How do you transfer knowledge in large groups?

When I am doing large group facilitation for the purpose of disseminating knowledge, three things are important. I always wanted to keep in mind the acronym W I,IFM—what’s in it for me. It’s important to keep in mind how the information benefits the learners. Secondly, it’s important for me to be relatable, so I like to use stories and examples relevant to the audience. Finally, having small group interaction around the new information can be very useful as people tend not to want to speak in a large group.

A large group is indicated with a less intimate interaction, indirect interaction between members, presence of subgroups, or all. Therefore, large group facilitation focuses on providing clear, structured, and self-managed processes in the form of methods, guides, and instructions. For example, an organization with different units is inherently a large group; facilitating its townhall is more like conducting an orchestra than a jazz ensemble.

The concept of a 'large group' completely depends on your experience level and the context in which you are delivering it. For instance, if you have never facilitated a group before then a group of 10 may feel large, whereas someone more experienced may consider 'large' to mean 100+. Additionally, you have to consider the context. Teaching guitar to 3 people may be considered a large group (as this is often done one to one), however a church congregation of 50 may not be considered 'large' in comparison to other groups.

Knowledge transfer is important in any group. In large groups, it is more critical as the size of groups and less intimate interaction of members may reduce the more natural way of the transfer process (informal chit-chat, etc.). The presence of subgroups may introduce more barriers to knowledge transfer.

Beyond the “session” itself, it’s also important to have the right information assembled in a way that’s ready to use by your participants. This ensures preparedness. When I’ve surveyed people involved in sharing information, it’s clear that the information is often multi-modal; that means that it originates form different systems. (For example, workshop stimulus in the form of slides; detailed briefings from data dashboards; and third party research papers to highlight challenges.) If you find yourself in this situation I would urge you to resist the temptation to treat PowerPoint as your unifier. It’s frequently easier - for both author and reader - if you can share links to the original source material.

Knowledge transfer in large groups is essentially similar to smaller groups. The difference is: focus on designing self-managed processes, ensure continuation between seeking-accessing-sharing-actioning processes, use methods and tools that are simple and easiest to understand, emphasize the need to contextualize and internalize gained knowledge and encourage people to interact beyond their immediate subgroups, more humanely.

Given the size, facilitating a large group is like conducting an orchestra. First, help everyone to understand the session objectives and outputs and, if necessary, provide examples. Second, give session guide and instruction with utmost clarity and, life necessary, simulate. Third, empower group members with roles required by the session, for example "in your smaller group, decide who will chair, take note and observe." Four, use technology to seamlessly deliver the process, for example, using templates in a collaborative document to record outputs. Last, go out of the way and let the process run on its own; minimize nudge or, if needed, use it indirectly.

You will see some of these challenges in most gatherings when participants cross corporate boundaries (whether internal across siloes or from one organisation to another). In these cases I’ve found that effective information prepared prior to any gathering is important. In this way, content can be reviewed either synchronously or asynchronously, and if done well, can often minimise or reduce the need for a face-to-face gatherings altogether. My advice in this case is to resist the urge to reduce everything to the lowest common denominator of PowerPoint slides. Consider providing links to source material - whether files or dashboards or cloud tools.

Group size: organize participants in smaller groups, use natural subgroups, or, if silos are visible, mix the group. Complexity: more members equal more aspirations and preferences; use or combine methods so that it provides many ways to consume and learn new knowledge. Lack of intimacy: encourage people to interact as an individual by sharing their personal experiences and views.

Consider using a “world cafe” style approach with small groups (in -person or virtual) given a specific amount of time to share knowledge and insights on a specific topic, briefly report out key points, and then move to a newly formed group to discuss a related or different but relevant topic. After three rounds, the large group may choose the most important topics for follow-up using a quick voting process such as using check marks or stickers. Group members may then choose a topic for which they would like to participate in follow-up activities.