Ritual Dissent Method

The basic approach involves one spokesperson of each group presenting his idea or plan to another group, which will listen to him in silence. After the presentation, the spokesperson turns his chair facing the back to the audience in order to avoid any eye contact, and listen in silence while the group critically attacks (dissent) or provide alternatives (assent). The approach of not facing the audience de-personalizes any criticism so that the meaning of the attack is not a personal one to the presenter, but is critically to refine the proposal.

Step by Step

1. Ask each group to seat at round tables or circle of chairs. The tables or chairs should be put in place to enable groups to move to the next table in a clockwise or anti-clockwise mode.
2. Ask the groups to work in parallel on selected issues. A complex problem should be handled by small safe-fail experiments, and a complicated one by detailed analysis and expertise.
3. Invite each group to appoint a spokesperson. The prerequisite to be a spokesperson is to have “a resilient and robust personality and not bear a grudge”. A time deadline is set to prepare the presentation (minimum 5 minutes).
4. Stop the work three minutes before the deadline and inform the spokesperson that he will have three minutes to present his idea. At this stage, resist any temptation to make the process a surprise which would be a serious breach of ethics.
5. Request the spokesperson from each group to stand up at the end of the deadline. Don’t allow them to move until one person of each group stood up.
6. Tell each spokesperson to move to the next table in a clockwise direction and take the vacant seat without saying or doing anything before further instructions.
7. Let start the presentation of the spokesperson who will be presenting for about three minutes. He must present his ideas to the panel which receives the proposal in total silence (listening silently without eye contact should increase the attention). At the end of the presentation, the spokesperson turns his chair around so that his back is to the panel, and listens without saying anything.
8. Invite the group to replay and attack the ideas with full and complete verve (dissent) or come up with better ideas or improvements (assent). The review panel is instructed to play the part of the disenchanted and cynical user who will harshly criticize a good idea without being necessarily fair or reasonable. Ideas emerging from this process are often more resilient than other consensus based techniques.
9. Ask the spokesperson, once the panel finished to replicate, to leave to a central area away from the group. This is an important recent addition to the method: if the spokesperson talks with the group the learning would risk to be compromised. Once all the groups finished their replays, send the spokesperson back to his group to talk about what they have learnt.
10. Repeat the cycle as many times you want (new spokesperson with different group). Eventual new iterations could lead to multiple perspectives and refine the final outcomes.

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