Future foresight methods
Paul Nunesdea, PhD, CPF, MC
Transforming Collaboration in Healthcare & Beyond | Certified Professional Facilitator | Health Data Forum, Health Regions Summit, Digital Health Portugal
Eventually, you will be learning like me, that you are your own meeting technology.
Since after the summer, I joined a working group hosted by IAF Europe & Middle East regional director Mirjami Sipponen-Damonte to define a Future Foresight Toolbox to assist managers and group facilitators that design and run Future Search conferences.
Future search conferences are highly structured events, usually lasting 2.5 days, at which a cross-section of community members or 'stakeholders' create a shared vision for the future. They are more suited for dealing with general issues rather than specific and gather people representing the widest possible range of interests, or 'stakeholder' groups, that are brought together in one room.
My participation in this working group has proved to be a great learning opportunity and quite inspiring because I am having the chance to work with colleagues that have a wealth of accumulated experience in working with groups in the creation of future scenarios. Their contributions are exceptional and I am sure the Toolbox that will be produced would be a much more useful resource.
Armed with this preparatory work, I am co-hosting with David Gurteen, John Hovell, and Jon Knight, a Future Café next 28 November and would like to extend a warm invitation to anyone interested in collaborative workplaces and how you and your company can make an impact in the future of teamwork and lifelong learning to join us.
In our case, we will be hosting a Knowledge Café - a conversational method in which small groups of people come together to have open, creative conversations on a topic of mutual interest, to surface their collective knowledge, to share ideas and to gain a deeper understanding of the issues involved.?
Not required in a typical Knowledge Café, in a Future Café, we do need to capture participant's inputs and will be doing so with Nureva Span a collaborative tool that extends and replaces the power of a large wall where we can post sticky notes with a digital canvas that can capture those paper notes and other digital objects and instantly shares them with anyone remotely located.
The potential for such new collaborative tools is tremendous. Yet, technology by itself does not engage your team nor the whole organization, for all that matters. Having the chance to use powerful digital tools in the meeting room or in the classroom is only the tip of an iceberg of a truly collaborative organization. You will be needing a lot more to take advantage of the full potential of a digital collaborative workplace.
When we try to combine the power of digital tools for group collaboration we approach the realm of GDSS - Group Decision-Making Support Systems.
Since the late '90s, traditional GDSSs use an interface that builds on the keyboard as the major source of data input. Whereas today, new touch screen technology such as FlatFrog's Inglass, enables multiple touchpoints on a screen and natural writing behaviour (like writing on a piece of paper).
Would this finally be replacing the flipcharts in meeting rooms? How would the market be responding to the appearance of a large digital canvas where the knowledge workers can contribute handwritten notes and digital media such as video and annotate on top? Why would visual interactive collaboration technology be in strong demand? We know for a fact that sticky notes in walls are increasingly being used by lean managers, scrum masters and group facilitators in all sorts of collaborative-intensive projects, including Future Search conferences.
As the IAF Future Foresight Toolbox will outline, there are many stages in a future search conference, namely:
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The Knowledge Café can certainly be applied in several of these stages, but for the purpose of the next edition of Visual Collab 2018, we will be focusing on exploring the signals of change that might lead to the wider adoption of digital visual interactive collaboration.
Do you feel the smell of fresh coffee?
We will have two keynote speakers to provide food for thought in our sessions in the RSA House next 28 November. Colin Messenger from Future Source will be delivering a short video presentation to clarify the domain and to surface current assumptions of where the industry is moving.
In the afternoon, Nureva's chairman David Martin - an industry pioneer that invented the first windows-based web conference system and the interactive whiteboard back in the 90's - will be doing the opening start of an Espresso Café (a lightweight version of the morning session) where we will be challenged and confronted with the need for a new business model in this industry.
The providers of technology need to team up with trainers, coaches and group facilitators to deliver something more than a digital tool. The package needs to include the skills enhancement for their users to be able to lead a transformative change in their teams and subsequently throughout the whole organization. I have found this diagram used by an Ohio-based company - Meeteor - quite inspiring and I am sure this is a possible future scenario that many attending will learn how to benefit from.
But don't worry if you are not yet there. Your current tensions will be a source of inspiration for the kind of conversations we experience in a David Gurteen Knowledge Café. You will also learn how easy it is to take this 'process' with you and run it in your own team or organization.
The recipe is very simple: total freedom to interact and engage within the minimal possible structure. Some folks call this a liberating structure.
Eventually, you will be learning like me, that you are your own meeting technology.