This brief paper, motivated by experience on the
Lincoln consultation on ‘Change and Responsibility’, outlines practical
procedures to foster higher levels of creative work and participation in consultations,
conferences, workshops, and similar events.
[1984]
* * * * * * * * *
The
level of creative work in a consultation depends to a large extent upon the
levels of trust and risk-taking that can be built up within the very limited
time available. It therefore helps if
particular attention can be paid to the building of small, high-trust-level
working teams very early on in the proceedings.
High
levels of work and creative participation also require the lowering of the
levels of dependency within the group and the placing of responsibility for
creative contribution firmly into the membership right from the start.This probably means that we have to resist
the temptation to collude with the pressure to protect membership from the
anxiety of decision-making in the early stages of the consultation and also to
resist the pressure to provide some kind of top-down management structure in
which the theme content is seen to flow from consultation management to
membership.
In
the light of these considerations it might be wise to fashion the opening
session, keynote address, groupwork and plenaries along some such lines as
follows:
| 1 | After
the initial pre-meal melee and the establishing of first tentative social
relationships, the consultation could be convened in the round without
tables. The chairman's introductory
remarks and welcome could be kept to an absolute minimum, ending with the
introduction of a consultation facilitator, whose task would be described as
enabling members to get to grips with the subject as deeply and quickly as
possible. |
| 2 | The
facilitator gives a brief outline of the process of group formation to be
employed. The task is to enable each
member to select working colleagues from the rest of the membership of the
consultation, to get to know them in some depth and together to identify key
points of agenda which they feel should form the core of the conference working
programme. |
| 3 | A
fairly effective way of achieving this is to ask each member to introduce
him/herself briefly around the room. This enables everyone to identify names, roles and faces. While this process of introduction was going
on, people would be asked to be looking for two other members with whom they
would like to work. When everyone had
introduced themselves, the next instruction would be "would each member
now please find two other people with whom they would most like to
work". Then as the threes form
they take their chairs and distribute the working triads using all the space
available in the room. |
| 4 | Once
in the triads, the next task could be for two members to interview the third
member for five minutes. They should
find out as much about their background as they could, identifying any
particular points of stress or concern that the person was bringing in to the
conference that they needed to share and talk about before being able to give
their attention fully to the conference business itself. That done, the person could be encouraged to
put into words what they hoped the consultation would achieve, what they
personally hoped to get out of it and what were the key issues they felt should
be tackled. After five minutes roles
would exchange within the triad and the second person becomes the
interviewee. After another five minutes
have elapsed, the third person is interviewed. That means that every person has had the opportunity of articulating
their concerns, of formulating some kind of hope for the consultation, with the
stimulus of being carefully listened to and questioned by two other people. |
| 5 | The
next stage depends on the number of people on the consultation and the size of
working groups required. The short-life
consult probably works best with groups of not more than 6 or 7 people, so the
facilitator's next instruction could be "would each triad next select one
other triad with which they feel they would like to work closely on the
conference theme. >Once you have
selected that partner triad form your chairs into a tight-knit six and then
each pair introduce the person you have just interviewed to the new triad,
taking no more than three minutes each.' If you allow 20 minutes for the exercise it will give just about enough
time for the decision making, chair re-arrangement and introductions. |
| 6 | By
this time most people will have relaxed and be talking quite freely. Each person will have got to know 5 other
people at some depth and initial anxieties will have decreased to the point at
which the working agenda of the consultation can begin to take the floor. The next instruction of the facilitator
could therefore be "would each group now take 10 minutes, brainstorming
the issues which members feel need to be raised at this particular consultation
on this subject". Encourage
everybody to make notes of everybody else's ideas within the group. The facilitator will need to stress that
this is not the time to start discussing the issues themselves but is the point
at which everybody should be encouraged to name the full range of issues which
they would like the consultation to address. |
| 7 | At
the end of this period, the instruction could be given, "would each group
now reflect on that list of issues and select the top three in order of
priority. In other words if you could
only tackle one issue for the rest of this consultation, which would be the one
that you felt above all must be raised and dealt with and then, provided that
issue was dealt with, what would be the next one on your agenda, and so on, to
number three". Perhaps 5 minutes
could be given for that exercise and then the facilitator with the assistance
of a scribe could call in the first priority issue from one group, ask if the
same issue was scored at top priority in any other group, and if it was then
the number of groups scoring it at number 1 is recorded, number of groups
scoring it at number 2 is recorded, number of groups scoring it at number 3 is
recorded, number of groups mentioning the same issue but not giving it priority
is recorded. Then the priority issue
from another group not already mentioned is called in and recorded and the same
procedure of scoring is gone through. The process continues until all number 1 priorities are called in, then
attention shifts to number 2 priorities not already scored, followed by number
3 priorities not already scored, followed by other issues mentioned but not
scored at all. |
| 8 | That
completes the first public session, with the comment from the facilitator that
the priority-weighted agenda drawn up by the consultation will be available
before the next working session the following morning. People may now want to go on talking in
their groups a little, or drift off to the bar or whatever, but that is the end
of the formal business for the evening. |
| 9 | At
this point the facilitator and scribe have to put in some overtime! The first task is to apportion scores to the
issues as follows. The first priority
scores 4 points, second priority 3, third priority 2, and a listing without
priority 1 point. The number of points
scored by the consultation against each issue can then be totalled up and the
issues rearranged in order of priority rating. Often two or three particular points will emerge with high scores
virtually neck and neck, while other issues tail off quickly to much lower
levels of scoring. Next there are
various ways in which the material can be prepared for presentation. The list of issues and scores, in order, can
be written up on acetate for overhead projection, or printed up boldly on
newsprint and stuck round the walls, or typed up and duplicated or photocopied. It also helps people to gain some visual
perception of the relative priorities given to different issues if the scores
are represented by a bar chart. The
typed list with bar chart, photocopied so that every member has their own paper
is probably the most effective way of distributing information. The overhead projector tends to reintroduce
a note of dependency and unless it is left on all the time, only displays the
information temporarily. Newsprint on
the wall is better, but again externalises dependency from the group focus onto
the boundaries of the consultation, whereas the personalised, individual sheets
of information means that each person is responsible for working on the
material, which they themselves own, can scribble on etc. |
| 10 | At
the first session the next morning the group reconvenes in the groups of six,
with the task of reviewing the priority working agenda thrown up by the
consultation and in the light of that, together with their own group concerns
to decide what topic they wish to tackle first, what other topics within the
agenda they also wish to deal with, taking into account their own levels of
expertise and the time available. That
exercise could take perhaps 10 minutes or a quarter of an hour. Each group should then report in the
subjects they are going to work at, so that everybody knows roughly what
everybody else is doing. Groups should
then disperse to allocated study areas, where they will not interrupt each
other, with the brief to get on with their work for the next, whatever it is,
two or three sessions. It should be
noted that no formal leadership structure has been appointed, either by
consultation management or membership. Peer groups with six members should be able to manage this kind of
working agenda without formalising the leadership structure, though obviously
informal leader roles will emerge within the groups. |
| 11 | Inter-group. It is important to cross-fertilise work
between the different groups. A
delegate process is one way of doing this, but it is a fairly ineffective way
of communicating information. It makes
distinctions between active emissaries and passive receivers in which only a
small proportion of the consultation membership have the responsibility for
putting into their own words the kind of work that has already been done within
their group. Perhaps a more effective
way of going about it is to reconvene the total membership of the consultation,
then supposing there have been six working groups with six members in each, the
facilitator gives the instruction would one person from each group meet up with
one person from each other group. This
generates six new groupings in which there is one representative from each of
the original working groups. These new
6s are then encouraged to spend half an hour sharing what has been going on in
the working groups. That gives each
member about 5 minutes to report and summarise their own group's formation,
concerns, questions, and achievement to date. The process achieves maximum cross-fertilisation within the consultation
without setting up imbalanced roles. At
the end of the exercise the original working groups are encouraged to reconvene
and return to their study areas to continue for the rest of that session and
probably the next working session as well. Each working group has access to six different perceptions of the work
being done in every other working group, giving the best possible information
matrix for further work, in the light of which they should be able to pursue
their own working agenda on their current and next priority issues. |
| 12 | The
last half hour of the final group working session should probably be given over
to the task of identifying issues, comments, questions, contributions which
that group would like to raise in the closing plenary. |
| 13 | The final plenary (which should
probably not be the final event of the consultation) is convened with the
working groups sitting tightly together, preserving their group identity within
plenary space. The facilitator and
chairman can work together in this session, indicating that the task is to give
an opportunity to the working groups to surface their questions, comments,
contributions to the various issues which have been identified by the
consultation as fundamental to the consultation theme. It is then probably best to let the groups
surf ace in whatever order they want to, rather than try to regiment the
exercise, selecting one group to report first or something like that. A simple question "Which group wants to
begin" followed by the toleration of a few moments silence will probably
kick the process off quite well. A few
minutes at the start of this plenary can be used to enable the working groups
to review the contribution they want to make. Rather than appoint a single spokesperson for each group any member
should be encouraged to speak on behalf of their group or on their own behalf
during the plenary session. |
| 14 | If
it is envisaged that the consultation should lead to specific decisions, and/or
actions, then a brainstorming and priority selection exercise can be carried
out along similar lines to the process used in sections 6 and 7 above. Groups could be asked to list decisions to
be taken in the light of the consultation and arrange them in priority
order. After reporting in they could
then be asked what actions should be taken, when, and by whom in order to
implement the priority decisions. |
| 15 | Closing
a consultation without burying the work that has been done is an important but
difficult process to which very little attention is normally given. It is as vital as building the working teams
at the beginning of the consultation. One useful way of achieving this end is to spend the final 30
minutes in the initial triads, which can be given four questions to work at: a)
what have you found most frustrating and disappointing about the consultation;
b) what have you found most valuable/interesting/stimulating about the
consultation; c) what personal action do you need to take in the light of the
consultation; d) what issues do you need to work on further as a result of this
consultation and how do you propose to go about that task. The same kind of process can be used as in
the original joining, namely that two members of the triad interview the third
member along those lines and then change roles until each person has had time
to reflect on the consultation and on their future working agenda, supported by
a listening pair. |
| 16 | At
this point the working structure of the consultation has served its task and
the triads dissolve leaving people free to make their own departure as
individuals, having arrived, joined, developed a working structure, identified
an agenda, worked on the agenda, reviewed the work both positively and
negatively and identified issues still outstanding for future work and action
beyond the boundary of the consultation. |
| 17 | The
leaving process itself is then the responsibility of individual members within
the melee of drinks, meal, packing and departure. |
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