FACILITATING GROUPS

Win-Win Decisions Involve Innovation by Collaboration

Forming a WIN-WIN SOLUTION for Sharing Limited Assets

A city council must choose between getting better fire equipment or providing more day care centers. Because of old fire-fighting equipment, it has an AA insurance rating. If it gets better equipment, it could get an AAA rating and lower insurance rates to homeowners, as well as attract federal funds for new housing. On the other side, inadequate day-care services demand solution. 
But there isn't enough money for both. (adapted from Making Meetings Work. by Doyle and Strauss)

WIN-WIN SOLUTION

Some of the funds are used to convert five local fire stations into day-care centers. The centers attract matching funds from state and federal agencies to operate them. Most of the funds are used to build three fire stations with new equipment. This serves the city efficiently and earns an AAA rating.

Pocket Guide for Sustaining Collaboration

1. Organize In Advance

• Identify who should be involved, at what levels, for what reasons, in what roles, with what authority, influence, and capacity.
• Prepare facilitators, recorders, timekeepers, doorkeepers, and mood watchers.
• Draft an adaptable agenda; get information, supplies, refreshments, media, materials and presenters ready.
• Prepare plans, photos, maps and media to communicate facts, truths and ideas.
• Prepare opening activities to initiate an attitude of playfulness.
• Add ways to sum up what gets done...with presentations, stories, music, visuals, food...to enjoy an upbeat ending

2. Spread Sensitivity to Context

• Experience environment to absorb impressions, get facts, and sense qualities.
• Pool perspectives without forcing agreement or defending positions; practice patience instead of perfectionism.
• Help everyone participate; keep communication open, direct and constructive.
• Review records and learn stories to enrich historic perspectives and assess forecasts.
• Explore complex causes of persistent problems; identify helping and hindering forces; analyze which hindering forces may be removable or reducible; which helping forces may be increased; and which hindering forces might be turned into helping forces.

3. Find Unifying Purposes

• Develop a purpose (common cause, mutual mission, shared aim) to inspire cooperation.
• Unite diverse interests toward highest common purposes. Cultivate openness by airing grumbles…graduating discourse to higher levels.
• Hear other's experiences and expectations instead of assuming they're known.
• Encourage, validate, reflect, and clarify each other's interests.
• Visualize ideal future, with a clear idea of what results should be achieved.
• State restrictions to accept and what scope of influence to exert.
• Explore ways to advance your aim in relation to others.
• Remember some ideals are not fully attainable, yet worth pursuing.
• Identify factors affecting your purpose—what, when, where, why, how, who.
• Check for degrees of agreement in your progress from problem definition to solution generation.
• Imagine alternative futures by linking facts, trends, insights and ideas.
• Identify knowledge gaps and get needed facts fast.
• Confirm facts from diverse sources before forming decisions.
• Generate Alternatives with Creative Cooperation
• Invest time to incubate impressions and dream up solutions.
• Propose solutions as means to ends; explore alternatives without criticism.
• Dissolve fear of criticism and suspend judgment to envision embryonic ideas.
• Ask open-ended questions to prevent premature closure; allow ambiguities without rushing to pat answers.
• Flex thinking with analogies, images, models, myths, metaphors, symbols, etc.
• Try whimsical ways to explore and reinterpret context.
• Release over-reliance on tradition.
• Make mind maps, flexible models, charts, diagrams, etc. to grasp the “gestalt.”
• Use rhythm, rhyme and music to stir organic thinking.
• Use language that supports flexible thinking (e.g. "portal" instead of "door")

4. Improve Alternatives with Creative Cooperation

• Invest time to incubate impressions and dream up better solutions.
• Identify helping and hindering factors that influence your ability to attain aims.
• Analyze which hindering forces may be removed, reduced or increased.
• Analyze which hindering forces might be turned into helpers…and factors that must be tolerated (won't be changed).
• Assess a range of ways to respond to problems: prevent, cure, or relieve.
• Explore what can be expanded, reduced, reconstituted.
• Explore what can be adapted to emphasize best properties.
• Explore what can be reversed, rearranged, divided, multiplied, and/or switched.
• Cluster sets of issues with similarities, connections and associations.
• Unravel conclusions into key elements, then remix elements into new conclusions.
• Look for areas of agreement to build on, and use disagreement as opportunity to learn.
• Extract smaller, more manageable problems from larger complex issues.
• State purpose in terms of intended results, then set goals as smaller steps for reaching results.
• Then state objectives in measurable terms, as smaller steps for taking action.

5. Form Win/Win Decisions

• Promote partnership rather than manipulate agendas to grab advantage.
• Define criteria, factors, pressures, and rules that affect decisions.
• Compare options for producing multiple benefits with minimal impacts.
• Recombine elements from different options in win/win solutions.
• Test decisions with 3 questions, do they: Add up? Sound okay? Feel right?
• Assess feasibility and set successive landmarks to reach,
• Find ways to leverage benefits with quick results that build ability.
• Keep methods flexible while keeping aims clear. Focus on outcomes.

6. Organize Realization

• Set realistic expectations: what should be done, who should do what, how to do it, when to begin, when to end, what the finished work should be, why the actions are necessary, what negative consequences will be if left undone, what the positive consequences will be when all work is done.
• Assess costs of long range plans, and best ways to secure resources. Identify means for attaining ends: survey resources and decide how to develop more assets to achieve mission--with financing, programs, organization, staffing and leadership.
• Form a preliminary strategy for each alternative. Assess relative ease of each.
• State resources needed and evaluate their effectiveness for serving purposes.
• Decide whether to: build on strengths, expand new roles, compete better, merge or joint venture, collaborate, and/or supplement capacities.
• Prioritize actions to advance your purpose and build momentum in relation to deadlines, contingencies, and reciprocal relations (synchronicity).
• Clarify roles and responsibilities: freely choose roles to express abilities and interests.
• Conserve time by streamlining interactions and reducing distractions.
• Keep each other updated about progress and changes in plans.
• Learn when to “wait and see” before making decisions and taking actions.
• Allow flex time to take corrective actions in response to changing conditions.
• Encourage partners to explore new roles with mutual assistance to support growth.
• Keep AUTHORITY connected with the responsibilities and rewards for attaining results.
• Let people take charge of their work without second-guessing or micro-managing them.
• Encourage others to struggle and grow instead of racing too soon to their rescue.

7. Grow Knowledge and Improve Quality

• Exercise increasing excellence with mental rehearsals of “what's next.”
• Make accountability a shared responsibility with open, mutual reviews.
• Develop information systems, schedules, and procedures to track success.
• Leave time for deadlines, peak times, down times, lag times, turn around times.
• Record actions in progress to keep track of agreements, handle timing, and capture lessons.
• Keep a running record as an organizational memory to review as a learning organization.
• Try new approaches while making back up plans to reduce risks.
• Review results and adjust actions as necessary by learning from experience.
• Use "failure" as information rather than proof for punishment.
• Screen out destructive criticism while seeking corrective information.
• Forgive inevitable mistakes and refrain from blaming.
• Undo all forms of coercive communication: commanding, diagnosing, discounting, judging, lecturing, preaching and threatening.
• Honor confidentiality by keeping interpersonal frictions from public scrutiny.
• State critiques about specific behaviors to improve, rather than making general personal condemnations.
• Help each other keep track of what works, what doesn't, and why.
• Fix losses as soon as possible while avoiding repeated mistakes.
• Adapt actions, improve evaluation methods and/or change expectations.
• Celebrate community spirit by honoring all involved.
  
  
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