Tools to Revolutionize How We Work Together for Social Innovation
I suspect you’ve had numerous experiences of “two heads being better than one” — of the greater effectiveness that flows when we access collective intelligence, collective wisdom and collective capacity.
This is good news! We know what’s possible.
The bad news is that we too often settle for less: the vast majority of our group experiences are “ho hum” — dry and predictable processes for moving at a snail’s pace — and many are mildly to extremely frustrating.
Even when groups/partnerships have excellent rapport and dynamic processes, there is always scope to SIGNIFICANTLY improve how things go. The more we seek social innovation breakthroughs, the more we need to “retool” how we work together.
Tools for Working in Groups
From my experience with hundreds of change initiatives, I’ve discovered ten tools that reliably lead to better outcomes when helping people to work together. Each comes from a leading theory of organizational change/group dynamics, and each shines light on different features in a group’s dynamics. They are:
- Appreciative Inquiry
- Trust Theory
- Chaordic Design
- Generative Dialogue
- Adaptive Cycle
- Enterprise Facilitation
- Theory U
- Process Oriented Psychology
- Integral Theory
- Conscious Co-Creation
Using just one of these tools is enough to significantly improve outcomes, and when used in combination, the tools become even more powerful.
Successful social innovators, in my experience, consciously or unconsciously use one or some combination of these tools, with a special focus on these three:
- Chaordic Design: be crystal clear about what you are really trying to do
- Theory U: take real time to delve deeply into your situation — learning from others, researching others successes, and listening for the future seeking to emerge
- Enterprise Facilitation: bring together three key factors: passion and knowledge for the core business/activity, financial acumen, and savvy for promotion and publicity.
In the story of Lunapads, for example, the business really took off when Madeleine’s vision and passion for sustainable feminine hygiene products was paired with Suzanne’s financial and marketing savvy (Tool #6).
To boost your effectiveness as a social innovator, invest in cultivating your group savvy. You likely don’t have resources to bring in professional facilitators for the hundreds of conversations, meetings and “more than one person” processes implicit in growing your business.
Leading commentator on social innovation, Al Etmanski, Co-Chair of the BC Partners for Social Impact, notes, “We already have proven solutions to our toughest social challenges. Our bigger challenge is working together to scale them for wider benefit.” [emphasis added]
Fortunately brilliant people have distilled potent tools for working better in groups. As Socrates has advised, “Employ your time in improving yourself by other men’s writings, so that you shall gain easily what others have labored hard for.”
Submitted by Kate Sutherland, author of Make Light Work in Groups: 10 Tools to Transform Meetings, Companies and Communities. Thanks to Youtube, you can also see Kate’s talk for the ISIS Ideas for Impact Speaker Series (UBC’s Sauder School for Business) called “Revolutionizing How We Work Together”.