I’ve just read the Wikipedia and Random House entries on James Surowiecki’s book The Wisdom of Crowds. These were pretty interesting, and I trawled around the net some more. So of course this makes me an expert…
The first thing that struck me was that Surowiecki’s argument makes sense, as far as it goes. […]
Tom Schwarz commented:
For me there is a significant difference between nature’s phase changes (at thresholds) and that when a collaborative group’s reality transforms - once a group’s awareness has been expanded/altered - there’s usually no ‘going back’ - no ‘reset button’ .. why I regard collaborative processes as being able to lead to genuine transformations
So […]
At the risk of stating the bleeding obvious, meetings have both costs and benefits. Figuring out both these aspects, and the balance between them, can help decide whether or not to hold a meeting.
These costs and benefits have three aspects: economic, political and cultural. Economic is fairly straightforward these days. What resources […]
David Tranter’s book Nature and Society makes a remarkable amount of sense. Among other things, he describes a range of thresholds in nature and links them to thresholds in society. I reckon properly designed and run collaborative events use this principle too.
Natural thresholds include the point at which reptiles have basked long […]
Alex Soojung-Kim Pang from the Institute For The Future has posted an extended comment on Sandberg’s Cubicle Culture article. Pang shows a fine appreciation of the degree of planning involved in any good (facilitation) event.
He goes on to identify a second argument on the value of individual brainstorming, and speculate what the literature shows. […]
An article by Jared Sandberg (from The Wall Street Journal, reprinted in Post-Gazette.com) presents several interesting perspectives on brainstorming.
First it discusses the pitfalls of poorly planned sessions. These boil down to using the tool in isolation with little or no preparation or follow up. I particularly like the line:
In fact, great brainstorming sessions […]
ToP™ modules train people in participatory facilitation/meeting methods using participatory methods.
Jim Belshaw commented:
I think that I would add learning by doing on the experiential side.
This is always good in a general sense, especially so where the exercise involves an on-going process. To make this work, you need to build in the culture and process elements up front.
This is true, both for facilitating training and for […]
What tools can you use to help you put together a good process on behalf a group?
Three that I use are: the practical result, the rational aim and the experiential aim. Each is pretty much what it says. The first is more about outputs, the other two are more about outcomes. Let’s […]
There are several noteworthy aspects to this aphorism. Firstly, I initially came across this in a class on paving, run at my local TAFE. So the point is equally practical and applicable wherever you go.
Secondly, it’s one of those ‘double-negative’ statements. As such, it doesn’t really guarantee a positive outcome. It […]