The Changing NHS

I used the World Cafe process for the first time recently as part of a one day workshop design. If you're not aware of it yet, World Cafe is basically a process for encouraging deeper, richer conversations. The originators have a strapline - Awakening and engaging collective intelligence through conversations about questions that matter.

In a nutshell you arrange the room as a cafe - small card tables, paper tablecloths that people can doodle on etc - and anything from 12 to several hundred people discuss a key question in groups of 4. After 20 mins or so just about everyone gets up and moves to a new table for a conversation with new people (apart from one person at each table who stays behind as a table host to welcome the new 'guests'). 

It works with groups that range from 16 up to several hundred. You run the small table conversation process 3 times, with the same question being addressed each time and then harvest the learning in a whole group plenary discussion. The idea is that people build and make links to what has been said before at the table rather than make new/separate points.
 
If you want more info you can download a good concise guide here.  More information can be acquired at the World Cafe site.

Btw, if you're curious about the magnitude of unnecessary variation that still exists in the NHS have a look at the stats collected as part of the NHS Institute's Better Care, Better Value initiative. The data is here

1. Spend some time with the group exploring what a key question might be, rather than presenting them with a suggested question and asking people if that sounded about right;
2. Have a 4th round of cafe conversations before the final plenary discussion, with a new question, something like "What have we discovered about how to make a more effective contribution?";
3. Ask table hosts, at the outset of each new table conversation, to invite new guests to add insights to 2 or 3 key issues that have surfaced in the previous discussion rather than asking them to summarise what has been said previously;

Anyway, what do you think? Does this sound like a process that could enrich some of your work with colleagues?

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