Posts tagged “AMED”

My client drove me to the station from our rather remote venue this afternoon.  She said:

“Do you think about a workshop after it’s over, or…”

I mentally completed her sentence as “or don’t you manage to?” After a small pause, she finished

“…or are you able to let it go?”.

I was reminded of the usefulness of not assuming you know what someone else is going to say.

And I realised I’d filled the pause with my own self-criticism: because I’m intellectually committed to action/reflection, and thinking about a workshop after it’s over is a powerful reflection stage.

But sometimes I’m just too tired to concentrate on reflecting ‘properly’. And I might beat myself up about all the scintilating learning I’m missing by not journalling or even blogging as much as I might.

Instead, my mind wanders or I retreat into the self-indulgence of a journey home where I can read the paper, mess up the Kakuro or stare out of the window.

But this particular journey home has been longer than expected, and I’ve got my second wind. So I will ‘reflect properly’, drawing on what we talked about and thought about on the way to the station.

You’re working too hard

One of the things my assessors said after my CPF earlier this year was that I was working too hard. The group should be doing the work, I need to get out of their way.  Perhaps I can take the same advice about reflection on my facilitation: let my mind do the work and get out of its way.

Wandering mind

The drive to the station was quite long, so I did let my mind wander, sparked by my client’s question. We had one of those leisurely conversations which are interspersed with gentle silences.  And our conversation touched on spaces, client comfort and workshop plans.

Owning the space

My mind wandered to what we had done to own the space. This workshop was the third in a series of three and all the venues we used had their challenges. Two of the three lacked good smooth walls to stick flips on and write on.  Today’s was crowded and we had to prop up boards on tables and stacked chairs to be able to see the flips.

In every venue, we quickly assessed the room, decided which furniture to move around or move out of the room altogether, and worked out where we would display the flips we needed for various metaplanning-type exercises and for participants to be able to see the running record.

Over the years, I have had to learn about the importance of layout, gain the confidence to take responsibility for making spaces as good as they can be for the conversation we want to have, pick up some tips and tricks for improvising the space and equipment needed, and get more decisive about making changes rapidly. That experience has paid off today.

Over-identifying with the client: whose comfort?

I have been more conscious recently of my own tendency to over-identify with my client, when facilitating stakeholder workshops. I feel uncomfortable when I think the client team may be feeling uncomfortable. I feel relieved when I think they may be feeling relieved.

I’m confident that this is not having a significant effect on my facilitation, but I’m conscious that this is a danger and that I need to check my inner motivation when choosing to intervene (or not) in situations where I believe that I know what my client would like to hear. Holding the space in periods of discomfort, doubt, uncertainty, conflict, anger, disappointment – this is one of the special gifts which a facilitator can bring to a group, and I’d like to strengthen my ability to do this with ease, without being overly concerned about the client’s level of comfort.

As it happens, today I was impressed with how well the client team responded to some of the things stakeholders said, which were probably hard for them to hear. Defensiveness was mostly absent.  When the team thanked people for sharing their experiences, perspectives, frustrations and aspirations, I think they meant it.

If I had, even unconsciously, sheilded the client from this difficult conversation, then I might have avoided some temporary discomfort (largely my own?) but I would have prevented some important truth-telling and mutual understanding from emerging.  And the elephants in the room would have remained hidden in plain view.

Let go of the plan

In two of the three workshops, we radically redesigned the agenda part way through the day.  A wise facilitator once said to me that any fool can design a workshop, it’s being able to redesign on the hoof that is the mark of greatness.  I wouldn’t claim to greatness, but my redesigns were good calls!

Today’s was helped enormously by the intervention during lunch of a process-savvy participant who observed that what the organising team wanted to talk about was not what the participants wanted to talk about. We negotiated a ‘deal’ to split the afternoon’s work so that some time was spent on the more pedestrian but urgent client concerns (and the group threw themselves into this) but a larger chunk of time was allocated to some open space. This was agreed by the rest of the group.

As my client and I discussed this on the way to the station, I was reminded of some insights about planning.

• At this AMED event last Friday, we talked in passing about Eisenhower’s claim that “plans are useless but planning is indispensible.”
• A few days before, at an ODiN workshop organised by Chris Rodgers, someone talked about their frustration at hearing people use ‘opportunistic’ as a way of disparaging those charities which apply for funding without a nailed down strategic plan.
• And my reading of this new sustainability leadership book containing experiences written through an action research lens has helped me understand how intention, values and an understanding of what you feel drawn to do can be coupled with being alert to opportunity resulting in emergent strategy.  (There’s an explanation of emergent strategy here, but you may know of a better one – stick it in the comments.)

I think there’s a parallel here with workshop (re)design:

• some values underpinning your work as a facilitator,
• some shared aims (intentions) agreed with participants,
• an understanding of the expertise and resources (e.g. time, space, numbers of different kinds of people, access to information) available for the conversation.
• being alert to ‘what’s trying to happen here’ and getting out of its way.

If you have those things – as a result of doing some planning (having a conversation about planning) – then a strategy is able to emerge if you get out of its way.

Update: This today (1st October 2011) from Dave Pollard would call this resilience planning, rather than strategic planning. An interesting post.

The conversation goes where it goes – who knows what might have happened if…

What I didn’t follow up on was the confession which may have been present in my client’s question: does she find herself unable to let go after a workshop, dwelling on what might have been in a way which doesn’t help her learn but perhaps keeps her in that unconfident phase of believing that she hasn’t done well enough?

I don’t know.  That conversation may have been equally rich.  The coach in me would have gone down that route, but the coach in me was taking some time out.

But by not trying too hard, and offering my own meandering observations, I reflected properly on what I’d learnt from the day.

I’ve met some interesting and challenging facilitators recently who have helped me reframe and explore my facilitation work and my sustainable development aims.

Our conversations together have been so refreshing and enriching, we wondered if it might be possible to open them up to a wider group…

So we have created Deep Open.

It’s a one-day workshop for people who are interested in groups, conversation, change and sustainable development.  We hope to enable conversations which allow us to be aware of our feelings (physical and emotional), alert to difference and conflict, challenging and honest.  We’re going to experiment with having our feelings rather than letting our feelings have us.  We’re going to experiement with not distracting ourselves when things feel uncomfortable.  We’re going to try to resist being task-focussed, whilst staying together with purpose.

If you are intruiged by this – rather than irritated – then you might want to join us on 19th May in London for this workshop.

We’re running the event in conjunction with AMED. The others involved are Johnnie Moore, Debbie Warrener and Luke Razzell.

I was reminded horribly of our different attitudes to risk a few days ago, when we were roused just after 7.00 by a strange sound.  Turns out the wonderful man who’s been cleaning windows in our street for over 15 years had fallen while washing our neighbour’s windows.

A— was lying there in next-door’s front garden, his arm bent rather alarmingly under him.

Neighbours gather round

We came to help A—, and so did other neighbours.  The emergency services were called, advice was provided by the 999 operator and soon A— was being covered with blankets against shock, the ladder was put in a safe place, his car had additional parking vouchers put in it and sweet tea was dispensed.

Not on the same scale as responses after disasters like the recent tsunami or volcano, of course, but a reminder that people will help when there’s a clear and present need.

Attitudes to risk

If you think an accident is never going to happen, then the cost of insurance seems like an unnecessary burden on the business. Likewise the cost of ensuring that systems and equipment are in place to make that accident even less likely may seem too high.

The accident in our street coincided with the world watching as the 33 Chilean miners were – remarkably and wonderfully – all brought to the surface safe.  The Chilean President Sebastian Pinera has promised a review of mine safety. Earlier this month, in the UK, a review was published into unnecessary health and safety rules, promising to get rid of ‘nonsense’.

One of the interesting things that we often share with participants on the Post-graduate Certificate in Sustainable Business is an analysis of what makes up our attitudes to risk.  David Spiegelhalter is a regular contributor, and he blogs here.  You can find some great examples of our perception of likelihood being at odds with mathematical probability.

Our attitudes are a complex combination of our assessment of the likelihood of something happening, and our perception of the severity of the impact if it does.  So far, so rational.  This is the way a professional would address risk. I’ve been learning a lot about the detail of this in the massive and complex Climate Change Risk Assessment project, where I’ve been privileged to be helping out with stakeholder engagement. The stages which the technical experts are going through, gathering data and developing complex ways of handling it are truly impressive.

But as lay people, we discount some risks if we wish they didn’t exist.  We intuitively factor in the ‘pain’ of doing something to reduce or manage the risk (both likelihood and impact).  So we consider what social benefits we’d miss out on by stopping smoking, or how silly we’d look in a cycle helmet. And we notice very clearly the cost of insuring ourselves and our business, without having much evidence to form a view of the likelihood or impact of a business risk occuring.

And we also consider who it is who is causing the risk, and whether we feel we can control our exposure to it.  This inability to control our exposure to the risks, and lack of faith in the benefits to us, are reasons why people are fearful of nuclear power or GM food. And there are other reasons.

Paul Slovic explains his view of the differences between professional and expert views of risk, and public perceptions of risk, in this paper.  The more ‘dread’ an impact is perceived to be (that is, the impact is horrific or unusual – think of it as a ‘yuk’ factor), the more ‘risky’ it is perceived to be by the public.  The less clear it is what the impact will be (once the causal event has happened), the more ‘risky’ it is perceived to be by the public.

Four rationalities

According to some anthropologists and political theorists, there are four cultural types and their attitudes to risk differ.  Individualists, egalitarians, fatalists and hierarchists will see risks (and what to do about them) in contrasting ways.  Our individual ‘risk thermostats’ have cultural filters in them.  John Adams puts it like this:

The contending rationalities not only perceive risk and reward differently, they also differ according to how the balancing act ought to be performed. Hierarchists are committed to the idea that the management of risk is the responsibility of “authority” – appropriately assisted by expert advisers. They cloak their deliberations in secrecy because the ignorant lay public cannot be relied upon to interpret the evidence correctly or use it responsibly. The individualist scorns authority as “the Nanny State” and argues that responsibility for decisions about whether to wear seat belts or eat beef should be left to individuals. Egalitarians focus on the importance of trust; risk management is a consensual activity, consensus building requires openness and transparency in considering the evidence.

The fatalists‘ motto is “duck if you see something about to hit you”. Read more here.

Who tells us what the risks are?

And its worth bearing in mind that we doubt some people and trust others.  This recent paper shows that we make assessments about whether the communicator is ‘like us’, and then come to a judgement about whether we believe what they are telling us about risk.  If we don’t identify with the messenger, we won’t listen to the message.

Who’s to blame?

Attitudes to risk also intutively take account of insurance and pay-back.

• If the worst happens, I will / won’t have a source of support and help.
• If the worst happens, someone will / won’t be held liable or accountable.

If blame is linked to the provision of help to those who have suffered, then perhaps those responsible for the risk will take measures to reduce its likelihood and its impact.  This is the logical chain which underlies campaigners’ calls for discussions on liability, decommissioning and clean-up to be concluded before new technologies are introduced.

What about insurance?

A—’s unfortunate accident made me revisit what I’ve learnt over the years about attitudes to risk – the professional and the lay.

Turns out that apart from a broken arm, he is fine.  Phew.

But he doesn’t have insurance and so he’ll be without an income until he can work again.

So his accident also made me glad that, being a bit of a risk-averse and rule-bound person, I have always made sure my business is insured for loss of earnings, public liability and professional liability.   If you’re in a similar line of work to me, then joining AMED is a great way to get access to a good deal on business insurance.  See here.

The New Economics Foundation is a wonderful organisation working practically and conceptually to enable us to rethink what our economy should do for us.  It calls itself a ‘think-and-do tank’. Amongst its many interests are participation and consensus-building as part of the renewal of democracy.

It’s in that spirit that my near-namesake, Perry Walker (no relation) has developed the Crowd Wise tool:  a way of enabling groups to propose alternative solutions and find consensus using a combination of a slightly sophisticated voting system and discussion which allows people to take the aspects they like about a proposal and combine them to form new proposals. Sounds a bit complicated in theory!

It is much more easily understood when you try it out in practice, which is exactly what I did at the launch a couple of weeks ago.  You can try it out on 23^rd September in London – see here – where our subject will be electoral reform.

Using a fictional example – the role of nuclear power

The launch was a mini-workshop where we were given some prepared options on the role nuclear power should play in a low-carbon, energy secure future.  (Of course, in a ‘real’ situation, we’d arrive at a discussion about a topic we had chosen to be present at and come with our own views which would then form the basis of the initial options.)

We were then asked to vote for the options in order of preference.  There’s a rather complex voting system, where you assign the options a preference (1^st, 2^nd, 3^rd preference etc) although you are not obliged to rank all of them.  Depending on how many you rank, the ones you rank are assigned points.  For example, if you give a preference for five options, your 1^st preference will score 5 points, your 2^nd preference will score 4 points and so on.   If you decide to express a preference for only two options, your 1^st preference scores 2 points and your 2^nd preference scores 1 point.

The maths wizards may immediately see the significance of doing it this way: when the scores are amalgamated, it’s possible to see the degree of consensus.  In fact, the results are presented as a ‘consensus coefficient’, between 0 and 1.

In our nuclear power example, the results in the first round of voting varied between 0.19 (for an option based loosely on the views of the World Nuclear Association) and 0.59 (for an option based loosely on the views of Amory Lovins – demand reduction and a ‘soft energy’ path.  Since this was a demonstration workshop, we were then randomly assigned an option to brief ourselves about and represent.  We spent some time in small groups of (fictionally) like-minded people, understanding our option and discussing possible negotiating tactics. The groups were then mixed up and we had a chance to explain our option and discuss it with people who had different views.

Then came the negotiations!  This descended into horse-trading a bit, as we raced against time to find common ground with other groups.  In the end, the five options we began with were reduced to three.  One of these was from the original five, and two were new amalgams.  The consensus coefficients this time varied between 0.47 and 0.92.

The seemingly popular choice had elements that many of those supporting it did not like – perhaps this element of compromise is essential to consensus.  If we had had time for subsequent rounds, I think that more options would have emerged and perhaps what we would have ended up with would include a more precise understanding of the things that we really don’t agree about, as well as broader areas of common ground.

That’s a summary of the technical process.

Real-world example – AFC Wimbledon

We also had a fascinating insight into a real use of this tool as part of discussions about the strategic direction of a member-owned football club, AFC Wimbledon.  This process is ongoing.

The six options which the strategy group began with were generated by drawing on themes identified using a classic meta-planning technique, with the initial post-it brainstorm informed by gathering views from members and fans.

Options include “selling up to any sugar daddy who would build the club a 25,000 seater stadium” as well as something based more on the importance of the club as a community resource.

Pondering

There was a very interesting discussion afterwards, as people who might well use this technique in practice explored its features.  We wondered whether it was in itself a decision-making tool, or a tool to inform a decision.  We agreed that the provenance of the options was important and needs to be clear.  It was also clear that the expertise and information about the detail behind the options, the nuances and assumptions, need to be ‘in the room’, in order for new permutations of options to be created and for well-informed voting.

NEF stress the usefulness of this tool in consensus-building, because of the in-built incentive to find common ground: your score only goes up if more people express a preference for your option.  This is the case even if the preference is quite weak.

In my group, I observed one person who was extremely keen on ‘winning’, i.e. crafting the most popular option.  This led to him being willing to include elements of other options which our initial option completely excluded, because this would increase the common ground.  I was uncomfortable with these ‘compromises’, but perhaps that’s because I was more committed to my (fictional) position than to finding common ground.  I’m not sure whether this is a strength or a weakness of the system!

Try it out for yourself?

Perry is running another taster session so you can try out Crowd Wise for yourself.  In conjunction with AMED and NEF, there will be a workshop in London on 23^rd September, from 2.00 – 4.30.  It’s just £15 (£10 for AMED and NEF members).  Find out more here.

Update

There’s an interview with Perry on the Rhizome blog, here, and a description of Rhizome’s use of the process (to help develop options for involving grassroots activists in organisational governance) here.

Ever been in a meeting where everyone is sure they’ve tried everything, and nothing works?

And nothing will ever work?

And it’s everyone else’s fault?

Sure you have!

Tempered radicals and other internal change agents face this kind of situation alot.  So do external consultants, activists and coach / facilitators.

“The eco-champions meetings I go to are a real groan fest!”

When I was faced with this heartfelt description in a training workshop, we spent a bit of time coming up with ideas.  But I was sure there must be some even better approaches than the ones we suggested.

So I posted a question on two great forums: AMED (the Association of Management Education and Development) and IAF (the International Association of Facilitators).

The useful suggestions from fellow facilitators, coaches and OD (organisational development) professionals gave me a lot of chew on, and the result is this article.  It was first published in the environmentalist, and has also been reproduced in the IAF Europe newsletter.

Your own experiences and suggestions are very welcome!

Not groaning,

Penny

…at the AMED Sustainable Development Network Cafe Conversation on 26th January.  Details here.

What do we make of Copenhagen?

Here are some contrasting views, first a commentary on what went wrong, from the BBC’s Richard Black with – as Bruce Nixon says -

“some interesting news of tectonic shifts in the international relations between countries which need time to digest.”

Richard’s analysis?

1. Key Governments do not want a global deal.
2. The US political system.
3. Bad timing.
4. The host Government.
5. The weather.
6. 24-hour news culture.
7. EU politics.
8. Campaigners got their strategies wrong.

Next, something to cheers us up.  Forwarded to me by Dave Sharman, this quote comes from the blog of  Roger Harmer.

“For three days, the mayors and leaders of a hundred major cities discussed the challenges of climate change, their ideas, plans, projects and responses and their shared focus on action and delivery.

At no point did anyone question the need for urgent action or question their own individual – and shared – responsibility and there was a quite remarkable lack of competing, showboating or criticism.

There was no carping about the levels of adopted targets or about who was at what stage – even though Copenhagen plans to be carbon zero by 2025 and Los Angeles daren’t mention what their carbon emissions are likely to be 25 years later!…

This looked and felt like a team!”

Who’s coming?

As well as the people who have RSVPd on the AMED site, we are expecting people who:

• cycled part of the way there raising funds for adaptation projects and delivered pledges from a 350 event in his home town;
• helped set up a sustainable tourism and education project in Nicaragua;
• wrote a book on sustainable business and is currently writing another;
• set up a consulting practice around sustainable development, and whose teenaged daughter went to Copenhagen;

Perhaps you’ll be there too?

What’ll we talk about?

The purpose is to share reflections and perspectives on what the outcomes of Copenhagen were, and what they mean for us and our practice as consultants, facilitators, organisational developers and the various other hats we wear.

I’ll blog about what happened.

If you’d like to be part of this conversation, see here for details.

If you’re a consultant (internal or external), are any of your clients going to Copenhagen?

What are you doing to prepare them to, in the words of Dave Hampton, “succeed, against the odds, and pull off a real deal”.  Dave suggests, in his letter to the Independent, that if this comes about, “history will remember them for eternity, for the bold leadership they found, out of the blue, when planet Earth needed it most.”

Those of use who are coaches, mentors, facilitators or similar help our clients to think better, listen better, find out what they really want and co-create their future better.  Those of us who are advocates, communicators and campaigners bring inspiration, motivation and purpose.  What are our best, most excellent ways of helping clients find bold leadership, out of the blue, when they need it most?

If you’re interested in hearing from others and sharing your own perspectives on this, why not pop along to this informal meet-up of the AMED Sustainable Development Network, which will focus on the Copenhagen Climate Summit.

If you are planning to come, please RSVP on the site, so we have some idea of numbers.

And why not post your thoughts here, on the discussion thread on AMED’s website.