Facilitator difficulty: easy
Participant difficulty: medium
Time required: 12 minutes
Most people know 1-2-4-All, which is a brilliant tool to reveal the most important ideas in a group. 4-2-1-Snap has a different goal. It is designed to let every individual participant identify their most important insights, but with help from the group.
As we all have different experiences and beliefs, we all look differently at the information we receive, for example a joint decision or collective results from a meeting or a presentation. 4-2-1-Snap makes it possible to gather insights from others, let all information sink in and let the most important things nest in your memory.
How to facilitate 4-2-1-Snap
Determine whatever it is you would like to reflect on with the group. This could be insights, results, measures, impressions, experiences, findings, or a combination of these. The topic at hand could be a report, presentation, discussion, workshop outcome, training, conference, you name it!
Form groups of 4 and share your most important insights/ results/ measures/ impressions/ experiences/ findings regarding the topic. Do this by complementing each other’s insights in a fast pace, using the words “Yes, and also…“
Split your group in pairs and discuss what stood out in the flow of insights in the previous step, and which insights resonate with you the most.
Tell the group: Grab a chair and quietly reflect for yourself. What is the most important insight? What do you want to remember? What would be a possible first step that you can take yourself?
Tell the group: Close your eyes. If you have decided to take action, imagine that situation. Where are you? Who is with you? With whom are you speaking? How does that place look like? Keep visualizing these things in front of you.
After a brief moment, invite participants to count down together from 4,2,1 and finish with a collective snap of the fingers. Tell them “This is something you won’t forget”.
The benefits of 4-2-1-Snap
- Diversity of perspectives: Taps into the collective intelligence of the group by incorporating a wide range of viewpoints, leading to richer discussions and better individual insights.
- Creativity boost: The process of sharing ideas through different perspectives sparks creativity, leading to more innovative personal next steps.
- Flexibility: Can be adapted for various purposes, from reflecting on a report, presentation or discussion, to evaluating a sprint, training or conference, across diverse settings.
- Spontaneous expression: The fast-paced sharing in groups of 4 encourages participants to immediately express ideas that emerge spontaneously.
Use cases and tweaks for 4-2-1-Snap
- Easy to incorporate: Fits seamlessly into any meeting type and context, from the boardroom grinder to the ad hoc get together on the work floor. Do make sure the group is open to reflection with closed eyes.
- Use for following up on another Liberating Structure: 4-2-1-Snap is a nice way to reflect on the collective results from action-generating Liberating Structures, such as 15% Solutions, What So What Now What, Ecocycle Planning, Integrated~Autonomy. It can be used to share the plans, condense them and foster a get-things-done mindset.
- Retrospectives and evaluations: Conduct 4-2-1-Snap to let everyone gather viewpoints from the group regarding for example a sprint, project or conference, before giving everyone an opportunity to make sense of what matters to them most. Let each participant share their most important insights with the group and follow up with another Liberating Structure to dive into these insights.
- Workshops and training: Make sure everyone remembers their most important learnings by closing the session with 4-2-1-Snap.
- Adjust to group size: When the number of participants doesn’t allow for groups of 4, turn it into a 6-2-1, 6-3-1, 5-2-1 and/or 5-3-1.
- Asynchronous preparation: Have participants go through the report/ presentation/ video/ workshop outcome/ etc. by themselves and plan a short meeting specifically to conduct 4-2-1-Snap with the entire group.
- Incorporate 15% Solutions: To really get participants into action mode, 15% Solutions could function as a follow up to, or even as an alternative to, step ‘1’.
Tips for facilitating 4-2-1-Snap
- Emphasize a positive improv mindset: Make sure participants use a “Yes exactly, and also“-structure in step ‘4’ to playfully generate many insights without getting into a “Yes but”-discussion.
- Keep explanations brief: Avoid over-explaining the steps. The simplicity of 4-2-1-Snap means it should be explained quickly, ideally in less time than it takes to conduct the exercise.
- Focus on personal sensemaking: Make sure participants focus on the insights that are most important to them personally and how they make sense to them, instead of gathering collective insights.
- Ensure proper silent self-reflection: Make sure that participants take the time for individual reflection. This step is crucial for engraving the most important insights in the participant’s memory.
- Explain per step: Don’t explain the entire exercise at the beginning, but only provide an explanation of the step at hand. This prevents people from rushing to the next step before the previous is over.
- Repeat the prompt: Start your explanation with the words "As soon as I'm done explaining" and give the prompt (invitation) to the participants twice. This prevents participants to jump into action without really understanding what the assignment is.
- Monitor group cadence: Make sure that the group transitions to the next step as a whole to prevent a mismatch when reflecting silently and counting down.
- Play sound for transitions: Use a bell or other auditory signal, like tingsha, to announce the start of new rounds, helping to keep the activity on track without over-explaining.
- Encourage movement: Start the activity standing up, with participants walking around the room to grab a seat for the silent reflection. This adds energy to the process and keeps participants engaged.
- At least 4 participants: Only skip step ‘2’ when there are less than 4 participants as this step functions as a springboard to deepen understanding of one’s own insights.
- Count down together: Make sure participants join you when counting down and start again until most of them do.
- Count from three: To make things easier for the participants, start the count from “three” instead of “four”.
Learn more about 4-2-1-Snap and Liberating Structures
As this Liberating Structure is quite easy to facilitate, it is a matter of learning by doing. If you need help to incorporate it into a larger meeting structure, I’m happy to help prepare and set it up!
If you are curious about Liberating Structures in general and would like to experience the structures firsthand, check out our Training page for learning possibilities. A simple workshop is quickly organized.
A few quotes from participants
- "Because of the question to visualize an initial action in the individual step, you think about a small step that you could take immediately to put your insights into practice."
- "I was particularly triggered when sharing insights with colleagues in the group of 4. This brought up new ideas in me, which I could share with the group immediately. This way of rapid sharing makes the exercise really efficient."
- "The most essential insight appeared when I reflected on my own in the final step and came to a different outcome. I find this quite strange because we had not discussed that outcome in the earlier conversations in quartets and pairs. Was it my personal escape from groupthink? With 1-2-4-All, you work towards consensus, but with 4-2-1-Snap it is okay to diverge to something personal. That still feels a bit unfamiliar, but also beautiful. It was a fascinating process to experience!"
This structure was developed by
Daniel Steinh?fer
and is one of many available in the Liberating Structures family.
Liberating structures was developed by Henri Lipmanowicz and Keith McCandless.
