Timeline Techniques
From Regional Knowledge Resource Kit
Timeline techniques are one of the most powerful techniques used in group facilitation.
Some popular examples of timeline techniques include:
- Focus on the past - from Future Search. Here, people make time lines of key events in the world, their own lives, and in the history of the future search topic. Small groups tell stories about each time line and the implications of their stories for the work they have come to do.
- Historical Scan - from ICA's technology of participation. See How to conduct a Historical Scan.
- History trip - from Dalmau T and Dick B (1994b), To tame a unicorn...: Recipes for cultural intervention, Third edition, Interchange, Chapel Hill, Brisbane.
Past-oriented processes have a superb capacity for strengthening a group's identity. Future-oriented processes are excellent for developing vision. Brought together, past and future oriented processes are a powerful combination and complement for organisational change.
In addition to its ability to strengthen group identity, past-oriented processes have periphal effects to:
- Build relationships between participants through the high levels of legitimate self-disclosure
- Remind people that the present is an outcome of the past, and encourages them to accept that they can begin in the present to work towards a desired future
- to encourage people to review their most deeply held values
- diffuse conflict by building on common ground - shared experiences
The Possible histories technique has been inspired by the Cynefin's Future Backwards approach and Bob Dicks and Tim Dalmau's History Trip. When a group first comes together there are many possible histories of the participants. This process provides a powerful way to delve in and discover these possible histories.
