1-2-4-All
A participation structure that lets everyone contribute to a question in ~12–20 minutes: one minute of silent reflection alone, two minutes in pairs, four minutes in foursomes,…
C3
Co-Creation Skills
Facilitating collaborative processes with diverse stakeholders, fostering teamwork and psychological safety, and being aware of power dynamics.
Tools for this skill (20)
Analyzing and addressing power dynamics in collaboration
Power dynamics inevitably shape collaboration. Unexamined dynamics can make 'collaboration' into disguised hierarchy. Before significant collaborative work (especially with exte…
Building capability for co-creation with external actors
Co-creating with external actors involves challenges beyond internal collaboration. Before significant external co-creation, clarify the nature of the collaboration. Is this gen…
Co-creation Prompt
Co-creation builds shared ownership of sustainability initiatives. When people contribute to solutions, they are more committed to implementing them. When to use: When planning…
Collaborative working sessions
Most team meetings are for coordination. Teams need dedicated time for actually creating together. Create working sessions specifically designed for collaborative creation. The…
Container Building
The facilitator's meta-practice from Theory U: deliberately creating the holding space before the work — preparing one's own inner condition, co-creating ground rules, and invit…
Design StoryBoards
Meeting design as explicit craft: before an important session, sketch its arc frame by frame — purpose, participants, and which structure fills each block of time — the way film…
Discovery & Action Dialogue (DAD)
A facilitated dialogue built on positive deviance: through seven fixed questions, a group discovers who among them is already solving a chronic problem against the odds, what th…
Enabling Co-Creation
Participants learn to facilitate co-creation sessions themselves: framing a real-life case, designing for inclusion and safety, hosting diverse stakeholders, and reflecting on w…
Facilitation for generative collaboration
Skilled facilitation helps collaborative sessions be generative rather than frustrating. Develop facilitation capability within the team. Key facilitation skills include: • Stru…
Fostering Collaborative Creativity
Participants learn to lead brainstorming-centered co-creation themselves: hosting inclusive ideation, protecting wild ideas from early judgment, and steering groups toward break…
Future Search
A structured 2.5–3 day planning conference that gets "the whole system in the room" — 40–80 stakeholders across interests review their common past, map present trends, own their…
Min Specs
Groups draft the maximum list of dos and don'ts for a purpose, then ruthlessly test each item: "if we broke this rule, could we still achieve the purpose?" Everything that survi…
Open Space Technology
Self-organizing conference format for 5 to 2000 people around a question that matters: participants themselves post the sessions, form the agenda in the opening circle, and move…
Options Place
A meeting without a preset agenda: participants post the topics they care about on a breakout board, sessions run in parallel stations, and people move freely to wherever they c…
Purpose-To-Practice (P2P)
A design session for anything meant to last: the group works through five elements in order — Purpose (why the work matters to those affected), Principles (must-dos and must-not…
Strategy Knotworking (SKW)
A whole strategy process as one composed arc (~6 hours, or split over days): the group works through six questions — purpose, honest baseline, shifting context, competing challe…
The Build Upon
A seconds-scale daily micro-practice for Co-creation Skills (VCoL collection): When someone shares an idea, pause before responding. Instead of countering or critiquing, ask: 'H…
The Power Check
A seconds-scale daily micro-practice for Co-creation Skills (VCoL collection): During group discussions, observe power dynamics. Ask: 'Who is speaking most? Whose ideas get pick…
The Space Making
A seconds-scale daily micro-practice for Co-creation Skills (VCoL collection): In group discussions, notice who has not spoken. Create space by: pausing to let quieter people en…
Also develops it (19)
3D Mapping (Sculpting the Current Reality)
A team sculpts its current reality with physical objects: stakeholders and — crucially — invisible forces (power, frustration, hope) are each given an object, with distance, siz…
Brainstorming with Eureka
A structured brainstorm in explicit ideation and narrowing phases: teams break a complex problem down, generate freely on cards, then converge on a simple narrative, idea, or so…
Co-Designing Transition Experiments
With a printable card deck and practical guidelines, teams co-design transition experiments — innovation projects that start from a societal challenge and treat learning as the…
Creating genuinely inclusive engagement with external actors
To model inclusive practice in how the team reaches out and collaborates. When planning engagement with external actors, consider who is being included and who might be left out…
Deep Democracy (Facilitated Group Process)
Facilitation approach built on the premise that the minority voice carries information the group needs: decisions are made only after the "no" has been genuinely heard, dissent…
Focus on contribution over credit
To shift team culture toward valuing contribution to shared goals rather than individual recognition. Cultivate norms and practices that emphasize contribution over credit: • Wh…
Generative Relationships STAR
Working groups assess their own interaction pattern on the STAR compass — Separateness (diversity of perspective), Tuning (listening and reflecting), Action (joint activity), an…
Improv Prototyping
Groups act out a chronic challenge scene three ways — the dysfunctional version, an improved version, and wild variants — with player groups performing while observer groups har…
Inclusive Decision-Making
Group decision-making built on the Lewis Method of Deep Democracy: every voice is actively sought, the minority "no" is heard and its wisdom added to the proposal before decidin…
Integrated ~ Autonomy
For the perennial center-versus-local tension: groups examine where their organization needs standardization and where local autonomy creates value, then design "both-and" moves…
Participate as a Pro
Teams leave the classroom to connect with local actors and co-initiate real participation: engaging professionals directly with the people affected by their work, learning to se…
Peer learning forums
To enable team members to learn from each other's experiences and expertise. Monthly or bimonthly, dedicate 30-45 minutes to peer learning. One or two team members share somethi…
Prototyping (Theory U)
Explore the future by doing: a small core team (~5, a microcosm of the challenge) moves an idea into a concrete experiential prototype — clarify intention, sense the system, hol…
Psychological Safety Micro-Behaviours
An individual practice run inside real teamwork: deliberately doing the small things research links to team psychological safety — asking genuine questions, speaking up about yo…
Self Guided Assessment
Learners co-create the assessment criteria for an unconventional assignment: negotiating what quality means, defending judgments, and owning the standards they will be measured…
Shared Problem Definition
Stakeholder role-play in which participants from different disciplines and organisations must integrate their perspectives into one shared problem definition before any solution…
Structured ideation sessions
To generate diverse ideas systematically when facing challenges that require creative thinking. When facing a challenge that requires creative solutions, use a structured proces…
Team Psychological Safety Scan
Measuring a team's psychological safety with Amy Edmondson's validated survey items (e.g., "If you make a mistake on this team, it is often held against you"), then debriefing t…
What I Need From You (WINFY)
Functions or teams that depend on each other each formulate their top needs from the others as crisp requests. Spokespeople exchange them in a public circle — and answer only "y…