The Groupworks Project
It's very rare for any group of people to never encounter some
sort of problem with their group dynamics. Maybe it's simply
that meetings are perceived as 'boring' or maybe there are
unresolved fundamental personal differences within the group.
One reaction is to bring in professional or expert facilitators to
try to sort these things out. I must admit that I dread
this. Recently a workplace of mine hosted this sort of event
which include having everyone wander around the room with Post-it
notes stuck to their foreheads, trying to read everyone else's
Post-It note. Everyone can remember the Post-It notes but
nobody can remember what it all meant and what we learned.
Outside facilitators seem to come with their own agenda and
hang-ups and quickly disappear again leaving people like me feeling
like we've probably been ripped off by a bunch of quacks and
patronised at the same time for our trouble.
The thought of groups trying to learn to run things better
themselves is a daunting prospect. How could this be achieved
amongst all the other things we have to do? A
pointer to a possible resource turned up on the Resilience website which is
the top aggregator for sustainability resources on the net, in my
opinion.
The answer is a deck of cards. It's a very special deck of
cards. It comprises one hundred cards each describing an
exemplary group practice - i.e. something that is a good thing to
do.
The cards were created by more than fifty volunteers (the Group Pattern Language
Project) from diverse organizational backgrounds who
collaborated over three years to express the core wisdom at the
heart of successful group sessions.
Here's an example card; one of my favourites 'Embrace Dissonance
and Difference'. I like this card because I often find
that groups supposedly seeking liberty for all readily demand
conformity and may do this through various forms of bullying. "We
should all be vegetarians". "Use the Farmers' Market".
"Everyone should join in." "This organisation runs by
consensus and if you don't agree with the consensus then you're
out". I
shudder.
Maybe you agree with 'Embrace Dissonance and Difference' and
maybe you don't. The beauty of the situation is that it
doesn't matter. The card merely raises an issue for
discussion. It could be that the card makes you think clearly
about an issue. It could be that the card enables you to articulate
more clearly what you think about an issue. It could be that
the card could be used as the focus for a group discussion about an
issue, such as planning for a specific event. There are one
hundred such cards in the deck. You do not need a
professional facilitator to use them. Having said that, the
cards could have a visual and tactile appeal that is similar to
Tarot cards which are used to encourage the discussion of personal
issues and I can certainly imagine a user building up skills in
their use over time. Additionally there is nothing to stop
you creating new cards.
If this interests you then you could read the
article that I originally read. Don't let the jargon
about 'pattern
languages' faze you. There is also a beginner's'
guide.
You could go further and download, for
free, the pack of 100 cards. Why not?
Behind all of this there is a supporting
organisation and online community that continues to push this
idea forward.
I'd really like to get hold of a full colour copy of the
cards. There are 2 possible ways to do this - either import
them from the designers in the U.S./Canada or print them
locally. For both options it makes good sense to take
advantage of economies of scale - once you have produce/sent one
deck the price of additional ones falls away sharply. If you
are interested in getting hold of a deck then let me know and we'll
see what we can do.
The entire deck is governed under a Creative Commons
Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 License. For more specific
information on how that license works, see: www.creativecommons.org