Facilitation Template: Miro

Hello World — beta version

A beta version of a creative commons licensed, template in Miro for your enjoyment has been released.

Sign up | Miro | The Visual Workspace for Innovation

A few caveats:

• This is beta. I’m speaking with some very smart, passionate system explorers and designers about it. I’m already learning about some unanswered questions about how to use it.
• This is a framework with broad application, and my perspective is not going to be the only right one! It is very context specific. A facilitator should spend time to understand what realities and potential this framework might help surface for a group. The prompts I’ve included may not be the ones you need.
• I’m better at sketching with a pencil and watercolour. But I haven’t translated that into digital yet… so this looks like it could have been made with MS paint. I will not be offended if I see you modifying the design for your own use 🎨

This is a view of one of the facilitation templates on the board, which also includes a bunch of explainer slides and content.

What is VASE again?

VASE is intended to surface what a group of people need to generate:

• Value (a small team can quickly learn how to meet the needs of people they serve);
• Alignment (needs of people and the organizational mission and structures facilitate effective priority setting);
• Scale or Spread (such that the investment of effort is generative, shared and/or lasting); and
• Enablement (where there is amplification of the relationships and structures signaled from the bottom and nurtured from the top, which drives momentum through cohesive culture.)

To extract the value from the model, there are plays and tactics that facilitator can bring to help guide dialogue around the framework. These are not prescribed in the template. I do plan to add more references to other great work and practices, such as liberating structures.

• Liberating Structures — Introduction

The Value-Align-Scale-Enable (VASE) framework is in some ways, a hack.

I think it helps cut through a bunch of figuring, sorting, and aligning that people do when they are trying to make sense of their context. I’ve simply experimented and tested a value chain with my teams that seems broadly useful. I hope releasing it it can help leverage the public investment in learning (plus the sweat and tears) that have been put into it to date.

If you’re finding it useful, or totally broken, or somewhere in between… I’d love to hear from you 🙋🏻‍♀️

💐 Heather-Lynn