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A small group of Practitioners convened for this Best Practice event which took the usual format, with a mix of hands-on and presentation contributions from all participants, each followed by a review session in which reflections on the inputs were discussed in plenary.There follows a summary of the procedings.

Programme Introduction: Dan Varney
Greater LVT: John Varney
SME Coaching: Peter Cruikshanks
Business Process Mapping: Leigh Foster
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Materials and Product Development: Dan Varney
Community Consultation: Yvonne Deane
Rough out a book in 20 minutes: Anthony Blake
Using LVT in the NHS and DOH to shape policy and influence funding: Ray Turner
Introducing LVT: – 2 minute spiels

Greater LVT – John Varney
LVT in the sense of using MagNotes and boards need only occupy a fraction of a development programme. In that sense, we see it fitting into a greater whole. But this greater whole has the same structure as LVT.

John outlined his model of structured process in nine points – an enneagram – based on a triangle of Need-Leadership-Commitment. He related that to a workshop process with LVT when the triangle becomes Ready-Willing-Able. He expressed the steps in sequence:
1. Set the tone
2. Clarify the challenge
3. Ready-mutual engagement
4. Generate possibilities
5. Optimise possibilities
6. Willing – shared commitment
7. Explore possible strategies
8. Decide to act
9. Able – field of action

There is a crucial transition between 4 and 5 which John called ‘letting go’. In terms of the five stage of LVT this marks the transition between Gather and Organise on the one hand and Integrate and Realise on the other. John finished by outlining the general characteristics of the five stages.

Reflections
The ready, willing and able view makes sense.
An effective process gives people chance to breath
We can bring into the picture the dynamics between individuals and groups The actual media used (e.g. MagNotes, photographs, documents) develop through the process and influence it Always wise to look at needs/challenges before looking for solutions – this is Focus
Pre-work determines the quality of the outcomes
Often people are very happy to get to 4, half-way, maybe the rest is only for a more able self-selected group

SME COACHING – Peter Cruikshanks
Peter took us through a few case studies of using LVT in his coaching work. He described how his clients have little or no experience or skill in thinking together and ‘ache’ for:
Clarity
Structure
Making Sense
Getting hold of Purpose
Bringing many points of view together - just the things that LVT offers help with.

His first case study was of two directors who had never done any brainstorming or used post-its, held different views and had no business plan. Peter was able to map out their situation with them via LVT.

His second was of a highly stressed director who had nobody to talk to and was thinking of getting out of the business. LVT helped him get it out of his head and make it possible for him to cope.A manager and one of his team sampled the process and got to a ‘ring’ that made sense to them.

In another example three different businesses came together to produce a five-step cycle for their shared enterprise.

Summary
•SME owners ache for structure and clarity
•A simple LVT approach can help significantly
•"just dump my brain down and make sense by clustering and linking"
•They recognise the power of multiple viewpoints coming out through dialogue

Reflections
Seeing thinking - making thinking visible is a great step forward
Externalisation is a way of relieving stress
LVT creates a ‘safe space' for both client and facilitator
Challenge to create a safe space to go beyond simplicity
We have to recognise that many people have had no experience of any thinking technique
LVT enables writing to underpin and gave shape to talking
LVT enables the facilitator to be impartial - different from a consultant who gives ideas
Cycles can be introduced via the theme of being the opposite to ‘vicious cycles'

Business Process Mapping - Leigh Foster
Leigh outlined who his clients were, with the key parameters that they had a CEO was unsure of herself and autocratic and a business that lacked sales abilities. He saw three main issues:
•How to make the players see the need to change
•How to make the players make the changes, they don't know they need
•Initiate change without ‘upsetting' the team dynamic
He used Harley Lovegrove's Nine Steps in Making a Difference (similar to John's enneagram). He described how he took the group through the stages but ended with using the ‘swim-lanes' format to lay out actions as the final piece.

Summary
Stage #1 - Focus - Difficulty in maintaining focus - Very easy to digress into too many areas of complexity
Stage #2 - Gather - Getting balance right between owner / senior people and "minions"
Even where the issue is clearly demonstrated, it might not be the correct solution..........
E.g. Distribution channel - its always worked Ok
Internal politics of the business?? I'm the boss.....
Stage #3 - Organise / Understand - Very difficult to get MOM clusters identified as significant ‘Titles'
Stage #4 - Action - Needed to revert to Swim lane charts to clarify who does what when....

Reflections
Clients often do not recognise the need for paid preparation before an event.
Capture of outcomes is most important to demonstrate learning to client.
Example of invoicing for three visits - before, during and after
The form of the outcome should be suited to the client - the swim-lanes worked for this one
Writing of MMs: Need to apply rigour, Put an example up to demonstrate difference from post-it exercises, admit to bad writing to get people to write them, Discipline of points up or down helps requirement of readability and then clarity of meaning.
Writing of titles: Should be response to the (focus) question, Is it a label?, Abstract the meaning from the contents, Needs to be interesting and add value, Needs to be useful to other people or later on.

Materials & Product Development - Dan Varney

Dan showed round the various magnetic and magnetic receptive materials he is working with to develop bespoke products for clients and which have the potential to enable people to set up the equivalent of boards at any location. He showed slides of his ‘Thinking Walls' installations and the artistic application commissioned for a Network Rail project with special shapes that children could put one on top another to create their own designs.

Community Consultation - Yvonne Deane
Yvonne outlined her background and introduced the range of applications she had made of LVT - in small, medium and large groups. She described her work on the Spaceshaper programme where local people and professionals come together to look at the development of public spaces.

Workshop outline
•Walkabout
•Spaceshaper questionnaire
•Lunch (data entry!)
•Questionnaire feedback
•Poster competition
•LVT - Priorities for change

Great things about LVT
•Flexibility
•Combines easily with other techniques
•Enabling - positive experience
•Safe space
•Participants are the experts!

Downside??
•Its not always used to the full
•There's always a naughty table
•Other people think its easy

Reflections
The participants are the experts and the facilitator does not need to have knowledge of the domain
Yvonne's example showed ways of helping participants build up towards the LVT process by generating experiences they could use in Gathering MMs: physical -walking about in the spaces; cognitive - analyzing impressions; emotional - expressing hopes and visions
It was noted that people find the process so easy they tend to undervalue it. No answers were forthcoming
The process is by its nature suited to help groups with linguistic and cultural diversity and there are ways for people to be mutually supportive in using it

Rough out a book in 20 minutes - Anthony Blake
A useful way of doing the stage Integrate is to think of it in terms of sketching out a book or article - as a composition. This is a different approach to starting from engineering and systems. Everyone knows stories.

The five stages of LVT are usually approached as from Focus to Realise, but this can be reversed and we can start from the other end and ‘go backwards'.

The five stages are integral aspects of one whole action and is divided into separate parts particularly for when different people have to work together. The ‘thinking circuit' is the repetitive cycle of thinking that LVT seeks to break up and transform.

A book has an author and this is usually one person, or ‘authority'. This is ‘Realise' starting from the other way.
Starting from Integrate as a composition we think of a Title and then of Topics. Topics are the main chunks of meaning we want to put together, or subjects we want to use to express what we want to say. The provisional title was something like ‘Coping with Life in the 21st Century'. The Best Practice Group offered suggestions for Topics. Some were put to one side as being of lesser ‘size' to others to be used later. Anthony suggested that twelve Topics would be covenient for the process. The resultant set included Climate Change, Religion & Politics, Fate of the Biosphere, Thinking, Resources, and so on. In this approach, it does not matter that the titles used are single words or simple phrases because they are going to be fleshed out later.
The twelve Topics were arranged in two columns.

The essential thing about a text is that it should flow and in a consistent way.

The Topics can be taken as Chapters of the book, or sections of the article.
The group started with the beginning but then jumped to the end. In writing a book you proceed according to where you want to get to. Then ensued a period of adjustment, with Topics being moved around to (a) make for the best sequence (b) begin and end with the best Topics for their role. Anthony summarised some of the ensuing steps we did not have time for:
Transitions - what leads from one Topic to another
Betweens - what binds Topics together - major ideas or examples linking the two sides of the ‘argument'
Content - using discarded material as content
Follow up - going from a Topic to its content and then to the specific things you will be asserting in the book which you will have to justify and reference (find the references, etc.) which is to go backwards in the five stages
Retitling the book - one suggestion was ‘Surviving Armageddon' - the title is the latch which holds beginning and end together.
Grasping the critical idea that links the two sides (between 6 and 7) - the deep belief, the critical hypothesis - what is called the turn in the narrative.
The arrangement of the twelve becomes a flexible framework for organising your writing. The formats enable you to work out fractal patterns in the text.
There are various formats besides the two-column approach such as:

One chooses the one which best suits your approach. The diagrams are shown in this way to suggest the basic LVT sequence F-G-O-I-R and imply it might be repeated at different scales.

Using the LVT process with Key Decision makers in the NHS and DOH to shape policy and influence funding - Ray Turner
Ray expalined how, in December 2007 he had used LVT to facilitate key decision makers from the NHS and DOH who had come together to a meeting chaired by Professor Nick Bosenquet from Imperial College London and Director of Reform, at the RCM (Royal Society of Medicine) London.

The meeting was judged by all who attended to have been a great success with recommendations and a paper produced for the DOH by Professor Bosenquet, the meeting was influential in the decision making process for the Cervical Cancer vaccination programme which has since been rolled out in the UK via a schools programme, which was one of the key recommendations from the meeting. Other key recommendations from the meeting have also been taken on board.

LVT was new to all those who attended the original meeting but has subsequently been used successfully in other similar type meetings at this level. Ray successfully marries LVT with an adaptation of TRIZ and cited a wonderful article on LVT and TRIZ by Anthony Blake for anyone wanting further information on the topic. See Making Knowledge Tangible and also part 5 of the comparative Study - TRIZ.

From the success of the meeting on Cervical Cancer Ray has now been asked to put together a similar meeting looking at the challenges and issues ahead for Childhood Leukaemia. As before, this project will produce a paper and recommendations for the DOH. Ray will be working closely with Imperial College London and the Reform Group on this project in 2010.

From Rays experience using LVT over many years he believes passionately that people enjoy the process because it assists them to quickly see and grasp a clearer understanding of the thinking within the group as that thinking takes place, and the process enables them to make clear recommendations that all involved can agree on quickly.

Reflections
• Process already rapidly produces effective outputs
• Can the same process be used in a different context?
• Don't accept No
• I am driven by passion
• People enjoy the process

Quick intros to LVT

Way to bring sense, structure, clarity to the stuff in your head

Has diverse applications, is visual and transparent, provides a safe place, produces commitment to shared outcomes

New and exciting and involves people

Solution for strategic planning

Depends on the context and whom you are talking to

Has such a diverse range of applications that one pithy quote won't work