Hi everyone Harrison wrote (see below) how setting collective priorities is often what is needed and that with large groups that can be a practical challenge - too many dots to count and technology breaking down, although for very large groups this has been the method of choice ...so far. A new way has been offered and tested.
Some Canadian aboriginal people shared with us another technique for compiling votes - or the survey as I now often call it (* see why below). Their way is very quick and simple: tickets in envelopes. They prefer this method since the individual choices are less influenced by the number of votes others have given to a topic report for the simple reason that votes are not visible. Larry Peterson received that gift and shared it. He and I both experienced together and separately, several OS events of 450 people and it works wonderfully. Voting was over in about 5 minutes, compiling results took around 15 minutes followed by another 5-10 minutes of announcements of results for a total of half an hour or less. My experience is 15-20 minutes for everything with groups of 100. Now, that is as fast as computer voting where people wait in line for about 30 minutes to access a computer. This technology - mostly human - does not break down and it is an extension of self-management and honours self-organization. It is totally transparent, trustworthy and reinforces trust since even the organizers and the facilitator discovers results at the same time as participants. Here's how it works: 1- Reports are posted in numerical order, spaced out on the wall, with attached at the bottom, an envelope bearing in the top corner in large dark print, the report number. 2- Participants read the Book of Reports identifying at the same time their top priorities and combining identical topics with the initiators' consent knowing that combinations will be announced to the group just before the vote (a transparency measure, accountability to the whole group and a safeguard for combinations made for wrong "strategic" reasons). 3- After the combinations have been read, outside each of the 4 or more aisles in the circle, people are handed a strip of tickets (3 or 5 for e.g.) as they walk out to go to the reports on the wall. They place their tickets in envelopes attached under each report on the wall. 4- Participants' choices are less influenced by the number of votes others have given to a topic report for the simple reason that the votes are not visible. Contrary to dots, you cannot do a quick compilation by eyeballing the number of tickets (this may in any event be contentious with large groups) but counting tickets you hold in your hands is faster, less confusing so more precise. 5- Participants are invited to go to a report - not their own - count results, mark (in large print readable from a distance) and circle the result on the envelope attached to the report. Two volunteers instead of one per report may be desirable when the stakes are high and the trust is not so high in the group. 6-One volunteer remains at the wall for the announcement of results. 7- When counting is all done, the facilitator asks if any report has the maximum number a report could receive (e.g., same number as the number of participants when it's one vote per person per report), and then goes down by 10 until someone shouts that their report is in that range. As report numbers and titles are announced volunteers note them on flip charts (and simultaneously on overhead projector for very large groups if desired). It works!! If anyone has done something like this with groups larger than 450, let the world know. Diane * I use the concept of the "survey" instead of the "vote" when participants don't have decision making power - which is most of the time. It's best not to raise falsely expectations. I frame what they are doing as "a survey to propose priorities" that the leadership will immediately after the results are out, give their go ahead on priorities for action or put some on hold if needed and explain why. Harrison wrote: I have run into the same concern, which is why I still think some form of formal prioritization can work well. Granted this often looks like voting, but I am not sure that voting is such a bad thing. The actual mechanism for doing this can be as simple as pasting sticky-dots - or as complex as a ballot with weighted scores. We used to have a nice software package that recorded and tallied the votes and reported the results as bar graphs. Somehow it developed a bug - but maybe some techie sort could fix it? Or make a new one?? Anyhow, with large groups (over 100) I always found it worked very well, and for sure it made the engineers and other "numbers" people happy. At a practical level, counting sticky-dots can be an eye-popping affair when the group size hits 500+. In those cases, having the computer do all the work is a wonderful thing. * * ========================================================== osl...@listserv.boisestate.edu ------------------------------ To subscribe, unsubscribe, change your options, view the archives of osl...@listserv.boisestate.edu: http://listserv.boisestate.edu/archives/oslist.html To learn about OpenSpaceEmailLists and OSLIST FAQs: http://www.openspaceworld.org/oslist
