group process Archives : Conferences That Work

Jeopardy Meets Event Innovation: The Fishbowl Sandwich Format

Monday, July 29th, 2024 by Adrian Segar

Ken Jennings: “Welcome to America’s favorite answer and question game, Adrian! The answer is ‘The Fishbowl Sandwich’.”

<DING!>

Adrian: “If you had to pick one unique/creative/innovative session format or strategy you successfully implemented or you’ve witnessed that resulted in better interaction and engagement, what would that be and why?”
—Merijn van Buuren question via LinkedIn, July 17, 2024

Ken Jennings: Right!

And, just like that, I was on to the next round!

We can dream

Here’s how I answered Merijn’s question:

“In 2015, I invented the fishbowl sandwich. It’s a session format where hundreds of people can profitably discuss and learn more about a “hot” topic—typically “hot” because it involves difficult challenges for the participants—and crowdsource creative, unexpected solutions by drawing from the ideas and experiences of the entire audience.

A well-designed and facilitated fishbowl sandwich is the best way I know to uncover, share, and develop solutions in a single session. People are often unaware that they know things that could be of immediate value to other group members. The fishbowl sandwich process finds these individuals and helps them share their knowledge and expertise. It encourages active participation and ensures that multiple perspectives are heard.

As a bonus, you can also use a fishbowl sandwich to offer structured consulting to group members grappling with a specific issue or problem.”

You can learn the what, why, and how to run a Fishbowl Sandwich from my book Event Crowdsourcing: Creating Meetings People Actually Want and Need.

But wait, there’s more!

Having only one tool in your tool chest of conference session designs and formats won’t get you far. No problem! I also wrote The Power of Participation: Creating Conferences That Deliver Learning, Connection, Engagement, and Action, which Julius Solaris called “a mandatory read for the modern event professional”.The book comprehensively covers twenty-seven fundamental session formats that transform traditional conference sessions into a powerful learning and connection experience for your attendees. That’s why Jerry Weinberg described The Power of Participation as “a catalog of tools for designing meetings”.

For each format, the book includes:

A descriptive overview.
When to use the format.
Required resources and pre-planning.
Step-by-step implementation guidance.

Thousands of event professionals have purchased Event Crowdsourcing and The Power of Participation. They’ve beefed up their event design toolkits with the tools to tackle the hardest event design jobs.

Join them today!

Tags: fishbowl, fishbowl sandwich, group process, group work, Power of Participation, problem solving| Posted in Event design | No Comments »

Liberating Structures 1-2-4-All has a big problem

Monday, April 15th, 2019 by Adrian Segar

While Liberating Structures includes many useful ways to improve meetings and organizations, one of the “simplest” offered — “1-2-4-All” — has a big problem. It claims to uncover a group’s “important ideas” in just twelve minutes. However, in practice, it invariably misses innovative ideas that need time for the group to understand and value.

1-2-4-All’s point of failure

1-2-4-All starts with individual reflection on a question, problem, or proposal. Next, pairs and then groups of four develop individual ideas (a total of seven minutes of work). It’s not a bad start, though, in my experience, allocating several minutes for individuals to come up with and formulate ideas is well worth the added time.

Jumping to “All” is a big problem. At this point, each group is supposed to have answered the question “What is one idea that stood out in your conversation?” This requires throwing away the other ideas discussed in the group. Each group shares its “one idea” with everyone during the next five minutes. In addition,” large groups” … “limit the [total] number of shared ideas to three or four”.

I can think of four reasons why this is a poor process:

Forcing the groups of four to discard all but one of their ideas almost guarantees the loss of important perspectives.
The limited amount of time for the groups to review their members’ ideas biases the “one idea” chosen to something that seems quickly understandable and superficially attractive. Groups are more likely to reject good ideas that require nuanced understanding and/or more extensive justification.
Useful ideas can focus on the “big picture” or a specific detail. I’ve observed a useful detailed idea lose out to a vague sounds-good suggestion. 1-2-4-All provides no guidance as to how each group should select its “one idea.”
The process for restricting the total number of shared ideas for large groups to “three or four” is undefined. I suspect 1-2-4-All imposes this arbitrary limit to keep the entire process short. But a large group will generally have many more than four useful ideas. The surplus useful ideas are wasted.

A poor process leads to poor decisions

Rushing group process to quickly come up with some “great ideas” may feel good. “Wow, we’re really moving along, guys!” This is an unfortunate example of how our culture often prizes efficiency over effectiveness. (Another example: lectures are the most efficient way of sharing content — but also the least effective.) The 1-2-4-All process is biased against complex innovative ideas and prematurely focuses on an arbitrarily and hastily chosen few.

Decision-making that relies on the ideas output by 1-2-4-All is likely to be flawed or, at least, suboptimal. Generally, much more time will then be spent on turning these ideas into policies or outcomes. Underinvesting in idea generation and discussion leads to significant time wasted refining suboptimal, limited ideas.

When 1-2-4-All may be adequate

Under some circumstances, making quick and dirty decisions is appropriate and/or necessary. For example, making a group decision on where to hold the annual company picnic, or how to respond to an unexpected event that requires ideas and a decision in the next thirty minutes. Generating ideas using 1-2-4-All under such circumstances makes sense.

Affinity grouping— a better process than 1-2-4-All

Good decision-making by groups requires sufficient time to both generate ideas and review them, plus a process that involves everyone and that does not discard potentially useful ideas prematurely. A process that has been around since the 1960s and that satisfies these criteria is affinity grouping (sometimes called cards on the wall), described in the late R. Brian Stanfield‘s The Workshop Group: From Individual Creativity to Group Action and in Chapter 43 of The Power of Participation.

Affinity grouping takes longer than 1-2-4-All: from 30 minutes with a small group to several hours with a large one.

In my experience, affinity grouping leads to a comprehensive and rich set of ideas, discussions that allow the entire group to understand all suggestions, and clear methods to filter, cluster, and prioritize decisions and future desired outcomes and actions.

I recommend you use affinity grouping, rather than 1-2-4-All, whenever possible!

Have you used 1-2-4-All and/or affinity grouping? What has been your experience? Share in the comments below!

Tags: 1-2-4-All, affinity grouping, decision making, group decisions, group process, liberating structures| Posted in Event design | 1 Comment »

How to get attendees to risk doing something new at your event

Monday, December 18th, 2017 by Adrian Segar

Getting your attendees to do something new at your event can be hard. For example, Seth Godin illustrates the problem:

“Want to go visit a nudist colony?”

“I don’t know, what’s it like?”

“You know, a lot of people not wearing clothes.”

“Show me some pictures, then I’ll know.”

Well, actually, you won’t.
You won’t know what it’s like merely by looking at a picture of a bunch of naked people.
The only way you’ll know what it’s like is if you get seen by a bunch of naked people. The only way to have the experience is to have the experience.
Not by looking at the experience.
By having it.
—Seth Godin, Experiences and your fear of engagement

Now you’re probably not taking your attendees to a nudist colony for the first time. (Nudist associations, I did say probably.) But introducing a new event format where an attendee has to do something different, like interact with other attendees or play a game, will usually evoke uncomfortable feelings for some or many attendees, ranging from mild unease to outright fear.

So how can we encourage attendees to take the risk to try something new?

By having them do something new together.

A caveat — allow attendees to opt-out

Whatever we are asking attendees to do, it’s important to always provide an option for individuals to opt out. How to do this depends on the circumstances. For example, running an activity as a concurrent breakout or an add-on to the main program implies that participation is optional. But if the activity is a plenary session, then you should always give an opt-out provision after introducing the activity and before participation starts.

(This doesn’t mean that attendees necessarily get to pick and choose how they will be involved with the activity. For example, when I run The Solution Room I make it clear that those present who choose to attend can do so only as participants and not as observers. If they choose not to participate, I ask them to skip the session.)

Strong scientific research performed over fifty years ago has shown that groups are more likely to accept taking risks than the members individually (e.g. see diffusion of responsibility and level of risk-taking in groups for supporting research). Seasoned facilitators know this. Working with groups we can routinely get members to do things collectively that they might balk at as individuals.

Simply asking a group to do something perceived as risky is not all that’s required, however. Supplying or obtaining agreements on how the group members will work together helps create a safe(r) working environment for risk-taking. In addition, if the group members are mostly strangers to each other, it can be helpful to provide appropriate and meaningful activities for them to get to know each other before moving into new kinds of work. Finally, begin with low-level risk activities and then move to those perceived as more risky. This will help a group obtain experiences that they would have resisted had I asked them to participate right away.

The power of group process
Change is hard. However, the potential of group process to successfully introduce people to beneficial experiences that might be judged beforehand as scary or risky allows us to create powerful new experiences for attendees at our events. Furthermore, new experiences that incorporate valuable learning and build new personal connections are one of the most powerful ways to make meetings relevant and memorable.

That’s why I love to design and facilitate group work at conferences. I’ll probably never get to facilitate the kind of exposure in Seth Godin’s example (and that’s fine by me). But group work has the power to engage and transform attendee learning and connection in ways that conventional broadcast sessions cannot match. It should be top-of-mind for every event professional who wants to hold engaging and successful meetings.

Image attribution: Lyndi & Jason, Dallastown PA, United States [CC BY-SA 2.0], via Wikimedia Commons

Tags: cccccc, facilitating change, group process, group work, opt-out, risky learning, Seth Godin| Posted in Event design, Facilitating Change | 1 Comment »

Indaba—The simple consensus process that saved international climate change conferences

Monday, January 18th, 2016 by Adrian Segar

Negotiators twice used a powerful yet little-known South African consensus process—Indaba—to rescue foundering talks at international climate change conferences.

Introduced at the 2011 Durban talks, the recently-concluded 2015 Paris talks also invoked indaba (pronounced “in-dar-bah”) to reduce “900 bracketed points of contention in the draft text to about 300 before the last session“—making it possible for the first time for all 195 countries present to agree to reduce carbon emissions.

Indaba has been used at Zulu, Xhosa, and Swazi tribal gatherings for two centuries or more.

“A message was therefore conveyed..to the King, inviting Umtassa to come in to an indaba at Umtali.”
—The Pall Mall Gazette, London, December 26, 1894 (earliest documented written use)

What is Indaba?

Indaba is not a clearly defined format. The term has been appropriated and adapted (example) and I’ve been unable to find detailed descriptions of the original South African process. I suspect the form used at the Paris Talks does not define Indaba and may distort or omit significant features. Here are the key ingredients from the Paris talks:

Negotiators used Indaba as a logjam-breaking technique after traditional negotiating process ground to a halt.
Participants with decision-making authority worked in small groups that included members from countries with seemingly incompatible goals.
Small group members shared verbally and face-to-face their “red lines”. These were specific “hard limits” issues they were not willing to compromise on.
Participants who shared hard limits were concomitantly responsible for proposing solutions to other group members. This prevented the meeting from being merely a presentation of position statements.

The Durban climate change conference implemented a more open process. Diplomats representing the main countries formed a standing circle in the middle of hundreds of delegates and talked directly to each other. John Vidal reported: “By including everyone and allowing often hostile countries to speak in earshot of observers, it achieved a remarkable breakthrough within 30 minutes.”

The third and fourth covenants listed above distinguish Indaba from other forms of group consensus and negotiation process: explicit sharing of what is not acceptable, coupled with a commitment to propose and explore solutions for supposedly intractable differences.

Similar consensus processes

A couple of more recent formats are reinventions of Indaba principles.

One is concordance, developed by Will Schutz (here’s an introduction). Robert McNeil summarizes as follows: “Everyone who has a stake is in. Anyone can veto. If you veto, you have to explain why (openly and honestly). We explore the vetoes openly and do the work necessary for all to agree.”

Another is the “two circles” couples work technique for finding common ground popularized by John M. Gottman & Nan Silver in The Seven Principles for Making Marriage Work, in which you draw two circles, one inside the other, using the inner circle to list aspects you can’t give in on and the outer circle for aspects you can compromise over.

[Know any others? Add them in the comments below!]

The overlooked importance of good group process

It’s remarkable that such an elementary consensus process proved to be key to creating a meeting agreement that will likely profoundly shape the future of our planet.

In addition, it’s incredible that such a powerful process is virtually unknown to most meeting designers, negotiators, and facilitators!

In conclusion, the outcome-changing application of indaba at the United Nations Conference on Climate Change demonstrates that there is an urgent need for all of us to become familiar with and use good group processes when we meet to learn, connect, engage, and decide. The world will be a better place when we do.

How do you facilitate change? In this occasional series, we explore various aspects of facilitating individual and group change.

Image “COP21 participants – 30 Nov 2015 (23430273715)” courtesy of Presidencia de la República Mexicana

Tags: Climate Conferences, concordance, consensus, covenants, Durban, Gottman, group process, indaba, John M. Gottman, Paris, Robert McNeil, two circles, Will Schutz| Posted in Facilitating Change | 4 Comments »

Improve conference sessions and workshops with Color/Advance

Monday, October 5th, 2015 by Adrian Segar

During a pre-workshop at the fabulous Applied Improvisational Network 2015 World Conference in Montreal, I realized how to improve group process with an improv game, Color/Advance.

At the workshop, the talented Patrick Short and Alan Montague reintroduced me to an improv game called Color/Advance. It’s a simple game for two players, a storyteller and a listener.

At any time while the storyteller tells a story, the listener can give either of two commands: “Color” or “Advance”. Color instructs the storyteller to describe whatever she is talking about in more detail. Advance tells her to continue with the story. Improvisors typically use the game to improve storytelling skills. They use the listener’s requests as feedback to determine when:

More detail will spice up the story; and
It’s time to continue with the plot.

It struck me that one could use Color/Advance in a different way, as a group process tool in a conference session or workshop. Often, when I lead a meeting, I have limited information on what the participants want to get out of it. With up to about fifty participants I normally use the Post It! technique to uncover the wants and needs of the group. Then I tailor the session to fit as well as possible, covering a judiciously selected set of the topics mentioned.

This approach works very well. However there’s no standard way for attendees to indicate during the session that they would like more or less information to be shared on the current topic. It’s not unusual for people to occasionally ask for more detail. But few will spontaneously volunteer that they’ve heard quite enough about a topic and they’d like to move on to the next one.

So why not use Color/Advance as a tool for session participants to give them control over what they want to cover during a session?

Here’s what I suggest

How to use Color/Advance

After you’ve used Post It! to create an impromptu outline of the topics to include, explain that at any point anyone can say “Color!” meaning that they want more detail of what was said. Or, they can say “Advance!” which means “I’ve heard enough about this, please move on to the next topic.” Also explain that people can respectfully (and succinctly) disagree, so that the wishes of one person are not imposed on the entire group.

I love discovering how to harness human process in new ways. Body voting makes preferences and opinions public. A fishbowl allows a group to have a useful discussion. And, thanks to my experience at the AIN 2015 World Conference, we have a new tool Color/Advance for conference session or workshop participants to fine-tune the information shared to match their wants and needs.

If you have thoughts about or used this technique, please let us know in the comments!

Photo attribution: Flickr user ncindc

Tags: Advance, AIN 2015, Color, facilitation, group process, group work, improv, Post It!, tool| Posted in Event design | 2 Comments »

From broadcast to learning in 25 minutes

Monday, April 21st, 2014 by Adrian Segar

From broadcast to learning in 25 minutes

Last week’s Green Meetings Industry Council’s 2014 Sustainable Meetings Conference opened with a one-hour keynote panel: The Value of Sustainability Across Brands, Organizations and Sectors. Immediately after the presentation, my task was to help over two hundred participants, seated at tables of six, grapple with the ideas shared, surface the questions raised, and summarize the learning and themes for deeper discussion.

Oh, and I had twenty-five minutes!

For a large group to effectively review and reflect on presented material in such a short time, we have to quickly move from individual work to small group work to some form of a concrete visual summary that’s accessible to everyone.

Here’s what I did

[Added August 2023: I documented this entire process, named RSQP, in more detail in my book Event Crowdsourcing.]

Stand up!

1) My audience hadn’t moved for over an hour, and their brains had, to varying degrees, gone to sleep. So, for a couple of minutes, I had people stand, stretch, twist, and do shoulder rolls.

Explain!

2) Next, I summarized what we were about to do. I

- - Outlined the three phases of the exercise: a) working individually; b) sharing amongst the small group at their table, and c) a final opportunity to review everyone’s work in a short gallery walk.
  - Pointed out the tools available. Each table had a sheet of flip-chart paper (divided into a 2 x 2 matrix), 4 pads of different colored sticky notes, and a fine-tip sharpie for each person.

- - Explained the four categories they would use for their responses. After introducing each category I asked a couple of pre-primed volunteers to share an example of their response with the participants.
    - REMINDERS. “These are themes with which you’re already familiar that the keynote touched on. You might want to include ideas you think are important. And you might want to include themes that you have some expertise or experience with. More on that in a moment. Write each REMINDER on a separate blue sticky note, which will end up in the top left square of the flip chart.”
    - SPARKS. “Sparks are inspirations you’ve received from the keynote; new ideas, new solutions that you can adopt personally, or for your organization, or at your meetings. Write your SPARKS on yellow sticky notes; they’ll go in the top right square.
    - QUESTIONS. “These are ideas that you understand that you have questions about. Perhaps you are looking for help with a question. Perhaps you think a question brought up by the keynote is worth discussing more widely at this event. Write your questions on a green sticky note; they’ll go in the bottom left square.
    - PUZZLES. “Puzzles are things you feel that you or your organization or our industry don’t understand and need help with. Write your puzzles on a violet sticky note; they’ll go in the bottom right.”
  - Gave these instructions. “In a minute I’m going to give you about five minutes to work alone and create your REMINDERS, SPARKS, QUESTIONS, and PUZZLES. Don’t put your notes on the flip chart paper yet; we’ll do that communally soon. Any questions?” [There were none.] “Two final thoughts:
    - 1) Words are fine, but feel free to draw pictures or diagrams too!
    - 2) Consider adding your name to any of your notes. We’re going to display your notes on the wall over there. If you have expertise or experience in one of your themes, adding your name to your note will allow others who are interested in the topic to find you. Have a question or puzzle you need help with? Adding your name will allow others who can help to find you.”

Get to work alone!

3) I gave everyone five minutes to create their notes, asking them to shoot for a few responses in each category.

Share at your table!

4) For the second phase of the exercise, I asked each person to briefly explain their notes with the others at their table, placing them on the appropriate quadrant of the flip chart as they did so. I allocated each person a minute for this and rang a bell when it was time for the next person to begin.

Review everyone’s work!

5) The final phase was a gallery walk. I asked one person from each table to go and stick their flip chart page on a large blank meeting room wall. Once done, I invited everyone to go to the gallery and explore what we had created together.

The results

Here’s one end of the resulting sharing wall.

6) Later that evening I had a small number of subject matter experts cluster the themes they saw. (If I had had more time, I would have had all the participants work on this together during my session.) The resulting clusters were referred to throughout the conference for people to browse and use as a resource. Here’s a picture, taken later, showing the reclustered items in our “sharing space”.

Yes, you can go from broadcast to learning in 25 minutes! Even when time is short, an exercise like this can quickly foster huge amounts of personal learning, connection (via the table work and named sticky notes), and audience-wide awareness of interests and expertise available in the room. Use reflective and connective processes like these after every traditional presentation session to maximize their value to participants.

Tags: affinity grouping, clustering, facilitation, group process, Learning, maximizing meeting value, process, reflection, reviewing, sharing, sticky notes| Posted in Learning | 1 Comment »

One way to build a movement at a conference

Monday, February 4th, 2013 by Adrian Segar

Here’s an illuminating example of how to build a movement at a conference.

“On Wednesday, I walked into our boardroom at USGBC for our Green Building & Human Health Summit and I got goose bumps.”
—Rick Fedrizzi, CEO of the US Green Building Council

One of my greatest challenges and pleasures is creating “just-in-time” process that meets the evolving needs of an event.

Last week I was invited to consult on a two-day, one hundred participant “turning-point” summit for the US Green Building Council (USGBC) in Washington, DC. A much wider range of organizations were convening than at previous USGBC events in order to explore a major long-term expansion of the green building movement. So, good process was vital.

During the event, we dreamed up a simple yet powerful exercise to uncover and communicate participant expectations for the meeting. I say “we”, because at least three members of the summit working group contributed to what became an effective and dramatic way to expose and share what participants saw as successful outcomes for the event. Here’s what happened:

What would success look like?

We designed the summit around a set of “shirtsleeve sessions”. We began some short stimulating talks by expert “igniters”. Next, participants divided into small groups to discuss three principle goals and formulate key strategies to address them. At a working group meeting at the end of the first day, we had to decide how best to use the thirty minutes that had been scheduled the following morning before the next shirtsleeve session.

Someone proposed that we ask participants to share their answers to the question “What would success look like?” either from a personal or group perspective. The working group liked this idea. I suggested that answers be written on large sticky notes and displayed in a central location during the day. This allowed the group to view all the responses during breaks, rather than hearing just a few of them in the limited time available.

The participants liked this activity. Soon, a large grid of answers was posted on a lobby wall outside the breakout rooms, available for all to see.

During the afternoon, another working group member had the bright idea to review and categorize the sticky notes’ contents. At a subsequent working group meeting, we agreed that during the closing session she would briefly share seven groupings she had devised that covered just about all the definitions of success that participants had proposed:

The seven groupings

A “trail map” for the future. During the event, one participant said the meeting was more like a base camp than a summit. The metaphor stuck. We started thinking of our journey as an expedition that needs a trail map to be successful.
Inclusiveness. As the organization adjusts to working with a broader community of interest, issues of how to expand connections and social equity are important.
Public relations and messaging. Successfully framing USGBC’s messages is key. This helps people understand that choices they make in their home and business can enhance their family’s and employees’ health.
Standards. How do we emphasize and integrate knowledge and actions that improve well-being into existing standards?
Definition and valuation of health and well-being. We need to define and value health and well-being in USGBC’s and the related community’s mission.
Research. What do we know, what are the research gaps, and how can we obtain funding to fill them?
Paradigm shift. How do we get to a place where the green built environment is synonymous with health?

Building a movement at the conference

Providing summary feedback at the close of a “turning point” event is very important. Participants have put a lot of time and effort into their work together. They need to feel heard and receive assurance that what has happened will lead to significant next steps.

At the USGBC summit, the complexity of the issues and constituencies involved, plus the reality that not all key players were able to attend, meant that detailed trail map outcomes would take some time to formulate.

The sharing of participant’s seven categories of success was, therefore, an important way for participants to feel heard and know that others shared their goals and aspirations. As a result, this simple focused sharing of major insights and common agreements became a key ingredient for “building a movement,” a phrase heard frequently during the high-energy closing session of the summit. After offering a next-step communications plan and an impassioned closing speech by Rick Fedrizzi, USGBC’s CEO, many participants shared that the summit was a milestone moment in the development of green building.

Do you have examples of how to build a movement at a conference? Share them below!

Photo attributions: US Green Building Council

Tags: build a movement, group process, movement building, participation techniques, success| Posted in Event design | No Comments »

The potential of group process

Wednesday, February 10th, 2010 by Adrian Segar

I used to staff large group seminars that lasted three or four days and involved intensive group interaction, sharing personal experiences, and individual and group feedback. Quoting from an invitation:

“The seminar involves risk-taking, emotional investment and expanding your comfort zone. It is all part of a process that has been developed and fine-tuned over a number of years. We know it works; we also know the more you contribute, the more you will gain from it. We hope that you recognize mixed emotions and feelings are a part of the process which, when acknowledged and examined, yield tremendous rewards including greater focus and clarity about your goals, new choices for your personal and professional life, and closer more intimate relationships.”

I staffed over thirty of these events. Typically there were around sixty participants, and I led a group of six or seven people. I hadn’t met the people in my staff group before and rarely ever met them again.

By the end of our time together, the people in my group knew more about the other members than most people know about their closest friends. And, more important, everyone received valuable information about themselves from their group members and from their responses to what happened during the event. This all took place in a safe and supportive environment. Most people found their experience profoundly moving, sometimes life-changing.

The potential of group process

You might be interested in, skeptical, or dismissive of what I’ve just described. That’s not the point. What’s important is my repeated observation that most of us have the potential to quickly develop intimate, powerful connections with others at group events. What must we do for this to occur? At a minimum we must offer 1) a safe environment, and 2) permission and support to step a little outside what we’ve been taught (albeit for good reasons) about what can happen when we meet people.

No, Conferences That Work aren’t large group seminars that launch participants on a voyage of self-discovery. They are gentle, joyful events where people learn, share, and connect safely around a topic of common interest. But my knowledge, gained from those seminars, of what’s possible when people get together drives everything I do.

Image attribution: http://www.flickr.com/photos/virtualvillage/ / CC BY 2.0

Tags: group process| Posted in Uncategorized | No Comments »