Discovery and Action Dialogue (DAD)

Overview

Discovery and Action Dialogue (DAD) is a method that enables participants to autonomously find new approaches to performing their work routines. This method offers participants access to a new thinking process and equips them with practical problem-solving skills to open up to positive change. Participants work in groups to explore a shared chronic problem or challenge encountered in their daily work and jointly create potential solutions by following a conversational structure under the facilitator’s guidance.

Use this method to:

• Generate ownership among people doing the work, avoiding someone else’s best practices and strategies.
• Discover tacit and latent behaviors that are positively divergent.
• Generate changes that are sustained because they are developed by the people doing the work.
• Solve local problems locally and globally and transmit momentum across units.
• Use as an ethnographic data collection tool within a multi-site research project.
• Research and find actions to build professional competencies.
• Use in a one-on-one conversation about how to approach a challenge.