Community Building Tips: Ideating & Generating
At this Stage
This is the sixth part of a toolkit series on community building and social change.
Read this if you’ve moved past the The Dip and your group is ready to start organizing and taking specific actions.
Skip this if you already know exactly what your group will be doing and have decided on roles for all group members.
“Listening may be the single most powerful action the leader can take”
The NGM Circle Community Building Journey Map: You are at the “Ideating & Generating” stage.
You’ve made it to the Ideating & Generating stage, congrats! This stage is all about bringing your team together to get everything set up for your community engagement.
There are two parts to this stage:
Ideating
Ideating is the process of imagining or forming ideas. Brainstorm solutions to any remaining barriers to make the most of the skills, aspirations, and connections in your team.
Generating
Now that you’ve dreamt up the future, you need to generate it. Get specific and make decisions about what’s happening, when, and who is responsible. Make clear and accountable decisions together about the roles each person will play for your upcoming community engagement.
Ideating
You’ve put a lot of general thought into what you’re doing and why you’re doing it, now it’s time to resolve any remaining questions and figure out the details. Just like the rest of this process so far, the end result is going to be better and stronger if you make a point of co-creating with your team. An open discussion or brainstorming session (or multiple sessions if needed) with the people you’ve brought together is going to help you avoid missing out on opportunities or making snap judgments that can hurt you later.
Common things to be ideated upon include:
What is the purpose of our engagement?
What is the subject or topic we want to gather others around?
What do we want to happen at the engagement?
What outcomes do we hope for?
How will we structure our engagement?
Logistics - Where and when is your engagement happening?
Promotion - How are you getting the word out?
Roles - Who’s going to be there from your team and how will they contribute?
How to Ideate
Some of the questions above might be easy to answer while others, like purpose or structure, may take more time and effort. Take a question you’re struggling with and brainstorm on it with your group.
Here are some ground rules for brainstorming:
Every contribution is worthwhile
Even weird, way-out ideas
Even confusing ideas
Especially silly ideas
Suspend judgment
We won’t evaluate each other’s ideas.
We won’t censor our own ideas.
We’ll save these ideas for later discussion.
We can modify this process before it starts or after it ends but not while it’s underway. Don’t derail your own process, set it up so that people feel safe enough to share openly.
Adapted from Sam Kaner et al.,
Facilitator’s Guide to Participatory Decision making
If you’re worried your brainstorming session won’t be fruitful or innovative enough, you probably need to encourage a wider range of differing perspectives or divergence in your group. This might sound scary because it can feel like a loss of control, but remember that your job as a community leader isn’t to be the voice for others (unless they’ve asked you to) but to help others find their own voice. Lean into uncertainty and trust the people and the process that you’ve convened.
In the Facilitator’s Guide to Participatory Decision Making referenced above, Kaner explains that “divergent thinking expands the range of perspectives and possibilities” and provides three tips for encouraging divergence:
Suspend judgment and accept different perspectives.
Don’t react negatively or try to control ideas, listen.
Amplify diverse perspectives.
Center and bring out marginalized opinions and thoughts.
Encourage full participation.
If this is a challenge, make an object a talking piece and pass it around to ensure each person gets a chance to speak. Nobody else gets to speak except the person holding the object. This can be a powerful way to visibly and tangibly neutralize power in the group and give others the floor.
Generating
Done well, brainstorming can help you bring out the imaginative potential of your team. Hopefully you have more, better, options than you did at the start of this stage and have clarified lingering questions about the group’s position and purpose.
It’s time to go from dreaming to doing. If your community engagement is going to become something real, you’ll need to get specific about the actions each person involved will take to make it happen.
There are many ways to do this, but avoid simply delegating tasks out to people. This is the first instinct for many of us, but it has the potential to exclude someone from doing something they’re really interested in or excel at. In the long run, this can be the difference between your community building efforts growing or crashing and burning. Open the decision making up to the group before making suggestions about who’s doing what.
If nobody’s available or taking ownership of a critical task, then offer up a suggestion, take it on if you have the capacity, or ask the group if it’s necessary to rethink the plan.
Once you’ve collectively agreed on who, when, and what’s happening you’re ready to move on to the next checkpoint.
Summary
Actions to take before moving on to the next stage
Brainstorm ideas collectively with fellow organizers
Decide on actions that must be taken
Assign roles and tasks to group members
Resources
Hyper Island Toolbox: This online toolbox has tons of structured activities organized by time and purpose that can help bring out ideas and different perspectives.