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.