Hive Health

Last night a group of us headed back to the Dana centre to fill our brains with some more geek fulled knowledge. The talk this time was a bit closer to our hearts looking at how far patient empowerment and knowledge can be pushed and with what consequences.

The talk entitled ‘My beautiful genome’ explored the science behind genetic testing and its future roll out to the general population, and looked at the possible ethical and practical consequences of doing so.

Lorna Frank, the author of ‘My beautiful genome’ discussed her experiences getting her genome sequenced and learning the risk factors that her genetic profile predisposes her to. She likened the genetic revolution to that of the PC revolution – something that will take ours and the next generations by storm and become so widely accessible that in her view all individuals will be armed with their genetic profile.

But what are the consequences of this? Ethically is it right to be informing patients that they are predisposed to diseases like Alzheimer’s without firstly being able to directly predict that they will actually develop the disease and in full knowledge that currently there is no cure or possibility to prevent onset? Does this lead to greater anxiety, potentially lower quality of life and ultimately greater pressures on the medical system as patients armed with greater knowledge appear at far greater frequency in front of their GP? Lorna’s view was no and that the current studies underway are showing no negative impact of this nature. I would question the bias of the sample at the moment with only those truly interested and well informed individuals being tested. If the genetic revolution does explode in the way predicted then I think there would need to be a far more robust infrastructure of pre and post patient counselling as well as education and information on what the results actually mean – they do not correlate to a direct prediction and as such the general population would need to have their expectations managed or we would have an entire host of terrified hypochondriacs on our hands!

However it did raise a load of interesting questions and is something that once the science evolves a bit further could be quite tempting. Most interesting to me was the more psychological side of things – the thought that some of my more annoying personality traits maybe down to my genetic profile and so ‘not my fault!’ It would re-open the discussion of nature versus nurture – with the potential that far more of our personalities than we think are actually outside of our control.

Either way a fascinating debate and one that will only become more heated as the technology and availability of these tests increases.

We come into contact with situations where we are required to facilitate all of the time. Be that in amongst friends, family environments, in social situations or in relationships.

In our industry facilitation more traditionally appears in a variety of guises from brainstorms, workshop sessions and client meetings to advisory boards and research.

I have been recently trying to work out if there are any simple rules that we can follow to help us be better facilitators on a daily basis.

My investigations have involved lots of reading, a fair bit of observing and then some discussions with internal teams.
After all this, in truth I think there’s a lot to be said for taking each situation as it comes, breaking down the problem and then approaching facilitation on a task by task basis. The way you facilitate varies so much depending on the people in the room, the objective of the meeting and what you want to facilitate. The objectives may be generating innovative or creative ideas through to gaining insights and ensuring a balanced and honest view from a group of individuals.

However this leads me fairly neatly to the first and probably most fundamental rule of facilitation: You need to think about what you want to get out of whatever session it is and then what the people you are facilitating might want – can you meet all objectives, who is going to steer things off course and why and how will you get back on track. Think about all the people in the room – what are their hopes, concerns and hang-ups. How do they like to be spoken to? What is their relationship to each other (honestly).

While the premise on which you may be facilitating will vary I have tried to break down a few simple guiding principles that allow us to take each problem and ensure a consistent and hopefully successful approach so here goes:

1. Clearly recognise and define your objectives and identify the team roles and structure.
2. Understand who is in the room and therefore the dynamic of the group your are facilitating – this is crucial to allow you to adapt to individual styles, personalities and attitudes
3. Create a positive environment. Allow a forum where ideas can flow freely and discussions are encouraged – ‘if it’s worth thinking it’s worth saying’ – this will require a fair bit of prep work. Look at the room you are in, the way you’re planning on running the session, where people are sat and ways of maintaining the energy levels throughout the meeting. You need to know what you are facilitating – how to cut people short nicely and park rubbish ideas!
4. Once in the meeting be neutral, flexible and adaptive. The art of a good facilitator lies in the ability to read peoples expressions, emotions and body language and guide the meeting in a positive direction
5. Be engaged and confident yourself but be very careful of learning too. This depends on your specific role in the meeting, be sure you understand if you are you a contributor and facilitator, or there specifically to facilitate the group. You need to make sure you listen and respond but if you need to be ‘in the moment’ and contributing you have a different job on your hands
6. Don’t allow others to dominate the discussion or be dismissive of others questions or views – be aware of individuals who are not as vocal or expressive and ensure they feel confident and encouraged to contribute it is often good to have an emergency ‘bail out’ route in your head – e.g. who can you turn to for support in the room in the event of a runaway train, who can you get to reinforce or re-explain for you?
7. Intervene thoughtfully, promote enquiry and steer the conversation if it is wavering of track
8. Finally, drive commitment of ideas or opinions. Complement and acknowledge individuals by referring or building on their initial thoughts. Don’t close the discussion or an idea down.

I think the best summary of this I could find was from Knowles, albeit specifically with reference to learning: ‘establish the right climate, create a mechanism for mutual planning, diagnose needs for learning, formulate objectives to satisfy these needs, design a pattern of learning experiences, conduct these with suitable techniques and materials, evaluate outcomes and rediagnose needs.

However whilst the rules provide a good benchmark just from observing a load of situations I think the best facilitators grow with experience, learn from others and never get static. Taking notes of the good bad and ugly in meetings, asking how others approach things and sharing views and opinions can go a long way to growing us into wonderful facilitators.

Hive now has a geek squad, a hard core of nerds who seek out science in its purest form. When we aren’t sawing golf balls in half in the office kitchen, we’re usually at the Dana Centre. Check it out, it’s part of the Science Museum and last night we arrived to partake in a series of lectures on the future of science.

We found out that the lectures were to be given in the Pecha Kucha style. Essentially there would be 10 different talks, each around 6 minutes along, directed by a slide show over which the speaker had no control. First was a talk on cosmology from a Cambridge guy who became increasingly attractive over the minutes as he wowed us with pictures of galaxies and planets.

He was very quickly followed by a lady from Bristol who was looking at science in story writing. This one we struggled to take seriously – her story of The Painter and the Physicist didn’t touch at all on the richness of the art-science mix.

The evening unveiled great talks on everything from CERN and the Large Hadron Collider to the future of cognitive neurology. My personal favourite was around stem cell research in blindness. It was a fascinating event, but it would have been good to hear from fewer speakers for longer to really get a feel of their area of specialism.

That said, our geeky brains are refueled. We have a further trip planned for the Horror in Dreams talk on the 9^th March. Let us know if you fancy it.

Every now and then we head out to see an individual talk about some mildly relevant subject. Last night – saw us be invited to Super Contemporary and a few hours with Wayne Hemingway – talking to 50 of us about design, inspiration, and life.

The Design Museum has joined forces with Beefeater 24, to bring a series of talks and gin to celebrate the fearlessly progressive spirit of London’s greatest creative minds, past and present. We were lucky enough to be invited along. Read more about Wayne here.  

Wayne was pretty insistent that us in the creative world;

1.  Stick to our guns and hold on to our principles despite the risk of missing out on short term cash. Do what you want to do, not what you need to do. 
2. Know our customer as well as we can. Research them, be with them, and understand them. For God’s sakes don’t hide in the office. See the white of their eyes. 
3. Understand that environments need to be built that fosters creativity. Gives space to make mistakes. Let the kids do it their way. Expect anyone to be able to do anything, give them the freedom to conclude themselves.
4. Champion the evolution. Humans instinctively want something better. They know when they are making do, OK is not a natural human state. But only very few ‘intolerants’ make a difference and change it. So be one.

At no time did regulatory, PI, sales aids or brand planning feature. But the 2 hours was so valuable and a real delight. How can this be beaten? Well – the next one sees us with Paul Smith. We have a couple of tickets spare – shout if you want to come along –  beapart@hivehealth.com.