Without Being Asked
Find where the talking already happens, and what keeps it alive.
What is made possible
Somewhere in this organisation, people already talk to each other usefully without anyone arranging it. A group finds all of it and works out what is keeping those places alive. Most of what goes on the wall was never anybody’s idea, and nobody has a plan for that part.
Five structural elements
Structuring invitation.
“Think about where in this organisation people actually talk to each other usefully, without anyone organising it. The corridor. The group chat. The two teams who sort things out between themselves. The person everybody rings. We’re going to find all of it, and then work out what’s keeping it alive.”
Space and materials.
A wall with two zones marked in tape: Would Survive and Wouldn’t. Sticky notes, pens, red dot stickers. Enough room for everyone to stand at it at once.
Participation distribution.
The whole room writes, sorts and dots. Two questions from the facilitator; otherwise they stay out of it. Eight people up.
Group configuration.
Alone, then pairs, then foursomes, then everyone.
Steps and time allocation
- 3 min
Intro. Give the invitation. Point at the two zones without explaining them. Before anyone writes, say that some of what goes on this wall is happening in spite of an arrangement somebody standing here made, and that this is what we came to find.
- 5 min
Write alone. Places where people talk usefully without being asked to. One per sticky, and name the actual thing: who, where, about what. Not “collaboration”. The Tuesday coffee, the group chat nobody minutes, the two engineers who ignore the ticketing system and just ring each other.
- 5 min
Pairs. Merge, cut duplicates, keep eight. One test before a sticky goes to the wall: nobody set this up. If somebody set it up, it belongs on a different wall.
- 14 min
The sort. Foursomes at the wall. If this organisation reorganised next month, new structure, new managers, new tools, would this survive? Left zone, would survive. Right zone, wouldn’t. Two minutes for the contested ones, then they land, underlined if they took the lot.
- 8 min
Second pass. Nothing moves. Now ask what is keeping this alive. Not who is in it, what protects it. Somebody senior who shields it, a budget nobody has noticed, a room, a shared history, the fact that nobody upstairs knows it exists. Write the protector on the sticky. If you can’t name one, red dot. A dot here means unprotected, not important.
- 10 min
Stand back. Everyone. Ask “what do you notice about where the dots are?”, then hold the silence and let it get uncomfortable. Nobody answers out loud yet: one noticing each, written down, then read round, no commentary.
- 8 min
Keep one alive. Foursomes. Take a dotted sticky. What is the smallest thing somebody here could do to make it more likely to survive the next reorganisation, without formalising it, naming it, funding it or putting it on a slide? Name who, and somebody outside this room they’ll tell this week. No date.
An hour once people have shuffled about.
Practice insights
- Tips
The gate is what makes this work. Nobody set this up keeps the wall from filling with the guild, the community of practice and the monthly forum, all of which are somebody’s initiative and belong somewhere else. Say twice that a dot means unprotected rather than important, because the room will read it the other way round the first time. Watch for the instinct to scale a pocket, which arrives within about a minute of the second pass; a pocket that gets rolled out stops being one, and that is the same finding As It Arrived reaches from the other direction. If the room can’t name a protector for most of the wall, that isn’t a failed sort, it’s an organisation one reorganisation away from losing the thing it runs on. And the best sticky on the wall is usually the one somebody hesitated to write down.
- Riffs and variations
For a group that has read the book, give them Sami’s line from Chapter 7 of the book: no interactions, no progress. Then ask what keeps this organisation’s interactions going. The wall is the answer, and most of it was never anybody’s idea.
For the same question asked in negative space, run Creative Destruction (TRIZ) (opens in a new tab) instead: design the organisation where nobody can usefully talk to anybody, go down the list marking everything you already do, then stop one of them. It works on a wall too. Build the design in one zone, then physically move into a second zone everything that turns out to be true, which lands harder than writing a second list. It opens a considerably harder room than this one, so know your group before you reach for it.
- Practical applications
Before a reorganisation is drawn, while there is still time not to run it through the pockets. When somebody proposes a communications workstream. When two organisations are being integrated and nobody has asked what the merger will step on.
- Optional string
Take a dotted sticky into Smaller Than That, where the ban on adding anything is exactly right for something you are trying not to formalise. Or run it after Same Plan, Ten Times, once the room has seen which work depends on people responding.
Where it came from
It stands near Discovery and Action Dialogue (opens in a new tab) and Appreciative Interviews (opens in a new tab) without being built on either. The idea of going to look for what already works, rather than for what is broken, belongs to the positive deviance tradition of Jerry and Monique Sternin and Arvind Singhal.