Australian Community Development Blog

Getting the Whole System in the Room

Regular readers of this blog know what an advocate I am for large group meetings and the idea of getting the 'whole system' in the room.

Here's a systematic approach for doing that - best done with a couple of others or even a formal planning group:

1. Clarify your purpose. The system can only be defined in the context of a task or purpose.

2. Brainstorm everybody who has Authority, Resources, Expertise, Information, Need in the context of the purpose.

3. Based on the brainstormed list, identify the key stakeholder groups. These groups represent a subsystems within the whole system. (By way of example, a recent Chamber of Commerce that I worked with came up with the following groups in the context of developing a strategic plan - Chamber members, Chamber Board and staff, local non-member businesses, other local business associations, government and education.)

4. With the benefit of your stakeholder groups, go back over the brainstormed list and ensure that all of the stakeholder groups have reasonable representation. If there are any groups low in numbers, think further about important stakeholders within that group who should be added to the list.

5.  Look at the group and ensure demographic diversity. Do we have a good mix of genders, ages, cultures and so on. Again, these decisions need to be made in the context of the identified purpose.

Once you have done each of these, you will have the whole system. It takes a little work but if you are dealing with an important task, its well worth the effort. The benefit of engaging the whole system is greater differentiation, diversity, creativity and therefore greater development.

9 Principles for Effective Large Group Meetings

My last post mentioned the importance of using large group meetings for community development PROVIDED they are based on the latest most effective principles and practices.

For maximum effectiveness, follow this maxim: "Principles Precede Practices"

Here's my list of 9 principles for success. They are my words but I have learnt principally from (and borrowed some of the words from) my US based friends and colleagues Marv Weisbord & Sandra Janoff. Gil Steil and Nancy Aronson.

1. Clarity of Purpose

2. Quality Meeting Conditions - Natural Light and Healthy Food

3. Facilitate Attendance of All Relevant Stakeholder Groups

4. Active Engagement - No Expert Presentations

5. Focus on the 'Whole' Before Looking at the Parts

6. Self Management - Based on Guidelines

7. Focus on Future Opportunities Instead of Present Problems

8. Discovery of Common Ground

9. The Length of the Meeting(s) Needs to Be Proportional to the Circumstances and Desired Outcomes

Of course, not all meetings involve large groups of 30 or more but, with some modification, the principles still apply to smaller meetings.

Also, you don't need to apply all 9 principles at once. Like everything in life, its a learning process. Start at #1 and work your way down. If you haven't previously clarified, documented and shared the purpose of your meetings, try it and see what happens.

The Backbone of Quality Community Development

I had to start this blog with my favourite theme - periodic structured large group meetings.

Many community leaders have had downright terrible experiences with large group meetings. So before you tune out let me emphasise that I'm talking about quality meetings based on the latest most effective principles and practices.

I'm not talking about meetings where certain sections dominate. I'm not talking about meetings where people are seated theatre style. And I'm certainly not talking about meetings with lots of talk and no action.

What I AM talking about is meetings where a representation of what we call the 'whole system' come together, have equal voice, and develop specific action plans with the mutual understanding and goodwill needed to see those plans through.

Because of past bad experiences or the desire for the quick fix, its easy for community leaders to look elsewhere for quality community development and one of the current favourites is online initiatives.

Don't get me wrong, what online and other non-meeting offline approaches provides is awesome. (In fact, a large part of my Australian SME Marketing Blog is focused on online developments, many of which relate to both marketing and community development). But with one proviso, nothing has the power to match quality face to face meetings.

In this Knowledge Era that we're now well and truly into, what matters is the ability of parts of the system to learn from other parts. When this happens, the system AUTOMATICALLY changes or develops.

Another word for this 'learning' is communication and we know that nothing replaces face to face communication - with one BIG proviso.

What's the proviso? I've already said it. The meetings needs to be based on the latest most effective principles and practices. (More on this in my next post).