Originally published 6 November 2007. This article is retained from the tCI archive. Law, policy or practice may have changed since publication.
One of the biggest trends in consultation is away from the big fat document and towards participative events. These come in different shapes and sizes and sport a variety of titles from consultation seminars or workshops to full-blown Stakeholder Conferences.
Most, if not all these, will involve a participative element or breakout session. Unfortunately these often don’t work too well, possibly because insufficient thought has gone into planning them.
Any experienced organiser of these events will confirm that, in general, breakouts have a bi-polar satisfaction profile. Many people give them high marks, but many also give them low marks, whilst relatively few score them in the middle; in other words participants either love them or hate them. This, in part, reflects the truism that group sessions are only as good as their facilitation, and too often groups are left to organise themselves – so chance plays a role in the experience people get. Then there are differences of opinion about the ideal length of breakout sessions. Some complain that there wasn’t enough time; others think there was too much. Many see them only as “talking shops”, hi-jacked by the event’s more talkative individuals.
But they can’t be all bad, or we wouldn’t continue to use them. Their biggest strength is that they are an obvious opportunity to contribute and participate. If you’ve spent the rest of the day suffering death by PowerPoint, breakouts are a blessed relief, a change of pace and the occasion to address specific issues in more detail.
Here are nine activities for which breakouts are good:-
- Information exchange 2. Issue identification 3. Capturing shared experiences 4. Seeking consensus 5. Discourse with experts 6. Commenting on papers or proposals 7. Sense of participation 8. Understanding the mood music 9. Networking
And here’s the downside. Unless extremely well facilitated, Breakouts are poor at these six activities:-
- Systematic information gathering 2. Considered analysis 3. Policy-formulation 4. Problem solving 5. Representative feedback 6. Providing structured output
Of course, these are generalisations, so may not apply to everyone. But the moral of the story is this – when planning consultation events, prepare breakout sessions really well, and your organisation and the participants will all benefit.
Trigger points
- Next time you plan an event, use the good/poor lists above to get the best from your breakouts
- When attending others’ events, consider how breakouts could have been improved
- Familiarise yourself with best practice for public meetings in general. The Institute’s Effective Public Meetings Course.
This is the92nd Tuesday Topic; a full list of subjects covered is available for Institute members and is a valuable resource covering so many aspects of consultation and engagement