This last Saturday (the 11th of August) we sat down for an hour long session that we started off on a funny foot. Some people thought we were going to be talking about some of the various ideas in the phrase 'new economics', others thought we were doing something more group process focused on communication during group process. What started out as 15 minutes spent on signaling, only began getting really fruitful as the 15 minutes was closing, so we carried on on that path. Not without its challenges, the rest of the conversation began to flow smoother as we adapted to one another's conversation styles, and began building more shared language and signals for communication. Ruben got up at one point and wrote what I thought was a real gem on the board.

First share an agreement about desired outcomes
Identify a specific need of the group (a challenge we're having communicating)
Create a signal / symbol / shared language to solve that need.

After we closed with a recap of the five signals we'd identified to make use of there was a nice buzzing energy level. Although, in a later discussion, I liked that Emory pointed out that he wasn't ready to jump on the self-congratulating train that some of us were on at the end of the session, as what we need to do now is sustain that smoother collaboration, not act as if we've already done it. All grist for the mill, as they say in the Group Works deck :) Can you guess what spoon means?

Just closed a great group jam on signaling with @emleaders. Found a need for 5 signals, check 'em out! twitter.com/Connoropolous/…

— Connor Turland (@Connoropolous) August 11, 2012