THOUGHTstream

THOUGHTstream is a facilitated online process that uses Crowd Sourcing and Structured Dialogue to help leaders, teams and groups collaboratively answer questions and find solutions.

The technology replicates the process that is often used to reach decisions and find solutions in a face to face meeting. The difference is that the process, when moved online, removes many of the barriers that can block effective and timely outcomes.

With THOUGHTstream, group members can work on their own time and pace from the comfort of their own homes or offices. The obvious advantage of this is that travel costs are eliminated. The less obvious but perhaps more important advantage has to do with human nature.

When you bring a group of people together they bring with them, in addition to their perspective and knowledge, their own personal set of social behaviours. We expect this, indeed it’s one of the best things about getting together in a group. We humans like to socialize, to connect, to make eye contact, to share experiences, to have our voices heard. The challenge with this very human social behaviour is that it often distracts from the business of making decisions and finding solutions.

In any group you will find introverts and extroverts. You will find those with more power and those with less power. You will find those who process information quickly and those who need time to reflect. That is the nature of a group and it’s a good thing. Diversity is critical to the health of species and the health and performance of a group.  In face to face groups the extroverts, the folks with power, the ones that process quickly tend to dominate. The challenge with that is that the best decision, the best solutions quite often lay at the edges, in the minds of the introverts, the outliers,  the less powerful, the reflective folks who may need more time to think outside of the box.

THOUGHTstream allows the voices, ideas and innovative thinking to bubble up regardless of the personality of the group member. In a way it’s like an equalizer. The technology allows all ideas to be heard equally so that it is the pure idea rather than the personality that is at the forefront.

Ah, but what of collaboration you say? The opportunity for collaborative group process also resides within the THOUGHTstream process. The brilliance is that the collaboration occurs after individuals have mined their own internal thoughts and selected their own ideas without the noise that can block original thought.

To clarify this process let’s take an example “problem” and see how it might play out using THOUGHTstream. Let’s say that your group has to decide on a slightly contentious initiative. For the purposes of this example we’ll say that you are a leadership group within a non-profit organization and you have an opportunity to begin a harm reduction program. The funding you have received can be used for a number of harm reduction related initiatives leaving the door open to multiple avenues. Within your group you have people who are very much pro harm reduction measures that include things like providing clean syringes to substance abusing clients. You also have within your group people who are supportive of harm reduction but see some forms as enabling and therefore harmful. As the group leader you need the group to come to a decision that all the members can buy into. Your first step, in working with your ThoughtStream facilitator is to clearly define the problem you are seeking a solution to.

You define the problem and then reframe it into a clear and targeted question. You know that as you work through this initial question, other questions may emerge and that’s ok because with ThoughtStream you can add new questions at any point.

Question # 1 – How can we make the best possible use of our harm reduction funding?

In preparing your question you provide your facilitator with some background information that provides context for the question along with information about applicable policy and legislation and specifics about how the funding can and cannot be used. Your facilitator places this information in a section on the ThoughtStream platform called Shared Research.

When your group members are initially invited into the ThoughtStream online platform they will have access to three sections:

The Question - How can we make the best possible use of our harm reduction funding?

Shared Research – Information that adds context and need to know items.

My Research – A section that group members can use to collect their own research and ideas about the question. Group members can only view their own My Research area.

After an agreed upon period of time group members will be asked to Refine their thoughts and ideas. At this point they will be able to access the next section called, you guessed it – Refine.

In this section group members will post their succinct Points that represent their best answer to the question and provide Details to support their views. Group members can have several points with multiple Details to support their Point. For example:

The Question – How can we make the best possible use of our harm reduction funding?

Point 1: Set up a mobile needle exchange

Detail 1: Allows us to reach more people.

Detail 2: Good way to begin relationship with clients.

Detail 3: We already have van so $ can go to staffing.

Detail 4: Needle exchange clients are underserved by our agency.

As group members are completing this time-framed step the facilitator has the opportunity to check in with them individually to make sure people are on track. This is one of the key advantages of using

ThoughtStream as a facilitated process; no one gets swept downstream. The facilitator is there to guide the process.

Once the group has completed this section they are ready to Share their Points and Details.

It should be noted that you and the facilitator and in some cases the group members themselves can choose to have the group members identified by name or simply as a number. In some cases the added anonymity of not being identifiable can be a benefit. Points and Details are limited to 75 characters.

There are two ways to Share. The Read Mode can be used for groups that want or need to work either asynchronously (on their own time) or anonymously. For groups that are willing and able a conference call, whiteboard session or even a face to face session can be set up and the Slide Show Mode can be used. Both the Slide Show and Read Mode display the Points and Details posted by the group members.

The next step is to Converge the Points and Details. To converge is to bring together. In the ThoughtStream process, this facilitator guided activity works like affinity charting. From the Points and Details themes are grouped together, similar items combined and outliers incorporated so that no idea is lost. Participants can be involved to varying extents and as with the last section this exercise can take place at a distance, synchronously or asynchronously or face to face. What emerges through this visual, tactile and sense-making process is a field of possible solutions some of which may have never been presented using traditional means.

The next and final step is to Choose. This is done by rating the emergent solutions. There are a number of ways to boundary the voting so that people cannot just choose their own ideas. The online interface used in ThoughtStream makes this often messy and complex step clear and easy.

Although this is the last step, ThoughtStream is not finished. The final and possibly the best part of the entire process (because it has been done online) can now be automatically generated into a formal, sharable, printable, report. A report that accurately captures all of the salient data and the outcomes from people involved (if names were used) to the question, and including the points shared, the possible solutions and finally the collaboratively arrived upon final solution. How cool is that?

For a look at the theory behind THOUGHstream you can check out my blog post and go to the THOUGHTteam blog for case studies, more theories and other cool stuff.

For another view and more thorough history of ThoughtStream development see Dave MacLeod’s blog. And of course there is the THOUGHTstream site itself.