Digitisation can provide valuable services to democratise decisions made within our living and working environments. Because online, decision-making processes can be made transparent and potentially accessible to all. Digital tools make it easier to contribute our ideas, discuss them and vote on them, regardless of time and space.

Every Wednesday we from liqd come together for our Weekly. For the agenda each of us can bring in an own topic. The submission of the agenda items is done online and all contributions are visible in advance and can be commented on before or after the Weekly. During the Weekly, the topics are discussed in the order in which they were submitted and the moderator uses our digital “traffic light” to indicate whether the contribution will be implemented, checked or not. In this way, agenda setting is easy to organize and is transparent and comprehensible for everyone.

Finding new ideas is not always easy and the white sheet of paper does not bring out a bubbling source of creativity in all of us. That is why we love brainstorming together. Here we can develop vague thoughts, build on the ideas of our colleagues and find good solutions together. Sometimes we do it analog, sometimes digital and sometimes it becomes a mixture of both. For example, when it comes to finding a name for our own participation platform adhocracy+. The final name was created in a meeting as a combination of two ideas submitted digitally in advance.

There are projects we are all attached to. Our new participation platform adhocracy+ is one such project. Of course, we have appointed a project manager to coordinate the projects and further developments. But also all other employees and all users should be able to contribute their ideas. The ideas are collected publicly online and then internally (also digitally) prioritized by us together. Only then do they go into development. In this way, the project is supported jointly and the possibility of participation strengthens identification.

Every year…what action do we want to do at our Christmas party and where do we go to eat afterwards? With the help of a digital idea competition we pitch our ideas to the colleagues. First all ideas are submitted and described. Additional visualizations can help to convince the colleagues of the own idea. Afterwards the ideas are evaluated. Fun Fact: We have been going to the same Chinese for years!

For one year we regularly invited people to the Liquid Tank, a new series of events in our premises, where we discussed topics and invited people we found exciting. After one year there was an interim evaluation. For this, the responsible working group decided to conduct a survey on adhocracy+. Surveys have the advantage that the participants can give input relatively quickly and the questioners get a good picture of the opinion and mood.

We talked intensively about our internal feedback culture. Who gives feedback to whom - and what kind of feedback? Following analogous discussion in the team, a working group has drawn up detailed feedback guidelines. Since our software allows us to discuss entire texts section by section, the draft guidelines were put online and everyone was able to submit suggestions and change requests. Now we have guidelines that are supported by everyone!

In principle, topics that are very close to the participants' working and living environments are better suited for digital participation than abstract topics. Nevertheless, it is possible to use digital tools to make even complex processes transparent and open them up to participation. Strategy development is one such process. In our case, the responsibility for this lies with our association's board of directors. But the team is strongly involved in the process: What are currently important topics and trends (brainstorming)? Which of the goals do you find important, which less so (prioritization)? What is your opinion on the draft strategy (comment on text)? In combination with analogous meetings we get the best results here.

Last year we celebrated our 10th anniversary. And what could be better for us than to present new software on such a day? The participation module “interactive event” was born out of our wish that everyone has the same chance to get involved in analogous discourses. Now it is also possible during events to ask questions and make comments digitally and visible to everyone. Optionally, the moderator can query certain characteristics of the participants and a statistic provides clarity: Was the discourse fair? At our anniversary celebration we used this tool during a fishbowl discussion and many participants took part.

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