Posted by Julia and Sylvia from Plenum

Identify Learning Journeys: find places, individuals, organizations that provide you and the group with a new perspective.

Prepare as a group by discussing:
• What is the context that we will experience?
• Who are the key players that we will talk to?
• What questions do we want to explore?
• What assumptions do I bring with me? What do I expect?
• Share your most eye-opening sensing experience to date.

Start by developing a short common questionnaire (7-10 questions) that guides your inquiry process. Keep updating your questionnaire as your inquiry process unfolds.

Prepare the host: Share the purpose and intent of the visit. Communicate that it would be most helpful for the group to gain some insight into their ”normal” daily operations, rather than a staged presentation. Try to avoid “show and tell” situations.

Small groups travel to the host’s location. While at the site, groups can split up in pairs. Trust your intuition and ask authentic questions raised by the conversation. Ask simple and authentic questions, use deep listening as a tool to hold the space of conversation. When your interviewee has finished responding to one of your questions, don’t jump in automatically with the next question. Attend to what is emerging from the now.

Example questions for sensing journeys:
• What personal experience or journey brought you into your current role?
• What issues or challenges are you confronted with?
• Why do these challenges exist?
• What challenges exist in the larger system?
• What are the blockages?
• What are your most important sources of success and change?
• What would a better system look like for you?
• What initiative, if implemented, would have the greatest impact for you? For the system as a whole?
• If you could change just a few elements of the system, what would you change?
• Who else do we need to talk to?

After the visit, reflect and debrief: To capture and leverage the findings of your inquiry process, conduct a disciplined debriefing process right after each visit. Don’t switch on cell phones until the debriefing is complete. Here are a few sample questions for the debriefing:
• What was most surprising or unexpected?
• What touched me? What connected with me personally?
• If the social field (or the living system) of the visited organization or community were a living being, what would it look and feel like?
• If that being could talk: what would it say (to us)?
• If that being could develop, what would it want to morph into next?
• What is the generative source that allows this social field to develop and thrive?
• What limiting factors prevent this field/system from developing further?
• Moving in and out of this field, what did you notice about yourself?
• What ideas does this experience spark for possible prototyping initiatives that you may want to take on?

Close the feedback loop with your hosts: Send an email (or other follow-up note) expressing a key insight you took away from the meeting (one or two sentences) and your appreciation.

Debrief as a whole group: After a one-day learning journey this debriefing would take place in next meeting with the whole group. In the case of a multi-day learning journey, plan to meet between the journey days if logistics allow.

Structure of the whole group debrief meeting:
• Get everyone on the same page by sharing concrete information about the Journeys: Where did you go, who did you talk to, what did you do, what have you experienced?
• Talk about your findings, learnings and insights.
• Generate new ideas for your hosts or for your own field of action.