Day Two

We began day two with a feed forward from Mel reminding us of what had happened yesterday and sharing a story about how in her work as a doula she had been struggling with a strategic manager in the health service who she felt wasn't really listening to the women and what they needed. She realised she herself hadn't been listening to the manager and when she began to do so, something changed in their relationship and they were both able to really hear each other. This was a fundamental change in being able to communicate well and know what to do together to improve things for women giving birth. The power of good listening

Check in

Diamond of participation

We checked into our day by silently self organising ourselves by our height.

Then Bronagh offered a model of how groups all go through a process of Divergence: where many diverse ideas and perspectives come forward. Then Emergence where newness happens and then Convergence where we begin to make a plan and come together for action. She spoke about how often we avoid the emergent phase also know as the Groan zone as it feels uncomfortable. But this is also the Grown zone where we really feel the edges of what we know and a much needed place to learn to host and hold well, as its often here where innovation and new possibilities lie. You don't want to stay here forever though, its important to design meetings so that they can come to some conclusion and find a way forward. This is the real art of hosting, how and when to move though these phases and sensing what's ready to conclude or not.

Open Space

Andy Steve Chris Nick and Jed opened the space for us to call and be in the conversations and questions we now wanted to explore

The following groups met and reported back their key findings

How do we keep in the loop and gain momentum?

work from purpose and shift the paradigm from health to wellness
develop a core question and core teams
keep connecting and harvesting
hold a big assembly

How to start a conversation on health and wellbeing in my organisation and make it a priority?

Recognise the importance of culture and vulnerability
Create space to talk to other managers
Importance of team building

How to show impact of current deprivation in Morecambe?

Structural problems lead to inflexibility
How much do people in the West End understand people in Bare?
Hold a forum in all parts of Morecambe

How important is broad representation and how do we achieve it?

Better invitations and develop more networks and relationships
recognise the importance of peoples stories
Focus on who is here as much as who isn't here

What is it that we want?

An intergenerational Morecambe
A unified vision
Trees and more open spaces
A big open conversation

How do we involve different cultural groups?

Rise in hate crimes and fear - struggle to get stories from Polish women
Involve perpretrators - need to meet people where they are
Have a fun day building relationships, understanding culture

Getting parents into conversation around experiences of maternity services

You have a voice we want to hear it
Find out about red book inserts
Plan to visit drop ins

How do we harvest all the conversations that will happen?

Need for some co ordination, strategically good to know whats happening
Mapping out whats going on where
Number of forums and conversations at partnership board
Commitment to share information

Who is having the uncomfortable conversations?

History of competition hinders us
Good listening to provide uncomfortable space for change to happen
How do we harvest this?

8 breaths of design

Design Lab

Thank you for:

All the advice and questions
Critical friends
All the support and encouragement
Life
Helping me make it happen
Challenging me

After another delicious shared lunch, Linda offered a teaching pattern on what makes for good process design. What are all the things you need to think about when designing and hosting conversations. Getting really clear on the need and the purpose and also the team who you might work with ( don't go alone ) Finding a good question takes time and is a great measure of how well you are reading what's at stake. Invitation is an art, how do we invite well and then let go of our need for certain people to participate. You can use any of the tools for your meeting, but they are just tools. Your questions, purpose and what you want to harvest will guide the design of the meeting. Take time to harvest and make sense of the patterns and themes that come out. Follow up actions and take time to reflect and learn. What, so what and now what are useful questions here. Finally pay attention to holding the whole of the process, seeing it beyond a single event and take a birds eye perspective. Who is tending to the well being of everyone in the system?

Finally Gaz Austin and Paul hosted us into a design lab. Inviting people to put forward real projects that they were working on and that they wanted some help with. A template to help everyone think though the design principles was provided and we spent an hour in small groups developing the projects and asking some questions to help the project holders get clear on what they were trying to do. Some peer coaching followed, everyone moved to a new table and heard a quick summary, then the project holders turned their backs and listened in to the new groups response. Not being able to respond allowed some strong feedback to come forward. Finally the project holders returned to their groups and spent some time in summarising where they had got to and what their next steps were

These were the projects and next steps

A community conversation in Grange and Lakes community centre on health and wellbeing
Get my team on board, include the community connectors, relationship is the mechanism for change

Helping the elderly to become more active
Find out whats happening already, talk to more people

Co stewarding a social movement for the wellbeing of Morecambe and the Bay
Work with the health and wellbeing partnership to become the change we want to see : Find a good question and make the language more accesible

A new fringe arts festival for social empowerment and change
Assemble a team, find finance - its gonna happen

VCS Faith and social empowerment sector involvement in the social movement
Start small and continue to help people to be involved. Its organic not planed

Getting the community to think
Look forward not back, ask for help, celebrate, invite change don't push it. How do you eat an elephant ? One bite at a time.