The Collective Power Playbook

The Epitaph

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by

fabrider
in ,

This play is currently in development. Please use the Google Doc version for Comments/Feedback.

Summary

This exercise will get team members to collaborate on a ‘vision of success’ for their combined effort. 

Outcomes

Strengthened trust and cohesion between team members.  Alignment on goals.  

Objectives of the play

Creation of an articulation of a shared vision of success, which can be used for the development of strategy and starter dough for a theory of change

Original Source

Adapted from Keystone Accountability’s IPAL Guide 2: Developing a Theory of Change

Context

Time needed for the play

45 to 60 minutes

Number of participants

3 to 24 participants

Where it happens

This can be run online or inperson. 

In-person will work best in a room with space for small group breakouts and wall or floor space for review of epitaphs. 

Preparation 

The participants: This works best with a team working together on an effort and long-term goal

Accessibility: It’s always good to know if there are any accessibility requirements to consider e.g. language and the need for interpreters, people with different learning styles and abilities, communication abilities, physical abilities. Make use of translation and transcription tools where necessary.

Setup: 

  • In person – you will need table space to write together and wall space to look at what has been written
  • Online – you’ll need a collaboration space. This could be a google doc or a miro board with clear spaces for the different groups to write on.

Materials: 

  • In person you will need flip chart paper and blue tack / tape 
  • Online you’ll need an online collaboration space

The Play

  1. Instruct participants to write an epitaph for their effort.

The facilitator asks participants: What would you like the world to remember your organization for? 

Picture a future world where your effort no longer needs to exist because you were successful.  How did it contribute to this future?  How should it be remembered?

  • It should capture the essential transformation the effort would have made in the world as briefly as possible.
  • It must be written as an outcome (e.g. a result that you would see if you were to visit the context at some future time). However, the transformation must be one that the organization can plausibly influence.
  • Usually, it involves identifying one or more key actors (groups or institutions) in their context and how they are behaving and relating differently.

To facilitate their thinking an epitaph metaphor is used: in the vast graveyard of dead CSOs, what would you like to have inscribed on the tombstone (or other non-Christian equivalent were appropriate) of your organization?

What is an epitaph?

Don’t forget to do a warm up / intro exercise prior to the play.

Step 1 – Intro the exercise

The facilitator asks participants: What would you like the world to remember your organization / effort for? 

Picture a future world where your effort no longer needs to exist because you were successful.  How did it contribute to this future?  How should it be remembered?

  • It should capture the essential transformation the effort would have made in the world as briefly as possible.
  • It must be written as an outcome (e.g. a result that you would see if you were to visit the context at some future time). However, the transformation must be one that the organization can plausibly influence.
  • Usually, it involves identifying one or more key actors (groups or institutions) in their context and how they are behaving and relating differently.

Take a couple of minutes to individually write down your initial ideas or thoughts.

To facilitate their thinking an epitaph metaphor is used: in the vast graveyard of dead CSOs, what would you like to have inscribed on the tombstone (or other non-Christian equivalent were appropriate) of your organization?

What is an epitaph?

Definition: a phrase or form of words written in memory of a person who has died, especially as an inscription on a tombstone.

Examples you can share: 

An epitaph of a children’s rights organisation in South Africa. Effective, efficient and well-resourced communities are working with families and child-friendly government structures to ensure that the rights and welfare of children are realised.

Thanks to a political watchdog NGO, A free just society of active people who are not afraid and don’t cheat because strong and open institutions enforce rules transparently

Thanks to a resource for the global digital security training community, individuals provide digital safety training and education, developed through shared values of what effective training looks like, how to deliver effective training, and being able to understand why it is effective.   

Thanks to a healthy public internet festival, diverse community groups regain ownership and shape the future of the internet, holding makers and platforms accountable for ensuring its health.

Step 2 – Small group breakouts: Ask participants to write an epitaph for their effort

After the examples are shared, break your participants into groups or 3 or 4. Ask participants to form groups with the people in the room they work with the least. 

Ask the groups to work together to draft an epitaph. What would you like the world to remember your organization / effort for? 

It might be helpful for people to draft something in their native language first.

“Thanks to the [insert effort / org]…”

If people get stuck / you would like more structure you could use this:

“Thanks to the [insert effort / org]

[these actors / people] have experienced 

[the change that has happened]

which has resulted in [outcome]”

Step 3 – Large Group Discussion

After the epitaphs are written – get people to read them (move around the room in gallery format or the google doc).

Then large group discussion questions –

  • How are they similar?
  • Where are the differences?
    • Are those differences significant?
  • Final bonus question –
    • How long? What year would it be when the effort has died from being successful? 
    • Reference the pace of transformational change. How would you test your assumption here? How would you measure success?

Step 4 – Where from here?

As a group, decide what next.

  • Could you craft a vision statement from this?
  • Is it the starting point for working out how you will achieve this – your theory of change?

Contributors