The shared experience of collaborative planning is a significant outcome in itself. It can build a sense of team, increase depth of understanding, build common vocabulary, and give people a touchstone on which to call in the future when a group starts to drift.
But is that shared experience enough? Don’t we also need to produce something together through it? What happens if our shared experience is one of seemingly landing right back where we started?
Collaborative decision-making is my default setting. So familiar to me that I barely notice doing it.
Two books have brought that position into sharper focus for me recently.
I’ve recently talking to a whole bunch of people re: how best to strengthen addictions services in Waterloo Region (about an hour west of Toronto) for an organization called House of Friendship (HoF).
Throughout the project, people have been talking excitedly about a new, much-needed space scheduled to open this July that will house HoF’s residential treatment services, day treatment programming and counselling for people concerned about their substance use.
Yesterday morning, I saw a Tweet about a fire at the construction site of that new facility. The cause of the early morning blaze is still under investigation, but the damage is extensive.
I have worked with two clients recently who listed “collaboration” in their strategy documents, in one instance as a goal and in the other as a core program/service. In both cases, I was curious about the why behind that choice. What value are they getting or offering from collaboration that would cause it to feature so prominently in their strategy? And how we can ensure its value is truly outweighing its costs? Even more than that, is collaboration an end in itself?
I love facilitation techniques that are “high density” — that is, they pack a lot of meaning into a single exercise.
I have written previously about how the common technique of “dotmocracy” can be improved upon. I stand by those observations and wanted to show you a very recent example of why. It also provides greater detail to support a recent post about deciding how to decide before deciding.
Continue reading “High-Density Collaborative Techniques”
