A triad of constraints for hosted containers

This triad has turned out to be surprisingly helpful. I’ve been thinking about it ever since I posted it a few days ago, because it answers some questions that have been bothering me for a long time. So here’s an attempt to capture where the idea is leading. Think of this as watching it evolve in real time. I’ve already changed some of the labels.

If I were to sum up my work on dialogic containers, I would say it’s driven by not having the physical metaphor sit well with me. In facilitation theory, containers are often thought of as objects with tangible sides: a cauldron, a room, a nest, a cup, a pot. Our language around containers is physical: craft, create, hold, disintegrate, build, strengthen, let go of, occupy, manage.

A dialogic container is not an object at all. It is a pattern of interactions and constraints between people within a context. Because they are about constraints, it makes sense to think about them by their relationship to stability and emergence.

In complexity theory we talk about emergence, that which emerges from the interactions between people, things, and ideas in a complex spaces. So one way to think about containers is to look at them occupying a dyad of stability and emergence. Containers with a high degree of stability and no emergence are very solid and durable. In anthro-complexity terms we might say these are the result of governing constraints. The system is held together in such a way that no emergence is possible. On the other hand is the emergent container in which the shape of the system arises from the interactions of the participants within it. There is very little stability or permanence to this. There are patterns that emerge, but they are not stable like a built environment is.

This is how I’ve been trying to make sense of dialogic containers for a long time, trying hard to properly name them as emergent outcomes of complex dynamics. In dialogic work, we shouldn’t think about “creating and holding the container” but rather “catalyzing and monitoring” the container.

But facilitation introduces another source of constraint that this dyad cannot account for: design. You can read deeper in to Snowden’s work on trialctics, but suffice to say that introducing this third dimension introduces three distinct tensions that together form a space in which a dialogic container exists and in which the role of the facilitator can be calibrated.

So now we have three productive tensions, each of which is pulled open by a third consideration.

The tension between stability and emergence asks how much stability or structure is enough for new things to happen? Or how lmuch should we suppress emergence in order for stability and longevity to be retained? This is pulled outward by the question asked of the design, which is “what are we trying to do?”

We also have the tension between design and stability which asks “how does intention become something stable?” This is the concern of architecture, product design, and other material pursuits. The stabile structure retains the intention, the purpose and the function. This tension is pulled outward by the question asked by emergence: “how much agency do people have with this container?”

And finally there is the tensions between design and emergence which is about how we should respond to what is emerging as it shifts our intention. That one is pulled open by the question of “what stability serves here?”

The role of the facilitator in dialogic work introduces a critical tension to the stability/emergence axis. As facilitators we bring intention into the space that has an effect on both the stability of a container and the emergence of the container. In fact, having a facilitator at all concerned with process automatically pulls the tension from that axis in a way that means that the process can neither be fully stable nor fully emergent. That is something we need to be honest about. What results is the above triad, and any given facilitated, hosted or otherwise led process will exist somewhere inside this space.

Introducing this dynamic helps me to address Dave Snowden’s serious but also tongue-in-cheek invitation to me from a few months back, where he said in a comment something to the effect of “give us a call if you want to get the facilitator out of the centre of the work.” I think this triad does that, not by removing the facilitator, but by honestly accounting for the facilitator.

All facilitated work exhibits these three modulators. Even the collection of methods in the Cynefin wiki, practiced through the lens of “complex facilitation” has a facilitator present. Sometimes that facilitator is a person, and sometimes it can just be a group of stories selected from a narrative capture. Sometimes the role is to religiously enforce the rules of future backwards, and sometimes the role is to be present but invisible. That facilitator exerts influence through intention, which is carried through the design of the process, method or moment. The “Design” point provides the doorway for intention to enter the system, and how that intention operates is critical.

In Dynamics in Action, Alicia Juarrero describes intention itself as a kind of constraint. intention can be a preferred sense of direction, it can be a spontaneous desire, it can be a hidden political agenda. It can also be shadow (the conflict-averse facilitator brings an intention of peace and resolution). The power of the facilitator, embodied by the privileged role the design plays, makes this point a true modulator of the nature of the container and the work that can be done there.

Every dialogic container exhibits a particular constraint regime, and in the lifecycle of any given container, its position in this space will change. Once we start seeing containers like this we can map dynamics that matter on to them as well, so we can see that power, for example lives on all three points.

The design conveys power vested in a role that is privileged in the space. In the case of dialogic containers, that applies specifically to the facilitator/host. The distributed power lies in the participants who have and hold the capability for the work in a way that the privileged position does not. The stable structures (including the physical structures, time and resources, and also the durable socio-cultural forms of the context) provide a substrate upon which everything operates, and are responsible for the affordances that may be available to the group and the was with which they can access them.

There are many other things that can be mapped upon this triangle as well and I’ve spent the last few days drawing them out to play with them. Here’s a few:

So what comes next? You’re looking at my sketch book here, and as such this is a roughly assembled table and not quite right. I’m trying to articulate a theory of dialogic containers that creates a space in which we can understand containers as constraint regimes influenced by design, underlying structures and the dynamics of emergence in groups. This is important because it helps us to be critical about facilitation approaches that just rely on methods without cultivating the practice of facilitation which lies in attention.

I don’t know yet whether this becomes a useful theory, but it already feels like a useful way of asking better questions. It gives us somewhere to locate intention, somewhere to locate emergence, and somewhere to locate the durable structures that shape every conversation before anyone speaks. It also gives us somewhere to talk honestly about power, capability and facilitation itself. It’s about containers, only in that containers are one kind of constraint regime that are widely discussed but not deeply understood. I’m trying to more deeply understand them.

There are many other dynamics that seem to map onto this triangle, and I’ve spent the last few days sketching them out. These are still field notes rather than conclusions, so I’d love to hear what you think belongs here. If this model is useful, it will become more useful through conversation.