Putting Step 5 into Practice

Putting Step #5 into Practice

1. Use your hopes to focus your information gathering. What do you want to accomplish and why? Orient your information gathering around the way each option supports your hopes.

   An easy way to focus your efforts is to create a table with the options you are considering listed in the left-hand column and the key hopes you want to realize arrayed as headings across the top of the other columns. Then, enter information about how each option relates to each of your hopes. (See Table 3.) This structured approach will keep your information gathering focused and balanced. It will also overcome any organizational biases.

   Table 3: Gather Information Based on Your Hopes

   Organize your information-gathering groups according to your key hopes. For each hope, gather information about how the options support it. Use your hopes to guide your information gathering.
   OPTIONS	HOPE A	HOPE B	HOPE C	HOPE D
   Option 1	[How does Option 1 fulfill Hope A?]	[How does Option 1 fulfill Hope B?]
   Option 2	[How does Option 2 fulfill Hope A?]
   Option 3
   Option 4
   Option 5

2. Avoid setting up factional dynamics and advocating particular positions. Unfortunately, many groups set themselves up for divisive failures. Participants work only on the options they like and then battle it out with each other. This process reinforces their ego attachments to specific approaches and diminishes the opportunity for creative solutions that can earn broad support. By pursuing information and results through shared hopes, your team can avoid the unpleasantness and inefficiency of factional fighting.

3. Include a variety of participants to strengthen learning. View information gathering as a learning process for the whole group, rather than as an expertise-driven way to get things done. For example, don't put all the financial people in one group and all the marketing people in another. You need enough experts in each work group, but you also want others to learn about areas of concern outside their own specialty. Including participants from a variety of areas and with wide-ranging experiences will build a broader, cross-linked foundation for surfacing new ideas, exploring fresh opportunities, bridging differences, and reaching agreement.

4. Learn relevant information from others. How have others addressed similar issues? If you learn how different groups approached making their decision, you may not have to reinvent the wheel. The critical thing is to find others with similar hopes and circumstances; be sure that the examples you study are in alignment with your group's particular hopes. It won't help to follow someone else's map if it doesn't lead you where you want to go.

5. Be focused, not exhaustive. Get just enough information to make a first cut on how each of the options addresses your key hopes. Some groups expend so much effort gathering information that they are exhausted before they even start to evaluate what they've learned. Reserve time and energy for new, creative ideas that emerge or to refine the options that appear most appealing.

   BE AN AGENT OF HOPE

   Use your shared hopes as a lens to focus all of your activities. Structure your working groups and information gathering according to them. Whenever you sense that you're getting lost in the fog, return to your shared hopes as a simple yet highly effective organizing principle.