How we pivot
Learnings from the experiments in collective decision making and collaborative dreaming that helped the Deepr Learning Marathon navigate COVID-19.
As so many other organisations, events, programmes, experiences, human beings, and organisms, in March this year, as the wave of COVID-19 crept up on us, the Deepr Learning Marathon found itself in uncharted waters. We weren’t exactly a sinking ship, far from it in fact, but it was becoming clear that we needed to set a new course.
And never was there a more appropriate ship to practice collective decision making on than a ship of 20 people all on a Learning Marathon about human connection.
As hosts, we knew that to bring everyone along we needed to understand everyone’s needs, and to involve everyone in the decisions we were making. If we were to go ahead and make assumptions and certain decisions without everyone there, we would effectively be throwing people overboard or making them walk the plank into a brewing storm.
So, we found ourselves designing rapidly evolving experiments in pursuit of collective decision making about what to do that tried to meet the needs of everyone aboard.
Some of them have worked, some of them haven’t had the desired outcome, some of them had zero engagement. All of them helped us understand better, and to pivot towards something new. (We’re still pivoting now)
This is by no means a guide. It is an account of what we tried, what worked, what didn’t. It’s a small effort to share our learnings with the world in case it’s of use to others out there facing the challenges of collective decision making and figuring out how to pivot, together, in the future.
We hope that sharing our experience and experiments a) provides something that others can learn and borrow from too, and b) adds something useful to a conversation that enables more people to be involved in more decisions about things that affect them and their lives.
Where we are today (May 2020)
At the time of writing this, we are approaching mid May 2020. And under normal circumstances in a parallel universe not infected by COVID-19 we would be 2–3 weeks away from the Deepr Learning Marathon Showcase, an in person gathering and event that would showcase 20 people’s learning journeys across 6 months a answering the question “How can we embed more human connection in services and systems?”
Instead we are navigating how to honour what we all signed up for (both participants and hosts) — A 6 month learning journey from November to May, with fortnightly meetups, occassional “Get Shit Done Sundays”, 2 residential weekends at the Hawkwood Centre for Future Thinking, and a showcase event — While balancing that with everyone’s new needs under a very new context, and maintaining an experiment in human connection when we are not allowed to gather, or be within 2 meters of another human being.
Collectively, as a group, we have decided NOT to continue with the residential weekend as planned. But to postpone it.
As hosts we made the decision to continue with fortnightly meetups and not to put the Learning Marathon on pause, at least until another consensus was reached.
We entered into a multifaceted collaborative decision making process about what to do about a showcase… reimagine it in a non-face-to-face world, postpone it too, cancel it altogether?
The result : a decision not to go ahead with a showcase, to create a website to share each of our learnings with the world and our networks, to transition to a new continual (yet optional) way of learning and sharing amongst us between now and a postponed Hawkwood.
Here’s how we got there…
The pivoting process
The ways we’ve gone about pivoting fall broadly under 3 buckets:
Below is a more in depth look at each one; the process, what worked well and what didn’t.
1. Human centred decision making
There are a few decisions we’ve made as hosts, with the group’s best interest at heart. This is how we did it:
2. Collective / Democratic decision making
There was a simple binary decision to be made, we put it to the group. Should we gather at the Hawkwood Centre for Future Thinking or not?
What worked
1 : Transparency and neutrality
We provided links to any relevant information about the situation as you can. E.g. policies and responses of the partners involved.
We made it easy for people to dive in deeper via links, without overwhelming them with reals of text.
We tried not to let our own opinions as hosts drive answers. It felt important not to dish out information that could be biased — e.g. news stories, opinion articles etc. It’s up to each individual to be able to choose where they consume media from in order to form their own.
Instead we decided to participate as hosts with our own views in the same way as everyone else
2 : Restate the purpose and goals
In the document we restated the purpose of the residential weekend, as a reminder to everyone of where we were at in the process, and in order to prompt answers to questions about redesigning the weekend online, if that was the outcome
3 : Clear signposting
We sign posted clearly where we were asking people to contribute in the document, and when we needed contributions by. If someone didn’t contribute by then, the decision would be made without their input.
4 : Anonymity
We realised that we didn’t need to know who said what and who had which opinion — Making it optionally anonymous allowed people to express their feelings and concerns without the worry of being judged by others.
5 : Considered questions
It was important not to ask too many questions, to cover all angles, and to set ourselves up well whichever way the vote went.
We asked 4 types of questions:
Simple vote questions
- What is your preference for the Power Up weekend? (vote with an emoji)
Concern gathering questions
- What are your main concerns about either OPTION 1 or OPTION 2?
- If we decide to go ahead with Hawkwood what would stop you going?
Generative idea gathering questions
- If we do this online, what would you like to get from the Power Up experience?
- What have you been learning so far that we could incorporate into the design of an online Power Up experience?
Anything else questions
- What questions do you have? (we’ll try to answer as questions pop up)
- Is there anything else you’d like to say?
6 : Invite open discussion
Lastly we encouraged and invited interactive discussion under each question, leaving dedicated space for comments and conversations to emerge as people added their opinions, feelings about what their needs and preferences were. This resulted in a rich, colourful, emoji filled generative discussion about the decision.
Interlude : A mid-point conclusion
Up until this point, we were really happy, it felt like everything was moving along smoothly. Feedback suggested this process had been a really appreciated. We moved our residential #powerup weekend online, and as part of this we designed some collective dreaming exercises to imagine what a ‘showcase’ during a COVID era might be…
3. Collective Dreaming
Collective Dreaming is how we took to that task of reimagining what a showcase might be if it couldn’t be a face to face event. It happened in 3 parts:
Collective Dreaming: Part #1
A facilitated envisioning Zoom workshop with the group.
What worked
1 : An opening ritual
We invited one of the participants to design a landing ritual to help bring everyone into the space, and to ground and connect together.
2 : Powerful questions
We created a set of powerful questions that enabled people to dream and imagine, and be out of analysis mode. Such as
- What are your highest hopes for the showcase? What is its highest success?
- Having completed the Showcase how do YOU want to feel?
- How do you want people to feel when they experience this ‘showcase’?
- What design principles should we consider for this showcase?
3 : Offline exercises
Inviting people to freewrite or draw their responses to questions for 3 minutes, before capturing the essence in the collaborative capture document.
- 3 minutes freewriting exercise: Write your response to this question in your notebook or type into a different document. Don’t take your pen off the paper — see what comes out onto the page…
- 3 minutes drawing exercise: In your notebook draw a picture of how you want people to feel from experiencing a ‘showcase’ of our collective work.
4 : Emoji synthesis
We gave time to read through each other’s answers and signal which were the most important using emojis (the online equivalent of ‘dotmocracy’ voting on your favourite post it notes) 🍦🌞🦁🐸🦋🦕
What didn’t work
1 : Assumptions and moving too fast
We had a made an assumption about continuing with a non-face-to-face showcase. In trying to create some stability among the chaos and something to give momentum to keep moving forward, we failed to create space for questions to be asked, concerns to be surfaced, needs to be heard. So they found a way to surface by themselves. The topsy turvey context of COVID-19 was still so new, it was too much to think about certainties in such an uncertain time.
2 : Being over ambitious
We were too optimistic about how much we could fit into the time we’d set out.
We went on longer than we’d planned to, going against our word about how much time we’d require of everyone. It was early on in lockdown and we hadn’t anticipated the zoom fatigue or the energy drain of weekend online workshops.
3 : Technology
Technology played up. Obviously! And while we were familiar (or so we thought) with zoom and the technology, others were less so and others had their own limitations and dodgy internet connections.
Collective Dreaming: Part #2
A Deep Democracy session to uncover perspectives and lead us to a decision.
What worked
1 : Deep Democracy techniques
A facilitated container for discussion and deliberation.
A process that encourages all voices to speak up and to be heard.
Deep Democracy hand gestures make it easier to gage the temperature of the people participating.
2 : Learning and engagement
Everyone was really engaged in the evening — it was a change to learn and experience a new technique and process the related to many people’s learning questions.
3 : Peer led
While it is a facilitated programme, a Learning Marathon is also a peer-led experience, designed to encourage and deepen learning through a dynamic of peers, support and self organisation. This Deep Democracy session — reminded us of the power held in dynamic; that no one single person has all the answers, that lis all working together.
What didn’t work
(note — these are more limitations we discovered than things that didn’t work)
1 : Missing a clear ask
Deep Democracy works when there’s a decision to be made, where people can for or against. In this instance, a clear ask hadn’t been made, because we’d not been able to identify defined options at this stage.
2 : Time and technology
Time and technology didn’t not work, but they had their limitations and didn’t work in our favour either. 2 hours is a very short amount of time to run through a Deep Democracy process, and technology makes it hard to read the energy of a room when everybody’s faces are small tiles on a screen.
If you’re interested in this — you can read more about Deep Democracy here.
Collective Dreaming: Part #3
We tried to use an asynchronous ideas document to envision what a showcase might look like in an era of COVID-19.
What worked
Nothing
What didn’t work
Everything
This left us flummoxed.
We paused to take a breath.
What next?!
We needed to reconfigure and find out why this hasn’t landed… we returned to a human centred decision making approach, listening to the what was needed.
We sent a quick Whatsapp message with an emoji voting survey.
The response told us that ☁️ people didn’t have the headspace, 👓 time participating in group decisions felt like time away from their own inquiries, 🌈 it wasn’t the right time to think about a showcase, and 🎩 a website was a solution many would be content with.
Along with all of the other insight, conversations, data and feelings we’d been hearing and listening to over the previous parts of our pivoting experiments; it became clear that the best decision for everyone was to remove the pressure of a showcase and open up to a continued learning journey together.
There is more dreaming to be done for what that future looks and feels like. The pivot continues with relief, gratitude, understanding and enthusiasm for the opportunity this creates ahead between now and when we can gather again at Hawkwood.
Some reflective words (July 2020)
I wrote this piece in May, mid pivot. It’s taken more than 2 months to publish.
Even today I’m wondering if I’ll press the the big green ‘publish’ button - there’s something about an incomplete story that’s made it difficult to do.
Every week more unfolds and together we continue to navigate our ship forward. Two months on and we’ve reached a new patch of calmer water, where we will self organise, with no one captain at the helm, but 20 guiding our way. Perhaps I will write a follow up piece about that one day.
Writing this has made me realise just how far we’ve pivoted in such a short space of time, and just how much it takes in order to pivot and bring everyone along with you.
A thread running through this pivoting journey has been one of radical honesty and intentionality. Along the way we’ve endeavoured to consider what’s best for all, from every perspective — as individuals, as a group, as hosts, and as partner organisations. We’ve attempted to explain the reasons behind certain choices, we’ve tried to be honest about the fact that we’ve been bamboozled by all of this, we’ve asked forgiveness, and done our best to show our gratitude for all of the energy, input and patience the process has asked of everyone involved.
Looking back, my sense is that this has both allowed us to remain connected to everyone as far as possible through these live pivoting ‘experiments’, and has helped to build group resilience, which will cultivate and maintain a place for growth. Hindsight has shown me what a powerful invitation COVID-19 has been to respond to our Deepr Learning Marathon theme — ‘how can we embed more human connection in services and systems?’
Beyond this, the nature of this new reality, however temporary it is, means anyone trying to change course, is trying to pivot a ship that’s in water where the currents change direction all the time. COVID-19 is asking, inviting us to do this on a scale that was until recently, hard to ever imagine. Deepening our practice of navigating change and how we pivot, together, will become one of the most powerful things we can do to prepare ourselves to respond to crisis and turbulence, and to continue to grow a relational culture that enables radical transformation and a thriving, interconnected system of people and planet.
Thank you for reading! Any responses and feedback bearing the fruits of opportunities to learn will be received with open arms — please get in touch here ellie@enrolyourself.com
Ellie hosts the Deepr Learning Marathon with Matthew McStravick, co-founder of Deepr.
The Deepr Learning Marathon is a partnership between Deepr, Enrol Yourself and Hawkwood Centre for Future Thinking. 20 humans are on the programme, each exploring a question relating to the overarching theme of “How can we embed more human connection in services and systems?”
Watch out for the launch of our website sharing our learnings later this year.
If you’re interested in a conversation to share your thinking or finding out more, drop us a line on ellie@enrolyourself.com or Matt@deepr.cc. We’re always open and keen for interesting conversations.
If you’re interested in hosting a Learning Marathon yourself, Enrol Yourself’s Host Fellowship is open for applications until August 17th 2020. Find out more and apply here. Or contact Zahra@enrolyourself.com.
