Bill Isaacs and associates at Dialogos (Bill's spin-off from the Dialogue
Project in the Org. Learning Center at MIT), have done alot of work in
practical applications of dialogue in business as well as research to
develop practices and processes. Bill has taken principles from Bohm's
dialogue process and added some concepts and techniques and exercises to
help people learn and use dialogue in the workplace. This sort of
dialogue is called "Strategic Dialogue" by Juanita Brown and others to
distinguish it from the open conversations about thought that Bohm
proposes.
If you've read "The Fifth Discipline Fieldbook" you may have caught the
story of dialogue at GS Technologies, which has been one of the
longest-running applications of dialogue in business. They continue to use
these prinicples in their interactions and meetings, although they no
longer have dedicated meetings with management and union reps. There were
about 35 people participating in the original dialogue sessions.
I've also been working with the Dialogos facilitators and the participants
in the healthcare community in Grand Junction, CO, who met one full day
per month for a year to learn and use dialogue to explore the future of
healthcare delivery in their community. This dialogue brought together
about 40 people, including the CEOs, administrators, and physicians from
the four healthcare institutions, plus people from local gov't agencies
and business organizations. The commitment to participation was
extraordinary, given these people's schedules. Of course, people
occasionally missed meetings, but only two or three dropped out.
In the Learning Community I lead in a monthly evening meeting to hear and
talk about issues in OL (it's more of an inquiry group than a dialogue
group actually), I have found that participation in open conversation
changes when the group size goes from 14 to 20 people (this aligns well
with standard group process theory). With 15 or more people, it seems like
you need to structure things more, like going around the room a couple
times to be sure everyone gets heard.
You'll find lots of people talking about dialogue groups of 100 or more
people. Obviously there are many fewer voices heard in these sessions.
There tends to be a good bit of silent reflection. And it's amazing how
rarely people start to speak simultaneously...
There are lots of different opinions about how to deal with very large
groups when the goal is to "bring all voices into the room." I prefer
Russ Ackoff's structure for multiple, overlapping small groups that cross
the organization structure (hierarchical and functional).
-- Dmweston@aol.com