Evolving Community of Design with Dialogue

Written by . Posted on February 8, 2011. Filed under Retreat. No comments.

Design with Dialogue has evolved into a learning and practice community.

The purpose of DwD was to create an ongoing venue for practice whereby we could develop established and emerging methods of dialogue and structured group engagement for community and social design. As the community has grown, we have a total group of about 150 past and present participants, and we’ve explored, hands-on, everything from Art of Hosting to Sensemaking. We’ve gone from just learning methods to inventing them, from trialing new practices to conducting them as live facilitation in community engagements.

It’s clear to me that DwD is having an impact on cultural change. People in the community are actively entering into new conversations with community stakeholders and clients to introduce more effective ways of social learning and action.  And while our monthly community sessions are extraordinary experiences, the lasting value shows up in how DwD informs our work and everyday lives. This is where culture starts to change around us.

We now have a Stewards Council of 6 regular, committed leaders that share a vision for a higher-impact DwD learning and practice community. And we have never made requests on the community before for a commitment, other than those who have graciously offered to present a session. But we’re not going to reach these goals on our own, we would love some more volunteers. We promise that you will get more from participating than you put into it.  I know this is true of all this work, a learning community that changes culture and eventually helps everyone we work with.

We need help in the following activities:

  • Two new programs getting started (KMDI and a Master’s series)
  • help setting up and striking down the gathering space
  • video and photo documentation at sessions
  • posting documentation and session follow-ups
  • Blog (DwD.com) management and posting relevant things from other sites
  • posting session invitations on dwd.com
  • toolkit development and management (for online methods resource)
  • outreach (help us find and connect to other leaders for masters or methods sessions)

We have action teams for Community, Communications, Programming, and other functions as well.

Please contact me, or Greg, to let us know you’d be interested. And how you would like to help.

Shut Up & Dialogue! (with Clowns)

Written by . Posted on February 5, 2011. Filed under Play. No comments.

DwD presents DwC: Dialogue with Clowns

What do clowns know that you don’t ?

The international clown troupe of Patricia Kambitsch, Heidi Madsen, and Elsa Lam presented the February edition of Design with Dialogue.

Through nonverbal, visual, and interactive experiences drawing from theatre games, we explored the essence of dialogue beyond words.

Eighteen people joined us in an inter-personal inquiry into the questions:

* What is dialogue, really?
* What does it feel like?
* How can we understand if we’re talking all the time?
* How might we experience understanding of each other through a dialogue between I, Thou, and Crowd?

Moving from Dialogue to Action

Written by . Posted on December 31, 2010. Filed under Retreat. No comments.

When we convene dialogue for the purpose of understanding, can we also inform decisions and achieve outcomes?

Can strategic dialogue - a process for informing decisions – also include open dialogue? Are they mutually opposed in practice?  How do we move from collective inquiry to decisive action?

What are the conditions that grant authority to frame the inquiry initiating dialogue?

What conditions enable authentic inquiry and co-creation?  What dialogue structures empower leaders to make decisions?

Case studies of our own examples of dialogue in action will be elicited from participants in the open dialogue.  Stories will be captured visually in sketches and harvests. Café groups will break out to explore action scenarios, closing with a group discussion on the dynamics of organizational co-creation and authority.

ALIA’s Little Book of Practice

Written by . Posted on December 8, 2010. Filed under Retreat. No comments.

Download this book as soon as you read this. And then read the book at your leisure – the ALIA folks created a wonderful gift for energizing a culture of dialogue. From their website:

The Little Book of Practice for Authentic Leadership in Action chronicles the principles, people, and practices that have come together to create ALIA’s unique approach to actualizing authentic leadership and transformational change.

Download the free PDF ebook: Little Book of Practice

Printed copies are available for purchase at ALIA.

KaosPilots student applications now open

Written by . Posted on November 12, 2010. Filed under Retreat. No comments.

From the KaosPilots website:

One person endowed with PASSION & PURPOSE can make an ENORMOUS DIFFERENCE , we are looking for 38. … Now consider spending three years of your life at a school located in Denmark… together with other highly motivated people who want to make a difference.

Exploring Positive Deviance

Written by . Posted on November 11, 2010. Filed under Retreat. No comments.

Erika Bailey spoke about the use of Positive Deviance as an organizational strategy in the University Health Network (UHN) for the control of MRSA and other superbugs. See her slides from the Nov 10 DwD (and her PD Handout pdf).

Positive Deviance, Presentation at DwD by Erika Bailey

From an interview with DR. Michael Gardam, UHN:

One of the things we do here is a program called TRIZ, where we ask people to design a system where you would spread infections to every single person in the hospital. How would you design that? And within about two minutes health care workers will yell out, “Don’t clean your hands,” “Don’t clean the room.” They all know exactly how these things are spread. But then when you talk to them about washing their hands, the answer is “Sometimes.”And from HIROC health news: Positive deviance refers to encouraging a hospital’s front-line staff members to develop methods for controlling superbugs in healthcare settings.

More from www.positivedeviance.org:

Positive Deviance is based on the observation that in every community there are certain individuals or groups whose uncommon behaviors and strategies enable them to find better solutions to problems than their peers, while having access to the same resources and facing similar or worse challenges.

The Positive Deviance approach is an asset-based, problem-solving, and community-driven approach that enables the community to discover these successful behaviors and strategies and develop a plan of action to promote their adoption by all concerned.

November DwD 11.10.10 | Facilitation of Positive Deviance

Written by . Posted on November 2, 2010. Filed under Retreat. No comments.
NEW LOCATION:
We are now holding sessions in the Lambert Lounge, room 187 at OCAD’s main building, 100 McCaul St. We’re right next door to the OCAD auditorium.
START TIME 7pm:
This month’s session only will be 7pm so folks can attend the Torch lecture next door in the auditorium if they like.

_____

DwD is the same time 6-9, second Wednesdays of every month.

The DwD session will introduce the principles and the practices of PD, and will invite all attendees to try out the PD tools and consider applications in their own communities.

Register at EventBrite for this session

Facilitated by Erika Bailey:  Human Systems Consultant with a decade of facilitation and teaching experience. Her extensive expertise and practical skill in leadership, individual and organizational change, and organizational development (OD), her impressive academic background, and her proven skill in designing/facilitating large and small group processes has made her an in-demand facilitator in engagement projects across the GTA. Erika is a coach in the Canadian Positive Deviance Project and is a faculty member of the Safer Healthcare Now! New Approach to Controlling Superbugs Initiatives.

Redesigning Design with Dialogue

Written by . Posted on October 9, 2010. Filed under Retreat. No comments.

A NEW LOCATIONS:   7 FRASER AVE IN LIBERTY VILLAGE

The October DwD was held in the intimate environs of the new Redesign studios at 7 Fraser Ave, Studio 12 .  We can fit everybody – at least the regulars – and we look forward to the fresh dynamics that this will introduce to the group.

Greg shared his process ideas and learning from the Art of Social Innovation workshop last April. (His presentation is available to participants on request). Peter shared a process to engage the group’s vision and proposals for scaling DwD to a level of more significant impact in the next year.

Dotmocracy: Large Group Decision Making

Written by . Posted on September 1, 2010. Filed under Retreat. No comments.

September’s session on large group decision making was hosted by Jason Diceman, Senior Public Consultation Coordinator for the City of Toronto and author of the Dotmocracy Handbook.

Dotmocracy Workshop Sept 8 2010

Dotmocracy is a transparent, equal opportunity, and participatory large group decision-making tool. It is a simple method for recognizing points of agreement among a large number of people. Participants write down ideas on specially designed paper forms called Dotmocracy sheets and use pens to fill in one dot per sheet, recording their levels of agreement. The result is a graph-like visual representation of the group’s collective opinion. Note, this is not sticky dot voting like you may be familiar with. It focuses attention on each idea in turn, as shown here in the session:

Dotmocracy has been proven to:

  • Recognize collective priorities and direction from all participants.
  • Engage and empower diverse groups of people.
  • Recognize agreement on unique and specific ideas, as well as general and thematic ideas.
  • Give an equal voice to even the quietest of participants.
  • Help avoid verbal debates and “soap box” style speech-making.
  • Support friendly discussions while efficiently leading to practical conclusions.
  • Provide fully documented results that can be easily turned into action plans.

We will learn the details of facilitating this technique and apply the tool in a real life scenario, discuss approaches to various challenges and hear stories from Jason’s experience in Venezuelan communal councils, Canadian co-operatives, un-conferences and public consultations.

You can download a free PDF of the Handbook and learn more about Dotmocracy at Dotmocracy.org