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<p>Susan Lilley wrote:
<blockquote TYPE=CITE>Hi Chris,
<p>I was looking forward to reading about your novel action planning design
and
<br>how it worked out, but haven't seen anything on the list -- did I miss
it,
<br>or has it not happened yet? I am facilitating an Atlantic regional
meeting
<br>where I think it might make more sense for the action planning to happen
by
<br>province, so I would like to hear how your approach turned out.
<br>
<br><a href="http://listserv.boisestate.edu/archives/oslist.html"></a> </blockquote>
Oh Yeah...I did do that didn't I?
<p>I have been REALLY busy of late, so apologize for not getting back to
everyone on this.
<p>Okay..the story in brief...
<p>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.
<p>Lots of politics and expectation from government, but all were overcome
by opening space. In the end 41 groups met and reported.
<p>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.
<p>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.
<p>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.
<p>2. Take a copy of the proceedings from the centre
of the circle, and five dots.
<p>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.
<p>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.
<p>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.
<p>6. Gather back in the plenary room after two hours
for a report out.
<p>We spent about an hour allowing the youth to report back to the plenary.
<p>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.
<p>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.
<p>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.
<p>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.
<p>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.
<p>Cheers,
<p>Chris
<br>--
<br>CHRIS CORRIGAN
<br>Consultation - Facilitation
<br>Open Space Technology
<p><A HREF="http://www.chriscorrigan.com">http://www.chriscorrigan.com</A>
<br>corcom@interchange.ubc.ca
<p>RR 1 E-3
<br>1172 Miller Road
<br>Bowen Island, BC
<br>Canada, V0N 1G0
<p>phone (604) 947-9236
<br>fax (604) 947-9238
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