Complaints with recommendations—a simple facilitation method

Last week I had lunch with a pal who was planning a conference session and looking for a way to get people talking about a specific set of problems. I suggested she might use a method called ‘complaints with recommendations,’ but didn’t have a good link to share with instructions. So now there’s a link, and you’re reading it. The lunch-to-link pipeline works.Complaints with recommendations is my own swizzle of an activity from the social worker and psychologist Virginia Satir. So after I share the method, I’ll tell you a bit about where it came from.What this is and when to run it Complaints with recommendations is a simple way to get feedback and ideas on what’s not working while in the middle of a project. You might use it during recurring reviews, between days of a multi-day event, or when working through multiple drafts of a document or deliverable. Don’t use it at beginnings, where there has not been time for complaints to ripen, or at endings, where it’s too late to act on…