
it was sandwiches, and therefore nothing could get cold -- although I stayed
away from the egg salad.

Cheers,

Chris
--
CHRIS CORRIGAN
Consultation - Facilitation
Open Space Technology

http://www.chriscorrigan.com
corcom at interchange.ubc.ca

RR 1 E-3
1172 Miller Road
Bowen Island, BC
Canada, V0N 1G0

phone (604) 947-9236
fax (604) 947-9238

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