Motivating introverts and quiet, but crucial domain people on remote session

[Wojciech Żdżarski]

Hi!

We adopted methodology of Event Storming in non-pandemic times, where motivating (as a facilitator) even most grumpy introverts was a piece of cake. Currently in remote session I see clearly division between a team having very important domain discussion and people who are just listeners, and in the end they are responsible for development and design of the product.

Have you already elaborated some techniques to encourage some people to take part in the discussion? I do not want to manage the discussion by calling out certain people cause it's very uncomfortable for them.

Thank you,
Wojciech

[Ryan Marsh]

Alberto had some suggestions in a recent webinar which escape me at the moment. I've struggled with this since everyone started working from home. I've noticed introverts are more likely, but not guaranteed, to speak up in a breakout room with a smaller group. I've also had some success encouraging everyone to put all of their thoughts into stickies in the Miro board, then it becomes easy to read out loud a stickie and then ask who can help us understand it better. Sometimes the author will speak up and clarify what they meant. 

I hope Alberto chimes in on this one.

Kind regards, 

Ryan Marsh

Sent via Superhuman

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[Philippe Bourgau]

Hi,

My colleague Matthieu Tournemire and I have animated a large event storming remotely at our company a few months ago. We struggled as you did with a large number of 'silent listeners'. Eventually, we managed to get something better using different inspirations:

• In this post, Nick Tune suggests setting different roles in the groups (facilitator, storyteller, interrupter, and the rest of the mob) and doing a 'single threaded' flow. He also suggests smaller groups and switching roles regularly
• Alain Cardon, a french coach has invented something he calls "Delegated Missions" to run smoother meetings. It's about assigning specific roles (Nick Tune's idea on steroids) to people in the audience to make sure all aspects are taken care of, and that everyone is involved.

We experimented with a mix of all this, and after a few sessions, it was quite effective. Here are the roles we have been using:

Facilitator

• Animates and structures exchanges
• Makes sure the 4 other missions are incarnated
• Verify that everyone can speak up

Meta feedbacker

• Shares his feedback about what he observes
• Provides options to move forward

Intent keeper

• Shares and repeats the intention
• Reframes action so that it fits the intention

Decision Pusher (note-taker)

• Triggers decisions
• Writes them down
• Uses notes to express the opinions of everyone

Time-keeper

• Gives rhythm to the meeting, in line with the facilitator so that everyone takes responsibility

What we ended up doing is:

• smaller breakout rooms
• single-threaded flow
• Using Delegated missions
• rotating roles every 15 minutes
• Every time the meta-feedbacker has the opportunity to share some feedback so the group can adjust

One thing we have been struggling with is to make the breakout groups self-emerge and self-organize, so we had to nudge them a lot for that. Maybe it would work better if we tried it again, now that people are more used to remote work.

Something else we noticed is that going through a demo or even practice sessions about the 'how to collaborate' will save you time!

I hope this is helpful.

Thanks,

Philippe Bourgau

Le mer. 21 avr. 2021 à 18:08, Ryan Marsh <ry...@thestack.io> a écrit :

Alberto had some suggestions in a recent webinar which escape me at the moment. I've struggled with this since everyone started working from home. I've noticed introverts are more likely, but not guaranteed, to speak up in a breakout room with a smaller group. I've also had some success encouraging everyone to put all of their thoughts into stickies in the Miro board, then it becomes easy to read out loud a stickie and then ask who can help us understand it better. Sometimes the author will speak up and clarify what they meant. 

I hope Alberto chimes in on this one.

Kind regards, 

Ryan Marsh

Sent via Superhuman

On Wed, Apr 21, 2021 at 9:34 AM, Wojciech Żdżarski <wojte...@gmail.com> wrote:

Hi!

We adopted methodology of Event Storming in non-pandemic times, where motivating (as a facilitator) even most grumpy introverts was a piece of cake. Currently in remote session I see clearly division between a team having very important domain discussion and people who are just listeners, and in the end they are responsible for development and design of the product.

Have you already elaborated some techniques to encourage some people to take part in the discussion? I do not want to manage the discussion by calling out certain people cause it's very uncomfortable for them.

Thank you,
Wojciech

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[Alberto Brandolini]

Hi folks, 

it largely depends on the scenario, with discriminating factors being mostly related to age, available hardware, and familiarity with the modeling tools.

One annoying consequence is the need to take over more responsibility as the facilitator since it will be harder to delegate the scribing responsibility.

We do use three main patterns:

- Narrator: tries to tell the story;

- Scribe: makes sure the story is written according to with the current grammar;

- Validating Audience: challenges the narrator.

... but we try to keep the rules of the game as simple as possible. Having two facilitators in the narrator/scribe position really helps. In general "speed of execution" is the only thing that could keep the grumpy ones engaged. 

Please keep in mind that some of them simply cannot be saved. If they're trying to be part of the workshop with a 13'' screen using Internet Explorer as a browser, with a cat walking on the keyboard, ...it's not your responsibility anymore. Well, of course, you need to remind about interruptions, having the camera on, and so on.

Nobody mentioned it, but... we gotta keep the workshop shorter. Can't have people engaged if they're already exhausted.

Alberto

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/eventstorming/CAJTmZJdvaZ3X3-ewY9S_U3DWw%3DGdt9mSOuVb7De5Z3wU-q4NCA%40mail.gmail.com.

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Alberto Brandolini
Phone: +39-347-6005027

E-mail: alberto.b...@gmail.com
Twitter: @ziobrando

Company: http://www.avanscoperta.it
Blog: http://ziobrando.blogspot.com
Linkedin: http://www.linkedin.com/in/brando

[Philippe Bourgau]

The length of the workshop is definitely an issue. What we ended up doing was running 1h30 sessions every day. The full workshop might last for 1 week or more, but this nice side effect is that people can do 'research' between sessions.