codevelopment
Codevelopment is an action learning training approach, based on collective intelligence and within the paradoxal systemic conceptual framework, that was designed by Adrien Payette in the early 80’s. It consists in a 6-steps method for workshops gathering a group of peers to improve one’s professional efficiency.
Potentialities for organizations
Deployed with skills, it proves a highly efficient tool for organizations to adapt to their environment, prepare and deploy transformations along with supporting and developing their managers.
Participants develop their collaboration and managerial skills (listening, questioning, supporting, giving and receiving feedbacks etc.) while organizations implementing Codevelopment projects will benefit from collective creativity, transversality, isolation alleviation, good practices sharing.
Simple, elegant and powerful, its ecology resides in the absence of any artificial inputs. Codevelopment only requires engaged professionals dedicating a fraction of their time to share and learn from each other.
A blend of action learning
& collective intelligence
Collective intelligence
Codevelopment relies on the collective intelligence that can flourish when a group of professionals with diverse experiences and skills collaborate to analyze complex situations.
For this reason, Codevelopment is very adapted to enhance transversality, as gathering members of various professions, functions and/or age for example increase the group potential to diverge and thus develop a comprehensive analysis of the situation they will work on.
Action learning
Although Codevelopment workshops are training times with recognized deep efficiency to improve managerial and collaboration skills, they are very different from the traditional lecturing courses.
The group of participant works following a structured process on a concrete, real, work situation brought by one of the participants.
Learnings are made throughout the session, sometimes highlighted by the facilitator and sometimes directly discovered “on the ground” by participants. All learnings are capitalized at the end of the session (6th and last step) to catalyse this learning objective.
Action learning typically brings increased anchoring of the learnings as these are systematically associated with a concrete example that was experienced during the workshop, along with higher satisfaction for the participants, as they work on their real-life work situations.
Certified facilitation for impact
Although this approach is beautifully simple, Codevelopment sessions absolutely required a certified and experienced facilitation to provide its impact and to maximize benefits, both for the individuals and for the organization, from the time dedicated by the participants.
The facilitators allows the group to embark so as the journey is :
Safe
We deal with complexity and humanity, the safety of every one must remain the priority.
Rich
The participants time is valuable, we are not here to “have a pleasant time” nor to have a mere brainstorming or coffee-machine chat.
Facilitation is therefore a very subtle exercise that consists in :
-
- Keeping everyone comfortable and safe at all times ;
- Discreetly but firmly guiding the group through the process and within the client’s problematic ;
- Favouring collective intelligence ;
- Highlighting learning opportunities and enriching.
Skilled facilitation combines skills and experience. At Cecodev, we train and certify a number of facilitator thanks to our cursus that initially focusses on the method and the safety of the group, to progressively develop the capacity to explore and guide through complex situations with maximized learnings.
Minimum requirements
Codevlopment does not involve any technological mean, only engaged humans. However, Codevelopment very much differs from mere brainstorming at it is orientated in accompanying and enriching the client’s questioning rather than looking for an answer to it.
At Cecodev, our experienced has demonstrated that some fundamental pillars must be respected to benefit from Codevelopment impact :
Minimal duration of
2h30
Maximum of
8
8 active participants + 1 certified facilitator
Workshops that don’t respect these requirements shall simply be called otherwise.
Books and ressources
If you can read French, we highly recommend you our books that summarize our praticial recommandations, facilitation good practices and tips, illustrated with many real situations we have faced since we have introduced Codevelopment in France.
Le Codéveloppement professionnel et managerial
TOME 1
L’approche qui rend acteur et développe l’intelligence collective.
Anne Hoffner et Dominique Delaunay,
Editions Ems
Le Codéveloppement professionnel et managerial
TOME 2
Animation compétente, subtilités de la pratique, montée en puissance
Anne Hoffner et Dominique Delaunay,
Editions Ems
We are currently working on translating into English our many pedagogical resources, and we’ll upload these here as soon as they are ready.