(null) on the longish side:action planning

Wed Apr 7 09:44:51 PDT 2004

Dear Kim,
over the years I have experimented with various ways of
converging/prioritizing in more than 100 events.
First I used the 55 sticky dots (Delphi) that Harrison has in his
book...with groups of up to 250 without ever having had the need to
do it electronically (there always were plenty of participants doing
the counting).
What I noticed every time was that in this way you always get  6 or 7
(rarely 5 and even less often 8) issues with lots of dots, then a
broad field with markedly fewer dots and usually one or two with very
few dots regardless of how many participants or issues there were. I
sort of liked this predictability.
A couple of observations that got me thinking about the whole
process:
-the issues with the largest number of dots often did not get acted
on at all
-when there were people who thought themselves in a "minority" with
their issues not getting lots of dots they got together and simply
put their related issues in one cluster adding the dots and proudly
proclaiming that they also had one of the highranking issues (for
which they then developed action plans)
-lots of people seemed much less interested in this process than in
the previous mode of being (in open space)
-some people developed action plans that had no direct link to the
high ranking issues
Ok, observing this, I felt that there must be a way to be closer to
where the passions of the participants were.
Delphi being a predictable statistical method supports the generation
of data on the "system's" reading on where priorities are (ranking of
issues) but less on where the passions of individuals joined by other
individuals are on action.
This data is an interesting piece of information especially for
leaders and management and, I think, supports their tendency to act
on things that have priority often leading to overload and overwork
and overplanning and eventually defeat.
Ok, so I skipped Delphi and all other form of ranking but was still
attached to the "converging" idea.
My new design then was to have the entire group (the largest group
that ever did this in my practice were 100 people) arrange all issues
in "Families" (from the notion of "related" issues which is part of
the Delphi Design). This worked very well. Funny thing was, that
usually, regardless of number of issues or group size, there were 5
or 6 or 7 "Families". All issues always found a family in this
process. Sometimes there were issues that belonged to more than one
family. That was taken care of by creating a duplicate so that the
issue could be in 2 or 3 or more different families (this was not
facilitated, just the design explained and go).
This process, inclucing finding a "Family "name for each cluster
takes about 25 minutes regardless of number of issues or group size
(never had a group of more than 100 do this, however).
Observation here was, that in effect, again more data was generated
on how the system sees the situation....yes, more participation and a
lot of activity involving the entire group but still, action planning
did not take place for each family.
Hmm.
Eventually, I skipped that design, too and have action planning
without any prior ranking or prioritization or messing in any other
direct way with the issues.
And here is how it goes (in some ways similar to Chris' process):
1. Circle. Book of Proceedings are deposited in the center.
2. Participantse are invited to take a book and take 25 or 30 or 45
minutes, depending on how voluminous the book  is and how much time
there is available and whether or not the individual reports had been
posted before -- and are asked to return to the circle by time x.
3. Circle. Participants are invited to offer corrections and ask
questions on anything that needs clarification.Enough time for
everyone to get the "facts" straight.No "new" discussion at this
point.
4. Circle, still. Transition: I ask people to deposit their books
etc. under their chairs recalling that they have worked for so many
hours on so many issues and produced so many reports that are now in
the book. And then I ask "What does all that mean to you, to your
work, your life, the organization you work and live in? You have 7
minutes to reflect just on your own. There is paper and pens to jot
down things if you find that helpful".
5. The 7 minutes are spent in the circle, a great hush spreads, utter
silence and concentration.After 7 minutes I give the faintest
possible temple bell sound and invite them to spend 13 minutes in
pairs to draw on each others ressources to understand better what all
they have been engaged in the last x days for their future. A great
din breaks lose, everyone engaged in intense interchange.
6. Ring the bell (loud, this time) (in the meantime A3 sheets and
markers returened to the center, pinwalls spread around the circle)
and I invite people to reflect on what it is that needs to grow hands
and feet and a heart and a head (sometimes I add "and wings") and to
step up, write it down, state their name, state the action planned
and hand it to one of the helpers (they spread the action sheets
around the room).
The number of actions people are wanting to take is pretty
unpredictable. I saw situations where a group of 27 had 35
actionplans, or a group of 100 with 12 or 200 with 27.
7. Participants are invited to go to the action plans that interest
them, see who else is there and work out the next steps. A seperate
A4 (letter size) form with the following headings: Action, people
involved, steps (sometime step1, 2, 3), Date of next activity, name
of contact person.
8. Action plans are announced by contact person (45 sec/each),
additions or questions from the entire group invited after each
report.
9. During closing circle high speed assistants and xerox machines
produce Book of Proceedings Part 2, so that everyone takes a complete
set of action steps with them after closing circle.
10. Follow up meeting (already agreed upon and scheduled long before
the open space in the planning session with the planning group and
sponsor and communicated with the very first invitation to the open
space) is pointed to with the remark that this second part of the
documentation will be a valuable ressource in the follow up meeting.

The next challenge comming up is an os with 650 participants where
action planning is part of the game.
I know that someone in this list has done that before! Let me hear
about it.

One last thing: the present form of action planning that is part of
my way of working is also the most challenging for the sponsor.
If there is any remnant of "control" desire this is the point where
it will surface.
Typical questions: how will we coordinate this mess? what happens to
oddball ideas? what will happen to people when we dont want to
support the kind of action they propose?
To the last question I usually say: make no promises ahead of the
game that you are going to support any of the action plans that
people think up. Just let them know what you believe deep down anyway
that they will come up with more action plans that will benefit the
entire organization than management could ever dream up on their own.

Greetings from Berlin
mmp

On Tue, 6 Apr 2004 23:45:18 -0600, Kim Willing wrote:

>Re: convergence - In the past I have worked with up to 120 people and
>around 30 topics. I have given each person 15 sticky dots and asked them to
>allocate 5 dots to top priority, 4 to next etc down to 1.  I think the
>converging of similar topics has happened later, in the action groups when
>people are asked to relate and record similar topics -
>
>People will have a photocopied report of all the workshops given to them
>when they arrive on Fri morning and after being given some time to read and
>digest this, I will invite them to PRIORITISE THE TOP 10? TOPICS (? not
>sure about this no.)  and we will form action groups on those.
>
>Questions:
>What method will I use to do the prioritising of those topics requiring
>immediate attention??
>
>And, once hot topics are found, shall I ask for a champion to nominate for
>each before people break up into action groups or let each group decide (I
>am inclined to identify champions whilst still in large group, before
>action groups form).
>
>Would it be better to converge similar topics BEFORE prioritising?  The
>voting may be more meaningful this way - less spread out and more
>informative? I understand this would need to be a fairly quick, crude,
>intuitive process with this no. of people but it might help?
>
>Also, even if only 250 come to the Friday morning session, would it be
>unwieldy to use 15 dots each, and given that there may be many more topics
>than with a smaller group, I'm wondering whether it might be better to ask
>people to just list their top 10 (rather than 5) issues and to give 1 dot
>to each vs. ranking them. The counting of dots has to happen fairly quickly
>once the voting is done and I don't want to make it impossible.
>
>I look forward to hearing from those of you who have any thoughts on this.
>
>All the best and thanks,
>
>Kim Willing.

Michael M Pannwitz
boscop
Draisweg 1
12209 Berlin, Germany
FON +49 - 30-772 8000     FAX +49 - 30-773 92 464
www.michaelmpannwitz.de
www.openspace-landschaft.de

An der E-Gruppe "openspacedeutsch" für deutschsprechende open space-PraktikerInnen interessiert? Enfach eine mail an mich.

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