This ALAC Development Session is only for ongoing and incoming ALAC members, liaisons and others invited by the ALAC Chair.
To be held in the Abu Dhabi Convention Center, at ICANN 60 on Friday 3rd November, 2017 (1100* through to 1830 GST {UTC +4} - In 4 sessions with breaks as follows in the detailed Agenda)
*PLEASE gather from 1030 on in our allocated room, as we will be starting promptly at 1100.
Also note that you have some preparation to do before attending. You are requested *not* to share the details of your prepared materials before our sessions.
Aim: An introductory session to aid in the improvement and development of a productive, communicative, effective ALAC team for the year ahead.
Please pay particular attention to text in this style and colour this indicates something that you will need to prepare in advance for our session.
In our session we will aim to discover how we can try to ensure that we have a clear definition of our ALAC shared purpose and core work, in addition we will explore some of the procedures and structures we can deploy to enable us to work effectively together.
It is vital for distributed or global remote team (and that *is* what the ALAC and At-Large should be defined as) to have a common vision of the future and a clear strategy of how to achieve that vision.
To do this best we should look at a few questions and each participant in our session should come with a few brief prepared ‘talking points’ on the following questions:
○ How do we set goals and define priorities?
○ How clear are our values?
○ How can we lead by example and act as expected?
○ How can we develop trust in each other?
○ A cross-functional team is a group of people with different functional expertise working toward a common goal; How can we collaborate cross-functionally?
○ How should we best communicate?
○ How can we best talk about sensitive topics?
○ How should we make decisions?
○ How do we hold one another accountable?
○ How can we balance regular ‘urgencies’ against the long-term development of ALAC as an effective entity within ICANN?
○ How should we workout inevitable conflicts and competing priorities?
For our starting Agenda Item - Icebreaker exercise. ‘An unlikely truth and the believable lie, each of you is requested to come prepared to in less than 2 minutes tell the group at least 2 things (so that to share with the group you will take no more than 2-3 mins) about yourself that to the best of your knowledge the rest of us do not already know. At least one of these things should be true and another should be a ‘believable lie’. PLEASE ensure you have not shared anyone else on our group, what these things are. This type of short, and hopefully fun, process is known as ‘icebreaking’ and I will explain to you why we do this as we start our session.
Ideally if time had permitted we would run further sessions to guide our group through a process of defining and improving our charter (mission, values, goals/metrics, etc.), design (how we can best organize ourselves to accomplish our work), and relationships (their respect, trust, cohesion and synergy) so we can become a ‘best effort’ cohesive team with a common focus, able to rally people behind us, and achieve outstanding and effective results in our aim to influence. However the time available for us at ICANN 60 is limited and this will mean a highly compressed activity, where sadly these important issues will need to be done (or not) at a later date.
Agenda
Time | Item | Lead | Notes |
---|---|---|---|
10:30-11:00 | Gathering and settling in | Cheryl Langdon-Orr | |
11:00-12:00 | Part 1: Introduction and session preparation Kick-start activities Icebreaker exercise: "An unlikely truth and the unbelievable lie" Discussion and Review of our aims for today and beyond Group sharing of some of your prepared input | Cheryl Langdon-Orr | To begin with in our opening session let us first “break the ice” with ‘An unlikely truth and the believable lie.’ ❏ After this ice breaker we will look at, and discuss the following graphic. Your attention will be drawn to several existing documents relating to and used by the ALAC, including the ICANN Bylaws, ALAC Rules of Procedure, ALAC wiki space, ALAC and At-Large web pages. ❏ Then referring to your prepared talking points we will review and discuss some of the key questions to seek some consensus on the ‘best answers’ as we develop our ‘top-notch team’.
❏ After general discussion of these basics we will focus on a few specific steps that can increase our productivity and effectiveness: Here are five steps to building a productive and effective team this coming year: ➢ Step 1: Establish our leadership and communication ‘styles’. ➢ Step 2: Establish workable relationships between each of you. ➢ Step 3: Build relationships between you, and your primary ‘work units’ (your Regions and other parts of ICANN you will need to engage with. ➢ Step 4: Foster teamwork. ➢ Step 5: Set ground rules and expectations. |
12:00-13:15 | Joint lunch with RALO Leadership | ||
13:30-15:00 | Part 2: Building a "Top Notch" Team Policy I - A campfire exercise Fast Track Team Building An exercise on the topic of Geographic Names | Cheryl Langdon-Orr | Campfire exercise. This is a non traditional room set up which has a number of useful features and benefits (that we will discus in the session part introduction) Each participant should sit next to their ‘match’ located over the break. In this session we will develop the ways in which you can most effectively and efficiently work together as a ‘top-notch’ team and also further your shared understandings about a Policy issue in ICANN that will require considerable commitment from our At-Large Community and the ALAC over coming months, the use of Geographic Names as TLDs. |
15:00-15:15 | Afternoon Break and Match-Up with 'partners' | All | Each of you will be given a label as you go to the break, in the break you should talk to others and ask them short questions about what your label says without asking directly, and then when you know your label, find the person labeled with a ‘match’ to yours, when you return please sit next to your match. |
15:15-16:45 | Part 3: Development of Personal and Group Dynamics: some “tools of the trade” Break out (of your traditional shell) activities "What am I?" exercise Drill down focus session on selected key questions. | Cheryl Langdon-Orr with Gisella Gruber | |
Part 4: Work Practices - trying to work "smarter, not harder" Policy II - "favorite" tools and how to use them (AC room, mailing lists, etc.) Wrap and Next Steps | Cheryl Langdon-Orr | An exploration of the ‘tools of your trade’, including but not limited to Adobe Connect Rooms, teleconferences with and without interpretation or captioning, email lists, messaging, hangouts and hallways. Review of our Session and any Outcomes and Action Items; Wrap Up and any Next Steps. |
Reference material and suggested readings:
TBD