Workshop activities to Analyse, Understand and Innovate

In Wicked Questions, participants ask, “How is it that we are doing two things in tension with each other simultaneously?” These questions reveal entangled challenges that are unintuitive or difficult to discuss. Wicked Questions can reduce either-or thinking and engage everyone in thinking strategically about how to balance competing priorities. It can be particularly useful in transitions because it exposes the tension between what is being said and what is actually being done. This structure reinforces LS Principle #7, Emphasize Possibilities: Believe Before You See.

Een CALQ-discussie laat studenten de kernboodschap van colleges verduidelijken en met elkaar te bespreken. 

With this facilitation technique you can immediately include everyone regardless of how large the group is. You can generate better ideas and more of them faster than ever before. You can tap the know-how and imagination that is distributed widely in places not known in advance.

Open, generative conversation unfolds. Ideas and solutions are sifted in rapid fashion. Most importantly, participants own the ideas, so follow-up and implementation is simplified. No buy-in strategies needed! Simple and elegant!

This structure reinforces LS Principle #1, ­Include and Unleash Everyone.

Help Me Understand is based on the underlying (and accurate) assumption is that employees come to meetings with widely different questions around a topic or a change. It also allows the players to discover overlaps with other players’ questions and to notice the frequency with which those questions occur—something they may not have known prior to the meeting.

Studenten brainstormen met behulp van een mind map om zo tot een interdisciplinaire onderzoeksvraag met sub-vragen op te stellen.

A Focused Conversation to begin to process traumatic situations for use with colleagues, friends and family, and how to respond to them productively. Often traumatic events become undiscussable and this enables persons to talk about them

This is a structured discussion activity for exploring a topic by answering questions in three different set-ups: individually, in pairs and in teams. 

The goal of this game is to map out the motivations and interactions among actors in a system. The actors, in this case, may be as small-scale as individuals who need to work together to accomplish a task, or as large-scale as organizations brought together for a long-term purpose. A give-and-take matrix is a useful diagnostic tool, and helps players explore how value flows through the group.

Instead of altering our beliefs to fit new information, we often force information to fit our existing beliefs.

W3 helps groups break this pattern by reflecting on a shared experience in a way that builds understanding and spurs coordinated action while avoiding unproductive conflict.

Progressing in stages makes this practical: collecting facts (What Happened), making sense of them (So What), and identifying what actions logically follow (Now What). Every voice is heard while simultaneously sifting for insights and shaping new direction.

The shared progression eliminates most of the misunderstandings that otherwise fuel disagreements about what to do — enlivening LS Principle #4, Learn by Failing Forward. Voila!

Build empathy by retelling someone's story.