Talk:Ritual dissent

Virtual environment

I have heard User:Lunivore mention running this in a virtual environment. I think depersionalization was achieved by turning off both camera and microphone. William Bartlett (talk) 16:13, 14 May 2021 (UTC)

Example of a virtual graphic facilitation board for Ritual dissent

William Bartlett, I have recently facilitated a virtual experimental Ritual dissent-based workshop in a business environment. A detailed description of my experience follows below (I will update it in multiple editing sessions). Comments especially welcome -----Luca Orlassino^T-A-L-K 07:52, 7 July 2022 (UTC)

1. Context
   1. Business need: finding better and more effective ways to carry on an ongoing large corporate application rollout program at global scale (20+ countries involved), with a number of technical and user-adoption issues already experienced
   2. 10 Participants:
      1. all from the IT, the PMO, and the Innovation departments, the latter included the core project team;
      2. all native Italian speakers;
      3. seniorities ranging from new graduates / new hires to people with 10+ years in the company, and ranging from associate to director level;
      4. participants knew each other and had a high prospective probability to have to repeatedly work together on a number of different projects over a long time.
   3. A pre-worked list of ideas / suggestions, comprising:
      1. around 30 ideas;
      2. previously categorized / grouped in 9 topics;
      3. articulated in a variety of depths, from one-sentence to lists of subpoints;
      4. collected on stickies on a Miro board;
   4. Time available for the workshop: 90 minutes.
   5. Available tools:
      1. Miro board for online visual collaboration;
      2. MS-Teams for videoconferencing (using breakout rooms).
   6. Expected outcome: to agree upon a minimum of 2-to-3 improvement actions.
2. Preparation
   1. Created a 'shadow' online collaboration board, so that I could quickly copy-paste parts of it onto the main board just before using them, thus preventing potential distractions for the participants. As a perhaps better alternative, the collaboration tool would normally allow hiding / revealing single objects and frames when needed, without having to create a second board. However, having a backup board with empty templates and layouts might come in handy for future reuse anyway.
   2. First divided the participant list into 3 subgroups, mostly by department of origin to maximise cross-table diversity and with a minor rearrangement (moved a junior colleague to a group of initially 2) to balance group sizes:
      1. 'IT', 3 participants;
      2. 'Project team', 3 p.;
      3. 'PMO and others', 4 p..
   3. Created 3 pre-formatted frames, one for each subgroup. Labeled and color-coded them as 'A - Blue', 'B - Purple', and 'C - Green', each having:
      1. A space for listing subgroup participants, pre-filled with their names on stickies;
      2. An empty space for hosting the name of the spokesperson;
      3. Three spaces for hosting one idea each, pre-populated with some some blank hexies (yellow) on which to write components of the idea, and some other blank hexies (red), on which to record constraints / obstacles;
   4. Then created a second partition of the participant list into 2 subgroups, based on a seniority / decision-making criterion:
      1. 'Managers', 5 participants;
      2. 'Others', 5 p..
   5. Created 2 additional pre-formatted frames, one for each subgroup labeled and color-coded them as 'X-Red', assigned to the 'Managers' subgroup, for ideas components and 'Y-Yellow', assigned to the 'Others' subgroup, for constraints / obstacles, each having:
      1. A space for listing subgroup participants, pre-filled with their names on stickies;
      2. An empty space for copy-pasting and clustering the hexies;
      3. An empty space for linearly sorting hexies from the 'hardest' (labeled by a sticky pre-positioned at the bottom-left corner of the space) to the 'easiest' (labeled by a sticky pre-positioned at the top-right corner of the space).
   6. Added a support frame that worked as a graphical agenda for the meeting, divided into two spaces:
      1. A space for listing all participants, pre-filled with their participants' names on stickies, and colored rectangles to highlight the 5 (3 + 2) subgroups;
      2. A 'GANTT-style' space, with a timeline divided in three sections, with no precise time indications, and color-coded bars representing breakout groups.
   7. Added arrows between frames / frame groupings, to work as a graphic aid to the board navigation according to the established process.
   8. E-mailed the online meeting invitations and 2 reminders to all participants:
      1. Three working days before the workshop, an updated online meeting invitation, specifying that the agenda would be unfolded during the meeting, formalizing the expected outcome, and instructing participants to check their accesses to the visual collaboration board, to take a look at the pre-worked list of ideas, and to possibly join the meeting already logged into the visual collaboration tool;
      2. One the day before the workshop, asking to check the access to the collaboration board and to inform that the facilitator would not interact with the content (link to Complex facilitation provided);
      3. Another one a few hours before the workshop, to inform that webcams would be required to be on throughout the meeting (while specifying the workshop would not be recorded), that some of the participants could be required to take notes without using their pc's, and advising to pee (sic) before the workshop, as there would be no time for breaks.
   9. Pre-configured 5 breakout rooms (3 + 2) on the videoconferencing tool, one for each of the corresponding frames on the visual collaboration tool.
3. Execution
   1. I strictly refrained from interacting with participants on the contents discussed throughout the workshop.
   2. The workshop language was Italian, to facilitate communication, despite the inherently 'global' nature of the context. However, some hexies were filled in Italian, while others in English.
   3. Part 1 - Choice of ideas and first ritual dissent session (45 min)
      1. As all participants knew me and each other, and were supposed to be familiar with the purpose of the workshop, I jumped directly to the practical instructions.
      2. I copy-pasted the 3 discussion frames from the backup onto the main board, and showed them to participants, including the initial 3-subgroup partition.
      3. Before moving subgroups into their respective breakout rooms, I asked them to nominate a spokesperson within each subgroup, and to move the corresponding sticky into the dedicated space on their respective subgroup frames. I specified that the spokespersons had to be chosen carefully, as they had to be good listeners, and they critically needed to be resilient to criticism, without tendencies to get touchy or bear a grudge. The audience's non-verbal feedbacks showed they were starting to get intrigued if not excited at this point.
      4. I instructed participants to chose, within each subgroup, one idea from the pre-compiled list, to de-compose it into its main parts, and to write those on the yellow hexies. I anticipated that each-spokesperson would then have to present the idea in front of another subgroup. I allowed them 10-12 min for the idea articulation step, explaining that this would be a warm-up round, and they did not need to seek perfection, as they would have the chance to improve their idea later.
      5. I moved participants of the 3 subgroups to their respective breakout room, and kept moving from one to the other to observe the smoothness of discussions. In 2 out of 3 cases, I had to remind the subgroups that they had to nominate the spokesperson and move the sticky into the right space. Apart from that, I only spoke to inform them they were running out of time. Anyway, I allowed a few more minutes for them to complete discussions.
      6. I briefly moved all participants back to the main virtual room. I informed the spokespersons they would be moved to the next virtual room (clockwise on the visual collaboration tool). I then explained that the spokespersons would have 5 minutes to illustrate their respective subgroups' ideas. Then they would have to turn their backs to the cameras, and silently listen to their audiences' critical remarks. The audience's excitement peaked at this point. I allowed 5-7 minutes for the subgroups' responses.
      7. Of the 3 spokespersons, only one autonomously opted for turning off his camera instead. I deliberately chose not to force him to follow the instructions, as things seemed to proceed well anyway, but I asked him to verbally confirm in front of his audience that he was not looking at his screen.
      8. Approximately 15 minutes after moving the spokespersons, I brought everybody back to the main virtual room, and instructed the spokespersons to report the other subgroups feedbacks and criticisms back to their subgroups of origin. I also specified that they would have to record constraints and obstacles emerged along the discussion, using the red hexies on their subgroup frames. I allowed around 10 minutes to do so, after which I brought everybody back again to the main virtual room.
   4. Part 2 - Second ritual dissent session (30 min)
      1. I instructed participants to re-discuss their ideas in the light of the criticisms received, and to improve them. I also allowed the possibility to change or to add further ideas, if they thought they would be able to do it in the short time available. No group took this possibility.
      2. The second ritual dissent session proceeded according to the same sequence of tasks as the first one, the only difference being that the spokespersons would present their ideas to a different subgroup.
      3. Thanks to the previous experience, the second ritual dissent session was approximately 30% faster overall.
      4. I brought everybody back again to the main virtual room.
   5. Part 3 - Clustering and linear sorting (15 min)
      1. I copy-pasted the two additional frames to the main board, informed the audience I would form two new subgroups, one for actions and the other for constraints / obstacles, and showed them the 2 corresponding frames, on which subgroup members were already listed.
      2. I instructed the 2 subgroups they would have to first copy-paste the yellow and the red hexies respectively, from all of the 3 original frames onto their new subgroup frames and then cluster them by in the spaces reserved for 'clustering', by affinity, similarity, or whatever made sense to them.
      3. I also instructed the 2 subgroups to take one representative element from each cluster and copy-paste it onto the space reserved for prioritization / sorting, in a line from the hardest to the easiest.
      4. Both subgroups worked quickly and effectively, although not always strictly according to the given instructions. For example, none of the 2 subgroups chose representative hexies for clusters. They chose to sort all the hexies, instead. Also, one subgroup copy-pasted all the hexies in the clustering space, in random order, and then clustered and sorted them all on the sorting space in their frame. However, these deviations did not appear to affect the final result.
4. Outcomes and Follow-up
   1. When asked, participants responded that they had reached consensus on a few concrete actions to carry on, thus confirming that they had achieved the expected outcome of the workshop.
   2. At the end of the workshop, I asked to briefly comment on how the experience had worked. I joked with my audience by briefly turning my back to the camera. I received many positive comments on the method, including:
      1. "I especially appreciated the silent listening part and hearing full explanations without interruptions";
      2. "It was good to discover that another table were promoting an idea we were also endorsing... and then to have to criticize it!";
      3. "We should do more of this, also in connection with other topics";
      4. "The time was too short, and many good ideas were probably left behind: could we do a follow-up session in three weeks?";
      5. "Next week we'll discuss [Innovation topic XYZ] during our monthly meeting: wouldn't it be nice if we used the same approach?";
      6. "Please, next time, avoid using the red and the yellow colors close to each other" (football fan).
   3. Three working days after the workshop, I sent an e-mail to all participants providing more detailed credits to the author for the method ideation and development, Wiki references to the method page and to principles of complex facilitation, and general references for the Cynefin framework (which I hadn't mentioned during the meeting).
   4. One week after the workshop, I was asked to facilitate a new one, on a completely different topic, in a different setting:
      1. In this case, we held the meeting in-person;
      2. The participants were partially the same as those of the previous week, and partially new ones, 12 overall;
      3. As one of the new participants did not speak Italian, we held the whole workshop in English;
      4. We arranged three tables in a large meeting room, but we still used Miro instead of physical paper, stickies, etc.. It was our only option, as I neither had the stuff ready nor the time to organize it otherwise, although I would have preferred to;
      5. I had revised my templates on Miro, and added spaces and blank hexies for the standard questions (same, different, surprised...);
      6. I am now thinking of a clustering and Cynefin contextualization follow-up, based on the workshop outputs;
      7. Compared to the previous week's, the new workshop worked out well, although I did not feel the same levels of fun and excitement, which might be explained by the late hour in the working day, by the need to use a second language, and by the fact that the tables were too close to each other and the noise level in the room was high.