Full Circle

A fast-paced activity that’s creative and collaborative.

Purpose

To efficiently gather ideas and insights from a group efficiently and turn it into usable information and advice.

Valuable as a distributed process when you have a large group, multiple areas to explore and limited time.

Instructions
People rotate around a number of different themed stations and then return to their original station to review what the group have generated. 

Don’t have too many stations and don’t let it go on too long – energy drops after 20-30 minutes.

Set Up

  • 4 or 5 stations set up around the room

  • Each station has a flip chart sheet, tapestry paper (or something more creative) to capture notes. I like to get people writing on the paper rather than using sticky notes.

  • Each station has an activity for people to do, where they can contribute their insights and ideas to: challenges, opportunities, questions, timelines, maps, card sorts (and many more!).

  • Enough space for groups of 5–6 people at each station

  • For larger groups (40 to 75 people) one option is to create two separate ecosystems of stations

Advice process

When groups arrive back at their original station they can do some further work to turn the data into an advice process. 

You can ask groups to:

  • Identify key themes
  • Highlight what’s most important
  • Cluster, rank or vote on sticky notes
  • Offer next steps, questions, or suggestions
  • Pick a topic to take into Open Space / World Cafe


Emergent version
Another way of doing this is to let participants move freely among the stations as they wish. 

Include some time for a Gallery Walk around the space so people can read what has been generated/synthesised. This keeps it very light, slightly messy and self-organised – usually with higher levels of energy.

Benefits

  • Shared ownership of complex topics

  • Makes ideas visible and builds momentum

  • Encourages a mix of divergent and convergent thinking

  • Builds a sense of collective intelligence and movement

Notes

  • Ideally keep group sizes small (5–6 people) so everyone can contribute

  • Think of different mediums for stations (writing, sketching, bullet points, maps, timelines, sculpture, tags on a tree)

  • Remind people that mess is fine – it’s about contribution, not polish

Riffs and Variations

  • Circulate in the same direction (very orderly). 

  • Go where you like every time the bell rings.

  • Each station has a host who stays in place to help with sense-making

Source:
Adapted from Creative Facilitation – Johnnie Moore and Viv McWaters
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