Agora - Nonprofit organization

Prior to the meeting

Establish a coalition which needs to be well connected within the community and possess intellectual skills to fully grasp the project and its nature. The first task is to unite this coalition around a strong mission, like: „Harness the wisdom of the people to build a better future for all of us“. The founding team can call on international experts and specialists to enhance the dream.

Select a team of experts (facilitation experts). These are preferably professional facilitators, people from academia or people with experience from management position within corporations. Select a depending on the total number of facilitators needed to facilitate the dialogue at the events. Include these people in the DREAM and get them on board. They will now serve the role of being „head facilitators“.

Give the head facilitators thorough training so that they fully understand the nature and organization of the event. They need to be the flow experts and provide support to their facilitators at all times. In some cases, the head facilitators would need to be trained as trainers for the facilitators. This is especially true when language can be a barrier and strong group of local people have the capabiltiy to fully capture the methodology (trained in English), and carry it forward.

Ask them to recruit facilitators, 9- 18 each; people they know and trust are able to do the job. They will thus each be responsible for a team of facilitators. When that is done, organize a training of facilitators. The training relies on the event handbook (already available), where the facilitators will be taken through the handbook a number of times in a simulation excercise. They will be given tools to use at the event itself when unsure how to handle issues, but their responsible head facilitator will always be there for support.

If there is information technology available, get IT specialists on board. They need to devise a system to capture the data and register it. This can be a simple registration of points from cards and need not be that complicated, but the IT experts usually find ways to enhance the basic task. It would be preferable if someone in the founding team was an IT person.

Furthermore, people who are in the position of summoning volunteers for various tasks at the event itself need to be included in the dream. They will head the organization around catering, reception of delegates, call center to contactd delegates etc.

Stakeholders

Stakeholders like authorities, religious groups and special interests groups usually don‘t want to be directlly involved in an event like this. It is not adviseable in any way, since it could give the event a certain label.

They should be offered to support the event in cognito without having to worry about the organization of it. The founding team and all others should agree to work on a voluntary basis, but would have to pay for possible expenses like experts flown in, training of head facilitators, project administration plus possible out of pocket costs relating to facilities, equipment, catering etc.

What the founding team is really offering is to organise a „day of the people“,where there will be secured an authentic space free from all outside influences focusing on how best to fulfill the needs for a better future. The output would be an important contribution to general policymaking, which thus would be grounded in the „wisdom of the people“ and as such more likely accepted.

It is important to include the stakeholders in the meeting under the premises that they are there just as anyboty else; only representing themselves.

Author: Bjarni S. Jonsson, Ph.D. Candidate – Adizes Graduate School

Introduction

An authentic public sphere, in which participants can express their thoughts in a safe and uncritical environment, is necessary for harnessing collective intelligence. This enables genuine joint meaning-making through sharing of experience and storytelling, resulting in a representative view of the desired identity, values and vision of the social system involved.

The nature of human social systems differs fundamentally from that of a living organism, although belonging to the same class of meta systems. A crucial factor distinguishing human social systems from other meta systems, apart from the degree of internal autonomy, is language. Therefore, “the identity of human social systems depends on the conservation of adaption of human beings not only as organisms (in a general sense) but also as components of their linguistic domains”.

Maturana and Varela defined this particular dynamic of human social system adaptation as structural coupling, an important concept in what is to follow. It is not only a question of coupling or adaptation between the system and its environment, called second order coupling by Maturana and Varela, but a structural coupling within the components of the system itself, called third order coupling. Third order is a structural coupling among the components within the system, which then unify it.

The focus of this article is Citizen Communicative Engagement, or alternatively Employee Communicative Engagement, if applied in a corporate setting, as the fundamental process for adaptation of human social systems to their environment, not only as organisms (in a general sense) but also as components of their linguistic domains.

The following is based on a study which is a dissertation by the author of this paper, at Adizes Graduate School, Santa Barbara, California, which currently is under final review of the respective Doctoral Committee. It involves two so-called National Assemblies [Visioning] held in Iceland following the financial crisis that affected not only the society’s livelihood, but its very identity. The first public dialogue, organized by a grass root movement called the Anthill, was so successful that the Parliament of Iceland called for the second in preparation for revising the nation’s Constitution. Within the Constitutional Council, which was a 25 publicly elected member council to present a proposal for a new constitution to the Parliament of Iceland, several members stated that the resulting 700-page document with the conclusions from the second National Assembly, was a significant factor in equipping them material to reach a decision in only four months, on a full draft proposal for a new Constitution.

This report relates to the particular process, called “The Assembly Process” (Visioning) applied in these two instances, to the dynamics of a greater range of human social systems in the hope that it will contribute to facilitating conscious and constructive evolution of such systems. As it turns out, multiple such events have been organized in Iceland since November 2009 among corporations, municipalities, associations and more, many of whom have been organized by the author of this report.

Below the discussion will focus on the data i.e. what kind of data was gathered and how. Furthermore, how this data was classified and how it would fit different deliberation approaches, one of which is linked to the capacity of the software package developed by the Parmenides Foundation in Germany, called EIDOS. The author had permission to use the software for research purposes during his study and the following is a brief overview of the main findings.

It is argued that these types of large crowd dialogue events, organized according to the methodology of Participatory Action Research, are useful for visioning in human systems in general, be they countries, municipalities, corporations or communities of any kind and that it can, not only generate a vision for change, but also a very strong momentum for action.

The data

Collective Intelligence, Wisdom of Crowds and the like, is a phenomenon widely studied not only with reference to humans, but also, and perhaps more so, with reference to other living social systems. The whole idea behind the Assembly Process is that of harnessing the wisdom of the crowd, under the premises that the crowd is selected in an authentic way securing proper diversity to represent the total population in question.

The process referred to in this document will be called Assembly Process while a human system is representing a human social system of any kind. A handbook for this process is available for everyone to use, and as earlier stated, multiple such events have taken place. The author has the raw data from two national assemblies and over 20 assemblies performed at corporate level.

The Assembly Process is in effect a participatory inquiry based on an open question or questions starting with an organized brainstorming to get the raw data on which to deliberate. The deliberation is done through categorization according to the principles of Grounded Theory, which participants themselves perform according to the natural classification in their terms with reference to the different subject points which were presented in the brainstorming session. The Categorization done in this way, involves an extensive meaning making discussion between participants to explain and understand the nature of each point. As later discussed.

The categorization of the data is dependent on the nature of the question involved and the context in which it is handled. In accordance with Grounded Theory, categories form through the participants studying the available data and are peculiar for each instance, although similar in nature. This similarity allows grouping the categories according to their actual nature and content in the following general groups:

Cultural issues – statements involving values, beliefs and behaviors. Often a specific question is put forward to the crowd as to what core values should guide the system in question.
Systemic issues – statements involving strategic and structural phenomena within the system. These can be objectives of some kind, issues relating to mission and vision of the system as well as its structural alignment.
Sub-system issues – These are issues usually in forms of ideas for improvements of the day to day operation of the human system involved. Often these involve ideas or tasks, which can be solved by the participants themselves if they would choose to collaborate. These issues create the momentum for change since they fall often very close to what participants consider being within their influence to improve.
Manifestation issues – These are statements describing some sort of manifestation which is a product of all the above mentioned issues represents an outcome which participants wish to see different.

Given the brainstorming principles, part of the data will always be unclear or vague not really involving an actionable point or idea. These are kept for the purpose of authenticity, but do not really make a contribution to the deliberation. Furthermore all repetitions are taken out by the participants in the process.

The application of the EIDOS software is related to the Systemic Issues as described above. The applicability is very significant, in that the prerequisite for solving the so called Sub-System issues is paying attention to whatever Systemic Issues which might get in the way of activating operational change for the benefit of the system. The Systemic group of issues is usually very interdependent and therefore sophisticated software dealing with complex interdependency of data is of tremendous significance. This becomes particularly the case

Human Social System Revival and Evolution

Later in this report, a particular example will be given relating to a large crowd representing a cross section of a whole nation. The process can also be used in sub-units within those macro systems involving communities (states, municipalities or however else a community would be defined) as well as corporations, which would want to tap the wisdom of their employees for evolutionary purposes and associations of any kind.

Without excluding any possibilities below are some examples of how this process would be of significance:

Nation Building – A Citizen Communicative Engagement initiative organized by a Government to capture the diversity and degree of granularity to consider the way forward for the Nation or to consider an issue of such national importance that it would require extensive grounding among the public. In this instance it is fair to assume that a vast array of remarks would appear from the crowd involving all aspects of the society. The Authorities in question would in this instance regard the respective sample (crowd) of the total population as a “sounding board” in controversial issues or use the data to facilitate further policy making. In a large (geographically) setting, more than one event might be organized simultaneously with capabilities to combine data without losing the source from a demographic point of view. The complexity of the data is such, that the groups of categories discussed above, will fall into larger subject areas. There are also other complexities involved, relating to the diversity of the placement of authority and power residing within the different social institutions be they formal or informal. Stakeholder analysis is required along with the actual deliberation on systemic issues and there are subject areas that each involve systemic and sub-system issues which have to be aligned internally. Here is where the EIDOS package is of particular significance as will be shown in the next section.
Community Building – a Communicative Engagement involving a certain community or area organized by local authorities and/or sponsors of some kind. These would typically be organized around a common goal or mission to revive or enhance the life condition of a given community such as employment opportunities, innovation/startups, community projects etc. The question put forward would typically reflect such overall goal and participants would typically present multiple of both systemic issues to facilitate evolution as well as specific ideas for their own collaboration to activate or solve. The organizers would thus get the task of making the best strategy to actually facilitate the movement or evolution they would desire and to monitor the results. In the case of community building, complexities are also involved but they are usually easier to deal with and it is fair to assume that stakeholder groups are to considerable degree aligned around the overall mission and purpose of the project making it easier to establish the necessary combination of authority, power and influence needed to create the desired movement. However, stakeholder analysis will be required as well.
Organization Building – Many such events have been organized in Iceland using the Assembly Process. These typically involve most or all of the organization’s employees, but in case of large organizations would involve multiple events being organized in local context tailored to the unit in question (not necessarily simultaneous). Issues that typically come out of these sessions fall into the groups of categories outlined in the previous section and management is left with having to deliberate on and decide the structural alignment of the organization to facilitate evolution in the desired direction, plus to install a system for internal collaboration. In organizational setting, the complexity is different, in that it is to be assumed that the corporate hierarchy will cover a workable approximation of the combination of authority, power and influence needed.

A case in point – using EIDOS to deal with complexities

As earlier mentioned, a so called Iceland National Assembly was organized by a grass root organization called the Anthill in November 2009. The method by which participants was carefully planned as to maintain authenticity by choosing the participants in a transparent and objective manner; however, it was also important that stakeholders in national and economic leadership be present in order to gain their support. Transferring the results of this meeting to the wider population would be problematic without first grounding those results with the “establishment.” A random sample of the total population was used, aged 18 and older, culled from the National Registry. This eliminated both hand-picking and open access, which would not have allowed control of the participant profile. Being a National Assembly, it was desired that the participants represent the nation’s demographic profile as much as possible. To approach a 3% error margin with 95% confidentiality, 1,200 attendees would be required. In order to get a turnout of 1200 attendees, a total sample of 6000 individual was drawn.

At the first Assembly, an expert committee categorized the collected data into themes and sub-themes. Experience proved, however, that this part of the data deliberation needed further development to save time and secure integrity of the categorization. Thus, at the 2010 Assembly, the participants themselves performed final data registration and categorization.

At both Assemblies, participants registered their thoughts on data cards and categorized the cards into nine themes, each with multiple sub-themes. Each card contained the number that had been assigned to the participant, to which demographic information such as age, gender, and geographic origin of the contributor was linked. All data, unedited in any way by Assembly facilitators, was registered the same evening and later made available on the Assembly’s website for public access.

To prioritize the data participants were given three sticky dots to place on three issues presented at their table. Through this voting, data pieces were collected to work with further in deliberation from the meeting. The themes which evolved at the 2009 Assembly were: Economy, Education, Environment, Welfare, Family, Public Administration, Equality, Sustainability, and an open category called New Iceland. Participants formed vision statements around these themes, a sample of which can be seen at the Assembly’s website.

Further studying the data, however, revealed another model as outlined in the below figure:

The Social Stratification Model—Forces of Social Evolution—Visionary View

By carefully studying all marked data from the assembly, they could fall into the above subject areas and many threads proved to be mutually interdependent requiring simultaneous initiative at multiple strata involving a multiple of stakeholders which would have to be combined.

Given the features of the EIDOS package, it proved a promising alternative to handle the complex data analysis resulting from this study and to link the data between different strata and stakeholders. However, since the focus of this particular dissertation study was the Assembly Process itself, i.e. the data generation activity and its validation, the EIDOS possibilities are still to be explored to its full potential. To do that further research is required; research I am convinced will open new possibilities of handling a large crowd qualitative inquiry data and transform into strategic wisdom and actionable policy grounded to the members of the human social system at stake.

In the enclosed overview presentation generated from the EIDOS package, a very brief example is given as to how the data was handled within the software. It is important to note, that this is just a sample case involving real data but the interdependencies and links between the different data is a matter for further exploration and discussion. Two analysis were done; one involving the themes which evolved during the meeting and another involving the model shown in above figure. The example below is the one generated with the Social Stratification Model.

Using the elements above, pieces of the data was placed in an option development matrix as shown below:

The data was classified according to Social Stratification Model, and listed under the different heading as follows (note: this is only sample data):

When using interdependencies strategic clusters were identified as follows:

Relevant combinations were studied and would form a basis for stakeholder analysis and further planning with respect to internal interdependency. Several options could be explored in this regard, but as a matter of fact, further proficiency on behalf of the author of this report would be required to do the full analysis. It can be stated that the matrix involving the themes from the assembly was considerably more complex involving 57 million different combinations as opposed to 6300 different combination of the simplified version shown above.

The Goals features of the packages were also considered and visulaized as follows:

The goals were listed, without, however, assigning any features to them, since that would be a matter of policy making and strategizing using the data.

It is important to realize the levels of data and that the data used in the above examples represent only the top layer, i.e. top categories, each containing multiple sub-categories each containing multiple points.

Summary and conclusion

The above report is a brief overview of a dissertation study done by the author involving large scale communicative engagement dealing with national issues. It is argued in this study that this method can apply to whatever human social system at hand. The event is in essence a participatory research process involving a large crowd where sufficient diversity and authentic physical space are secured to facilitate simultaenous dialogue and preserve the integrity of the data. The focus of the dissertation was mostly around the inquiry process itself and its validation.

Experience has shown, that an event like this produces multiple of outcomes. The most significan ones being on one hand a vast array of diverse data relating to the subject of inquiry and on the other hand a great momentum for change and action created by the enthusiasm around the possibilities and ideas from participants. The third significant outcome has been the general discovery among the participants, that at the core, all have the same needs and desires for a better life and share views in that regard to a considerable degree. This creates a tremendous sense of unity among the participants.

The most important feature in making an event like this of significance in conscious and constructive evolution of human systems is the ability to act on the data generated from such events. Given the diversity and complexity of the data, a temendous work is involed in gathering, making sense and using the data for the purpose of facilitating movement and change towards the desired direction.

Modern technology enables handling of complex qualitative data. In this instance the features of Parmenides EIDOS software was studied in relation to handling of the data gathered from the socalled National Assembly, which was organized in Iceland in November of 2009 involving a random sample of the Icelandic Nation. It is clear, that while such a large scale event can produce very rich source of data relating to national evolution and improvement, the EIDOS package provides the potential to extract the collective wisdom and actionable points from such data imperative to any follow-up and policy making. An example was shown above, but there are clearly much wider application possibilities involving both similar events in different settings, as well as more complex and eloquent data analysis involving goal assessment, option evalutation, stakeholder analysi, project planning and risk analysis to mention a few.

A lot of data is already available to do further tests. Data from two similar large scale events (1000+ participants) on a national scale and multiple events on a community and organizational level, which would allow for much deeper study of the potential of the package to take the rich raw material extracted from such large crowd events and turn them into focussed and mutually interpendent strategic intiatives and policies aimed at aligning the human system involved for greater prosperity.

Reykjavik, Iceland, July 23, Bjarni S. Jonsson
email: bjarni [at] agora.is

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Creative Thinking	Critical Thinking
Involves creating something new or original. It involves the skills of;	Involves logical thinking and reasoning including skills such as;
flexibility, originality, fluency, elaboration, brainstorming, modification, imagery, associative thinking, attribute listing, metaphorical thinking, forced relationships. The aim of creative thinking is to stimulate curiosity and promote divergence.	comparison, classification, sequencing, cause/effect, patterning, webbing, analogies, deductive and inductive reasoning, forecasting, planning, hyphothesizing, and critquing.

Question 1 in The Preparation session

Question 2 during session 1 on Purpose and Values

Question 3 during session 2 on the Idea Creation Process

Question 4 during session 6 on Deepening