your thoughts on really big invitations?

Tue May 10 21:01:27 PDT 2005

Just thinking out loud. . . I have not given your fascinating
challenge, Michael, deep thought. . . but. . .

I recently heard two internal OD people talk about an Appreciative
Inquiry (AI) intervention that was done in their business as a
response to the dissatisfaction with the annual employee satisfaction
survey.  These were not my clients so my understanding of the dynamics
is not fluent. . . just what I heard in an hour's presentation.
Thirty three employees were trained to conduct AI interviews and then
all the employees of this org (a division of about four hundred within
a much larger entity) were interviews and all the interviews made
available to any and all who wanted to read them.  As these people
talked, I asked them if their boss had any explicit deliverables for
this intervention. . . . but, amazingly (maybe not so amazing), the
boss had not had any explicit deliverables.  Now, after all the
interviews have been conducted and compiled, there is a management
group who is tasked to do something about all the data collected. . .
but I got the impression that the client org, from the head of the
division to the internal OD folks and to pretty much everyone that
everyone was, basically, already very satisfied with the intervention.
 The power of having real conversations with one's coworkers about
where their passion for their work is rooted and what their wishes are
for the future was enough.  Being an org. in contemporary America, the
management committee will look at all the wonderful data embedded in
those interviews and come up with some action plans. . . but the thing
that impressed me was that simply having the conversations was already
enough.  I just share this with food for thought.  The org. was a
client of Steve Cato, who is an AI colleague of Peggy Holman's (Peggy
facilitated the presentation I am telling you about) if you want to
hear more.  We asked these internal OD folks if they would go on doing
the annual employee satisfaction surveys and they said that yes, they
would but they were going to have to be different.

Two friends and colleagues recently convened an initial planning
meeting for a potentially gigantic project and they created an AI
interview to be used in advance of the meeting:  all of the invited
participants were asked to interview another participant.  It was a
small group, less than ten.  And, again, I was not directly involved
in the project and my knowledge about how it worked is not very deep.
. . . just what I heard in a brief description afterwards.  The
planning meeting was an open space. . . but remember, each participant
had begun to move in to the conversation by having conversations with
at least one other participant, over the phone, in advance of the open
space planning meeting.  My colleagues reported that in the opening
circle, each person introduced themselves. . . and before they
finished going around the circle, the group went very deep, very
quickly.

Again, I am not sure how this directly answers your questions,
Michael, except that they illustrate, for me, that what you are
proposing to your survey clients is brilliant and I hope they go
along.  I think one way to increase the passion/responsbility bar is
to invite each person who accepts the invitation at the end of the
survey to not just agree to show up but to actively invite them to
interview others, to engage with colleagues around a set of
appreciative questions. . . .

I know I might be getting off topic to your fascinating project,
Michael, but I have been sitting, a lot, with The World Cafe (TWC). .
. I love to read great OS practitioners tweaking TWC model until it
becomes OS!  Instead of having pre-determined questions at tables with
facilitators at each table, I would prefer to engage all prospective
participants in a mutual AI process.  Seed the field for meetings with
dynamic, alive interchanges grounded in appreciative questions and
then just open space.  If two people out of the 100,000 surveyed
respond at the end of the survey and say "Yes, I'd like to have a
conversation" and then you set them up with the contact info to have
an AI conversation (both parties interviewing the other). . . . and
the interview itself could ask, again, would you like to have further
conversations. . . and the people who said yes to that could, again,
be put in touch with others who said yes. . . and then you could trust
them at some point to take initiative.  I might not be explaining
myself well but I am very excited by your project, Michael.  Keep us
posted.

I would be interested to read what other OS'ers think about making AI
interviews a part of prep for an OS day, esp. one whose desired
outcomes include specific action planning.

On 5/10/05, Michael Herman <mjherman at gmail.com> wrote:
> hi all,
>
> i've got an interesting situation emerging here and i'd appreciate
> some design thoughts.  i'm in conversation with a firm whose business
> is surveys for big companies.  they poll 10s of 1000s at a time on
> engagement, leadership, alignment, innovation type issues.  they've
> been at it a long time and are very good at what they do.
>
> my idea is that these surveys, which are always done anonymously,
> could be very effective invitations.  that would require putting a
> one-paragraph 'invitation' at the end, directing anybody who would
> want to be (and the wording here is an open question, but
> essentially...) in conversation with their colleagues about the issues
> raised, the survey results delivered, and any things that individuals
> and small groups might do directly for themselves (passion bounded by
> responsibilty) to address these things.   the idea is that they could
> be directed to a new page where they could enter their contact info,
> without it being connected to the survey response, and thus add
> themselves to the 'invitation list' for the conversation(s) about
> issues and survey results.
>
> now, in one organization they are about to survey 100,000 employees.
> if even a very small fraction of people say yes, and these folks are
> scattered around the globe, it gets to be a very big conversation to
> have.
>
> certainly we can handle this, but how?  we know that we could handle
> as many as 2108 in one place, if we wanted to, but at what point (how
> many people) would we have to shift from event mode to remote,
> self-facilitated, self-convening mode?  how might we set up the
> deputizing of many conveners/hosts throughout an org and around the
> world?  could we do some things to raise the passion/responsibility
> bar in the sign-up process?  could we lower the activation hurdle?
> how much would need to happen to make good on this invitation, how
> much of a conversation do you suppose we can and should be able to
> offer?  is this a good job for open space?
>
> i'm just beginning to wrap my brain around this and would be glad for
> any thoughts from you.  initial contacts on this are in europe, just
> in case that makes any difference to how we think about this.  i'm
> hoping to raise this possibility in conversations later this month and
> can report back on progress then.
>
> many thanks, michael
>
> --
>
> Michael Herman Associates
> http://www.michaelherman.com
> ...inviting organizations into action
>
> Small Change News Network
> http://www.smallchangenews.org
> ...blogging giving flourishing
>
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--
Warmly,
Therese Fitzpatrick

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