[Ailist] Discovery/Dream with 400 senior managers

[Neil D. Samuels]

What a marvelous opportunity Marvin!
I have first hand experience with 300 and was part of the AI Conference
where they managed an inquiry with 450 of us in the room. Both worked very
well.
For my one-day summit for 300 (270 students ages 11-17 and 30 teachers) we
used circles of 10. They had completed interviews prior to the summit so we
did not have to think about that part of the process. Each group developed
their own Success Factors and Wishes, then shared with the nearest circle
and consolidated into one then shared with the large group and posted them
on the wall for all to see. For the dream phase, each circle had their own
box of creative STUFF with which to craft their image. We then asked all
groups to simply raise their images above their heads. The energy was
fantastic. Then we asked them to get with two other circles and choose
either the image they liked best or the elements of the dreams they liked
best and consolidate into one and present out. That got us down to 10 Dreams
to share. What actually happened for the most part was that they slapped all
three together so that nothing was lost. That is, little integration and
longer presentations--but it still worked well. The energy from the 10 that
were shared was astounding!
We did not do Design with the large group so no help there.

If I remember the AI Conference correctly, for the Dream, groups lined up at
the front of the room and about 10-20 got to share. Then Bernard and Adrian
had us walk around and visit other group to see their provocative
propositions before getting into design. I don't think it worked as well as
they had hoped because many people seemed to lock onto their own PP rather
than truly explore others' perspectives. But I would be tempted to try it
again with some different instructions.

Hope this is helpful. Happy to talk more with you but the next 10 days will
be tricky.

Good luck and please share both your design and learning.

Neil

Neil D. Samuels
President
Profound Conversations
1003 Creekside Circle
Naperville, Il 60563
630-605-4610
neil at profoundconversations.com

-----Original Message-----
From: ailist-bounces at lists.business.utah.edu
[mailto:ailist-bounces at lists.business.utah.edu] On Behalf Of Marvin Faure
Sent: Saturday, May 12, 2007 4:48 PM
To: ailist at lists.business.utah.edu
Subject: [Ailist] Discovery/Dream with 400 senior managers

Would any of you that have a lot of experience working with very large
groups be willing to share some ideas?

I have been set the very exciting task of designing a one-day offsite for
the top 400 managers in three French companies that are merging part of
their operations. The principle theme of the offsite is to be change. Each
company has recently introduced a significant change (new internal business
process, new IT system, etc
) that will now be rolled out across the other
two.

I have plenty of experience running AI sessions with smaller groups, and
have a very dog-eared copy of Jim Ludema’s book that has served me well
designing summits for up to 150 people. This will be the first time I have
tackled such a large group. All 400 will be in the same room, in principle
on tables of 10. The client is very concerned about keeping everybody
entertained and engaged. The brief is that the sessions need to be
fast-moving, with plenty of animation and transitions between activities.

I’m looking for ideas on how to scale the processes that work well for 100+
people up to 400. How to do the report-outs, how to keep everybody “engaged
and entertained”? What has to change in the Summit methodology as it scales
up? What are the really crucial things to get right?

Any and all ideas would be very much appreciated!

Marvin FAURE
MINDSTORE France & Suisse
Chemin du Canal 5
CH-1260 Nyon
Tél. +41 22 363 9286
Mob. +41 786 826 926	
www.mindstore.ch




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