A Collective Breakthrough! U.Lab Prototyping in London

By Andy Paice and Malek Jaber for Enlivening Edge

If you’ve ever experienced a moment of group synergy when an entire group of diverse minds meet in a co-creative flow to give birth to a new idea or project, you know how just how uplifting, life-affirming and joyful that kind of moment can be. In our culture with a mainstream that still painfully clings to outdated command-and-control structures, perhaps these positive collaborative experiences mark us because they are all-too-few and far between.

So when these occurrences do arise, it can be useful to document them and outline some of the processes, tools and conditions that gave rise to them. On an April weekend in London I was fortunate to be part of a group that experienced a collective breakthrough that arose through playing with some of the established practices from the toolboxes of Theory U and the Teal movement. Here’s the story.

In North London last year a group formed through the Islington and Kings Cross Impact Hubs to meet up weekly and go through the U.Lab online course “Transforming Business, Society and Self.” By the end of the course in December a group of 10 of us from a variety of backgrounds (corporate, coaching, self-development, teaching) felt inspired to continue meeting with a view to creating a prototype project. Exactly what kind of project that was going to be, we knew not.

Our weekly Thursday meetings had been going on since January and over the course of those months we deepened our connections, got to know each other as individuals with our unique qualities and challenges, and grew to cherish the opportunity to meet up. But as the weeks progressed, finding common ground to create our project remained an elusive goal.

That was, until Sunday 17th April. We’d decided it was important to give ourselves a day of working through some of the processes together in order to go deeper in getting to know each other and to look for connecting elements that might gel into prototypes.

We set the scene for the day by watching a replay of some of the U.Lab broadcasts in which Otto Scharmer gave a guided mindfulness practice for envisioning our highest collective future potential. This initiated the movement towards reflections that reveal common connections.

We then moved on to a mini-project that we’d already started as a group. Each of us had created a Life Work Map, an exercise inspired by George Pór’s work in which each of us mapped out the various roles we are currently inhabiting in our lives.

Each of the roles were presented and noted down on circles (paper plates) with a view to making connections between our various roles that might help in finding commonalities for a project. After each presentation of Life-Work the group reflected back 5-6 words that came to their minds relating to that person and their roles. They have been harvested below in the form of a word-cloud:

 

 

 

 

 

After taking lunch in the April sun of St James’ Park we returned to our practices. Next on our agenda for working towards a collaborative project was a Case Clinic. Case Clinics consist of a structured process in which a case-giver presents a case, and a group of peers move into a helper/coaching role based on listening and presence-based principles.

Our intention was to present our predicament to ourselves so that we might collectively find a way forward. Before we started a genius suggestion came from one group member that we combine the Empty Chair method as outlined by Frederic Laloux in Reinventing Organisations with the Case Clinic. So with one chair set out in front of our group, we took turns sitting in the chair and speaking from the perspective of the “We,” the group itself, speaking to the following questions:

• What key challenge are we up against?
• What future are we trying to create?
• What do we need to let go of and what do we need to learn?
• Where do we need input or help?

What we found incredible was the amazing coherence of the responses that emerged from the perspective of the empty chair:

“How do we connect all our passions and all the dots?”

“We can let go of needing the project to be related to our personal passion”

“We can do whatever we want”

“How can we connect this with the outside world, with people who haven’t had this space?“

“We can start a project in a small way, in a safe place”

“We can let go of our fears”

“Perhaps we can offer Case Clinics as a gift?”

We shared images and metaphors for what was emerging, images such as fragile new shoots that are just strong enough to break through the cracks of rigid old structures.

The last stage of this kind of peer coaching process is called generative dialogue, and when it’s in full flow it can be an amazing experience. A synergistic group mind truly starts to emerge, and another participant speaking one’s own thoughts is not uncommon.

And this is where we started to brainstorm possible solutions. Quite organically, an idea emerged that seemed to encapsulate the conversations that had gone before during the day and even the weeks of meetings beforehand.

Our project would be to share ourselves and the togetherness that had been forged over the months of our encounters. We would show up in openness and vulnerability to demonstrate the use and effectiveness of the Case Clinic process itself, either in private clinics for individuals, start-ups or other businesses, or as part of a larger event.

Now this may seem a modest project to an outside reader, but instinctively our group knew this to be exactly the right level of prototype for us to move forward. The fact that it so completely arose from everyone’s process meant there was full buy-in from the group, and a feeling of a maximum energy to carry it forward.

Having confidence in our ability to be vectors for this process of co-creativity, we knew we had an important offering for teams and businesses that sense the need for new approaches in a changing world. As we left the venue stepping out into the sunny Westminster afternoon, we knew we’d made a significant step forward in our U.Lab project.

 

Andy Paice is a London-based Coach, Facilitator, Mindfulness Trainer and Community Builder.
Twitter @andypaice Website andypaice.net

 

Malek Joseph Jaber is passionate about driving change to make the world a fairer place through self development and organisational design leveraging Teal and Theory U. He is a digital native, born in London, and lived & worked across the globe, with 20+ years international business experience. Malek has extensive experience in digital product-services for both developed & emerging markets and advising businesses. He is currently mentoring-advising startups, and is the co-initiator and founder of Teal for Startups. Find Malek: Linkedin,  Twitter,  Angel,  Medium and Meet Me.