Your experience on "practices" for self assessment!

[Célicia Theys]

Practices. You know, that sometimes tricky-thorny part of the CLC Process that comes right after the dream and before diving into the self-assessment?

Well, the global support team of the Constellation is thinking of bringing more attention to it by adding it as a separate step between the dream and SA.

As we are thinking of giving more weight to this step, we want to learn from you!

• What is a practice?'
• 'What does the full set of practices allow us to do?'How do you facilitate the process of surfacing the practices?
• why is this step important?
• stories of times you have used it and found it useful

 SALT and the CLC Process have always been alive and changing as we learn from experience, please share yours below :) !

With deep gratitude,

Celicia on behalf of the Global Support Team.

 

[Rituu B. Nanda]

Dear Geoff, many thanks. We are happy to wait as this is important for our process. As you said its about stimulating a deep conversation in the group and not as much about the level.

[Célicia Theys]

Thanks Geoff and yes of course as Rituu said, we're happy to wait... and learn ;-) !

Specific questions for you to consider:
- how do you usually introduce the concept of "practice" to people?
- how do you facilitate the group so that they reach a set of practices (in the event of a blank sheet)?
- can you share one example of a day where that worked really well? did you do anything differently that day?

many thanks and happy travels to you until then :) !!!

[Gaston]

Yes, makes sense as separate step. Probably one of the hardest steps to facilitate in my opinion. I recently facilitated this with a company in singapore. After the dream step, I gave each of the team members 5 A4 papers. They had to start with We [active verb].....they only had 5 options. Give them time to reflect and prioritize their top 5.

Then each shared those and as we progressed we started clustering them. We put things together and were around the same theme. Eventually we ended up with 9 practices even though we started with 50 A4s. So it requires some deductive process (which we timed during lunch so a small group could do this instead of the whole group). Worked really well and everyone felt ownership of the SA framework. Here were their practices: 

1.We have and live a clear, shared and aspirational vision

2.We are united and include everyone

3.We trust and stand by each other

4.We drive excellence through learning, innovating, adapting and challenging

5.We keep each other accountable

6.We act with bravery, courage and kick ass. We take risks and show hunger

7.We create buzz, excitement, laughter and energy

8.We appreciate, celebrate and reward each other

9.We share feedback, learning and issues and failure without reservation

[Rituu B. Nanda]

Hi Gaston, thanks a lot! My struggle is framing the practice like We have overcome the issue of alcoholism in our village. How does this sound to you? 

[Geoff Parcell]

How about switching it to a more positive statement and include an active verb (in this case "drink")

"We drink alcohol sensibly and responsibly"?

[Rituu B. Nanda]

Thank you Geoff. I like your advice and will try to apply. It is very practical too. No one is going to stop drinking alcohol:-)

[Célicia Theys]

Many thanks Gaston, I love the practices they came up with (especially "we kick ass") :) !

How do you introduce the concept of practices to them in relation to the dream?
How do you make sure people feel connected to the dream?

Also: have you ever used group visualization/meditation to bring people into the dream and draw the practices (I know I have :) ) ?

[khorchi laurie]

Thank you to Autry, Jan, Ricardo, Gaston, Geoff for your responses and experiences. 

Any of you had an experience with non-literate community? How do you manage to get a set of practices developped by the community? 

I always find this part difficult and very intellectual? Did any one manage to find an easier way to get these practices? 

Thank you 

Laurie 

[Rituu B. Nanda]

There are two more questions to this discussion. They come from Phil. I request responses to these.  'What is a practice?' and perhaps a related question 'What does the full set of practices allow us to do?'

[Autry Haynes]

 My response to follow-up questions:

What is a practice?'

For me a practice is a ‘specific outcome’ or intended ;behavior / developmental change’  (in the beneficiaries) that are the logical consequence of achieving a combination of Specific very related actions. This practice is directly related to the common dream that a community pursues in an effort to achieve the dream, It is ACTIVE in nature.

 

When ACTUALLY doing this however, my experience is, that participants relate more to, ‘what are some big steps’ or ‘stepping stones’ we need to accomplish, so that we can be sure we are in pursuit of our dream? NOT! These are not actions but are a cumulative set of actions.

After the stepping stones are identified and titled as ACTIVE outcomes, I would say in Constellation we call these practices (^_^)

 

'What does the full set of practices allow us to do?'

A full set of practices help a community to be motivated towards a common dream. It helps us to structurally accompany the community as it takes  ownership in a responsible way to achieve its dream.As community members have candid conversation on the levels of competence for each practice, trust between themselves [each other] is achieved. There is also trust of the facilitation. The conversation also allows for inclusion of individuals and more confidence of the process.

 

[Geoff Parcell]

As promised here are some resources. I've copied a proof of chapter 3 of the book No More Consultants. Please treat it as a taster of the whole book which can be found on Amazon in paper or electronic form. 

Building the self assessment framework this captures much of what i have learned about using self assessment.

We did construct a generic framework for life competence. You might wish to start with this and make it more specific to the issue. 

[Geoff Parcell]

some more