How do you make a two hour presentation of a three year long project that has engaged more than a dozen co-workers without people dying from information assault? Well, that was the challenge I was facing a couple of weeks ago when our management team asked for an update. I thought hard about how to make everyone’s project efforts justice but also on how to achieve learning and change among the management team.
I decided that the best way to go was to minimize the presentation part and instead go for a strength-based development workshop using my background in Appreciative Inquiry. As part of the Discover phase I made the managers express their present knowledge of the project and their desires to learn more by selecting cards with pictures (Thank you Anne Radford for introducing me to this lovely technique!). I also talked about my own background to provide them with insights into my perspective of the world, using models developed and applied in the project. Of course, I also made a rapid expose of the project where I tried to mix various levels: fundamental ideas, cases and tools. During this part of the presentation, I made it clear that questions and discussions had to wait. I urged them to help themselves to the chocolate I had brought (Anthon Berg Fairtrade Sea Salt and Rasperry&Blackberry) whenever they felt like talking.
Next step was doing interviews where they had to ask and answer questions about what they wanted to do in the future related to the project (Dream), what “components” needed to be in place for that to happen (Design) and what kinds of measures they could take immediately (Destiny). After intense dialogues energized by the chocolate intake, they reported back to the group and also analyzed the results. As a finale, I asked them to select a book from the project library. Alexander Osterwalder’s “Business Model Innovation” was the most popular one.
Have you similar experiences to share? Please tell!!!
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