Convergence Leadership Series #2
Facilitating Team Science: Holding Space for Co-Creation
Liberating Structures
The second seminar on March 1 was dedicated to the second set of Liberating Structures/LS. The specific string of LS includes Impromptu Networking, TRIZ, Wise Crowd, and Chatter fall.
We started this seminar by reiterating the importance of facilitation: running a successful meeting is one of the most important leadership tasks.
Our Flow
Step 1. We used Impromptu Networking to check in with each other with this prompt: I like (season/month)…because…. We had 3 rounds of paired conversations, 3 minutes each round.
Step 2. We used TRIZ to generate ways to improve our team processes with this prompt: what are all the things we must do to ensure this project doesn’t advance the circular economy and it’s a complete waste of time?
Step 3. We use Wise Crowd to generate solutions for the tension between the longer runways needed to explore ideas and immediate deliverables to NSF, which is made worse by this upcoming midterm evaluation.
Step 4. We used Chatter fall to harvest our learning with this prompt: What are your takeaways?
Our Insights
From TRIZ
In answer to step 3, what are we going to stop doing now? What are our first moves? Below are what the team came up with:
- Sharing more information graphically (Stop relying on letters)
- Investigating the “middle ground” of research
- Stop talking and start doing
- Helping each other to know more about the circular economy
- Don’t be afraid of sharing new ideas
- Stop procrastinating/wasting time and start working
- Don’t strive for perfection (don’t let best be the enemy of good)
From Wise Crowd
Daniel and I presented two perspectives on the same challenge.
Gemma’s perspectives: 1) Holding creative tension: What is the team’s understanding of “creative tension”? How to enable the team to leverage the tension to generate creativity? 2) Spending time: Is there a sweet spot between time spent sharing information and leveraging collective wisdom to solve a problem? Is there a sweet spot between highlighting disciplinary work and exploring cross-disciplinary work? Is there a sweet spot between staying at the relatively known and venturing out to explore the unknown?
Daniel’s perspectives: 1) Start with the question or start with the data: Daniel’s advisor at MIT is as close to somebody with unlimited resources as can be. Her approach is to start with a big question like “what’s more efficient, private or public health care?” and then find the data and answer the questions. But most other people would do it the reverse way: “I can get this data. What kinds of questions could I ask?” 2) On this project, I see my role as the technical advisor. I do not know what are the big questions for the circular economy, yet I come to realize that we need to be working on smaller projects to satisfy the grant expectations and to build foundations for other things. If we don’t have the tension, how could we start to tackle these bigger questions? 3) I know the questions on resource loop we are asking from the proposal, but I have trouble connecting them back to what, at least, I’m working on. From the tech perspective, it’s almost like putting the cart before the horse. It’s almost like we assume this is what’s going on and then this is kind of the solution. So for me at least, there’s a disconnect between what were the questions that were asked that led the proposal writers to suggest that this as something that we’re going to research.
The wise crowd’s perspectives: 1) Could it be that the proposal is more confining than liberating? Could we really follow a formula for convergence research? Could we solve the problem and have a liberated intellect at the same time? 2) Are the questions on close resource loop and slow resource loop the right questions to ask? We have not examined the assumptions as a group. 3) We are in this experiment with NSF. Sometimes we feel we’re all pulling on a different thread of some overarching idea and some underlying story — in this case, developing that story explicitly might help finding out where your puzzle piece fits. 4) Might be a good idea to re-read the proposals. 5) How might we create some niche new ideas in the convergence process? What might it look like: a method, a tool, in the post-normal science realm?
Client takeaways: 1) Not all questions can be quantified; human problems are a lot more complex; 2) Dare to ask deeper questions; 3) experiment blurs the boundary between NSF and our project, and changes the power dynamics; 4) Convergence research is a paradigm shift; we need deeper awareness to fully understand what is going on.
From Chatter fall
About our research
Sharing papers can be a good way to understand each other’s work to ask questions and potentially converge. Re-reading the proposal and breaking research questions into smaller more manageable research questions can lead to new projects.
We should share our work/findings with other group members to keep our works from becoming isolated, and try to involve anyone in our research who is interested.
Intriguing. Maybe convergence is just helping all the time and doesn’t have a deliverable? But we have to have something to “show” for the grant progress. I wonder if we didn’t have that deadline if we would be more flexible in how we work together.
Today’s meeting inspired me really much, want to read more about all of the single team members' research!
About LS
I loved the TRIZ activity. I believe this could be redesigned to touch on the tension in teams talked about and how to go about solving that to bring people on the same platform.
Fan of the TRIZ protocol, I can see this being used for different topics and activities and on a personal level as well!
We are all mostly warm weather people :-) In all seriousness, I think it can be difficult to diagnose what we should STOP doing, so I appreciate that we were able to discuss the topic together as a group.
Be dynamic in thinking about this project and remind me what are the goals and questions to be answered.
