[SessionDesign] Hacking ADIDS for Strategy Implementation

[Dirk Slater]

Hello Session Designers,

As you have probably noticed, I’ve just run another Session Design Lab and we have more Lab Mates joining us on the List.

An interesting question came up during the lab about whether ADIDS is applicable to any sort of convening whether its a handful of people or larger OR is it really just applicable to a learning/teaching frame. I’ve been reflecting on this quite a bit. Curious about people’s experiences applying ADIDS in a variety of different contexts.  I realised that my default setting is to treat any gathering as a learning opportunity - no matter what the objective, you are likely to do some form of knowledge sharing, reflection and then applying that learning to the future.

So for instance, over the last year, I’ve been designing and facilitating strategy implementation meetings for a number of organisations. The number of participants have ranged from 4 to 16 people. The design of these meetings generally go like this:

1. Small group breakouts to discuss recent implementation, what’s happened and what’s been learned since the last meeting.
2. Reflection on the learnings identified in the small groups.
3. Large group discussion on how to apply those learnings to the next phase of the strategy
4. Planning the next phase - often in small groups made up of teams
5. Roadmapping the next phase - usually building a calendar of upcoming milestone in a shared spreadsheet so everyone can review and see potential conflicts, points where the org might be overwhelmed and an opportunity to make adjustments.
6. Concluding with what are people excited about and most important, what do they want to learn as individuals in the next phase of implementation (this can also be a point of reference in the next meeting - in my rich fantasy life, I call this the “self-reflective framework”)

In terms of ADIDS -
1 is the A- activity that gets people grounded, if it’s been a rough period - this activity might also include some venting time.
2 is the D - discussion, where you are getting people to articulate their own learning
3 IS ACTUALLY I-INPUT, even though it looks like more discussion.  This is where you surface the expertise/knowledge they need to apply to the future, it’s just that you aren’t doing it for them (though often I might interject a story or two that I know about from an external org that has had a similar experience).
4 & 5. Are both D- deepening, where they are apply that knowledge
6 is synthesis - where it’s all coming together and they can see beyond the tasks.

For me, regardless of the intent of the gathering, what is really critical is for me to know the journey people need to make during that gathering - I can’t really think of a gathering where there isn’t knowledge exchange amongst the participants, digesting that knowledge/learning and then applying that learning to plans for the future.  I also think it’s gold if that point of Input can be sourced from the participants rather than external expertise needing to come in. This can really help build confidence within a group.  I often find that I’m reinforcing the good stuff with external stories, rather than contradicting any learning that’s come up.

Wondering about other people’s experiences, especially as you have been trying to apply ADIDS in different contexts - have you hacked it? Have you found different sequencing that works? If so, what (and particularly) what context?

Thanks in advance,

DIrk


Dirk Slater
@FabRider
www.fabriders.net
+447903932817 Mobile/Signal
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Improve your facilitation and training skills at The (Virtual) Session Design Lab - https://www.fabriders.net/session-design-lab/
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