Those of us who have been practicing OD for a while know how much making a small change in the room can have a powerful effect on the conversations that take place. This was the moment the light bulb went on for me…It was 1997 and a client who had just brought the rights to deliver Stephen Covey’s 7 Habits of Highly Effective People approached me with a request. They did not have enough internal facilitators for the program and asked if I would get certified to be part of their delivery faculty. Next thing I knew I was out in Provo, Utah for a week long training certification. There were about 20 of us being taken through our paces by two Covey people and the layout for the week, looked like Figure 1 – kind of a “U” shape and “classroom” hybrid.
Figure 1
The week was progressing nicely when on Wednesday the Covey instructors announced, “Great news! Stephen is back in town and can come in for a :30 visit with us first thing Friday morning!” We were all excited to hear that. He held a “guru” status at this time in the country, so we were happy to have the opportunity to meet him. I remember as we were wrapping up on Thursday I was envisioning how this “conversation” with Stephen would go tomorrow especially if we left the room as is. I asked the Covey instructors before we broke for the day if we could arrange the room into something more informal. They asked me what I had in mind and I can’t remember what I told them other than “Don’t worry, I’ll take care of it.” They gave me a skeptical look, but said OK. The next morning I went into the room and took all the chairs from behind the tables and put them in a circle like you see in figure 2.
People started strolling in soon and most didn’t blink at the new set up, but a couple people came in and I noticed them standing outside the circle chatting and looking a little perplexed. When I walked over they asked, pointing at the circle, “Rich how’s this going to work?” I thought it was pretty obvious so I said “what do you mean?” and they replied, “well, he’s going to have his back to some people.” At first I was confused because I didn’t know what they meant, then I realized they thought the idea was for Stephen to stand inside the circle with us sitting around him like Jesus with his disciples. I laughed and said “No, he’s just going to sit with us.”
Fast forward to Stephen coming in and we sat down in our circle and had a very organic, emergent conversation that flowed freely around the circle. He left after :30 and we reset the room for the day. After getting back to our original design, we could all see the two Covey instructors looking very pleased. They turned to us and looking a little surprised said, “you know…that’s the most animated we’ve ever seen Stephen at one of these!”
Don’t underestimate the power a simple tweak to the room design can have on the quality of the conversation!
Rich
