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CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
MANAGING CONFLICT THROUGH LARGE GROUP METHODS
Barbara Benedict Bunker
Susan W. Coleman
This chapter begins in practice and works backward toward the theoretical question: Are there situations where managing conflict is enough, that is, in which our socialized desire for conflict resolution may be more than is really needed for joint action?
We live in a world in which our environment is continuously changing. Organizations and communities are constantly dealing with new developments and pressures. A predictable and stable world surrounding organizations and communities is a luxury we used to take for granted and no longer exists. In the United States, we are also living in communities and in organizations at work in which our diversity and our awareness of our differences in values, ethnicity, and religion are increasing. Learning to manage these differences is becoming ever more important. This new situation requires organizations that are far more flexible and responsive than those in our past. It requires communities to develop ways of gathering people for input and planning immediately, not six months hence. It requires methods that can acknowledge and deal with differences, not suppress them in the service of homogeneity.
Practitioners of organization development (OD) who consult with organizations and communities have developed large group methods of working with the whole system in large groups. These remarkable methods allow groups ranging in size from fifty to several thousand to gather and work together. Barbara Bunker and Billie Alban have been studying these methods since the early 1990s. Their book, Large Group Interventions: Engaging the Whole System for Rapid Change (1997), is a conceptual overview of twelve major methods, what underlies their effectiveness, and how they work. They edited a special issue of the Journal of Applied Behavioral Science in 2005 that presented new trends and developments in the use of these methods. Their Handbook of Large Group Methods (2006) updates their first text and presents detailed cases that demonstrate the contemporary reach and use of these methods.
In this chapter, the first three sections are an overview of the three types of methods now in use: methods for creating the future, methods of work design, and methods for discussion and decision making. In each section, we describe the methods and then speculate about the processes that allow conflict to be managed and sometimes resolved in these events. Then we turn to the recent innovations of Coleman and others using these methods in peace-building and legislative processes. Finally, we review the underlying principles that make these methods effective in dealing with differences.
WHAT ARE LARGE GROUP INTERVENTION METHODS?
These methods are used to create systemic change such as a new strategic direction for a business, the redesign of work in order to be more productive, or the resolution of some community- or systemwide problem. In contrast to older methods where decisions were made by an executive group at the top of the business or in the mayor’s office, these methods gather those who are affected by the decision or actions to participate in the discussion and decision making. In business organizations, this might include employees, customers, suppliers, even competitors. In school districts, teachers, administrators, and board members might be joined by students, parents, and community representatives. In communities, agencies, schools, churches, police, housing areas, and local and state government might all be present. Depending on the nature of the issue, the question is asked: “Who is affected by this decision or action? Who has a stake in the outcome?” The idea is to get the whole system into the room with all of the stakeholders so that a new kind of dialogue about the situation they face can take place. The size of the group assembled is determined by the critical mass of people needed to bring about real change and is constrained by limitations of budget and available meeting space.
Why bring together so many people? Why not let the decision makers do their jobs and make the decisions? This question leads us to the second major defining assumption of large group methods. The assumption is that when people have an opportunity to participate in shaping their future, they are more likely to sustain the change; in other words, people support what they help to create. These are very participative events: people express their views, listen to others, have voice, and are heard. They do not necessarily make every decision, but they have the opportunity to influence others a
nd the decisions.
Stakeholders in communities and organizations bring knowledge, values, and experience to these events. Many of the decisions that face us today are enormously complex and need the best thinking and experience of all those involved, not just a few. Executives who participate in large group events for the first time are often moved by the amazing variety of talent and capacity in their organizations. They often make remarks like, “I had no idea how great and how talented the people in this organization are! It has been a revelation to me!”
Underlying these methods is an assumption that democratic processes are more effective for moving forward in a united direction than hierarchical or bureaucratic processes. This assumption closely matches Deutsch’s ideas about the values underlying collaboration and cooperation. (See chapter 1.)
THREE TYPES OF LARGE GROUP METHODS
A useful way to organize these methods is by the outcomes that they produce. A brief description of each type with an anecdote that illustrates one of the methods follows.
Methods That Create the Future
Future Search (Weisbord and Janoff, 1995), the Appreciative Inquiry Summit (Ludema, Whitney, Mohr, and Griffin, 2003), the Search Conference (Emery and Purser, 1996), the Institute of Cultural Affairs Strategic Planning Process (Spencer, 1989), Real Time Strategic Change (also called Whole-Scale Change) (Jacobs, 1994; Dannemiller Tyson Associates, 2000), and AmericaSpeaks (Lukensmeyer and Brigham, 2005) are six methods that gather systems to define and set goals for the future. (See figure 38.1 for summaries.)
Figure 38.1 Large-Group Methods for Creating the Future
Source: Adapted from B. B. Bunker and B. T. Alban, The Handbook of Large Group Methods: Creating Systematic Change in Organizations and Communities. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2006. Reprinted by permission.
“What kind of school system do we want to be by 2015?” “What new market niche can we create in the next three years?” “How can we be a community with housing for all by 2020?” “How can agencies and funders collaborate to provide better mental health service delivery?” All of these are appropriate theme questions for these future-oriented conferences.
Each future-oriented event is carefully planned by a group representing the sponsoring system working with a consultant who is expert in the method. For example, the planning committee for a Future Search for a small Jesuit college business school about what it needed to do with its curriculum to create a successful future for the MBA program included representatives from the dean’s office, faculty, staff, students, alumni, and the business community. A planning committee of all the stakeholders creates a better understanding of the whole system and helps anticipate conflicts that may emerge in the large group meeting. Sometimes these conflicts can even be resolved in the committee so that they do not emerge on the floor of the large group. It also builds trust in the process as all sides are represented.
To show what the meetings are like, here is a description of a Future Search that occurred in Danbury, Connecticut. The initiating concern that brought the community together was the rapid increase in violence in schools as well as in the community as a whole. Realizing that “reducing violence” was too limited an emphasis for the future they wanted, they finally agreed on “creating a community free from fear” as the theme.
Imagine 180 people arriving at a big hall and picking up name badges that assign them to one of twenty-three five-foot round tables that seat eight. They are purposely assigned as heterogeneously as possible. This means that they will meet and work with representatives of all the other stakeholder groups at their assigned tables. Each table is designed to be a microcosm of the system in the room.
Future Search begins with a statement of purpose from the sponsors, and then everyone is asked to participate at their tables in an activity that reviews the history of the community, the world, and each person over the past thirty years. Using a worksheet, people think about the important events in these histories first. Then everyone gets up and writes their important events on long sheets of butcher paper that have been posted on the walls and labeled by decade. After everyone has put up their thoughts, the facilitators assign each table to do an analysis of the patterns they see and report their analysis to the whole assembly. This activity gets people involved and working together at the tables. In the course of the analysis, the history of the system is shared with everyone, the impact of the environment on the system is better understood, and people get to know each other personally.
Creators of Future Search have developed a “design,” or series of activities: discussion, self-disclosure, imagining, analyzing, and planning. These activities have both an educational and an emotional impact on participants. They represent the major steps in any open systems planning process (Kleiner, 1986). Thus, there are activities that scan the external environment and notice the forces affecting the organization or community. Next, there are activities that look at the capacity of the organization to rise to the challenges it faces. Then there are activities that ask people to dream about their preferred future in the face of the reality that they confront. Finally, there is work to agree on the best ideas for future directions and action planning to begin to make it happen. Although the overall plan is rational, the activities themselves are also emotionally engaging, fun, and challenging. The interactions that occur among people create energy and motivation for change.
In two days, the conference in Danbury discovered in their history that the sense of community had been disrupted by the loss of industry that moved out, the building of a superhighway that bisected the town, and the loss of the well-known community fairgrounds that brought the community together. In addition, new groups were moving into the area. They learned that forty-two languages were now spoken in the high school, creating new educational issues. When they assessed the resources of the community, they found that many groups did not know what other groups were doing and that there were untapped opportunities for synergy, coordination, and cooperation. The skits that groups created developed themes about housing, racism, hospital services in underserved areas of the city, and summer recreation transportation for children. Action planning groups were formed and began work. In two days, 180 people created over a dozen major initiatives to improve life in that community. Two years later, a number of these task forces were still at work and a number of major initiatives had been completed. Three other future methods—Search Conference, ICA Strategic Planning Process, and Whole-Scale Change—all have elements in common with Future Search. They vary in design activities, the structure of decision making, and how many people they can accommodate.
The work of AmericaSpeaks focuses on citizen participation in democracy. In the aftermath of 9/11, there was furious debate about what was going to happen to the World Trade Center site in Lower Manhattan. Many stakeholders—the people who lived in the area, the site owners, the tenants, the survivors of the disaster, the families of the victims, people from nearby states who worked in Lower Manhattan, the transportation authority, police, firefighters, and more—had divisive and competing ideas about what they wanted to see there. AmericaSpeaks created a one-day meeting in the Javits Convention Center in New York City to which forty-five hundred representative stakeholders came to express their views on how the site should be developed. Using voting keypads and computers to enter their views at the round tables, these were presented to the decision makers at the end of the meeting and changed the architect’s plans for the site. To be sure that the views are a valid representation of all stakeholders, AmericaSpeaks goes to great lengths to ensure that people attend in numbers that represent the prevalence of their stakeholder category. AmericaSpeaks is committed to creating processes that help citizens find their voice and be heard in projects at the national, regional, and city level (Lukensmeyer and Brigham, 2005).
A radically different approach is taken in the Appreciative Inquiry Summit. This method takes only a positive approach to change. In examining history, for exam
ple, it looks for the very best experiences from the past in order to carry that best into the future and amplify it. No attention is given to negative experiences that, if they emerge, are required to be translated into future desires. Appreciative Inquiry has been extraordinarily effective in organizational mergers because it provides a process for affirming the best of both organizational cultures rather than the usual takeover by one culture of the other. However, whether it can be effective in deeply divided systems where conflict is rampant remains a question.
Dealing with Differences about the Future.
One would think that when you bring together people from many different interests and perspectives, you are bound to have conflict or at least major differences about perceptions and future directions. What keeps these methods from blowing up? So many aspects of organizational and community life disintegrate into bedlam. Why don’t these events?
First, of course, there are differences—real differences and many of them. But all of these events operate under a different assumption from, say, a traditional town meeting or a hearing in front of the city council. The key here is the search for common ground. People are asked to focus their minds and energy on what is shared. Early activities in all of these events create a shared data base of information as well as personal connection with those present. People are encouraged to notice and take differences seriously, but not to focus on them or give a lot of energy to conflict resolution. Rather, they try to discover what they agree on, and this becomes the base for moving forward. Usually they are surprised by how much agreement there actually is when they look for it. This is because the usual process of focusing on differences has been disrupted. When people are focused on making their points stick, on winning, they tend to lose sight of what they have in common with others and see only the difficult differences.
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