Most mornings, when I’m at home, I stroll down to a local rocky beach, coffee in hand, to begin my day in meditation. The beach is a pleasant 15-minute walk from my house. When I reach the water, I step from the asphalt onto a gravel path that meanders through trees, past thickets of blackberry bushes, and ends in a secluded cove facing east, towards the rising sun that crests over the 1200 meter ridges of the Brittania Range, the mountains that make up the eastern edge of the inlet in which I live.
I began visiting this spot regularly the day after my father died. This beach, in all its varying weather and seasons, became my sanctuary for healing and introspection. Whether on a sunny summer morning or during a dark, rainy winter day, it offers a place to simply be. It’s a space where I am held in the vastness of the east wall of Atl’kat7tsem/Howe Sound, where I sit still, observing the ever-changing dance of the waves, wind, sky, and sea. This spot is undeniably a container, but it is one that’s vast and overwhelming, akin to entering a cathedral. It’s a space so grand that my presence doesn’t alter it, inviting me instead to enter and surrender.
There are containers in our lives that we create with intent and control. There are emergent containers, birthed from many small collaborative actions. Then, there are containers like this one, pre-existing, ancient even, that hold us and are accessed by deliberately crossing a threshold that ushers us into a different state of being, thinking, and feeling.
Having a space like this in one’s life is beneficial, as many of the containers in which we work, live, shape, and co-create are embedded within much larger ones, over which we have little control or influence. The practice of surrendering to a larger context helps us fully immerse ourselves in a place and moment, to quiet our minds, rest, observe, and experience. In doing so, we also discover our inner reactions to our surroundings.
Maybe you have a place like this, or you can find a place like this. It might not be the mountains of a fijord, but it could be a forest, a park, a lake, a field, or the heart of a bustling city. Go there, observe, listen, and notice how little your presence in that space changes it, but how much you are influenced by it. Consider the audacity of imagining how you could affect or change it. Familiarize yourself with your humility and insignificance.
Our work in the world requires us to dance between the spaces we make and the spaces we inhabit. We can dance between these spaces and we can witness the dance of these spaces with each other. And all the while, we inhabit our own little containers of thoughts and feelings and intentions and motivations, every so subtly shaping and being shaped by dancing space.
I’m reading, writing and thinking a lot about containers these days. It has been a pervasive theme in my life, as I have constantly been obsessed with the concept, the ideas and the practices of building and holding containers for as long as I can remember. The spiritual practices I have cultivated in my life have always been related to containers. From the beginning of my facilitation career, the ideas that have most grabbed me are the ideas of hosting and holding space.
I remember a couple of significant events in my thinking as I realized how important containers are to facilitation and leadership. The first was my first exposure to Open Space Technology in 1995. That first experience, hosted by Anne Stadler, Angeles Arrian and Chris Carter, began with a kind of ritual invocation as we moved from what had been a traditional conference of 400 people to a day of self-organized conversations. In that instance, a candle was lit, and something more spiritual than transactional took place as we were welcomed into Open Space.
After that meeting, I devoted myself to Open Space Technology and to the practice of what I later came to know as “hosting:” holding space for self-organization and emergence. As I began to study dialogic practice, facilitation, self-organization and complexity, the idea of “the container” loomed large in my awareness.
If you have read my blog over the years, you will see this. There are more than two dozen blog posts that explore my thinking on this, and my only serious academic publishing has been on this topic. It is a subject that grabs me because it represents a concept that has appeared in every part of my life, from facilitation to music making, to playing and watching sports, to spiritual practice and so on. It is the one idea that seems to define what my life has been all about hosting and holding containers for self-organization and the emergence of good things.
And yet, it is almost a completely intangible idea. Of course, containers are quite visible when we make them out of walls and windows, or the sides of boats, or an island surrounded by water. But most of the rest of the containers we live in are ephemeral, diaphanous, hardly there at all, and yet they determine so much of our behaviour. Containers enact ways of thinking and cognitive patterns for good or ill. They can evoke emotional responses that arise from our subconscious. They define or challenge our sense of identity or belonging and they can focus our attention or cause it to become diffuse.
Ten years ago as I was starting out on my research for the chapter I ended up writing in the Dialogic Organizational Development book on containers, I had a chance to sit down with Crane Stookey, who is a tall ship captain and a consultant and who has written extensively and generously on containers. He was my first interviewee on this topic because he has such a clear experience of understanding and working with containers, as do all captains that command ships built for the roiling sea. Our conversation at the time was fantastic, and the only note I recorded said this: “The container builds the conditions for internal transformation. In Dialogic OD, needs this to be the primary site of change.”
What I meant by that is that any change that comes to an organization (or team, or group or community…) comes because the conditions for how that group self-organizations have changed. Containers are so important for this because the constraints at work in containers are the things that determine the behaviours and possibilities in a complex system. We know this is true – take the tables out of your board room and see what happens – and yet so much work in the world towards changes focuses on the idea that if we could just work harder to control on the interactions between people and the outcomes of those interactions, we will get the world we want. It is a perspective I find cruel and at odds with human community and life itself. It is one that is colonial at its heart.
So there are stakes to working on this and trying to bring this idea and set of concepts to some clarity, and I think this is something I am going to be devoting my time and attention to over the next little while to see if I can come up with some really good ways to describe the properties of containers, especially the ineffable ones, and the practices we use as humans for crossing over thresholds and entering into the bounded spaces of our lives that bring us into different ways of thinking and being. Maybe – and I realize I’ve made this promise before but…- maybe it becomes a book.
I’d really appreciate your thoughts on this topic, your questions, your enthusiasms and stories of your experience. What do you think? Is this something worthwhile? What would it mean to you to have a set of thoughts, practices and ways of working with containers that help you to see this locus of change work?
A few months ago, I was immersed in teaching complexity within the framework of the Art of Participatory Leadership program (AoPL). Essentially, AoPL is the application of the Art of Hosting within leadership contexts, extending beyond traditional facilitation and hosting scenarios. With a strong emphasis on personal practice and the use of complexity tools, AoPL encourages a deeper exploration of the connections between the Four Fold Practice, complexity, and dialogic containers – topics I’d previously addressed in my chapter for the book ‘Dialogic Organizational Development‘. My recent revisit to these subjects has sparked fresh insights.
In one of these sessions, a spontaneous thought emerged: “Leadership is all about managing interactions to get results.” This notion, inspired by Dave Snowden’s idea that culture is the product of interactions within a system, made me reflect upon the history of my own fascination with containers.
Throughout my life, I’ve found myself drawn to the concept of containers, primarily, I believe, due to an aversion to controlling interactions between people. This leaning was what initially attracted me to open space technology as an empowering meeting process. It didn’t dictate how people were going to interact, but instead provided conditions conducive to fruitful and creative connections. It left agency with the participants rather than centralizing control with the facilitator – something I’ve always preferred to avoid. Open Space is built on the ideas of self-organization and is therefore a natural method to use in complex environments, to invite groups to organize around important conversations and ideas for which they have the energy and agency to host.
This interest in open space led me to the realm of complexity science and various writings on self-organization, including work on networks, emergence, and community organizing. These concepts strive to vest power in the hands of those actively involved in the work, a principle that resonated deeply with me and steered me towards anthro-complexity and the application of complexity science to human systems.
It was in this field that I discovered William Isaacs’s seminal book on dialogue. Isaacs was among the first to describe the dialogic container in the context of organizational life. This deepened my interest in the topic, leading to my connection with Gervase Bushe in the early 2010s. Our collaboration eventually resulted in an invitation to contribute a chapter to the book he was editing with Bob Marshak, a key text in introducing dialogic organizational development to the world.
Interactions, containers, patterns, and emergent outcomes are all characteristics of complex systems. Both Snowden and Glenda Eoyang offer valuable, and different, insights into how constraints create conditions for emergence. However, the lesson that resonates most with me is the idea that, in complex situations, we can only work with the constraints to increase our chances of creating beneficial patterns.
This approach to working with containers and constraints can be challenging and risks verging into manipulation, especially when massive amounts of power and data are involved, such as in large social media companies. There is an ethical imperative to maintain transparency when working with constraints, a principle fundamental to this work.
In my chapter for Bob and Gervase’s book, I discussed the Four Fold Practice as a guiding framework. It helps leaders focus on four key patterns that make conversations meaningful, while also nurturing an environment that fosters the emergence of these patterns.
This practice grew from the observation that presence, participation, hosting, and co-creation are essential elements of meaningful, productive conversations. Importantly, these patterns should not be imposed but rather fostered through well-crafted containers.
Rather than dictating “be present now!”, we can shape spaces where presence naturally occurs and feels appreciated. Instead of compelling participation, we aim to cultivate processes that promote deep engagement through authentic and impactful invitations.
The same principles apply to hosting and co-creation. We shouldn’t impose facilitation roles onto individuals; instead, we should craft environments in which people comfortably host each other on various scales – from open-space, world café, circle to intimate one-on-one interactions.
Similarly, forcing people into co-creation isn’t the right approach. Instead, we must provide them with the necessary tools, conditions, constraints, and challenges to stimulate collaborative creation and achieve desired outcomes.
I strive to uphold these principles from the Four Fold Practice in every facilitation – to create conditions where the patterns of presence, participation, hosting, and co-creation naturally emerge.
This exploration into the realm of leadership, complexity, and dialogic containers has been a journey of discovery, reflection, and evolution. My fascination with containers and how they impact interactions, outcomes, and ultimately culture within a system continues to grow.
The intersection of complexity and leadership in the context of dialogic containers is a rich tapestry of insights and practices that can greatly enhance our effectiveness as leaders, facilitators, and change-makers. The journey is ongoing, and the learning never stops.
How do these reflections resonate with you? I’m thinking of writing more on the idea of containers, and would welcome your thoughts and questions about the topic.
Four things conspiring here today.
- I had lunch with a friend/student, and we had a long conversation about what it means to “hold space.”
- This post from Michelle Holliday in which she finds herself Rethinking Self-Organization.
- Working with Cynthia Kurtz, who published Confluence a couple of years ago, which is a framework that helps create a thinking space for the intersections of organization and self-organization.
- Getting ready to teach our next cohort of Complexity From the Inside Out.
So before you dive into this post, go play Horde of the Flies at Complexity Explorables. Play with the sliders. Find a way to lock all the dots in one super stable state. Find a way to ensure endless randomness. Find a way to have the dots self-organize such that patterns emerge, persist for a while, and then change. Play with trying to control the system. See if you can get desired results.
Now, what’s going on here?
There is a relationship between organization and self-organization. Systems self-organize within constraints. Without constraints, anything is possible, which makes it far more likely that complete nonsense will occur, utter chaos. But with too many constraints in a system, nothing will emerge, and the system will be locked into one steady and stable pattern with no possibility for emergence, adaptation or evolution.
This intersection between organization (the deliberate application of constraints) and self-organization (what happens inside a constrained space) is really the whole world in which facilitation and leadership play. It is the world of complexity. As Dave Snowden and Cynthia Kurtz wrote with a nod to Alicia Juarerro in “The New Dynamics of Strategy” back in 2003:
Humans are not limited to acting in accordance with predetermined rules. We are able to impose structure on our interactions (or disrupt it) as a result of collective agreement or individual acts of free will. We are capable of shifting a system from complexity to order and maintaining it there in such a way that it becomes predictable. As a result, questions of intentionality play a large role in human patterns of complexity.
Kurtz, C & Snowden, D (2003) “The New Dynamics of Strategy: sense making in a complex-complicated world” in IBM Systems Journal Volume 42 Number 3 pp 462-483
This remains one of the critical insights about anthro-complexity that is the basis for how I look at facilitation and leadership.
Practically speaking, the implication here is clear. Anyone working with a group will find themselves creating a temporary space inside of which some degree of self-organization will take place and outside of which one’s influence is limited. The job is to manage the constraints in the system, which means primarily creating a container formed of boundaries and catalyzing attractors, which creates a context for connections and exchanges between people inside the container. Once the container is set, one monitors it and, if possible, works with the constraints to take what is happening in a positive direction of travel.
THIS IS A PERILOUS UNDERTAKING. It is fraught with power dynamics, ethical questions, moral quandaries, conflicting value judgements, surprising results and crushing failures. There is always a chance that people will have a peak experience of their life, and it’s also possible that someone will experience traumatic and lasting harm. Along the way, you might even get good work done, if the existential crisis doesn’t eat you first. If you think leadership (or facilitation, parenting, or being a citizen) is easy, you haven’t lived.
Many of us get into facilitation because we want to help create a better world. Creating the conditions for good creative work, productive dialogue, and good relations is one way that can happen. The shadow side of this is that we often get VERY attached to what happens in the containers we create. More attached than we think we are. We want things to go well, we want people to be safe, we want a good outcome, and we want every voice to matter and for people to exercise their power and leadership. We cannot guarantee any of those things, let alone that any of them will go the way we want. Too often, facilitation and leadership situations fail on the reefs of good intentions. Things grow very controlling and prescriptive. And yet…
And yet, the work of holding space is not a flakey woo-woo concept. Holding space means two things. First, it is about creating and holding a boundary, or as Dave Snowden famously puts it when describing the complexity approach to hosting a children’s birthday party: “We draw a line in the sand known as a boundary…and we say to the children ‘cross that you little bastards and you die.'”
Second, it is about creating probes inside this container that influence how people behave inside it. When it appears that one of the probes has become a beneficial attractor, we find ways to stabilize it. And when one starts producing non-beneficial behaviours, we destroy it right away because emergence and self-organization can make bad things worse, and as any parent or gardener knows, you need to learn to nip things in the bud.
That’s what facilitation is. And it’s a lifelong practice where you will get that balance wrong a lot of the time. In fact, I would say that MOST of the time, I get it “wrong” because no matter where you start, as soon as the people enter the room, shit gets real, as the kids say. It’s all about how one adjusts to the situation. Hence, you need to build flexibility and adaptability into the process design, and keep a careful watch on what is going on, both in the container around you and in the container inside you, because THAT one is often the one that creates the most trouble.
Buy and read Cynthia’s book if you want a guided tour through the very deepest implications of this simple intersection of organization and self-organization. I’m going to bring the essence of her ideas into this upcoming cohort of Complexity Inside and Out because I think it really helps us explain the terrain upon which leadership, management, facilitation and coaching all take place. And I think it also presents an honest take on facilitation and leadership and how those roles are related to issues of control, constraint, creativity, emergence and self-organization.
One of the hallmarks of a complex problem is the fact that we are confronted by paradox and polarity everywhere we turn. When a situation has a both/and in it, it is dynamic and unresolvable to one choice or the other. It needs to be managed, lived with, coaxed into a place where the positive aspects of both can coexist.
These polarities exist everywhere in human systems. On my home island right now we are going through one of our periodic confrontations of the polarities that define our place. Fundamentally this polarity comes down to an age old struggle between change and stability.
It is well captured by my friend Ron Woodall, our local cartoonist who never fails to hit issues like this square on the nose.
In island communities, there is a palpable sense of identity liked to the boundaries that encompass us, the history and culture that unfolds in a small, tightly connected community, and the state of the place when we first arrived and formed our earliest, most idealistic, and most lasting impressions. From that moment on, change continues, and longing for what was intensifies. It may grow so strong that one no longer recognizes the place and disappointment, sadness and despair takes over. “This is not the Bowen I knew.” That realization makes some changes feel existential in nature, and they are. They are a kind of evaporation of the identity that we construct and cling to. Over time, one needs to seek meaning in the changes, helping to shape them or surrendering to them so that one’s connection to the place remains meaningful. Or one leaves, either physically or emotionally.
We have many polarities active on Bowen Island. Some of the ones we live with include:
- Affordable housing and high property values
- Attracting visitors and managing the crowds
- Isloation from Vancouver and proximity to Vancouver
- Public access and private property.
- Individual and community
- Accessibility and privacy.
Polarization in communities happens when people get locked in to one side or another of a polarity and try to influence policy in their favour. Populism can easily play on this sentiment. “Vote for me and I will protect you from those people who want everything to change. Stability. Tradition. Security.” versus “It’s time to do away with the old guard. Vote for me and I will drain the swamp, get rid of the deadwood and bring us into a shiny new world.”
The reality of governance is something like “Vote for me and I will aim to preserve what’s working for us while considering changes to the way our community works that may be hard to swallow, but might take us in a positive direction, while still preserving everything we’ve been that makes us unique.” Good luck running on that platform in this age. And yet the reality of governance, and especially local governance, is that this is actually the job.
Managing polarities is a critical aspect of leadership in a community. Local government folks and the other stewards of our community have to manage these polarities constantly. The change versus stability polarity is an important case in point..Change happens and we need to respond to it so that it is beneficial as a whole, to the land, to the local economy, to the citizens and residents. But preserving traditions and identity is important too, especially in small communities where social connections are important, and where a shared sense of who we are is helpful for doing shared things, like building infrastructure, helping those in need, and fostering good relationships that can be relied upon in a crisis such as a fire or an earthquake.
There are ways of working with polarities that help folks become nuanced and strategic and adaptable to the changing nature of the environment in which the polarity exists. Barry Johnson’s Polarity Management tool is one of those tried and true frameworks that I use to help folks think through the polarities that they face. It’s a very accessible tool too, and using it allows you to see a fuller picture of what is happening. Here are some steps to follow:
- Begin by identifying a polarity. Often if there is a conflict with two sides in a community, there is a polarity at its heart. Sometimes several positions can be concentrated into an overall polarity. If you have a Ron Woodall in your community, get them to capture it in a diabolical cartoon. Lay these out on a map like the one I depict below.
- Start with identifying the highest ideal or state that both sides of the pole are trying to reach. Then identify the biggest fear or the pit of despair that both are trying to avoid. These should be broad and abstract states, captured only in a few words.
- Identify the upsides of both pole. What’s GOOD and positive about making changes? What is the benefit of stability? You are looking to identify a positive direction of travel. If you are working with a group of people who carry different opinions but are willing to consider other positions, you can even have them identify the positive aspects of the OTHER side.
- Next, identify the downsides that will happen if we tip to one side or another. It can be valuable here if people championing one side are able to identify the downsides to their position. But if they can’t, have no fear. Those who disagree with them will have lots to offer!
- Once you’ve filled out the map, the next step is to find indicators for the down sides that you can use as early warning signs of a situation that is falling too far to one side or the other. These indicators should be fairly obvious and they can be used to monitor the situation. An important skill to managing in complexity is rigorously looking for the early signs of failure. A bias towards positive outcomes will almost always create a situation of inattentional blindness, whereby the early signs of failure are ignored because mostly things are going well. With a co-created polarity map, you can put everyone’s attention to use looking for these early signs.
- Finally, identify strategies to maximize the UPSIDES of each pole. What are things we could do today that would take us in THAT direction. Deliberately focus on each upside separately. You will find that these simple strategies help right the ship when the early signs point to you tipping too far to one side or the other.
Here is the polarity map I completed around the change versus stability polarity. Click here to see a higher res version on miro.
It’s easy for local governments, committees and even citizens to complete polarity maps on their own. A completed polarity map gives you a broad strategic canvas on which to operate. For volatile situations, it’s worth reviewing the map frequently and making sure that indicators and strategies remain relevant to the context. The process of making a map can also be a very valuable exercise to build your team and enlist everyone in helping to manage the polarity. It can also be used as a process to put conflict to work for a community. For those whose job it is to actually govern, polarity maps can make visible the challenge they face as they try to meet everyone’s needs well. They can provide a degree of transparency and complexity that helps keep populism at bay and enlists more people in the very real, very thorny and very political realities of policy and governance.
I’m curious if you have used this tool in local governance and what you have learned.