A (facilitated) group process for co-creating a response to a driver.

Table of Contents

Overview

Proposal Forming involves people in co-creating agreements through a facilitated group process that draws on the collective intelligence and diversity of perspective within a group, and fosters accountability and sense of ownership.

Proposal Forming may also be used by an individual.

Proposal Forming Steps

1. Consent to Driver and Requirement: Check the driver and requirement is summarized clearly enough and is relevant for the group to respond to.

2. Questions about the Driver and Requirement: Deepen individual and shared understanding of the driver and Requirement.

3. Considerations as questions: Collect any considerations you have in relation to possible solutions. Record them in the form of questions.

4. Answer information gathering questions: Gather any information regarding constraints and specific details that are worthwhile to consider.

5. Prioritize generative questions: Identify priority considerations to clarify which are more or less important to consider when forming the proposal.

6. Collect ideas: Generate and record ideas about how to fulfill the determined requirement.

7. Choose tuners: Delegate responsibility for putting together a proposal to 2-3 people (tuners).

8. Design proposal: The Tuners design a proposal based on the information gathered in the previous steps.

Proposal forming process

Check the driver and requirement is summarized clearly enough and is relevant for the group to respond to.

Facilitator asks: Is the description of the driver and requirement clear enough? Is this an organizational driver? Is this driver relevant for you to respond to? And, is this requirement suitable?

This first step is simply about ensuring that the driver is summarized clearly enough and that it’s relevant for those who are involved to respond to it. Once the driver has been accepted, you’ll have the chance to ask further questions and learn more in the next step

As a general recommendation, aim to complete this step with meeting attendees asynchronously, prior to meeting. This will give you the opportunity to make any refinements in advance and can save wasting precious meeting time.

If the driver is not described clearly enough: take time to clarify and make any necessary changes to how the driver is summarized until there are no further objections. Unless this will be a quick fix, consider doing this after the meeting and defer forming the proposal until the driver is clear.

If the driver is not relevant for this group: pass it on to the appropriate person or team, or, if it’s decided that this is not an organizational driver at all, discard it.

If the requirement is considered to be unsuitable: hear the argument(s) and if they qualify as objections, resolve them before considering the proposal.

Step 2: Questions about the Driver and Requirement

Deepen individual and shared understanding of the driver and requirement.

The purpose of this step is to deepen your understanding, individually and as a group, of the situation and what’s been determined as required to address it. You are looking back in time and until the present moment, to understand the situation.

Facilitator asks: Any other (essential) information you need to know about the driver or requirement?

Ask whatever questions you need, to be sure you understand enough about:

  • the current situation,
  • the effect it has on the organization,
  • the requirement you’re trying to address in this process and
  • the impact you want to achieve.

Tips for the facilitator:

  • Use rounds, hear one question at a time, and invite anyone with an answer to share it briefly. Encourage them to be brief and concise.
  • Check regularly with the person who asks a question, if the answer(s) given is sufficient to move on.

Tips for everyone:

  • Prioritize your questions in your mind, in case there isn’t time to ask or answer them all.
  • If you don’t have a question, then when it comes to your turn, say “pass”.
  • Keep both questions and answers brief. Avoid preamble and aim to stay focused on each question in turn.
  • Keep any conversation to a minimum and avoid getting into discussion.
  • Only record answers, NOT questions.
  • If there are 2 or more points of view, record them all.

Step 3: Considerations as questions

Collect any considerations you have in relation to possible solutions. Record them in the form of questions.

Before jumping into ideas about how to fulfill the requirement, it’s useful to consider important constraints and specific facts that might inform the generation of ideas (which will take place in step 6). It’s also helpful to stimulate creative thinking. This is all covered in steps 3 and 4.

Facilitator asks: What questions come up for you when you’re thinking about possible solutions?

You’re looking for two types of questions: Information gathering questions and generative questions.

Information gathering questions

These questions elicit information that helps to understand constraints relating to possible solutions. They reveal specific information, or that there is a lack of knowledge to be able to answer that question.

Examples:

  • What budget do we have available for this?
  • How much slack time do we currently have?
  • How many people are affected by this situation?

Generative questions

These are open questions that can be answered in many ways and invite people to think of various possibilities. They stimulate creative thinking.

Examples:

  • How can we utilize our existing platforms to address this issue?
  • What’s the simplest way to begin?
  • What can we learn from how others have dealt with this before?

Solutions disguised as questions

There’s a third type of question that’s better to avoid at this stage: solutions disguised as questions, like “could we use tool X to solve this?” or “could we raise funds through an open campaign?”

Such questions invite listeners to converge on an idea, but in this step of Proposal Forming, we actually want to keep the field open (divergent) for as many creative ideas as possible. Specific Ideas about solutions are shared in step 6.

If you do come across a solution disguised as a question, have a go at reformulating it as a generative question, for example, “what tools do we know of that we could use for this?” or “how will we finance this?”. Alternatively, save it and bring it up in step 6.

Tips for the facilitator:

  • Begin by giving people a few minutes to reflect for themselves and record their considerations as questions on sticky notes.
  • Once the time is up, use rounds to hear 1 question from each person at a time. Go in rounds until all questions are harvested.
  • Remember: you don’t answer any questions in this step.

Tips for everyone:

  • Allocate two areas (columns) on your (digital) board, one for information gathering questions and the other for generative questions.
  • When it’s your turn, add one of your questions to the board as you read it out loud. You’ll need to decide in which column to place it. If in doubt, add it to the “info gathering” column. You can talk about it later.
  • Use the “Bingo” and “Sort-of Bingo” technique, to identify and cluster similar considerations together: When you have the same question, say “Bingo”, there is no need to repeat what’s on your sticky note. When you have a related question, say “Sort-of-Bingo” and jump in and add the additional details.
  • Avoid discussing questions in this step, unless it’s necessary for understanding the question.
  • In the case of a solution disguised as a question, rephrase the question or bring it up in Step 6 when you collect ideas.
  • To increase meeting effectiveness, you can also prepare some of these questions prior to the meeting, as part of your preparation.

Step 4: Answer information gathering questions

Gather any information regarding constraints and specific details that are worthwhile to consider.

Having collected and visualized all of the information gathering and generative questions, answer as many information gathering questions as you can.

Note: Don’t attempt to answer the generative questions in this step. This happens in step 6 when you collect ideas.

Facilitator: Ask those present to answer whatever questions they can and record the answers under the question, (on the same sticky note if that’s what you used). Learning that a question cannot be answered by those present is also useful information.

Information gained in this step informs people in making appropriate suggestions for solutions in the next round. Important information gathering questions that cannot be answered now might indicate the need to address them somehow in the proposal later.

Note: In some cases you might even pause the Proposal Forming process at this stage, to allow time to answer important information gathering questions before continuing to step 5 another day.

Here’s some tips on how to do this step:

  • Everyone gather around the board and begin writing down any relevant answers on the sticky notes with the questions
  • Have any dialogue necessary to clarify answers.
  • The answer can also be “we don’t know”.
  • If you notice there are many possible answers to a question, move it to the generative column instead.

  • Record any other generative questions that come up, including rephrasing information gathering questions if required:

    Example: Information gathering question: How many people are affected by this problem? Answer: we don’t know Generative question: How shall we find out how many people are affected?

Step 5: Prioritize generative questions

Identify priority considerations to clarify which are more or less important to consider when forming the proposal.

In this step, arrange the generative questions in order of importance.

A suggested way to prioritize:

Together, in silence, arrange the sticky notes in an approximate order of importance in a vertical list, with those that are essential to address in any proposal near the top, and those that are of little consequence near the bottom. Place any disputed considerations aside until undisputed notes have been placed. Then dedicate time for dialogue to decide where to position the others in the list.

Note: this prioritization only needs to be approximate. The main purpose here is to ensure that essential considerations are identified so that they can be considered when it comes to tuning the proposal.

Step 6: Collect ideas

Generate and record ideas about how to fulfill the determined requirement.

In this step, everyone shares ideas about how to fulfill the determined requirement. This can include ideas that might provide a whole solution, partial solutions, iterative next steps and suggestions about how to respond to any of the prioritized generative questions.

Facilitator says: Coming back to the driver for this proposal, mindful of all we’ve learned so far, and considering the priority considerations we’ve identified, please take some time now to come up with ideas about how we can respond to this driver.

Tips for the facilitator:

  • Begin by giving people a few minutes to reflect for themselves and record their ideas on sticky notes.
  • Encourage people to record as many ideas as possible. Reassure everyone that contradictory ideas are welcome.
  • Once the time is up, use rounds to hear one idea from each person at a time. Go in a round until all ideas are harvested.
  • Use the “Bingo” and “Sort-of Bingo” technique, to identify and cluster similar considerations together.

Tips for everyone

  • Take time to reflect individually and write down ideas you have on sticky notes.
  • If you know about the requirement in advance, you can start recording any ideas you have about how to fulfil the requirement prior to the meeting.
  • Keep your notes brief.
  • Avoid discussing, evaluating, comparing or debating ideas.
  • Ask questions for understanding if necessary.
  • Use the “Bingo” and “Sort-of Bingo” technique.

Step 7: Choose tuners

Delegate responsibility for putting together a proposal, to 2-3 people (tuners).

Tuners are individuals chosen by the group. Their task is to consider all the information and ideas the group has collected and to prepare a proposal for how to respond to the driver. They can choose one or more of the ideas, synthesize them or come up with new ones, based on all the information gathered in the process. When choosing Tuners, consider expertise, outside view, and inspiration.

Facilitator says: We need to choose tuners. Then asks in this order:

  1. Who do you think should be there?
  2. Who would like to be there?
  3. Can you think of anyone else, not present here, who might have a valuable contribution to make?

Tips for the facilitator:

  • Ask people to make suggestions, including proposing themselves, and if there are several suggestions, narrow it down to 2 or 3 people.
  • Check for any objections to the proposed tuners, and if there are any, resolve them until there are no further objections remaining.

Note: Tuners can invite others to contribute toward designing the proposal if they decide it is necessary or valuable to do so.

Note: The tuners are not making a final decision. Their task is to ensure a proposal is created based on the information gathered in the previous steps. The output of the Proposal Forming process is a proposal that can later be tested and evolved if necessary using the Consent Decision Making process.

Step 8: Design proposal

The Tuners design a proposal.

A well written proposal usually includes:

  • the driver it responds to and the requirement it’s intended to fulfill.
  • the proposal text – what, how, rationale, etc.
  • who will be responsible for what – for overseeing its application/implementation.
  • evaluation date or frequency – when the future agreement will be reviewed.
  • evaluation criteria – to measure/determine the success or effectiveness of the decision.
  • (a due date if necessary).

When developing the proposal it is often enough to design a (few) viable and iterative next step(s). Alternatively, you might prepare a high-level proposal first and then get into details later, once the basic concept has been tested and approved.

In any case, consider setting an early evaluation date to review progress and outcomes, and to develop next steps.

Of course, it’s sometimes necessary to develop a comprehensive proposal from the start but whenever possible, aim to break it down into iterative steps, so you can learn fast and evolve your agreement based on what you learn.

Tuners, note: When writing down the proposal, aim to keep your explanation clear and concise. Describe it in a way that maximizes the potential that others will understand it without needing further explanation.