Techniques & Strategies for Group Intervention

Corporate offices often employ a large group intervention to clarify and present goals for their company.

Many companies use large group interventions to evaluate and improve on their existing policies. They are meetings generally held with a consulting firm that will evaluate and present the company's current positions and practices while the participants in the intervention give input to help the company. There are many different formats for a group intervention, all of which are effective at helping a company meet its goals.

The Search Conference

The search conference is one of the most popular and oldest types of large group interventions. Used since the 1960s, the search conference is a democratic form of the large group intervention that encourages wide participation of the employees present to gain feedback and new ideas. The main idea behind the search conference is to have the organization's members take a more active role and more responsibility in the company's current situation. The primary identifying features of the search conference is that the meeting will only involve the main 25 to 30 people involved in the company's long-term goals. No external stakeholders are present, and the meeting focuses a large amount of time on action-planning.

Future-Search Conferences

Future-search conferences are concerned with finding an ideal goal for the company and figuring out how to steer the company into this future. This type of conference is a small, group-oriented conference. Usually eight groups of eight employees come together to figure out what they believe would be the best goals for the company and methods of achieving them.

The Conference Model

The conference model is a longer conference lasting four to six days, where the company's management meets to do a complete company overhaul. Usually the current and long-term goals are reevaluated, and they adjust the current business practices to meet the demands of the changing market.

Open-Space Meetings

The least structured type of large group intervention, the design of open-space meetings allow the participants to set the meeting agenda and goals. The group organizers put up large blank boards along the walls of the conference room, and the participants write the topics they wish to discuss on the various boards. Then everyone can move to whichever wall has the topic that they can contribute most to and set up discussion around the board. The weakness of these types of meetings is the open structure allows one person to take control and steer the meetings as he desires.

Appreciative Inquiry

Appreciative inquiry meetings focus on improving the potential for positive change in a company by discussing its strengths and gifts. This approach is different from the other methods of large group intervention as appreciative inquiry focuses strictly on positive aspects of the company while the others tend to focus on the problems and deficits.

References

• Large Scale Interventions: Leith's Guide to Large Group Intervention Methods
• San Fransisco State University: The OD Handbook