| A Co-Laboratory of Democracy
is a refinement of Interactive Management created by Christakis
and his associates. In these co-laboratories, people of diverse
cultures, ideologies, and agendas engage in structured dialogue.
They honor their differences; focus on common concerns; decide
on practical priorities; and craft consensual action plans.
In this process co-laboratories:
- Authenticate every stakeholder/participant;
- Elicit ideas and points of view from all stakeholders;
- Move toward effective consensus;
- Elicit and deal with the different priorities of stakeholder
participants;
- Equalize power relations among the stakeholders;
- Go beyond identifying factors that are important, to specifying
those that are most influential in achieving goals.
In co-laboratory sessions:
- The stakeholders have complete control over the content
of their discussions.
- The facilitation team controls the process.
- Design team personnel record the proceedings posting questions
and contributions through PowerPoint projectors and as 8
1/2 x 11 sheets on the wall. They also play back proceedings
as requested.
- The use of interactive software
Enables the group to deal with complex relationships in
terms of paired comparisons. For example: Does A influence
B; does B influence A?
- Keeps track of the long and deep logic between decisions
made on the basis of those paired comparisons. Long logic
is of the form A influences B; B influences C; therefore,
A influences C. Deep logic is more complicated.
For instance:
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if C ==> D and
E, and D =/=> C but E ==> C, and also E ==>
D, then C <==> E and are basically equivalent
in their influencing and together (C + E) ==> D.
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In doing this logic for the stakeholders, the software frees
them to deal with the matters that really concern them without
needing to constantly reorganize their conceptual maps.
- With a few added premises, our deliberations on paired
comparisons would produce a "tree of meaning"
such as the following. It depicts the most influential agent(s)
(A in our example) at the root of the tree, with B the second
from the bottom row, C and E, on the third row, and D (and
F) on the fourth. This primitive tree might look like this:
A more complex tree produced in an actual design situation
would have a similar structure. As in this example, it would
indicate the roots and "deep drivers" of a messy
situation and indicate where action needs to be taken to achieve
an organization's objectives.
This tree of meaning indicates the influence that actions
have on each other. It is a vast improvement over any mere
importance ranking because it actually indicates what needs
to be addressed to really change a situation, i.e., to really
do conscious evolution. Usually, the actions that are deemed
most important are not nearly as influential as are other
more mundane alternatives.
Structured Dialogue is useful in clarifying a situation,
designing a program, decision-making, and action planning.
At each of these stages, the process involves 10 steps as
represented in the following graphic
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