1. Working well together
in
large groups
HOW to make Planning&Design processes more inclusive,
creative, self-governed, effective and enjoyable?
Thursday, 17 March 2011

2. Making a great plan... together!
4 key process challenges >>> Response:
1) How to engage with many ...Propose meeting formats that
different people early on and are specifically developed for
throughout the process? interactive working in large
2) How to generate consensus on groups.
complex issues, where there might be ...Be transparent, encourage
winners and losers? passionate debate, make
3) How to provide great decisions and stick to them
opportunities for learning (mostly), enjoy yourselves and
from each other? visualise.
4) How to enable people to build ...Facilitate all three learning
trusted relationships, generate a types (seeing/listening/moving
sense of ownership, with a clear mandate things around)
...If you do all of the above, it
for future actions?
might happen quite naturally.
Thursday, 17 March 2011

3. MetaPlanning...
... has been around since the 1970s. It works well for diverse
groups because it makes use of all three learning types: Seeing/
listing and moving things around. 10 to 200 participants can work
together.
Large boards, large sticky cards, thick pens and other bespoke
facilitation material from Neuland is used to enable open
dialogue, foster balanced debate and effective group working. The
records of every part of the process are recorded on the boards
and walls. The minutes of a MetaPlanningRoom Session are simply
the photos of the large boards and walls populated and validated
by participants through-out the session.
MetaplanningRoom sessions provide a big canvas for an open,
interactive and collective brainstorm. Followed through properly, it
paves the way for well documented, consensual decisions owned by
many and generated by a diverse group of stakeholders.
Trained facilitators are at hand to steer the group or groups
through the agreed process. One key aspect of Metaplanning is the
use of large cards by all participants. Every idea and thought has
the same ‘weight’, no matter who wrote or drew it. This is critical
in groups with different kinds of knowledge and social standing
to facilitate a balanced and often surprising new depth of
dialogue. Through the course of a session (1hr to a series of
Play, explore days), all happening in one room, a landscape of ideas, issues,
opportunities, options, actions and decisions evolves and is visible
and improvise! to all.
Thursday, 17 March 2011

4. Fishbowl Session...
... is a dynamic alternative for a panel discussion for audiences
large and small. A participant at the Event Camp 2010 summarised
it as follows:
“Having sat through far too many sessions that use conventional
set ups, I found this more collaborative set up quite refreshing.
For those of you who have not seen fishbowl dialogue in action, it
is much like it sounds…a circle of 5-8 chairs are placed in the
centre of the room facing each other (this would be the fishbowl)
and 2-8 (depending on the size of your audience) rows of chairs
are set up to radiate out of the fishbowl.
People who volunteer or are selected to sit in the fishbowl have a
dialogue or provide points of view on a selected topic. One of the
fishbowl chairs is always left empty – this way if anyone from the
audience wants to join the discussion they seat themselves at the
empty chair (and someone else gets up to free up a chair). The
idea is the moderation is kept to a minimum and the constantly
changing fishbowl participants drive the dialogue.
I found this technique to be a great way to tap into the
Play, explore and intelligence of the audience and build content for a subject
improvise! around the needs, challenges and experiences of that crowd (at
least the ones who participated in the fishbowl).”
Thursday, 17 March 2011

5. World Cafe gathering...
... was developed by Juanita Brown and is shared all over the
globe (www.theworldcafe.com). It finds its power in an informal
setting of a cafe-house style set-up. This method taps into people’s
incredible ability to share stories that matter to them. Paper table
cloths are employed to develop and record ideas, thoughts and
action points. After about 20-30 minutes, everybody but one
person moves to a new table as ambassadors and the conversation
continues. The person staying builds links between the different
stories. The last round of conversations brings the original group
members back together. The task is to synthesise discoveries and
to share them in a whole group conversation. A plan of collective
actions emerges.
The mind-set that has made World Cafe such a success for large
and diverse groups is to:
- Focus on what matters
- Contribute your thoughts
- Speak your mind & heart
- Listen to understand
- Link and connect ideas
- Listen together for insights and deeper questions
Play, explore and
- Play, doodle, draw - use the table cloth
improvise! - Have fun!
Thursday, 17 March 2011

6. Open Space...
... puts participants in the driving seat. Open Space works for groups
from 25 to over 2000 people. Open Space processes have taken place in
more than 160 countries around the world. Well prepared and
facilitated by only one experienced person, Open Space processes create
environments for change, deeply rooted in self-organisation as a
means to make "more of what works".
This fabulous format is most distinctive for its initial lack of an
agenda. It’s the participants that create the ‘right’ agenda. The
organising and creative force here is the passion of individuals for an
idea/issue/solution. Harrison Owen discovered this force and
identified 4 principles & 1 law to support this self-organising and
highly effective way to create momentum for change. And in this spirit,
people join groups for as long as they feel they can add to the
conversation after that they move on. That the "Law of Two Feet". It
turns the gathering into a dynamic network of cross-pollination
between many informal workshops.
The 4 ‘principle’ or ‘positive attitudes’ of Open Space are:
1. Whoever comes is the right people...
2. Whenever it starts is the right time ... Now is great!
3. Whatever happens is the only thing that could
Play, explore have ...Excellent!
and improvise! 4. When it's over, it's over... All done. Well done. Let’s move on!
Thursday, 17 March 2011

7. Make the Future...
... stands for a whole set of techniques that tap into the
stimulating and inspiring power of playing&making. Imagine
hundreds of people literally building models of a new or
improved street, neighbourhood or city using lego type tools
linked to a simple spreadsheet showing number of homes, shops,
schools etc.
Every game has rules. The facilitator explains the rules and
provides every team with an aerial map, design principles and
‘building material’ and off they go. The game is on.
At the end of the design session a market place for all models
is put together, explained by design teams, critiqued and
(possibly) voted on. This interactive process can/should be
supported by professionals that freely offer their advice to all
teams in case tricky questions come up.
It is important to prepare and equip an event properly with 3D
props, ideally working to scale. However, never underestimate
the ability of people to imagine a place in the future even if
the vision is expressed by a model built with day-to-day items
such as sugar cubes, peas and other delicious things you’ll find
in a well stocked kitchen!
Play, explore and
improvise!
Thursday, 17 March 2011

8. WE know that you might be able to MAKE a great plan
without working well together with many people all the time ...
... BUT we also know that you can only DELIVER a great
plan when working well together with many people from the outset.
Have a look at our website (www.imagineplaces.co.uk) or contact
Angela (angela@imagineplaces.co.uk) if you need support in getting started.
Thursday, 17 March 2011