Purposes of Search Conferences
The search conference is useful for any system coming together around a common purpose and looking for a desirable future. The search conference works for the following systems:
· Communities looking for a desirable future regarding complex social issues, such as the environment, education, or social services
· Organizations—corporate or public sector—searching for a new strategy and direction
· Multiple organizations wanting to develop a plan for merging their business strategies or integrating their service delivery
Outcomes of A Search Conference
A search conference produces the following outcomes:
1. A plan for the future of the system. This plan is comprehensive in that it contains the system’s new purpose, strategic goals, and relationship with its environment.
2. People who:
· Want to implement the plan they developed
· Have learned about their environment and system
· Can fine-tune their plan as needed as they implement it
· Have the enthusiasm to spread their learning to others.
What Happens In A Search Conference?
When we use the word “participative” in the search conference, we are going beyond the way people often use the word. The search conference is not about a group giving input to higher up authorities who are responsible for planning. Participation means the group actually develops and carries out its own plan. That’s why it is important to keep the number of participants at a level where face-to-face community can emerge.
The search conference is not the usual visioning process that has been so trendy over the years. We frequently encounter organizations and communities that have produced creative, abstract vision statements that are framed on the wall and go nowhere. The search conference rivets people’s attention on real action based on a future the group wants to make happen.
The conference is normally three days, preferably off-site. People immerse themselves in a “social island” setting in which they form new relationships and commitments. At the conference people work together as a large conference community, with small groups for specific tasks. We call it “searching” because the conference community searches through their external environment and system, collecting, analyzing, and synthesizing data. In the search conference, people simultaneously learn and plan together.
The search conference is designed to provide a learning environment in which participation is equal and open, regardless of hierarchy or position. People’s words are recorded on chart paper for all to see. There are no individual workbooks, as the emphasis is on restoring oral culture, dialogue, and discussion. The search conference has no lectures, speeches, keynote addresses, games, or training sessions. There is nothing to make it look as if people are in a training workshop or traditional conference. And there is no need for people to experience chaos in order for learning or change to occur. There is nothing mysterious about a search conference—just people doing real work on important tasks.
Search Conference Design: The Open Systems “Funnel”
The search conference resembles a funnel in its design. It begins with the widest possible perspective, outside ourselves and our system. Then it narrows to specific key strategies and actions, widening again as the group diffuses and implements its plan back home.
The design is the application of open systems thinking to a conference learning environment. Every search conference is unique, requiring special planning and design. This is the generic design:
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Changes in the World Important To Our System’s Future
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Our System’s History: Where We Came From
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Our Current System: What To Keep, Drop, and Create
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Our Most Desirable System
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Strategies and Actions Plans
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Community Grows and Diffuses Through Implementation
In a nutshell, the search conference begins with the group learning about its turbulent, uncertain global environment. Next, the group searches through its system’s past and present in order to develop the most desirable system. Then they develop strategies and action plans that they will implement. Roughly one third of the conference time focuses on learning about the turbulent environment, one third on learning about the system, and the last third concentrates on action planning.
Learning About Our Turbulent Environment
After a brief opening session to clarify the conference task and design, and to negotiate expectations for the conference, the search is underway. There are no icebreakers, speeches, or any activities that might give the impression that people are about to experience a traditional conference in which someone else is responsible for doing the work.
Changes In The World Important To Our System’s Future. The first session has people working as a large community. People voice their perceptions of what has been happening in the world in the past 5-7 years that has been significant. The ground rule is that all perceptions of the environment are valid and are written on chart paper for all to see. The changing world appears before everyone’s eyes as the list grows: “Movement toward a global economy, intensifying environmental problems, expanding global communication and technology, increasing government regulation, increasing empowerment in the workplace.” The list goes on and on.
This is an important activity because all the concepts of the search conference immediately come into play. People see that their organization or community exists within a much larger context. People are immediately taking responsibility for their own data, behaving in an open and public manner, beginning to build a planning community of trust. Doing this session as a total community sends the message that the search conference is a community-building event.
Next, small task groups form to analyze the data. The small groups discuss and agree upon such issues as: the impact of global changes on our system; what the future of the global environment will likely be; or, what kind of world we desire, if we could get it right.
The reason for starting with the environment is that there is a direct connection between the future direction of any organization or community and the direction of the larger global environment. It’s the system and environment acting on one another that determine any new state of affairs. When system and environment are moving in sync, they are co-creating the future together.
In corporate and issue-oriented searches, another level of environment needs to be scanned. This is the organization’s direct business environment—those changes just outside the boundary of the system that are having the most immediate effect on the future of the system. Examples from corporate searches include marketing, industry trends, technical innovations, or changes in the larger corporate environment.
Learning About Our System
The next phase has people appreciating their history as a system, analyzing the current functioning of the system, and then agreeing on their system’s most desirable future.
Our System’s History: Where We Came From. Reviewing the system’s significant historical events allows any system, whether organization or community to gain a shared appreciation of where they came from, and what made the system what it is today. Appreciating its shared history allows the system to create a future that links past and future. You can do the history session as a large open community discussion in which people recall their memories of events they believe shaped their system. In a way, the history session restores the kind of oral culture that allows people to appreciate their common past.
Our Current System: What To Keep, Drop, and Create. The next task is to identify, usually in large group, what about the current functioning of the system to “keep, drop, and create.” This is a brainstorm with the ground rule that all perceptions are valid. The group should by now have sufficient trust in itself to openly acknowledge the weaknesses as well as strengths of the current state of the system.
Most Desirable System. People break into small groups that work in parallel on the same task: “the most desirable future of the system.” There are no imposed ways for the groups to work. The creativity is in the ideas of the groups. The groups manage themselves to come up with lists of specific points describing the desirable system, as it would look at an agreed upon time in the future. The groups report and integrate their results. Then the entire conference community decides which points to develop into desirable strategic goals.
It is important that this session result in an array of desirable future strategies, so as not to put all the emphasis on one overarching theme. It is best not to put all the planning eggs in one basket. The group decides the number of strategies to select based on what they think they can handle.
Action Planning
The final third of the search conference involves the community developing their desirable future into specific strategies and action plans. These plans contain a clear agreement on steps for implementing the plan and spreading their learning back home.
The time allotted for this phase should be roughly one third of the total working time of the Search conference. People agree on a final reporting time. Within that period, groups can choose their own working and resting timetable. They are self managing.
Strategies and Actions. Participants self select around strategic goals they want to work on, forming small groups that will develop action plans for that goal, on behalf of the whole community.
The components of this session:
· Ways around key constraints
· What are we going to do to make our goals happen?
· What are our next steps and how will we follow up?
The most effective strategies are those that are indirect. By indirect we mean that they encircle, get around, or undercut key constraints that exist, as opposed to directly confronting barriers that may be difficult to overcome. The intent here is to put constraints in a positive frame of reference. Because constraints are considered positive, groups often find that their work provides major strategies for their chosen goal.
The most successful strategies and action plans are those that are nested in time. If the ultimate time frame used for creating the most desirable system is 2015 for example, action plans may include subgoals for 2005 and 2010. Similarly, the plan will also include mechanisms for monitoring and coordinating progress, specifying who is responsible and when.
Whenever possible, there is an interim plenary to ensure coordination of the small group’s action plans in the interest of the total community. Final reports lead into a large group session where the community plans its continued life. It is here that the community decides what to do with its immediate product, usually some sort of report, setting out who should do it by when. Usually the community selects some of their members to do this; report writing is not the job of consultants. The community will also decide when to meet again and in what structural configuration.
Implementation
The search conference is the middle part of an overall three-part process of pre-planning, search conference, and implementation. No two processes of implementation are the same, but how the community organizes for implementation can make or break it. It is important that this new community of planners not fall back into a bureaucratic way of working, such as the traditional committee structure. Typically, a committee is run by a chairperson, with membership and rules decided beforehand by those higher up in the organization. Responsibility for carrying out the plan rests with the entire group, not just higher ups, or sub-committees. Some search conferences overcome this by making sure there is commitment to maintain the democratic, self managing structure experienced in the search conference. Some conferences add time at the end to organize the participants into self managing implementation groups.
Principles At Work In Every Search Conference
The search conference is simple, straightforward, and conceptually deep. It is based on concepts that cross over many disciplines, including ecology, psychology, and all the social sciences. It has benefited from over 35 years of research on the principles needed for direct democratic learning and planning to occur. These principles are the heart of the search conference. Understanding them and how they operate in the search conference is critical to its successful use. Julia Child once said, “Good cooks don’t follow recipes, they use principles.”
Open Systems Thinking
The search conference is based on open systems thinking, a concept that says that any system has an open and direct relationship with its larger social environment. We use the term “system” to mean any organization, community, or network that draws a boundary around itself to establish its relationship to its environment. “Environment” means everything outside the system.
Today’s global environment is turbulent, changing faster than our institutions can keep up. It was not always that way. The term “turbulent” describes the texture of today’s environment, an environment that has been emerging for over forty years. Turbulence refers to the way the current social environment is producing change by its own dynamism and consequently creating uncertainty for any system within it. The environment is no longer predictable or stable. When people see the list of inter-connected changes in the world go up on chart paper at the beginning of the search conference, they appreciate the way all these changes affect one another. They see how turbulence in the environment produces uncertainty for their own organization or community.
In a search conference people experience a learning environment in which they systematically explore their entire environment. The purpose is to find ways to plan actively, so that people are both responding to and changing their environment as they go. It’s called active adaptation. Adapting does not just mean getting faster or being more flexible. It means becoming actively adaptive—developing a system’s capacity to continuously learn from and change its environment. A system can reduce turbulence by changing the conditions that surround it and by influencing its future direction. To become adaptive, a system needs to make sure there is alignment between its own desirable future and the desirable future it has for the world.
Democratic Design Principle
We use the word “democratic” when describing the search conference. In this context, we are not suggesting that organizations make decisions by voting or use representative means to run their business. “Democratic” means that people who do the work are responsible for the control and coordination of that work, whether it be making a product or developing a plan. For people to behave democratically they need a learning and work structure that is designed to get it.
As a result of action research projects with Eric Trist and others in the coalmines of Great Britain after World War II, Fred Emery perceived two basic principles for designing any organization. The first principle we call the bureaucratic design principle, meaning that responsibility for control and coordination of work is located at least one level above where the work occurs. An organization based on this principle by its very structure de-skills and devalues people.
The second principle we call the democratic design principle. An organization designed according to this principle locates responsibility for control and coordination with the people doing the work. These design principles are a matter of choice. The search conference is a temporary work organization based on the democratic design principle. It is democratic and self managing. In the context of the search, this means participants are responsible for learning about the system and environment, doing the planning work, and carrying out their own plan. The assumption is that people want to learn, and want to create and exercise control over their futures.
Bureaucratic conferences are “talking head” events in which responsibility for content and outcomes rests with the organizers, speakers, facilitators, or chairs—not with the “audience.” Little learning results in a bureaucratic structure. Unlike bureaucratic organizations, the search conference has a democratic structure with no hierarchical dominance of one person over another, no master-servant relationships. This does not mean that anything goes in a search conference. It is not a laissez-faire event. Doing whatever you want is not democratic. Laissez-faire type conferences risk producing cynicism and frustration by not providing a clear purpose and structure for creative work.
Ecological Learning
The search conference is based on research showing that humans have evolved to extract information directly from their social environment. The environment is loaded with information—real meaning. Since the environment contains limitless information, any person with an intact perceptual system can make sense from it. We call it “common sense.” Access to information is restricted only by habit, lack of confidence, and physical or psychological isolation. Traditional conferences prevent people from exercising their abilities to the point that direct learning is like a muscle that has atrophied. The search conference is an environment in which people flex their learning and planning muscles.
Humans, by nature, are an intimate part of their world. We were never empty vessels, bottles to be filled up, or tablets to be written on. People, as perceiving systems, are purposeful and have the potential to affect their environment. Our formal educational systems are based on the theory that abstract knowledge is superior to knowledge from first hand experience. The traditional approach sends us to school to get the right answers that are found in the warehouses of abstract knowledge accumulated from the past. Searching allows people to use their natural abilities to make sense of their surroundings. It is learning by doing.
Effective Communication For Building Community
The search conference is designed to produce effective communications. Successful communication depends on four basic properties that were discovered by Solomon Asch. These properties are called the conditions for effective communication. Learning happens when people enter into relationships to influence one another regarding a real task they all care about. If the following conditions are met, group learning and planning can occur.
Openness. In order for people to communicate effectively, they have to know they are in a situation that is totally open to their investigation. Things are “what they appear to be.” The search conference is a learning environment in which exploration is valued and it is assumed that there are differences in perception and opinion. It is healthy and creative to acknowledge these differences. Mutual learning follows from the sharing of different experiences and perceptions.
A climate of openness in a search conference begins with the preparation of participants before the conference and continues with a straightforward statement and display of the conference agenda, purpose, and expectations. Perhaps the most striking innovation towards openness, now taken for granted, is the use of chart paper to compile an immediate, accessible, and continuing record of work as it occurs. These publicly displayed papers assure openness and absence of manipulation.
We Are All Humans With The Same Human Concerns. Most people naturally seek confirmation of their basic human similarities. Once people see that the behaviors and motives of others are similar to their own, it becomes possible for them to admit they can learn from each other. Any perception that a participant or conference manager is acting as “expert” or talking down reduces mutual learning.
During a search conference, people discover their similarities through sharing of ideals. Publicly sharing ideals makes them visible and real. It confirms that there is an underlying level of concern with humanity and the state of the world. Human ideals transcend gender, ethnicity, geography, status, or age.
We All Live In The Same World. The first task of the search conference is for people to state out loud changes in the world over the last 5-7 years. The rule is that all perceptions are valid. This data is publicly listed on chart paper. Accessible to all and manipulated by none, this snapshot of the changing world establishes that we all live in the same world. We realize the environment has real features, commonly perceived, and forms a shared context for planning and action.
Trust. When people experience an open learning environment, appreciate that we are all humans with the same human concerns, and we all live in the same real world, then trust develops. As trust develops in the search conference, interpersonal relations strengthen and deepen, increasing the probability of mutual learning and network building. The process of implementation would not be possible without this spiral of trust, learning, energy, and commitment. The presence of trust is tested towards the end of the search conference when participants self select into task groups to work on action plans. Each self-selected subgroup is trusted to work on behalf of the whole community.
The real key to direct democratic action is open communications and discussion among people. The search conference restores the human process of speaking and hearing, the oral culture known to ancient peoples. The world of literacy and bureaucracy is silent.
Rationalize Conflict to Discover Common Ground
The decision making process in a search conference is called “rationalization of conflict” (making our differences clear and understandable). It works like this. Small group reports on the most desirable system are hung next to each other and verbally reported. Two sets of questions are raised—first, questions of clarification from the groups, and then a question as to whether anybody cannot live with or is not prepared to work towards any item on any of the reports. If there is such a response, it is first discussed fully in plenary. If there is substantial disagreement, a couple of people from different sides may go out to negotiate the point, while the rest get on with the task of integration and agreement. If negotiation fails, the item goes on a “Disagreed List.” It ceases to be part of the further work of the community.
Once the common ground and its boundaries are clarified, the community can continue work towards its goals on the basis of the common ground that has been reached. Using the “Disagreed List” is important at the beginning of a search conference. It shows people that a simple, controlled mechanism is available for dealing with disagreements. People realize they can use this process later in the conference for more intense conflicts that are closer to home.
In this process we are not assuming there will or should be consensus. To do so is unrealistic, particularly on topics where there are legitimate and institutionalized adversarial positions. The aim is to precisely establish common ground and to know exactly where the thin line between agreement and disagreement is located. Groups with a history of conflict tend to assume greater conflict and less common ground than exists.
Conflict is an important feature of the search conference. It is not avoided. In the search conference people take conflict seriously. They work to understand and clarify their real differences. This is important because while these differences may not be part of the strategy the group adopts, they continue to exist within the community during implementation. Experience shows that when conflicts become clear and respected by the group, they diminish over time.
Planning A Search Conference
Search Conference Leaders. In a search conference, participants are collectively responsible for tasks and outcomes. Conference leaders are responsible for making sure participants have the best structure and process for their task, providing the best possible learning environment. Search conference design and management require knowledge of search principles, ability to design the conference by creatively matching these principles to the search task, and the skill to “design on the run” once the conference is underway.
Conference leaders normally come from outside the system and are responsible for conference design and management. Ideally, they are involved from the start of the conference planning process. Conference leaders should not have a vested interest in the subject matter. However, they do need to immerse themselves in the circumstances of the system so they understand what people are talking about. The job of conference leaders is strictly limited to providing a democratic structure for the group, and not becoming involved in the content.
Preparing The System. In most cases, several people from the system act as a planning group to organize the conference. Their job, working with conference leaders, is to:
· Clearly define the system that is the subject of the search conference
· Identify the conference task
· Manage the process of selecting participants
Once the conference is underway, the work of the planning group is complete.
The planning group begins by defining the system. This is a critical step because it determines the task of the conference and guides the selection of participants. Next, the planning group identifies the conference task. This simple formula may be helpful in formulating the task of the conference: “A plan for the most desirable future of ‘X’ that participants will carry out together.”
An important element in preparing a search conference is the selection of participants. They are chosen because they have important knowledge about the system and can implement the plan that comes out of the conference. Because the search conference is about puzzle solving, participants are selected because they carry pieces of the puzzle. If a major piece is missing, the puzzle solution may be inadequate or the implementation difficult.
There is a difference in how to choose participants for a community search and an organization search. For community searches, use the community reference system. The community reference system works in the following way:
1. Draw a rough social map of the system—whether the system is a community, issue, or industry—covering interest groups and demographics.
2. Decide the criteria for selecting people, such as knowledge of the system and potential for implementation.
3. Pick a starting point person in each sector of the map and ask them for two or three names that fit the criteria. This is for help only; no guarantees of invitation are given.
4. Ask each of the new names to give two or three names that fit the criteria.
5. After one or two go-arounds, some of the same names should appear. Select these from the total list and add others to make sure the map is covered.
6. It is not relevant that they be educated, literate, or articulate.
The community reference system clarifies that search conference participants are representative of some part of the system, but not there to represent anyone else’s point of view, as they would be on a representative committee. They do not see themselves as stakeholders who are there to argue for and get the best deal for their constituents. They participate just as themselves.
For organization searches in corporate or public sector organizations, search conference participants are those who hold responsibility for the health and direction of the organization. It is not usually appropriate for outsiders to attend, as they come from the environment not the system.
The system, in preparing for a search conference, may realize they require more research data about a particular area before the conference. For example, a community may want to provide some demographic information to participants before the conference. Or an organization could survey their customers concerning their needs and expectations.
All participants should be fully briefed about all aspects of the search conference beforehand. This works best in face-to-face conversation that can lead to design improvements as well as greater understanding of the task. When participants show up for the search conference, they should know what to expect and be ready to participate immediately.
Time, Place, and Numbers. Normally a search conference occurs over three days. Longer periods risk cognitive and emotional overload. Shorter conferences risk not establishing a planning community prepared to implement its plan. The best starting time is late afternoon. It is essential to create a relaxed social atmosphere in which people can become acquainted. Introductions, briefings, and expectations can occur before dinner, preferably served buffet style. Work starts after dinner and continues to about 10:00 p.m. It continues through the next day and evening, finishing late afternoon on the third day. Flexible arrangements help. For example, continuous access to refreshments is better than fixed times, because breaks are hard to predict. The search conference is a “social island.” People need to be free of distractions. Facilities should be open to outside and fresh air, have plenty of wall space and be comfortable.
Search conferences work best with 20-40 people. Less than this takes on the dynamics of a small group. There is not enough diversity of data and perspectives to produce the energy and creative thinking that characterize a large working group. The upper limit has been successfully pushed up to 50, but requires more time and management skill to pull off. Other approaches are able to accommodate more people because they limit the notion of participation to input, or do not establish a community that carries out its own plan. For larger numbers, it may be preferable to design a series of search conferences that can be integrated later.
After The Search Conference
Eric Trist and Fred Emery introduced the first search conference in 1959 to merge two aircraft engine manufacturers in Great Britain. People have been doing search conferences around the world ever since on a wide range of topics and with a variety of approaches.
The search conference produces communities committed to making their own future happen. Not only do people walk away committed to their plan, they also have learned how to search so they can continue to adapt and change. Typically, participants go back to their organization or community and spread their energy and excitement about what they experienced and the plan they developed. The search community spreads to other people in the community or organization, as the number of people committed to the plan grows with time.
The search conference provides an experience of and learning about direct participative democracy. Members of an organization or community that have done a search conference develop a keen awareness of their turbulent environment in the same way a farmer keeps an eye on changing weather conditions. Many groups set aside a day or so at regular intervals to search again. As time passes, searching becomes much less formal; it becomes a way of life. The product of a search conference is not just the “plan,” but also a community that continues to learn and implement its plan into the future.
* Adapted from “Search Conference: State of the Art,” unpublished paper by Merrelyn Emery, 1994
Robert Rehm and Nancy Cebula
Phone: 303.499.1607
bob@peopleincharge.org
nancy@peopleincharge.org