|
|
Our 10 groundrules
This page sets out our proposed groundrules that we will invite you to endorse at the beginning of the Forum:
1. Please feel free to change your mind 2. Please see yourself as a free spirit 3. If you can think it, you can say it 4. All comments in debate are unattributable
5. Building ideas through "buzz groups"
6. No representatives after buzz groups
7. Clarity before consensus
8. Living in the moment
9. Avoiding acronyms
10. Letting ourselves be pushed
Below we say a few words about each of them, in turn.
|
1. Please feel free to change your mind
This is the first convention of St. George’s House, and we believe that it is incredibly important if everyone is to have the chance of using the Forum to help them move forward in their thinking. We hope that you will feel free to change your mind at any time, without any loss of face.
One of the issues that many of us are tested on during the sort of debate that we will be having at this Forum is whether or not we are really open to changing our minds, especially on those aspects of the debate where we have already developed a keen personal view. We hope that you will be ready to use this Forum to challenge your own assumptions.
Our sense is that this debate about re-inventing the UN is bound to illustrate one very fundamental point: that there is no single right answer to so many of the challenges that the international community now faces in reshaping the world order.
2. Please see yourself as a free spirit
We find that people are most ready to move on in their thinking when they see themselves as free spirits, not bound to defend any particular position or fight any particular corner.
As free spirits, we can use the Forum to explore some difficult issues where we are genuinely unsure about what sort of global leadership model might offer the best way ahead. It is also as free spirits that we can best accept difference, secure in the knowledge that there are a range of possible options for re-inventing the UN, each with their own strengths and weaknesses.
|
3. If you can think it, you can say it
This maxim also needs to come up-front, because we see it as essential to creating a truly open agenda, and avoiding an atmosphere where people are suspicious of others bringing their own hidden agendas to the group.
At this Forum, we really do want to apply the maxim that if you can think it, you can say it! We don't want this to be one of those events where the person next to you at dinner says “now let me tell you what I nearly said” .
4. All comments in debate are unattributable
This principle is one of the Conventions of St. George's House, and is crucial if we are all to feel that we can be completely open in our discussions with each other. The only circumstance under which it is possible for someone to be quoted afterwards is if they give their explicit permission for something that they say to be repeated.
Apart from this, please respect the anonymity of everything that is said throughout our time together at Windsor. We all need to feel that we can speak freely, without any risk of being caught out by our remarks being quoted out of context.
5. Building ideas through "buzz groups"
As you will have seen from the agenda, we want to have a few rounds of what we term "buzz groups" during our time together. We will ask you to leave the circle for your buzz group, and remain standing, please, unless you have a physical need to be seated.
Buzz groups last for 10 to 15 minutes each, usually with three people in each group, and are literally intended just to take us all out of the main group for long enough to help energise the process of generating new ideas. This requires us all to feel free to pursue a minority view without worrying that we might be incurring the displeasure of others for the fact that we have a different view from them.
We hope that when you return from your group, ideas will still be in a state of movement and nothing will be fixed. Also, when you rejoin the circle we will ask you to sit in a different chair from the one you were in before, and not remain with the other members of your group.
|
6. No representatives after buzz groups
For buzz groups to work well, it is crucial that no-one sees themselves as bound to represent a group view. If there is any one phrase that is guaranteed to get us into bad habits, and that we try and outlaw from the very first time that people come back from buzz groups, it is the words “my group thought that ….”
We ask you, please, only to speak on your own behalf and not to speak on behalf of others who were in your group.
7. Clarity before consensus
We are sure that there will be much that we agree on during our discussions. We also suspect that there will be a lot about which we disagree, and we hope that we will all be relaxed about that. We believe that difference is a strength, and that we need to be truly open to disagreement to ensure that any consensus at the end is genuine.
If at any stage there is a choice between greater clarity, or some sort of woolly consensus, then our vote is for greater clarity.
8. Living in the moment
We will not use flip charts during plenary sessions, because they can easily encourage people to stick too rigidly to a declared position. We want everyone to feel that they can share a view, and then leave that behind them as the discussion moves on.
We want you to feel able to 'go with the flow'. As part of this process, we will ask that during our discussions people try and respond to the person who has just spoken, and avoid the temptation of saying “I want to respond to what someone said a couple of hours ago, and then I have five more points”.
Please try and 'live in the moment'. We usually find this works best if we all imagine that when people speak they are passing the baton to each other in debate. To come in on debate, you need to be prepared to take the baton from the previous speaker - rather than taking out of your pocket one that you have been keeping warm!
|
9. Avoiding acronyms
We hope that from the outset of the Forum we will all agree that we want to keep jargon down to a very minimum.
We also hope that we will try and avoid as many acronyms as possible. The danger with acronyms is that we can very quickly find ourselves forgetting the meaning of the words behind the letters.
That is why we want to go into our discussions expecting that the moment someone uses an acronym that doesn't command immediate recognition, others will dive in and ask them to describe the term in full. It really makes a huge difference if the first person to use a cumbersome acronym finds themselves stopped in their tracks, and asked what the letters stand for!
10. Letting ourselves be pushed
Quite some years ago we learnt that if brainstorming events are to be creative, they also need to be enjoyable. It is only when people are enjoying themselves that they let themselves be pushed, maybe quite a bit harder than they expected before embarking on the process.
Our ambition is that by the end of our time together we will have developed some challenging and focused propositions that point the way forward to how the UN might be re-invented in the coming years.
We think that it's worth pushing ourselves pretty hard to try and achieve that goal.
|
Links
Please click:
here for a link to the agenda for this Forum
here for a link to the page explaining the domestic arrangements at St. George's House, and
here for a link to the five Conventions of St. George's House, on which these groundrules are based.
updated on April 1 2003
|
|
|
|
|
