SV: Mixing action planning and

Thomas Herrmann thomas at openspaceconsulting.com
Thu Mar 1 15:42:29 PST 2007


Dear Diane

Thanks for sharing this way of “voting”. I usually use stickies and ask some
of the participants to count they – which goes pretty fast even with groups
up to 150 or so. 

I would like to try the envelope-way out! I have two questions that I´d
appreciate some more info on:

1. How do you do the combination of topics in this process?

2. What kind of tickets do you use?

 

Best regards

Thomas Herrmann

 

  _____  

Från: OSLIST [mailto:OSLIST at LISTSERV.BOISESTATE.EDU] För Diane Gibeault
Skickat: den 27 februari 2007 23:57
Till: OSLIST at LISTSERV.BOISESTATE.EDU
Ämne: Fw: Mixing action planning and

 

Hi everyone 

 

Harrison wrote (see below) how setting collective priorities is often what
is needed and that with large groups that can be a practical challenge - too
many dots to count and technology breaking down, although for very large
groups this has been the method of choice ...so far. A new way has been
offered and tested.

 

Some Canadian aboriginal people shared with us another technique for
compiling votes - or the survey as I now often call it (* see why below).
Their way is very quick and simple: tickets in envelopes. They prefer this
method since the individual choices are less influenced by the number of
votes others have given to a topic report for the simple reason that votes
are not visible.

 

Larry Peterson received that gift and shared it. He and I both experienced
together and separately, several OS events of 450 people and it works
wonderfully.

 

Voting was over in about 5 minutes, compiling results took around 15 minutes
followed by another 5-10 minutes of announcements of results for a total of
half an hour or less. My experience is 15-20 minutes for everything with
groups of 100. 

 

Now, that is as fast as computer voting where people wait in line for about
30 minutes to access a computer. This technology - mostly human - does not
break down and it is an extension of self-management and honours
self-organization. It is totally transparent, trustworthy and reinforces
trust since even the organizers and the facilitator discovers results at the
same time as participants. 

 

Here's how it works: 

 

1- Reports are posted in numerical order, spaced out on the wall, with
attached at the bottom, an envelope bearing in the top corner in large dark
print, the report number. 

 

2- Participants read the Book of Reports identifying at the same time their
top priorities and combining identical topics with the initiators' consent
knowing that combinations will be announced to the group just before the
vote (a transparency measure, accountability to the whole group and a
safeguard for combinations made for wrong "strategic" reasons).

 

3- After the combinations have been read, outside each of the 4 or more
aisles in the circle, people are handed a strip of tickets (3 or 5 for e.g.)
as they walk out to go to the reports on the wall.  They place their tickets
in envelopes attached under each report on the wall. 

 

4- Participants' choices are less influenced by the number of votes others
have given to a topic report for the simple reason that the votes are not
visible. Contrary to dots, you cannot do a quick compilation by eyeballing
the number of tickets (this may in any event be contentious with large
groups) but counting tickets you hold in your hands is faster, less
confusing so more precise. 

 

5- Participants are invited to go to a report - not their own - count
results, mark (in large print readable from a distance) and circle the
result on the envelope attached to the report. Two volunteers instead of one
per report may be desirable when the stakes are high and the trust is not so
high in the group. 

 

6-One volunteer remains at the wall for the announcement of results. 

 

7- When counting is all done, the facilitator asks if any report has the
maximum number a report could receive (e.g., same number as the number of
participants when it's one vote per person per report), and then goes down
by 10 until someone shouts that their report is in that range. As report
numbers and titles are announced volunteers note them on flip charts (and
simultaneously on overhead projector for very large groups if desired).  

 

It works!!  

 

If anyone has done something like this with groups larger than 450, let the
world know.

 

Diane

 

 

* I use the concept of the "survey" instead of the "vote" when participants
don't have decision making power - which is most of the time. It's best not
to raise falsely expectations. I frame what they are doing as "a survey to
propose priorities" that the leadership will immediately after the results
are out, give their go ahead on priorities for action or put some on hold if
needed and explain why.

 

 

 

Harrison wrote: 

I have run into the same concern, which is why I still think some form of
formal prioritization can work well. Granted this often looks like voting,
but I am not sure that voting is such a bad thing. The actual mechanism for
doing this can be as simple as pasting sticky-dots – or as complex as a
ballot with weighted scores. We used to have a nice software package that
recorded and tallied the votes and reported the results as bar graphs.
Somehow it developed a bug – but maybe some techie sort could fix it? Or
make a new one?? Anyhow, with large groups (over 100) I always found it
worked very well, and for sure it made the engineers and other “numbers”
people happy. At a practical level, counting sticky-dots can be an
eye-popping affair when the group size hits 500+. In those cases, having the
computer do all the work is a wonderful thing.

 

 

 

 

* * ==========================================================
OSLIST at LISTSERV.BOISESTATE.EDU ------------------------------ To subscribe,
unsubscribe, change your options, view the archives of
oslist at listserv.boisestate.edu:
http://listserv.boisestate.edu/archives/oslist.html To learn about
OpenSpaceEmailLists and OSLIST FAQs: http://www.openspaceworld.org/oslist

*
*
==========================================================
OSLIST at LISTSERV.BOISESTATE.EDU
------------------------------
To subscribe, unsubscribe, change your options,
view the archives of oslist at listserv.boisestate.edu:
http://listserv.boisestate.edu/archives/oslist.html

To learn about OpenSpaceEmailLists and OSLIST FAQs:
http://www.openspaceworld.org/oslist
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.openspacetech.org/pipermail/oslist-openspacetech.org/attachments/20070302/de6cddcf/attachment-0007.htm>


More information about the OSList mailing list