A method to converge within a few days
What if we collectively had the capacity to overcome any crisis in a matter of days?
My doctoral thesis, Healing Communities (Concordia University, 2023), describes a method for teams of teams to listen to each other, agree on priorities, pool their resources and create a few essential, freely adaptable solutions.
The four steps
-
Listen to each other
Each person says what they are going through and what matters to them, including what usually stays unspoken. The group forms a shared picture of the situation before looking for solutions.
-
Agree on priorities
Together, the group chooses the few challenges to act on now. The others are noted for later.
-
Pool resources
Skills, time, equipment and data are shared according to rules the group sets for itself, as commons.
-
Create the essentials
The group makes few solutions, but essential ones, published so that others can reuse and adapt them.
The Taking care together festival, in 2022, was its pilot, after the European EUvsVirus hackathon. Read the festival story
From scarcity to abundance
The diagram sums up the framework of the thesis. Each stage of the cycle can be lived in a mode of scarcity (dark) or abundance (light). The method helps a group move from the first to the second.
-
Perceived or created scarcity
- misery (spiritual, social, material)
- exhaustion (self, resources)
- dis-eases, corruption (physical, ecosystems)
Perceived or created abundance
- equanimity
- cultivation
- dynamic equilibrium
-
Survival
- greed, aversion
- inhibition of thoughts and feelings (self-ignorance)
- belonging to the collective narrative is critical
Fullness, reliance
- presence, love (agape), inner peace
- freethought, introspection, interoception
- congruence of one's own narrative is critical
-
Egocentric competition
- economic or ideological wars (nations, market)
- value extracted from the collective
- control (techniques, rules imposed)
Emerging cooperation
- cohabitation of plural realities and value systems
- value generated with and for the commons
- convergence (soft skills, local customs)
What sets my approach apart
I start from the group's own resources rather than from outside expertise.
-
Systemic
I look at the interactions between people, the organisation and its context.
-
Participatory
I don't arrive with a ready-made solution. I create the conditions for the people concerned to build a fitting answer.
-
Experimental
Ideas quickly become concrete trials, adjusted along the way.
-
Research-based
My practice draws on a PhD in social sciences and on years of fieldwork.
My tools
Proven approaches, which I choose according to the situation and combine with the four-step method.
-
Emerging change
Madeleine Laugeri, Institut du Changement Émergent
A ritualised dialogue between the whole team and its leader, so that the team organises itself and gains autonomy and performance, without competition between individuals.
Co-author of Les clés du dialogue hiérarchique (2024), board member of the Institut du Changement Émergent.
-
Mindset mapping
Based on René Rupert's management compass
Locating the useful level of autonomy according to the complexity of each activity, comparing it with perceived and desired autonomy, then deciding together where to act.
Used at Fujitsu (report, 2013, in French) and with the faculty of the Lausanne Hospitality School (EHL).
-
Leonardo 3.4.5 team profile
A research-based tool supported by the European Union (Eureka project)
Highlighting the potential and talents of each person in their working environment, and how they complement each other within the team.
Accredited consultant since 2010.
-
Creation-as-research
The approach of my thesis, Concordia University, 2023
An iterative and traceable process in which methods and contents emerge from creative work. Useful when a group has to invent rather than apply.
-
Transactional analysis
Eric Berne; EATA basic certificate, 1,000 hours
A reading of relationships, emotions and power games, so that each person can take their rightful place.
-
Game jams and game co-creation
Some twenty game jams since 2015, from Montreal to Ouagadougou
In two to six days, the people concerned, professionals and creators design game prototypes together.
-
Art of Hosting
Group facilitation and collective creation
Setting up an environment where energy and resources can unfold, then leaving room for co-creation to emerge: from head to heart, from leadership to active listening.
Further reading
Considering working together?
Briefly describe your situation. I will reply to see whether my approach can help.