CoVision News (continued)

The Handbook of Large Group Methods

Ten years ago, Billie Alban and Barbara Bunker wrote a book that had a seminal influence on how change management was conducted – “Large Group Interventions – Engaging the Whole System for Rapid Change.” It catalyzed an emerging movement within the field of Organization Development in which ‘the whole system’ – often hundreds of people – were brought into a room, face-to-face, to discuss the most important issues facing their organization.

Now, on the 10th anniversary of that groundbreaking work, they have released the “Handbook of Large Group Methods,” a comprehensive survey of the leading methods in use today for “creating systemic change in organizations and communities.” It focuses on the design and execution of large scale, face-to-face meetings.

“There is nothing more important in a complex, global interdependent world than to have some road maps and driving instructions on how to manage change in large systems. Bunker and Alban have provided the essential concepts of Large Group Methods, case examples, and, most important, prescriptions for how to manage large systems change successfully. This is a must-read for all enterprise managers.”
—Edgar Schein, Sloan Fellows Professor of Management-Emeritus
MIT Sloan School of Management

CoVision’s Contribution

CoVision’s chapter, at the close of the book, describes how groupware tools and processes are incorporated into large group methods. Titled, “Interactive Meeting Technologies – Overcoming Challenges of Commitment, Time, and Geographic Dispersion”, it reveals the mechanisms by which large group practitioners are able to give everyone in the room a “voice” and, simultaneously, processes that assure that everyone “hears” what was said. Most of the methods surveyed in the Handbook have used these processes successfully to accelerate cycles of feedback within groups, thus creating real-time conversations amongst hundreds.

Book Description

The Handbook of Large Group Methods is a virtual Who’s Who of practitioners. Most of the major practitioners are represented, including:

  • AmericaSpeaks – 21st Century Town Hall Meeting
  • Axelrod Associates: Dick & Emily Axelrod
  • Dannemiller-Tyson Associates: Sylvia James, Jack Carbone, Al Blixt, and Jim McNeil
  • Future Search: Marv Weisbord, Sandra Janoff
  • Julie Beedon, John Adams and many others

Large Group Interventions are methods used to gather a whole system together to discuss and take action on the target agenda. That agenda varies from future plans, products, and services, to redesigning work, to discussion of troubling issues and problems. The Handbook of Large Group Methods takes the next step in demonstrating, through a series of cases, how Large Group Methods are being used to address twenty-first-century challenges in organizations and communities, including:

  • Working with widely dispersed organizations, and the problem of involvement and participation
  • Working with organizations facing a serious business crisis
  • Working with organizations in polarized and politicized environments
  • Working in community settings with diverse interest groups
  • Working at the global level and adapting these methods for cross-cultural use
  • Embedding and sustaining new patterns of working together in organizations and communities

Further Information & Ordering

For a synopsis of CoVision’s chapter and role in Large Group Methods, click here.

To order the book:  Amazon  or  Powell’s City of Books

  
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