Leaving New York today. It has been an incredible four days here working with my good friends Kelly McGowan and Tuesday Ryan-Hart and Lex Schroeder, Aniestla Rugama, Alissa Schwartz, and Aswad Foster. We were running a workshop called the Art of Social Justice in which we were investigating the intersection of participatory process and social justice work. Over three days we explored a framework that Tuesday has developed and investigated with Kelly for the past year. The framework includes and transcends the gifts and drawbacks of traditional social justice frameworks and of what we know about participatory process.
Tuesday is writing a lot more about this, but the essence of the framework is that neither social justice analysis nor participatory process are enough on their own to move us into the new forms of leadership that are needed in a world where social inequity and power are becoming increasingly complex, and where traditional forms of organizing are no longer reflective of the interconnected nature of global society..
A gift of traditional social justice analysis is the way it understands personal and collective power and privilege. This analysis concerns itself with transformation of both the personal and the social power dynamics in society, but it often contains within it an invisible current of control that runs deep in the architecture of social change process. It posits a social separation between those of us who are working for change in or allied with the struggle of oppressed peoples, and people in the system that are thought to be – traditionally – the enemy. Or it sets up a struggle between the system that perpetuates oppression and the people who are oppressed by it. In this world, in this time, that analysis is out of date. We are all connected to the entire system. As I showed in my last post, you can even discover how many slaves you employ. Even if you are heavily marginalized within the mainstream, you are connected to the system itself. As the sign said at Occupy Wall Street, “you are us.”
Those of us who are facilitators of participatory process often make grand claims about the power of processes like Open Space Technology and World Cafe to even out power differences. In a circle everyone is said to be equal and leadership can come from every chair. While participatory process does provide a useful methodology for decolonizing how we meet, it has several risks associated with it. For one thing, if we fail to take into consideration the context in which we are working, power can show up in participatory process in a dangerously invisible way. Some participants may be able to operate much more resourcefully because of their power or privilege by, for example, becoming the scribes for small groups and speaking for the group. Those who cannot write may not feel comfortable posting a session in Open Space, meaning that there is no way that their voices can be heard or their contributions incorporated. Furthermore, participatory processes, like all facilitation processes, heavily depend on the role of the facilitator. If the facilitators (and the process designers for that matter) are not aware of the currents of power and privilege within the context in which they are working, they run the risk of designing structures that keep marginalized people marginalized. If they come to the hosting role without awareness of and good practice around their own power and privilege, the social architecture that emerges can be very exclusionary.
Both of these fields of analysis have something to offer to one another and both have their own drawbacks, In Tuesday’s framework, she identifies a middle path, which she named co-revealation. It is going to take me a while to unpack this concept, but I can at least begin to see how it works. In the space of power-aware participatory leadership, the gift of relationship is active. As we move together through process, the emphasis on relationship is key and in working together relationship becomes more revealed. In the process, we treat each other with more and more grace and compassion, coming to see that as we are all interconnected both to each other and the systems in which we are working to change, we recognize that personal and social transformation is also both inevitable and required. In Saskatoon last week, one of our participants in the Art of Hosting was carrying the question “how do we collaborate with dictators?” as a way of trying to discern the limits of participation. In several conversations over these last two weeks I have come to ask that question of myself, and reframing it as “how do I collaborate with myself when I am being a dictator?”. With that inquiry active, we may find that dictatorship behaviors are present everywhere, and we may also allow ourselves and others the grace to be imperfect in our lives and behaviors. This doesn’t excuse violence or oppression, but rather it gives us serious skin in the game in trying to address oppressive systems. If we are not a part of the problem we cannot be a part of the solution. And in being a part of the problem we need to treat each other with some kindness and latitude, qualities that are born in relationship, even relationship with people with whom we have fundamental differences.
It may feel as if this stuff is a little old hat, but I experienced it differently in practice. During our gathering in New York a group of three participants brought a proposal into the third day check in circle that required a complete think of our agenda, in doing so they were both proposing a new idea but also challenging the power structure of the system. The design team had been designing the days as we went and hosting the process, but here the participants were inviting us to practice what we preached about awareness of power. The group could have chosen to create a drama around the situation, but our field of relationship was very strong. And so they issued the challenge as an invitation We immediately went into a circle process first to seek everyone else’s thoughts on the proposal and second to gain clarity around how to make it work. It was clear in our group that the idea being proposed – that we all go down to Occupy Wall Street and learn what we can there – was both an excellent idea, and also not one that everyone wanted to do. In the circle, I expressed my faith in the resourcefulness of the group and the design team to offer and hold multiple options so that the decision did not have to be an either/or choice. Towards the end of the first round of circle a proposal began to emerge that made some sense, and seemed workable. Kelly and I, as host and guardian of the circle, invited a round for additional clarity followed by one more round of any refinements to the proposal. Then we thumb-voted on it, took care of two small questions and went forward with a great new design for the day.
What emerged was a process whereby the morning would be spent in proaction café which offers people a chance to work on projects. The group that wanted to go down to Wall Street decided to use that time to prepare a learning journey for themselves while others worked on other projects. The afternoon was devoted to nuts and bolts learning in our space while about nine people went off to the occupation. We reconvened at 300 and had two short fishbowls to report on what each group had learned. That harvest was recorded both in video and on flip charts so tat it could be made available to the wider community.
Among the many lessons of the day was the fact that Tuesday’s ideas take us beyond the realm of analysis and into a practice of this middle space. In fact the middle space of co-revelation can only live in practice, it has no power in analysis or in the kinds of theoretical debates that rage without relationship. In those domains the middle space disappears.
It is hard to capture exactly the effect this week has had on my practice, but it deeply continues the theme of “seeing more clearly” that has been the greatest gift of my journey in and around the Art of Hosting community of practice for the past seven years. In our workshops and learning events, we seek less to train people in methodologies and more to situate participatory process in its wider context. Doing so gives the methodologies power and effectiveness and activates the deeper gifts of invitation, collaboration, participation and transformation. And although the word feels raw and new and vague, I think I can finally describe what we do as assisting groups to enter into the space of co-revelation. That was Tuesday’s gift to the group, and that was the group’s significant gift to ourselves.
And as if to confirm it, I sensed this new space active in Liberty Park on the two nights we went down there. The young people who are organizing Occupy Wall Street are doing so in a way that gives profound insight into this concept, but that is the subject of another post.
A basic diagram for hosting questions that create extraordinary conversations. In the life of organizations and communities there are times when questions arise that just can’t be dealt with in the regular course of events. This is often when those of us who are consulting facilitators are brought into an organization. We are often told that “we have reached a place where we need a facilitator to help.” Usually there is an obvious need or purpose stated right in the first few sentences of the phone call or the email. This is something that consultants like us have to bear in mind.
The organizations we work with are in a constant flow of work. We were are hired to help facilitate something around a question that comes up, we have to remember that what we are doing is taking something out of the flow of work, turning it over and returning it to the stream. Unless we are involved in deep systemic change – where the banks of the river change as it were – our work is about diverting some time and attention from the mainstream.
To do this well, there are three basic phases to pay very close attention to. Each of these phases has to be designed in the beginning, but with space for emergent outcomes. Think of this model as a framework for holding the flow of an extraordinary event in the life of an organization. That could mean a one day think tank, a three day off-site or a two-hour staff meeting.
First there is the invitation phase. In this phase, we have to pay careful attention to inviting people well into our process. Among other things, participants have to know:
- What the clear purpose is
- How this will affect their work
- Why they should take time and attention away from their regular tasks
- What is required of them to participate well.
A skillful invitation invites people to suspend their day-to-day concerns to give their attention fully to the task at hand. For extraordinary meetings, especially those where the gathering is held in a different way than expected, it’s important to brief people before hand about how their roles might be different than they expected.
The second phase is hosting and harvesting. Of course this is the meat of any meeting, but I’m a strong advocate for focusing on the harvest primarily in the design and letting that determine the processes you will use to host. What is the purpose of the meeting? What impact is it intended to have? How will we capture and share the results and where will they go? From those questions choosing processes will be simpler. Choose processes that get you to that desired outcome.
A further consideration for hosting and harvesting is to balance the three domains of work, relationship and co-learning. I have written more about that elsewhere, but the essence is that balancing those three foci will give you an experience where work is at the forefront, learning together helps figure your way through the questions and building relationships ensures sustainable results.
The final stage is integration whereby we give some deep consideration to how the results of an extraordinary conversation can be re-integrated back into the organization. There are manyfactors to consider here, and some of them include:
- communicating results to those that weren’t there, especially the qualitative and non-visible results
- working with power and leadership
- dealing with resourcing issues
- balancing the need for new action with the reality of mundane tasks back in the main stream
- working with and supporting new ideas that might be at odds with the existing flow and structure
There are of course a myriad of issues with integrating new ideas and shifts in direction back into the life of an organization, but if there is one piece of advice I can give it is this: think about it before you have to do it. The worst case scenario for success is that an extraordinary conversation results in a stunning insight but that there is no way to reintegrate that back into the work of the organization.
Pay attention to these three stages up front, in the design process. Create questions around each of these stages and ask them of your planning team. Never be afraid to deviate from the “plan” but try to keep your thinking ahead of the game.
I have great clients. Most of the people who end up working with me do so because they want to work in radically more participatory ways, opening up processes to more voices, more leadership. In conference settings this means scheduling much more dialogue or running the whole thing using Open Space Technology and dispensing with pre-loading content.
But there persists, especially in the corporate and government sectors, a underlying nervousness in doing this. common objections to making things more participatory include:
- It’s too risky
- We’re not ready for it
- I’m worried it won’t work
- There won’t be enough structure
- People need content
- We need to know what the outcomes will be.
It is worth exploring these issues in a compassionate and direct manner. What these issues are really about are trust and control and a sense that the responsibility for the experience lies with the organizers and not the participants.
This is not always the easiest thing to say to people, especially those that have hired you to deliver a conference or a conversation. But it is important to confront these issues face on, because no matter how well you run a participatory process, without confronting the edges of control and trust, you are going to get anywhere ultimately.
These setiments originate in a couple of assumptions that are worth challenging:
- The responsibility for the experience rests with the organizers, not the participants. This is to some extent true although it does a great disservice to most conference design. Assuming that you as a planning committee have to deliver a great experience for everyone is neither possible nor productive. You are never going to make everyone happy, so leave that idea behind. And you aren’t going to get all the content right. The best traditional conferences meet some of the expectations of participants most of the time, meaning that there are large blocks of time that don’t meet people’s expectations. And so the default setting for most participants is to spend thousands of dollars on a passive experience, taking some interest in workshops or speeches and spending the rest of the time self-organizing dinners, coffee breaks and other chances to connect with friends old and new. Another word for a conference that takes thousands of your dollars and leaves you finding your own way is “a racket.”
- People need content and structure. Of course we do, but not in the way most conference organizers deliver it. On the content side, most conference planning consists of spending a year guessing what people want to learn about, or worse, putting out RFPs for workshops, which results in conferences becoming big commercials for people’s pet processes, or ideas, without any consideration for what folks want to learn. The conference is then marketed on the backs of these offerings. That isn’t to say that there can’t be value, but it does constrain learning. Similarly, with structure, conference organizers will often say to me that things like Open Space don’t have enough structure. Open Space has plenty of structure, but it is free of content until the gathering itself populates the agenda with the questions that are top of mind. I have worked at countless conferences where “structure” is everything. And what this typically means is that the conference runs behind schedule and people are herded here and there, shortshrifting almost every aspect of their experience, to the point where folks just plain don’t return from coffee breaks.
- People learn by passive listening. There is no question that a stirring keynote or a dynamic and powerful presentation can have the effect of galvanizing ideas and making people hungry for learning. But too often the passive experience of listing to experts is built into conferences such that a key note is followed by a panel, is followed by lecture-workshops, is followed by another keynote and so on. Participation is minimal.
What I have discovered over the years is that people want to be in a conference setting that has a variety of experience. If there is a keynote, it is important to have that person act more as a provocateur, to set up questions that folks can dialogue around rather than proclaiming the truth from on high. Also building a conference in part or in whole around Open Space means that people can bring their own questions and expertise to the gathering, create a marketplace to exchange ideas and perhaps even create new ways of being together. I don’t think every conference needs to end in “action,” but I do think that many conferences could build in more explicit opportunities to start something.
the bottom line for people in understanding that giving up control is important. A conference planning committee should focus on building a container into which participants can pour their ideas. Creative, engaging, participatory conferences and gatherings have substantial participation undertaken by the participants themselves. They look at how passive a conference is and break open opportunities for people to connect, to go on a learning journey together, to create something new, or simply to sit in good conversation with each other catching up and sharing their work.
Trust your participants and invite them well. Invite them to come prepared to make contributions. Put responsibility for their experience solidly in their laps. Let them know that if they are taking to time and money to come to the gathering, they should also take the chance to create and contribute content to the gathering. Bring your questions, bring your stories, look for others and see what you can create. Challenge participants to show up to a co-creative gathering rich in conversations, connections and inspiration. Invite them, provide a good container with tools for them to do their work, and turn it over to them.
Fearless conference planning, accompanied by excellent invitation and skilful hosting for productive self-organization and emergence creates memorable experiences.
I’m currently engaged in a number of projects that have me working at the margins, exploring margins, eliminating margins and generally working with difference, otherness, power and exclusion. These projects include:
- Running an Open Space Technology event in September to create collaborative actions around reducing addictions-related stigma in the health system in Vancouver.
- Working with the Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service in the United States on supporting and expanding a culture of welcome and acceptance in their work with migrants and refugees, work that is stunningly radical in the context of the current “conversation” on immigration in the USA.
- Part of a team co-hosting an Art of Social Justice gathering in New York City, looking at how power, privilege, race, class and other forms of marginalization and control crop up in society and what challenges those pose for the application of self-organization and participatory leadership in addressing these challenges.
- Working with youth organizations that support the reduction of stigma for youth with mental illnesses in Ontario and the inclusion of youth voice in policy and practice.
What is common to these projects is the idea that voices matter, that diversity matters and that the reality of community life now is that solutions to complex social problems are not going to emerge without participation from the margins. It is in fact the margins that will probably produce the solutions to the radical problems facing societies these days. If you look at the debate in the United States between Republican and Democrats about the fiscal future of the State, the conversation is being conducted on very narrow lines. There is a huge hole in the debate where the voices of those disempowered by the current financial situation are not being heard. A radical restructuring of the way people think about national economies is needed if the US is to make a transition from what is clearly an unsustainable path to something that ensures that the needs of citizens are met over the long term. Where are the solutions? They are not in the Congress, the are not in the financial pages of the newspaper, they are not at Davos, or the G20 or the IMF or on Wall Street.
It is the same with all of the intractable problems that we face. My friend Willie Tolliver, one of our Elders for the work we are doing in New York, says that change in social systems comes from clients, not from those within the system. Radical changes are driven by the clients and consumers of services re-designing the structures that provide for them. It happens when people claim the ownership of a problem and are able to get their hands on enough power to turn the ship. What keeps those voices out of the conversation is both the vested power and the unconscious practice of privilege which excludes and stigmatizes voices from the margins, and especially the voices and talents and capacities of those who have been victimized, oppressed, excluded or plain beaten down by the prevailing system.
It’s time for movement and movements, for action and activism, for engaging with power and questioning power, for creating ties and breaking them. That’s what’s in the air at the moment.
Three Art of Hosting learning events are coming up this fall in western Canada. Join us in Saskatoon or here on Bowen Island to explore the leadership capacities needed for convening the conversations that matter in our time.
- Art of Participatory Leadership and Social Change, September 26-28, 2011, New York City.
- Art of Hosting Conversations that Matter: Leading thoughtful collaboration and wise action, September 19-22, 2011, Saskatoon, Sask.
- Art of Hosting Conversations that Matter, October 23-26, 2011, Bowen Island, BC.