Enough! Let’s Move On!

I recently stumbled upon several Elmo figures while ordering all my workshop material. For years, these figures were useful companions during our training and workshops.

Whenever a discussion seemed to have lost value for the entire group, we would throw the Elmo doll as a signal to move on. Participants could also use Elmo amongst each other and even against us! 😳

I forgot I possessed these Elmo dolls because I hadn’t used them for a long time. 🤷‍♀️

While thinking about it, I noticed that the moment I started using Liberating Structures, the need for Elmo disappeared. Liberating Structures already prevent participants (or trainers/facilitators) from going on and on and on… 🤔

Exploring a topic in-depth is possible, but throwing the Elmo figure is optional due to the nature of Liberating Structures. The use of short timeboxes ⏰ already encourages participants to move on. You can always extend the timebox or do another round, but it’s often unnecessary.

Also, you rarely have group discussions from the start. Participants build up their conversations from individual thinking first, towards small groups, and sometimes big insights are shared with everyone. Because everyone already had the opportunity to contribute, there’s no need for a big (meaningless) group discussion.

While I no longer use Elmo in training & workshops, I often feel the urge to throw the doll in online debates. Especially if there’s another SAFe rant, clickbait-meme, or “please-like-my-poll”-poll” 🙄

So, whenever you need to use Elmo, ask yourself how you could have structured the conversation differently. What could have prevented the need for Elmo? 🤔

Anyhow, I just wanted to share some thoughts triggered by Elmo.

Enough!
Let’s move on!

😄