Part Two of a seven part series on the Seven little helpers for dialogue and action
2. Have a good question
One of the most common questions I get asked is “how do I come up with a powerful question?” My answer is “it depends.” There are some great guides to there to making great questions, (like ORID, Strategic Questioning or The Art of Powerful Questions) but when it comes down to it, my own practice is fairly intuitive. Here are a few guiding principles I use when creating good questions.
Know where you are in the process. Good dialogue proceeds from a good question, and a good question is dependant on the context of the work. When we are working in complex situations we can derive questions from the three phases of adaptive action: “What?” “So What?” and “Now What?”
Questions that get at “What?” are questions that help us to see what is happening. They orient us to the context of work. “What is going on here?” can be a perfect question to elicit stories and perspectives on a situation. Such stories and perspectives – especially when gathered from a diversity of voices and experiences – give us a rich set of data from which to ask more questions.
“So What?” questions are all about sensemaking. They ask us to look at data and discover together what it means. Given an understanding of one’s context – even an inevitably incomplete understanding – it’s possible to ask questions about where we want to go, what we want to do, or what needs to be changed. It’s often tempting to start with these questions but in the absence of at least some data, conversations around sensemaking questions devolve into aspirational wish lists or ungrounded conflicts of opinion.
“Now What?” questions are the ones of strategic intent. These are ones that require us to make decisions and to act to respond to the sense we made of our current context and do something about it. Sometimes we need to choose one direction to go in. Sometimes we need to send out exploration parties to discover promising pathways forward. Either way asking “now what do we do?” is a move that can only come after we have made sense of a situation.
Ask a question that no one can answer alone. Perhaps it goes without saying, but a good conversation is not a cross-examination, where one person has an answer and they try to elicit that answer from another. It constantly surprises me how frequently people in power “engagement wash” projects by giving the illusion of curiosity or openness while they hide the fact that their mind has already been made up. In Canada such action is technically illegal when it comes to consultation with First Nations with respect to infringing Aboriginal rights. Resource companies and governments regularly get called to account by the courts for pulling this trick.
At the very least I find this practice unethical and it leads to distrust, anger and apathy. As a professional facilitator I sometimes get asked to lead these kinds of processes and my response is to work with the client to be clear and honest about what is one the table for discussion. In a surprising number of cases I have had clients refuse to shift their stance, and in a couple of cases I have actually had people ask me to lead engagement processes that would lead the participants to a pre-determined conclusion. Those are immensely satisfying clients to fire. I only despair to know that there is often someone out there that will do the work regardless.
Just be honest about what you don’t know and go and find people to talk to that are smarter or more experienced that you are. I guarantee when you approach people with questions like that the honour and respect you afford them will create a great conversation.
Keep it simple and let the group add the depth. There is a romance about the beautiful and powerful question. Think of Mary Oliver’s question “What is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?” That is a beautiful question, aesthetically gorgeous, a small poem in itself. But for me such a question inspires awe and appreciation but not an answer. That may well be the kind of question that you can live into, but it is not necessarily a practical question for strategic work. Don’t get me wrong, as a person with a contemplative practice I love these kinds of questions. They give me a chance to reflect on my life; I can live them in the way that Rilke invites us to live a question.
But for a conversation in a meeting, keep your questions simple and let the group bring the depth. One of the best World Cafes I ever ran was a three round affair in which we asked the question “we are halfway through this retreat. What do we need to talk about now?” Another time, in a deeply conflicted community I asked “What the hell is going on?” These questions had the effect of opening a little space for the real conversations that were already happening to come into our process. The questions were simple, the conversations were powerful.
What are your own reflections and principles on creating good questions?
As the story goes, my buddy Tenneson Woolf sat down with our teacher and friend Toke Møller, and with all the depth of his legendary commitment to simplicity he asked this question: “Toke, if I had no tools or methods, but needed to hold an important conversation, what’s the ONE thing.I could use.”
And Toke thought for a moment and said “Presence. Just bring your full presence to the situation. Oh, and have a good question…oh….and…” What followed was short list of seven little things to stick in your back pocket that you can pull out to use anytime you need to stop and host a conversation.
Over the past few months I’ve been reflecting on these little helpers. They are both a very easy way into the practice of the Art of Hosting, whether you are using it for facilitation or leadership. And as I’m giving some thought lately about how to introduce these ideas in different languages and cultural contexts, I’m returning to the simplicity of these original seven basic tools, but I’m unpacking them and using them as a way to reflect on my practice. I think these might make a very good foundation for a particular kind of facilitation workshop.
So here they are, expanded, in an updated form, and with some new thoughts. This will be a series of seven posts, so please follow along and reflect with me as we go.
1. Be Present
When we are facing uncertainty and especially when the situation is complex the wisest thing we can do is to be still and open our senses to what is going on. This is both a personal and a collective practice. For me personally it means listening, watching, noticing what I am feeling. Becoming present helps me to sense the situation. It allows time to make a connection between our observations of the context and what we know to be true. It also allows us to wonder a bit about what we’re seeing and to file that in the “ask more deeply about this” bucket. As pattern finding creatures we look for the familiar first and when the context is uncertain we need to quickly scan for that which is unfamiliar too. The beginning of this work of Hosting conversations that matter comes from the practice of recognizing the unfamiliar in a sea of things that seem to make sense. It is not what we know that causes us to feel uncertain. It is the new and novel, perhaps even the easily dismissed that calls our deeper attention – a kind of unsettling dissatisfaction with the status quo – into play.
Being present allows us to linger in the unknown for a while and to take time to name it as a space of unfamiliarity. It also allows us to identify in ourselves what is trembling, worrying, disconcerting. My inner emotional landscape can provide a reliable set of signals and warnings, but without being quiet and still for a bit it can also provide a very unreliable set of responses to those signals.
Just as presence is a critical personal practice, it is also one that is important to do collectively. At the beginning of all conversations that matter I take a moment to bring people present to the work we are doing, provide a clear break from one context to another, and invite them fully into the work at hand. We often take a moment in silence to reflect on the work. I create a certain and clear threshold to cross before we begin.
In the work of confronting uncertainty, becoming present helps to ask the question “what is going on?” Which is always the first question to ask to orient a group’s attention to the task at hand. As we gather answers and reflections on that question, we can also look at how those insights work on us as a group, where we have fragility around the situation, where we need to be challenged, or where we are resourceful and clear.
Becoming present is the first tool to use but it is also one you can always come back to. When conversations are difficult, when emotional tension is high, offering a moment of silent presence is a generous act. It allows people to go inward and find their own wisdom in the situation. It can allow people a chance to let the adrenaline flow through their system and bring their senses back on line. It has saved many a tense conversation for me and helped me deal with situations that take me right out of my good mind.
I’m just coming home from a couple of days in Victoria where Caitlin and I were with colleagues Rebecca Ataya, Annemarie Travers, and Kelly Poirier. We spent two days working on what I can only call “polishing the core” of the Leadership 2020 program that we offer on behalf of the Federation of Community Social Service of BC. We have run this leadership program for 8 years now, putting around 400 people through a nine month intensive program of residential and applied learning. The program has built collaboration, trust, and connection between the Ministry of Children and Family Development, indigenous communities and organizations and people working in the social services sector.
The program has evolved with every one of the 13 cohorts that has come through. Our core team has changed and this new configuration is our latest version. We are playing with a new set of constraints and ideas as we take the core need and purpose of the program and discover other ways we can offer it to meet the demand in the sector for leadership training that strengthens resilience, creativity, and the ability to thrive in complexity.
When we arrived on Thursday morning to begin our work, we had no agenda on tap, but instead had a compelling need. We started talking and discovered the path as we went being very careful to harvest. Our insights emerged in very deliberate conversation. As skilled dialogue facilitators, we are also skilled dialogue practitioners and we have a refined practice of hosting and harvesting our own work. When we get in flow, it feels like ceremony. With attention to a practice, working this way is extremely productive. Here are a few principles that I observed in working this way:
- Tend to relationships. As we were both building a new team and developing new ideas and products for our work, the most important focus in on relationships. We always build in social time in our work, and enjoyed a nice dinner out at 10 acres bistro, an excellent local foods restaurant in Victoria.
- Nourish bodies and minds. Working like this is physically and mentally draining, and we are very careful to nourish each there when we are working. This meant good snacks (bananas, nuts, and chocolate), ample time for tea and coffee breaks, a lovely prepared lunch by Rebecca and physical breaks to walk, or maybe even dance to Beyonce songs a little!
- Don’t silo the conversation, but structure the harvest. Our conversation wandered from program content, to context, to history, to practicalities, to new ideas for structure. We were all over the map. But as we went, Caitlin made good use of our supply of post it notes and we harvested into the Chaordic Stepping Stone categories that we are using the structure the evolution of the program. Sometimes the best hosting is good harvesting, and Caitlin took on that role beautifully.
- Don’t control the outcome. It sounds almost absurd to think that we would have controlled the outcome. Pure dialogue is about following the energy of the conversation and seeing what emerges. There was no facilitation tool used beyond the ability to listen carefully and address the need and purpose of our work. We stumbled on many beautiful ideas over these past few days and we constantly look for ways to incorporate them in our work. This leadership program has the quality of a polished gem, reflecting years of attention to what is needed, and what is no longer needed.
- Stay with the flow until it doesn’t flow anymore. In Open Space we talk about the principle of “When it’s over it’s over” meaning that all creative work has a rhythm and flow to it. When the brains are no longer engaged and the mental and cognitive tiredness sets in, it’s time to stop. Two intense six hour days of work can produce tremendous results, but when the flow stops, there is no point forcing it. Wrap it up, make a date for some next steps and celebrate the work.
Working like this has the feeling of working with the simplest and most ancient way of talking about what to do. For tens of thousands of years, this is mostly how humans have talked about need and purpose in the world. Long before there were professional facilitators and methods for strategizing, decision making and evaluating, there was dialogue.
Sometimes all you need is a powerful need and purpose, solid relationships, a good way to listen, and time. When it takes on the feel of ceremony, you know you’re getting it right.
Five links that caught my eye over the holiday.
New Power: How it’s Changing the 21st Century and Why you need to Know
A book review from Duncan Green, whose work on power, evaluation, and complexity in international development, I much admire. Seems this new book invites a shift in thinking about power from quantity to flows:
Old Power works like a currency. It is held by a few. It is closed, inaccessible and leader-driven. It downloads and it captures. New Power operates differently, like a current. It is made by many. It uploads, and it distributes. The goal with new power is not to hoard it, but to channel it.’
New Power is reflected in both models (crowd-sourced, open access, very different from the ‘consume and comply’ Old Power variety or the ‘participation farms’ of Uber and Facebook) and values (informal, collaborative, transparent, do it yourself, participatory but with short-term affiliations).
Understanding the Learner and the Learning Process
I am fascinated by the connection between how we learn in complex systems and how we strategize in complexity. I think they are the same thing. And there is no better lab for understanding good complexity learning than complex sports like basketball and football. Here is an annotated interview with Kobe Bryant, in which Richard Shuttleworth makes some notes about how learners learn in complexity from Mark O Sullivan’s excellent footblogball.
Jacob Bronowski, a holocaust survivor, discusses the dehumanizing power of arrogance and certainty in a powerful clip from a video where he visits Auschwitz and reconnects with the violence of knowledge.
This is the concentration camp and crematorium at Auschwitz. Thisis where people were turned into numbers. Into this pond were flushed the ashes of some four million people. And that was not done by gas — it was done by arrogance, it was done by dogma, it was done by ignorance.
When people believe that they have absolute knowledge, with no test in reality, this is how they behave. This is what men do when they aspire to the knowledge of gods.
Science is a very human form of knowledge. We are always at the brink of the known; we always feel forward for what is to be hoped. Every judgment in science stands on the edge of error and is personal. Science is a tribute to what we can know although we are fallible…
We have to cure ourselves of the itch for absolute knowledge and power. We have to close the distance between the push-button order and the human act. We have to touch people.
Design Thinking Is Fundamentally Conservative and Preserves the Status Quo
A solid challenge to the ubiquitous application of design thinking to solve complex problems.
The political dimensions of design thinking are problematic enough on their own, but the method is particularly ill-suited to problems in rapidly changing areas or with lots of uncertainty, since once a design is complete the space that the method opens for ambiguity and new alternatives is shut down. Climate change is one such area. The natural environment is changing at an astonishing rate, in ways that are likely to be unprecedented in human history, and that we are unable to fully predict, with each new scientific discovery revealing that we have far underestimated the complexity of the systems that are at play and the shifts on the horizons may very well mean the end of our existence. Yet, design-thinking approaches, adopted with much fanfare to deal with the challenge, have offered formulaic and rigid solutions. Design thinking has allowed us to celebrate conventional solutions as breakthrough innovations and to continue with business as usual.
Intellectual humility: the importance of knowing you might be wrong
An antidote to the above challenges: admitting that you might be wrong as a disciplined act:
Intellectual humility is simply “the recognition that the things you believe in might in fact be wrong,” as Mark Leary, a social and personality psychologist at Duke University, tells me.
But don’t confuse it with overall humility or bashfulness. It’s not about being a pushover; it’s not about lacking confidence, or self-esteem. The intellectually humble don’t cave every time their thoughts are challenged.
Instead, it’s a method of thinking. It’s about entertaining the possibility that you may be wrong and being open to learning from the experience of others. Intellectual humility is about being actively curious about your blind spots. One illustration is in the ideal of the scientific method, where a scientist actively works against her own hypothesis, attempting to rule out any other alternative explanations for a phenomenon before settling on a conclusion. It’s about asking: What am I missing here?
In the world of non-profits, social change, and philanthropy it seems essential that change agents provide funders with a theory of change. This is nominally a way for funders to see how an organization intends to make change in their work. Often on application forms, funders provide guidance, asking that a grantee provide an articulation of their theory of change and a logic model to show how, step by step, their program will help transform something, address an issue or solve a problem.
In my experience, most of the time “theory of change” is really just another word for “strategic plan” in which an end point is specified, and steps are articulated backwards from that end point, with outcomes identified along the way. Here’s an example. While that is helpful for situations in which you have a high degree of control and influence, and in which the nature of the problem is well ordered and predictable, these are not useful with complex emergent problems. Most importantly they are not theories of change, but descriptors of activities.
For me a theory of change is critical. Looking at the problem you are facing, ask yourself how do these kinds of problems change? If, for example, we are trying to work on a specific change to an education policy, the theory of change needs to be based on the reality of how policy change actually happens. For example, to change policy you need to be influential enough with the government in power to be able to design and enact your desired changes with politicians and policy makers. How does policy change? Through lobbying, a groundswell of support, pressure during elections, participation in consultation processes and so on. From there you can design a campaign – a strategic plan – to see if you can get the policy changed.
Complex problems are a different beast altogether. They are non-linear, unpredictable and emergent. Traffic safety is an example. A theory of change for these kind of problems looks much more like the dynamics of flocking behaviour. The problem changes through many many small interactions and butterfly effects. A road safety program might work for a while until new factors come into play, such as distractions or raised speed limits, or increased use of particular sections of road. Suddenly the problem changes in a complex and adaptive way. It is not logical or rational and one certainly can’t predict the outcome of actions.
In my perfect world I wish it would be perfectly acceptable for grantees to say that “Our theory of change is complexity.” Complexity, to quote Michael Quinn Patton, IS a theory of change. Understanding that reality has radical implications for doing change work. This is why I am so passionate about teaching complexity to organizations and especially to funders. If funders believe that all problems can be solved with predictive planning and a logic model adhered to with accountability structures, then they will constrain grantees in ways that prevent grantees from actually addressing the nature of complex phenomena. Working with foundations to change their grant forms is hugely rewarding, but it needs to be supported with change theory literacy at the more powerful levels of the organization and with those who are making granting decisions.
So what does it look like?
I’m trying these days to be very practical in describing how to address complex problems in the world of social change. For me it comes down to these basic activities:
Describe the current state of the system. This is a process of describing what is happening. It can be through a combination of looking at data, conducting narrative research and indeed, sitting in groups full of diversity and different lived experience and talking about what’s going on. If we are looking at road safety we could say “there are 70 accidents here this year” or “I don’t feel safe crossing the road at this intersection.” Collecting data about the current state of things is essential, because no change initiative starts from scratch.
Ask what patterns are occurring the system. Gathering scads of data will reveal patterns that are repeating and reoccurring in the system, Being able to name these patterns is essential. It often looks as simple as “hey, do you notice that there are way more accidents at night concentrated on this stretch of road?” Pattern logic, a process used in the Human Systems Dynamics community, is one way that we make sense of what is happening. It is an essential step because in complexity we cannot simply solve problems but instead we seek to shift patterns.
Ask yourself what might be holding these patterns in place. Recently I have been doing this by asking groups to look at the patterns they have identified and answer this question. “If this pattern was the result of set of principles and advice that we have been following, what would those principles be?” This helps you to see the structures that keep problems in place, and that is an essential intelligence for strategic change work. This is one adaptation of part of the process called TRIZ which seeks to uncover principles and patterns. So in our road safety example we might say, “make sure you drive too fast in the evening on this stretch of road” is a principle that, if followed, would increase danger at this intersection. Ask what principles would give you the behaviours that you are seeing? You are trying to find principles that are hypotheses, things you can test and learn more about. Those principles are what you are aiming to change, to therefore shift behaviour. A key piece of complexity as a theory of change is that constraints influence behaviour. These are sometimes called “simple rules” but I’m going to refer to them as principles, because it will later dovetail better with a particular evaluation method.
Determine a direction of travel towards “better.” As opposed to starting with an end point in sight, in complexity you get to determine which direction you want to head towards, and you get to do it with others. “Better” is a set of choices you get to make, and they can be socially constructed and socially contested. “Better” is not inevitable and it cannot be predictive but choosing an indicator like “fewer accidents everywhere and a feeling of safety amongst pedestrians” will help guide your decisions. In a road safety initiative this will direct you towards a monitoring strategy and towards context specific actions for certain places that are more unsafe than others. Note that “eliminating accidents” isn’t possible, because the work you are trying to do is dynamic and adaptive, and changes over time. The only way to eliminate accidents is to ban cars. That may be one strategy, and in certain places that might be how you do it. It will of course generate other problems, and you have to be aware and monitor for those as well. In this work we are looking for what is called an “adjacent possible” state for the system. What can we possibly change to take us towards a better state? What is the system inclined to do? Banning cars might not be that adjacent possible.
Choose principles that will help guide you away from the current state towards “better.” It’s a key piece of complexity as a theory of change that constraints in a system cause emergent actions. One of my favourite writers on constraints is Mark O Sullivan, a soccer coach with AIK in Sweden. He pioneers and research constraint based learning for children at the AIK academy. Rather than teach children strategy, he creates the conditions so that they can discover it for themselves. He gives children simple rules to follow in constrained game simulated situations and lets them explore and experiment with solutions to problems in a dynamic context. In this presentation he shows a video of kids practicing simple rules like “move away from the ball” and “pass” and watches as they discover ways to create and use space, which is an essential tactical skill for players, but which cannot be taught abstractly and which must be learned in application. Principles aimed at changing the constraints will help design interventions to shift patterns.
Design actions aimed at shifting constraints and monitor them closely. Using these simple rules (principles) and a direction of travel, you can begin to design and try actions that give you a sense of what works and what doesn’t. These are called safe to fail probes. In the road safety example, probes might include placing temporary speed bumps on the road, installing reflective tape or silhouettes on posts at pedestrian crossings, placing a large object on the road to constrain the driving lanes and cause drivers to slow down. All of these probes will give you information about how to shift the patterns in the system, and some might produce results that will inspire you to make them more permanent. But in addition to monitoring for success, you have to also monitor for emergent side effects. Slowing traffic down might increase delays for drivers, meaning that they drive with more frustration, meaning more fender benders elsewhere in the system. Complex adaptive systems produce emergent outcomes. You have to watch for them.
Evaluate the effectiveness of your principles in changing the constraints in the system. Evaluation in complex systems is about monitoring and watching what develops as you work. It is not about measuring the results of your work, doing a gap analysis and making recommendations. There are many, many approaches to evaluation, and you have to be smart in using the methods that work for the nature of the problem you are facing. In my opinion we all need become much more literate in evaluation theory, because done poorly, evaluation can have the effect of constraining change work into a few easily observed outcomes. One form of evaluation that is getting my attention is principles-based evaluation, which helps you to look at the effectiveness of the principles you are using to guide action. This is why using principles as a framework helps to plan, act and evaluate.
Monitor and repeat. Working on complex problems has no end. A traffic safety initiative will change over time due to factors well outside the control of an organization to respond to it. And so there never can be an end point to the work. Strategies will have an effect and then you need to look at the current state again and repeat the process. Embedding this cycle in daily practice is actually good capacity building and teams and organizations that can do this become more responsive and strategic over time.
Complexity IS indeed a theory of change. I feel like I’m on a mission to help organizations, social change workers and funders get a sense of how and why adopting to that reality is beneficial all round.
How are you working with complexity as a theory of change?