For what?
Conducting Purpose Listening in the form of a constellation can be a very helpful way of engaging in questioning as well as creating a perceptual space that bundles the rational intelligence of individuals or teams and enables collective intelligence. This can help to radically simplify purpose processes and quickly simplify and clarify complex issues through the images that emerge.
At first glance, purpose constellations give a voice to abstract concepts such as the evolutionary purpose, its mechanisms of action and the culture of an organization by representing them through proxies.
Complex situations are viewed from many perspectives in order to eliminate errors and make dynamics and blind spots visible. In this way, an organization can create clarity about its future potential through purpose constellations, develop effective levers to achieve this potential and thus enter the world of the future in flow. By placing elements in the room, their positions, including the purpose and stakeholders of the organization, become visible. This makes it possible to recognize areas of tension through proximity and distance as well as the feelings expressed by representatives. Proximity is harmonious, distance is dissonant.
Example
A software provider with around 200 employees has decided to undergo a cultural transformation in order to sharpen its customer focus as a result of a new business strategy and to remain an attractive employer for new talent.
In a workshop to find the intention for the transformation project, the employees define three areas of work: working on purpose to find a common future direction, clarifying roles and responsibilities in the collaboration between new locations and ensuring purpose-oriented implementation of projects through Objectives & Key Results (OKRs). Once the as-is survey of purpose and culture has been completed through story sourcing and story mapping, the transformation team decides on purpose listening in the form of a purpose constellation in order to determine a clear picture of the future for the organization on which the further transformation process can be based.
What matters
In order to successfully carry out a purpose constellation, it is important to pay attention to a few things:
Rule 1: Appoint a moderator with whom the group has trust in order to create a communicative space that also allows for critical or unpleasant dynamics.
Rule 2: During moderation, make sure that all elements have their say in each round and that a story is created from the order in which the elements are called out.
Rule 3: Listening to the elements takes place on the basis of questions such as: What is the physical perception of the element? How does the element describe its thoughts, feelings and actions? How does the element describe its relationship to other elements? Is it more of a pleasant or an unpleasant situation? What is missing? Is there anything else that needs to be considered?
Rule 4: In addition to calm and concentration, a clear allocation of roles and an agreement on communication are important:
- Representatives: Immerse yourself in your role; enter the room consciously.
- Observers: Listen to the insights that arise from observation.
- Speak in turn - following the respective call of the moderator.
- Try to remain neutral and suspend any judgments and evaluations that arise.
- Pay attention to the questions you ask yourself.
- Concentrate on what is important.
- Rely on the flow that arises.
Step by step
Step 1 - Planning the installation:
- Appoint a moderator for the constellation, who usually also takes charge of the further course of the following points.
- Always set a clear goal for the purpose constellation first. In our consulting process, setting goals in the form of questions has proven successful - for example in the form of a "How Might We" question (Stanford Crowd Research Collective 2021, hereinafter "HMW"), which simultaneously allows you to adopt a certain perspective on a situation. This type of question is about figuratively planting a seed from which the future can organically grow. The HMW question in the context of a purpose constellation can serve several purposes - for example, reinforcing positives, removing negatives, discovering the opposite or questioning assumptions.
- An example question could be: "How could we make the purpose of XY organization relevant to our daily work?"
- Define the elements required for the list. These can include both the people and organizations involved as well as abstract elements. Examples of frequently used elements for a purpose constellation are
- People: CEO, top management, employees, customers, journalists
- Organizations: Politics, society, NGOs
- Abstract elements: individual purpose, evolutionary purpose (possibly split into the elements of contribution and impact), cultural principles and values such as "customer focus" or "empathy", concrete challenges and the element "what is missing"
- Assign the roles of representative and observer - and discuss possible obstacles and stumbling blocks that are to be expected in the course of the constellation.
- Decide on the "open" (representatives and observers know which person represents which element) or "hidden" (only the moderator knows the distribution of the elements), "virtual" (via a video call in combination with a virtual whiteboard) or "on site".
Step 2
Conducting the constellation: The purpose of a purpose constellation is to
The aim is to gain clarity about the evolutionary purpose of an organization and the individuals belonging to it. In this book, we have already become familiar with Theory U as a process for describing evolution. This is very well suited to describing the process of such purpose listening. In the following, we recommend a three-step process based on the sensing, presencing and prototyping steps of Theory U:
- Room 1 (45 min.): In the first room, you recognize the current situation as it is. The elements position themselves as they perceive the current situation. This creates a we-space with relationships at eye level, in which the current tensions become visible.
- Room 2 (45 min.): Based on the constellation in Room 1, the elements are now asked to visualize the future potential: How does a future present itself in which there is a shared understanding of purpose, intention and working principles? The elements ask themselves what it takes to be the best possible whole - and how a journey towards this state could take place.
- Room 3 (45 min.): The subsequent prototyping room is about making the emergent future visible in building blocks. We have had good experience with integrating this creative phase directly into a constellation sprint and supporting it with ideation methods. You can find suitable methods for this in the lean startup framework (Ries 2014), for example.
Step 3
Review (30 min.): Conclude with a reflection: What went well in the purpose constellation? What did not go well? What will we do differently next time?
Framework
Duration: approx. 2 - 3 hours, depending on the preparation of the session (please bring
Work timeboxing for the three setup steps)
Format: virtual (e.g. working together on a text document during a video conference) or in person in a suitable room
Participants: Team of at least 6 - 8 members (no upper limit) in order to distribute the elements sensibly among representatives
You can find more information on this and other tools for overcoming business challenges with communicative means in the book
