OS & Evidence based practice

Sat Nov 6 21:26:07 PST 2004

Jon,

I share BJ feelings that a combination of AI and OS might be a good approach
for your situation. Here is a process inspired from this combo that I have
found to be quite effective. It is based on story telling and pattern
recognition. We humans are not designed for analysis: when we use our
analytical skills we are rather slow and inconsistent, each of us tends to
use different methods and we thus have a hard time agreeing with other
people; i.e. we discuss and argue.  In contrast we are perfectly designed
for pattern recognition; we do it all the time with all our senses
immediately and without effort: with our eyes we see immediately the
patterns that tell us which trees are alike and which ones are different; we
separate and put together instantaneously and without effort trees from
bushes and types of trees from one another; we do the same with our ears to
compare and differentiate sounds or tunes; same with touch, smell and taste.
What's more other people see, hear, smell, taste and feel the same patterns
we do; it is therefore easy for a group of people to agree what is a tree
and what is a bush, or what is the song of a bird versus the sound of a
motorcycle.

Based on these ideas here is the process. Bring together people who have
been involved in the projects that you are studying. Try to have a dozen or
more participants.
1) Start by putting them in pairs. Ask them to tell stories to one another
(5 to 10 minutes max) describing their most successful experience with the
project that they participated in. I want to emphasize the word stories to
make it clear that you don't want presentations or analysis. You want
stories that are as unedited and unfiltered as possible. Stick to 5 to 10
minutes for each story; they don't need to be perfectly complete.

2) Put 2 pairs together in groups of 4 and ask each participant to repeat
the stories that he/she just heard. About 5 minutes for each story plus a
bit of time to answer clarification questions if needed.

3) Ask all participants in each group of 4 to listen for patterns, namely
conditions that repeat themselves across stories. After listening to all 4
stories ask them to collect the patterns that they identified together.
That's another 5 to 10 minutes.

4) Reassemble the whole group and collect the patterns across all the
quartets.

5) Make sense of the collection of patterns together with the whole group,
get clarifications, eliminate the weak ones, simplify and merge those that
look alike. Don't try to arrive at the perfect list, just something that is
good enough. Do your best to use the simplest possible language and avoid
big words (For instance "everybody knew what everybody else was doing" is a
lot simpler and clearer than "good communications"). Try to put a bit of
order in the list so that you get on the top the patterns that all agree are
the most "hard core" conditions of success. Don't bother to achieve perfect
consensus on all patterns.

6) With the learning from the patterning process as background start an OS
session about future projects.

7) What emerges during the OS session will inform you whether you need to
revisit the list of success conditions from step 5.

This has worked well for me but there is of course no guarantee.

Good luck,

Henri

-----Original Message-----
From: OSLIST [mailto:OSLIST at LISTSERV.BOISESTATE.EDU] On Behalf Of BJ Peters
Sent: Saturday, November 06, 2004 4:23 PM
To: OSLIST at LISTSERV.BOISESTATE.EDU
Subject: Re: OS & Evidence based practice

Jon-- There are a number of us on this list who sometimes use OST in
conjunction with Appreciative Inquiry (AI). Briefly, AI is about discovering
what's working in the organization, and teasing out the factors that
contribute to the success. These discoveries seed the vision and design
process to create more of the same.

When I use this combination of AI/OST, I use the discovery and dream phases
of AI. For the design and destiny phases of AI, I move into open space.

If you want more on this, I'd be happy to talk with you off list. Best --BJ

BJ Peters
bjp1 at cox.net
602.279.4805

"The path of violence moves - sharp, sharper, sharpest, while the path of
nonviolence moves - gently, gentlier, gentliest."
-- Dwarko Sundrani, last active disciple of Mahatma Gandhi

On Saturday, November 6, 2004, at 04:43 AM, Jon Harvey wrote:

> Hallo
>
> I work in the field of public services - and I have a potential client
> who wants help to discover what works in the field of community
> safety.
> Specifically they coordinate a number of projects thoughout a large
> city here in the UK - and they have conducted some recent evaluations
> of 4 of their major projects. However - the evaluations did not
> discover what were the critical success factors to the 4 projects - in
> other words - why ~did~ they work? They need this info - so that they
> can apply the learning to future projects.
>
> So they are looking for a meta evaluation of the 4 projects - to try
> and identify what are the 'differences that make the difference'
> between success and failure in this complex field of social
> interventions to increase community safety.
>
> Easy huh!
>
> I am keen to use OS to work with the client all the stakeholders to
> help them achieve this. Why? Why OS? Well (obviously) I value and like
> the process hugely. Secondly - I believe they need an innovative
> process (beyond the standard research evaluation that they have
> already used) to dig down deeper (and deeper) to discover the essence
> of the evidence based practice.
>
> So... my enquiry is this - has anyone out there had any experience of
> using OS in such a way - I would be most interested to hear your
> experiences
> -
> whatever you can share.
>
> Time is of the essence - I have to finish writing the proposal in
> about 24 hours time - so any info I need before then. (By the way -
> has OS ever been used to help procurement professionals to have a
> slightly less anally retentive view of the world?!!)
>
> All thoughts most welcome. Many thanks
>
> Jon Harvey
> Oxford
> UK
>
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