A Final Word or Two on Purpose and Adult Learning in Large-Scale Facilation

A Final Word or Two on Purpose and Adult Learning

The outcomes I have experienced from large-scale events have been transformative! I have been fortunate over time to have the opportunity to expand my group facilitation from the common group sizes of 20 or 30 to groups of 200, 500, and 1,000 or more. There other methodologies that I have not talked about here that include open space technology, appreciative inquiry, hackathons, and crowdsourcing. All have their plusses and minuses, and all need versions of the tips and suggestions I’ve provided.

My world is of one of strategy, vision, design, and learning. There are diverse reasons and applications for large-scale events. For all of these, purpose matters. For most events, I choose a primary purpose, but there are always several layers of dynamics occurring. You could choose a secondary purpose and design intentionally for the primary purpose and include elements that bring in elements of the secondary purpose. Here are five descriptions.

Foreseeing and visioning: much of the work I do is about strategy and it is important to see into the future; when this is your primary purpose is creating shared vision, you can anticipate potential challenges and identify new opportunities for intervention; processes of co-creation and iteration are useful in large groups to develop shared possibilities.

Creating and innovating: in the strategy and innovation work I do, ideating and creating choices is important;  we often use novel approaches for turbulence, disruption, reframing, reimagining, or recombining various elements and perspectives; prototypes are wonderful tools for making vision increasingly real as implementation approaches.

Aligning and implementing: the target for these kinds of events is to energize individuals in an organization or larger community to align actions and along a common path forward; we seek activities that build shared understanding of the environmental forces, explore perspectives on the nature of the problem, and identify decelerators and accelerators to planned action; seeking degrees of consensus throughout the event is often an implicit goal if not fully explicit.

Persuading and influencing: large-scale events can also have a primary purpose to influence and shape the perspectives of key stakeholders and the public; here, employing thought leaders and experts can be helpful; the evolution of proposals, sharpening of ideas, and promotion of conversation all help support influence and persuasion.

Learning and change: other large-scale events can be primarily focused on individual and organizational learning and change; convening a large number of employees from a single organization for example can have significant benefits and help propel the organization further than by moving forward in small groups in small steps or by top-down edicts; additional comments on adult learning follow.

In my work, I always take a developmental approach. Engaging your participants as adult learners is a fundamental perspective I take for large event success. From this perspective, large events create shared experiences, which in turn create common ground. Adults learn and engage best through experience and will have developed preferences that vary significantly from one person to another. This learning can be maximized by cycling through phases of engagement, ideas, experimentation, storytelling, and reflection as these activities enhance engagement and result in greater personal and collective performance. By acknowledging that learners have different learning style preferences, the designers and facilitators can reach and engage all participants.

While it may be a tricky addition to a large events, adults thrive on self-directed learning by recognizing their own goals, the stay motivated and open to change. Even more impactful and perhaps challenging, learning content is best when co-developed with participants in advance. Diversity in methodologies keeps activities fresh. And be prepared to abandon or change the program flow as learning unfolds.

A well run large-scale event can produce profound outcomes, extraordinary engagement, and have lasting long-term benefits. They can gain energy like a tornado and they can take a group to places they never expected to go. This can have both positive and negative consequences, so suggesting that a large-scale event be delivered is a significant proposition. It also requires a great deal of planning and resources.

It takes courage to design and deliver your first large-scale event and experience to keep doing it well. Participating, witnessing, and discussing large-scale events can provide what’s needed to get over the inertia. I encourage you run the experiment, plan to learn from the experience, seek help along the way, but most of all – have fun.

Soon I'll publish a link to the full text of this article in .pdf format.

Recipe for Success in Large Scale Facilitation

I have explored and honed a set of tools that make the design and delivery of large scale events successful and rewarding and I’d like to share what I've learned. This is not a complete list, nor does it give justice to details involved, but if you pay attention to these aspects of the work at minimum, you should find the process goes smoothly. The surprises that results should be not those of disappointment, but those of significant forward motion.

be intentional about design: develop a design plan with a clear purpose (more on this later) and learning outcomes, specified work products if appropriate, and key design elements such as maintaining momentum and flow, participant experience, and the use and integration of technologies

use a planning team: start early by informing the team of the design and establishing roles through the process; key roles could include coordinators, designers for learning and other processes, facilitators, logisticians, and budgeting

develop a facilitation guide: this document may include important scheduling details, learning and work product outcomes, materials and special materials, key participant lists, and session by session facilitation details with times, speakers, and roles of the key participants; typically the facilitation guide is less detailed and far more flexible than a formal script

establish a compelling challenge and an attractive invitation: be conscious of enticement and engagement of participants as they are considering whether or not to attend the event, express the experience through invitations that represent well what they may experience

intentionally arrange space: large events require extended logistics related to transportation, way finding, comfort, facilities for food and breaks, seating, and group interactions; consider professional meeting planning support when available

be obsessive about materials: develop detailed lists, a budget, procurement times and details, and disposal and reuse guidelines

use multiple facilitators: a single key facilitator should be assigned to coordinate and train support facilitators and pay attention to group energy, flow, activity, and output; specific assignments for support facilitation can include subgroup management, navigation, stimulation, turbulence, recording, and any detail that cannot be overseen by the lead facilitator

distribute participation: it is easy for a large group to shift behavior towards that of an audience; it is easy for speakers in large groups to treat the crowd as an audience; facilitators should find opportunities early the session to discuss with the group how this will be different and create micro group engagements; small group activities should be arranged with considered phases of input-process-output stages where output can be cycled in some way to large groups and capture the appropriate stage of development; the experience of the individual participant can be mapped through the large event system as an experience journey

configure groups: find simple and novel ways to form and adjourn small groups, encourage leadership, record outcomes, and swirl group membership to increase the number of contacts made by each individual participant

design for experiences: shared experience creates a common vocabulary, reflection of emotion among participants, and a connection in long term memories that has lasting impact

chose the right information and conversations for the full group: a general rule of thumb is that the large scale group should be in plenary, whole group format, less than 25% of the entire time they are together

attend to sequencing and time allocation: groups of various sizes process through various stages of development; adult participants need to have certain freedoms for self-direction; people of various personalities and styles have different needs to express and experience; all of these variables create time and sequencing demands, with the overall outcomes in mind, these can be added to the design elements and addressed early the event planning

plan for emergent design to shape activities as the event progresses: it is difficult to predict the nature of the outcomes of the micro and small groups; small variations in the early conditions can cause large ripples in the outcomes later the large group event, because of this facilitators should have options for shifting and pivoting design elements, exercises, and capture techniques as the event unfolds; while experience brings confidence and positive events, it also teaches us to plan for emergence and to add energy to new ideas and forming concepts

harvest and record: large groups can produce a high volume of interesting ideas during generative processes and quickly build consensus during evaluative processes, both the specific content of the ideas and points of consensus should be captured as well as the rules and conditions by which these outcomes and artifacts were produced; there are myriad options for recording; analog is often better than digital, and simple is often better than complex; and video, if allowed and agreed upon ahead of time, can serve as a full record to go back to and reconstruct outcomes later

debrief: reflecting on the experience can (and should) be part of the experience; all stakeholders (clients, facilitators, participants) need reflective feedback opportunities, some more formal and structured than others; special attention should be given to debrief with the planning team and facilitators on the design and flow of the large event; special attention should also be given to debrief with the facilitators and clients, reflecting on the expected outcomes and actual impacts

synthesis and follow through: is it important to seek meaning and understand the impacts of the experience as well as commemorate special happenings, learnings, images, and impressions that occurred along the way; large scale events have lasting impressions and different aspects of the event’s impact can be observed and assessed over varying lengths of time – immediately after the event you can assess engagement, energy, and specific outputs – two to three months later you can assess ongoing communication, the application of knowledge, and new collaborations – six months to a year later you can assess shifts in discourse, implementation of strategies or innovations, and change in the large context

Moving From Small to Large Group Facilitation

The leap to convening groups of 100 people or more, or 1000 or more, in one place at one time can be very intimidating. But in reality, the leap is not as great as you might expect. It is important to understand some of the critical differences that require attention in the design and delivery phases. Let me explain a few of the shifts that occur when scaling events beyond a hundred or so individuals.

being there: in small groups, there is usually greater similarity in the attendees and a greater commonality in purpose in being there, in larger groups, there is usually greater diversity in participants and often completely different reasons for being there

participation: in small groups, there is usually time for everyone to speak to the entire audience; in larger groups, there is rarely this opportunity, but some can do it, and almost everyone can speak in front of a small group if that is designed into the flow

flow: smaller group facilitation can permissibly get off track in order to pursue interesting ideas or approaches; in larger groups, this can lead to wholesale process breakdowns, part of the large event can be designed to accommodate this, but the lead facilitator needs to stage the activities to create flow over time

consensus: the smaller the group, the fewer the individuals that need to align to reach consensus; in large groups, consensus looks more like a cloud of opinions that may point in a general direction than a lineup of support for a singular approach; there are a variety of consensus techniques for large groups, many that are visual

conversation: in small groups, most participants can attend to the full conversation as it occurs throughout the meeting; in large events, there are series of conversations that allows people to come together and move apart, this creates the need to summarize and capture outcomes and results along the way, think multiple cycles of divergence and convergence

technology: in small groups, more technology can generally be used with a low consequence when it fails; in larger groups, even small failures in technology can be exponentially disruptive, analog is often better than digital, and simple is often better than complex

Next week, I'll add some "recipes for success" a set of tools that I have learned honed that make the design and delivery of large scale events successful and rewarding.

Delivering Large Scale Events

This month my blog will feature content on how to design and deliver large scale events focused on topics of strategy, vision, ideation, and related planning or futuring activities. I will describe how to go about designing these experiences, what the benefits are, and give instructions, tips, and insight about trying this yourself. I will summarize the importance of the developmental aspects of large scale events and how they contribute to individuals, teams, and organizations long-term success. 

Large scale events are those with more that 200 people in one location at one time. The focus here on on face-to-face, participatory, synchronous events. There are a variety of different methodologies appropriate for one-way delivery, distributed and virtual activities, and asynchronous engagements, which will not be part of the discussion.

Look for more content in the coming days...