I’ve reached a point where I am feeling incredibly limited by the common strategic planning processes and large meeting design methodologies I find in the international NGO space. And I am not sure what the better alternatives are. I am looking for help and feedback from the community here.

In the Greenpeace world – but also in most other progressive movement and technology spaces I’ve traveled in – the way big meetings are done involve limited plenary discussion, lots of small breakout groups. Post-it notes and butcher paper is used to gather and collate ideas. Individuals write quietly. They share in their small group. The group seeks to identify commonalities and cluster similar topics. Those are then reported at the high level in the room and further clustering and alignment building takes place. The outcome usually looks like a summary of key themes and topics for further discussion.

There are clear positives to this approach. It allows everyone to contribute in the idea and discussion process. At least in the first phase, it does not privilege extroverts and native English speakers, nor people from cultures where being proactive is normal (or, in the inverse, it doesn’t disadvantage introverts, non-native English speakers and people from high context communications cultures). It lowers the barriers to participation and prevents a few individuals from dominating the discussion based on their personal comfort in the meeting context. Theoretically, allowing everyone to participate in this way will produce an outcome that is more reflective of the people in the room.

Additionally, a highly consultative and inclusive approach can be essential to building consensus and buy-in for meeting (or strategy) outcomes. The process in itself is one that moves a room together towards the conclusion. Ideally it creates space for disagreements but closes them in the same phase.

But there are flaws in this model. As anyone who’s sat in a small breakout group with a pile of Post-It notes on their lap has experienced, the contributions in these moments are a mixed bag. Forcing big concepts or complex problems into a few words on a tiny sheet of paper is hard. Nuance and detail are lost. People relate to concepts that fit onto a Post-It in different ways. It’s not clear to people outside the group what the full idea was – only survived on the note.

Clustering as an activity further levels down nuance and complexity. A “Improve data quality” cluster might include topics as diverse as “improving our analytics engineering capabilities,” “automating deduplication with AI,” “building better governance policies for our federated network,” and “unclear KPIs for our social channels due to frequently changing Meta metric definitions.” Which of these did the group think was a strategic focus? No one can say.

Additionally, the small group cluster and report back methodology still creates process artefacts that confuse design for strategy. For example, let’s say one group has a loud discussion on a niche topic that the rest of the room has already dismissed in the other groups. Does that mean it must be included moving forward, as a reflection of the process design? Conversely, in a room with 100 people and 1,000 Post-it notes, how do we ensure that an idea that is only mentioned once and not advanced as fitting well into a clustered outcome is not lost in the process? We cannot reliably ensure that unique insights and complex experiences are adequately captured in this process.

While this is mostly about meeting design, similar practices of large scale consultation, note capturing, clustering and distillation show up as common tools for strategy design. The flaws are fundamentally the same.

My problem is that I don’t know what a better alternative is. I’d love to hear what other large meeting methodologies you’re using and finding effective.

How to you balance the requirement of building inclusive spaces against an information gathering process that doesn’t end up being over-simplified and without nuance or complexity?

How do you ensure everyone has space to share their ideas and perspectives, while still building towards strategic outcomes?

How do you leverage the rare opportunities to have a diverse group of people, with a wide range of skills and perspectives to build something greater than would be possible without having those people together in one place, at one time?

Who is designing interesting meetings? Who do you see innovating in consultative strategy development processes? What pieces do you recommend I read to advance my thinking on this?

My worst professional feeling is sitting in a room and thinking, “This time, with these people, could have been so much better used.” I look forward to feedback and inputs to help me avoid feeling that into the future.

Originally posted on LinkedIn.