Journey to Kinderland - Setting the Creative and Innovative Mindset

There were challenges running the MINDEF Innovation Game between 2002 to 2006. One of these was the organisation of workshops for large groups (more than 50 participants). With the configuration of 2 facilitators to every 5 players, I had to muster 10 facilitators to run an event for 50 players in the early days when the game was introduced into the organisation.

Subsequently, one of the players was made to helm the role of the 2nd facilitator but this arrangement affected that player's learning cycle. In the later years, I had the players trained in the mechanisms of the game so that they run the game with me and in their sub-units but there were reservations about their effectiveness in debriefing their participants.

Having facilitators at the table continued to be problematic (The mechanisms of the game could have been changed since I left MINDEF in Feb 2007 and these historical legacies may no longer impact it.)

From the lessons learnt from those few years of helming the game for more than 1,000 participants from MINDEF and many other public sector organisations, like MOE and MinLaw, it dawn on me that creating another game with simlar characteristics may not be viable for the private sector. I found another approach, in June 2007, that gets me out of this constraint of balancing learning effectiveness and organising efficiency.

Takeaways from Journey to KinderlandTM

Journey to KinderlandTM is a game, which consists of a series of 9 activities (to be expanded to 20 in the future), that provides players a new way of exploring their own personal and interpersonal barriers, in an experiential way, to creativity and innovation . The activities open a window into their subconscious mind and see how it operates. The game provides a language that helps them distinct and catches the triggers that control their thinking and behaviours that have prevented them from fully realising their personal potentials.

I had used 4 of the 9 activities with LTA (2007 & 2008), NACLI (2007) and recently with MICA (2008). The outcomes have been very encouraging. The mechanisms of these activities have proven to work. Besides their abilities to consistantly evoke the same behaviours sets, deem necessary as opportunities for the debrief after the game, they also generate the same category of deep learning amongst the players. Because each activity is self contained, players enjoyed the activity without the intervention from the facilitator until during the debrief period. As learning is modularised, the introduction and acquisition of the language is specific and faster although the debriefs have to be conducted by a skilled and experience faciltiator. Still. this is a breakthrough from the confines of the original innovation game.

The Happy Family Game

One of these activities is the Happy Family Game, which is a card-based exercise where participants learn about how we deal with the known and unknown.

2 x 2 Grid of Knowns and Unknowns

Throught the card-based exercise, participants learn that:

We Pretend We Know It All But Really We Don't

We often see the Future seen as a continuation from the Past. From this perspective, many of us attempt to deal with the future by strategising and planning as if we already know how the Future will unfold.

However, all known futures are actually hindsights. Those futures that we know before their occurrence are just predictions. Honestly, we are clueless most of the time. The reality is that all events in the world could be grouped into 4 different categories and the future is unknown to us. It requires a set of strategies and behaviors, which is different from those we are using now, to deal with it effectively.

Understanding these can give us the freedom to create the breakthroughs in our ideas and actions……

Another exercise conducted at the workshop is the Old Macdonald Sing-along. Participants learn that there is:

Meaning Making Machines

More than a Conversation in a Conversation

Unaware to us, as we speak to someone, we are in more than a conversation. In fact, there are five other conversations taking place at the same time. Conversations that we are not even consciously aware of.

What we are present to in any conversation are those things we can hear and see. However, there is also this conversation that only we can hear. Sometimes, we even verbalise and act out some part of it. This is the world of the internal conversation. This is the conversation of 'yes' or 'no', 'should' or 'shouldn't,', 'right' or 'wrong', 'whys', 'cannot be?!' and many more. This is a conversation of evaluation and decision making. This is the conversation where meaning are being made. This conversation is capable of stoping us from doing something.

The scary part of this conversation is that it is the loudest.

This acticle was 1st written on 6 Nov 2007 and updated on 14 May & 23 Oct 2008.

Copyright 2008. Anthony Mok. All Rights Reserved.

The Facilitation Star & Facilitation Competency Wheel

Towards the middle of 2005, I decided that we need a vibrant community of facilitators to sustain the culture of innovation in my previous organisation.

The timing for its formation was good as there was a urge in the organisation to move away from the efficient way of reaching agreements to that of the effective way of consensus building. Also, there was a growing recognition that the wisdom in the organisation is in the crowd and the efficient way of doing things has gotten in the way.

We attracted only 14 people at the 1st MINDEF Facilitators' Forum (MFF) on 16 September 2005. As the concept of facilitation was very new at that time, it became apparent to me that to grow the community I need to invest in the education, training and development of facilitators. Subsequently, this led to the introduction of the MFF Developmental Framework at the 30th of November 2005's MFF Gathering.

The years I spent leading the movement has provided me invaluable insights into how the art and science of facilitation could be imparted. The 5 points of The Facilitation StarTM represents the body of knowledge I have accumulated from MINDEF on developing facilitators.



The star is a structured process that could helps current and aspiring facilitators gain mastery over their trade. The star helps them to:

• Understand the characteristics of a facilitator and the nature of facilitation, and to differentiate this role from those of teachers, trainers, coaches, advisors, and consultants.
  
• Uncover the needs of the client who initiated the facilitated session and the needs of those participating in the session.
  
• Apply the above information to design effective group processes that could effectively to Manage the dynamics of goup in conversation, Facilitate the conversations, and Guide the group towards consensus.
  
• Use the skills of facilitation to create a sustainable environment for participation during the conversation.
  
• Deliver the design of the session to the group to enable its participants to create the intended outcome. Please click on this icon for the sample of the design template and the click on this icon for the Programme Run-sheet.

After two years of effort (and literally, of sweat), the membership of the community grew from a mere 14 to 200, and I have hosted 70 participants at some of the gatherings.

I am also very happy that some large departments have adopted the framework as their own, which shows the recognition of facilitators as champions of innovation in organisations.

The Facilitation Competency WheelTM

To begin cultivating and growing our facilitation capability and capacity, it is always good to know our current competency in facilitation.

The Facilitation Competency WheelTM is a self-assessment tool where facilitators and potential facilitators score 14 different statements against a 4-point scale onto the wheel below to determine his/her facilitation competency.

Understanding the Wheel

Facilitation is divided into the science and art of facilitation. In the science of facilitation, the focus is in the processes, methodologies and tools used in facilitating engagements. For the art of facilitation, the key concern is keeping the negative aspects of group dynamics out from the conversations at the engagements.

The wheel provides three important sets of information on the competency level of the facilitator:

Balance - It shows whether the facilitator is strong in the art or in the science of facilitation, and therefore suggests the broad areas he/she should next develop.

Focus – It provides information on the specific strengths to leverage on and weaknesses to avoid, which allows the facilitator to accurately pin-point his/her training needs and identify the most appropriate training programmes that could address these needs.

Competence – Finally, the Wheel also informs of the facilitator’s competency level. The lower the current competency is the greater the opportunity for growth in that area for the facilitator.

Both the Star and Wheel has been used in several organisations since 2007. These include Ministry of Education's Teacher Network and Ong Teng Cheong Institute of Labour Studies.

This article was first written in June 2007 and subsequently updated in April, September & December 2008.

Copyright 2007 and 2008. Anthony Mok. All Rights Reserved.

The Big Splash – Diving into the Realms of Entrepreneurship

There have been calls for me to develop an approach to help organisation produce entrepreneurs. I decided to create The Big SplashTM. It has five components that touches, moves and inspires individuals to:

• Adopt positive mindsets for being creative, innovative and enterprising
• Acquire the competency and capacity to do well as an entrepreneur
• Apply their knowledge and skills around creative ideas and innovations
• Accept the responsibility of the entrepreneur by bringing the benefits of the innovation to the public

The Big SplashTM is designed to allow participants:

• Learn the skills by doing their projects
• Gain the competency for creating other innovations
• Acquire the capacity to deal with the unexpected

The process of The Big SplashTM is described in the following ways:

While I did not have the opportunity to introduce Big SplashTM in my previous organisation, but I was lucky to bring some expects of the process into the organisation. These include ThinkInnovate, Entrepeneur Dive, and Innovation Jam between 2004 to 2006.

Copyright 2007. Anthony Mok. All Rights Reserved.