A couple of days I ago I shared a link on twitter from Rob Hopkins about a community meeting held in Totnes in the UK which brought together the community to discuss what to do now that the town had declared a climate emergency. The design of the meeting was highly participatory and I’m grateful that the organizers took time to document and share the results.
The design had all the hallmarks of an effective participatory gathering, including having a well thought through harvest strategy so that the gathering was in service of the work and that it left people engaged, enthusiastic about participating in community work and more importantly trusting one another.
These kinds of gatherings are not uncommon, but it’s unlikely that you’ve ever been to one in your town or city. I’ve been lucky enough over the years to do a few really interesting gatherings in my home community of Bowen Island, including a nearly year long series of monthly Open Space events which ran parallel to our Official Community Plan update and a participatory design session for the future of some of our community lands.
This morning, when asked on twitter what I though contributed to building trust in community meeting I answered with a few thoughts. I’ve written a lot about this before, but it’s always interesting to see what I would say differently at any given time.
So here’s today’s version. As design principles, I think these should be at the centre of design for participatory processes if you want to do things that increase trust:
- Trust the people. Invite them because they care about the issues and they have something to say, and invite them to engage in questions you don’t have answers to. Don’t spend a lot of time lecturing at them. You invited them, treat them like honoured guests.
- Let them host and harvest their own conversations. My core practice here is “never touch the people’s data.” If they are recording insights and clustering themes and writing session reports simply give them the tools or the process for that and let them get on with it. Provide a clear question for them to work on, and let them use their own words to rerecord the answers and insights. Be very careful if you find yourself synthesizing or sense making on behalf of a group. Those are your insights, not theirs.
- Use small groups and mix them up. Put people in proximity to many different ideas and perspectives and let them struggle with difference and diversity. Mix them up. Not every conversation will be great. Let people move on and discover better things in different conversations.
- Work from stories and not opinions. If you want to know about the future of a community ask people to tell stories that somehow capture the change they are seeing, rather than “what do you think is going to happen?” try not to have abstract or aspirational conversations without first grounding the participants in a process that helps them to also see what’s happening in the system.
- Ask people to act within the scope of their agency. Be careful asking for recommendations for other people to do things if you don’t have the resources to undertake those recommendations. Be clear with participants about what you can support at the end of the meeting and what is theirs to do, and don’t ask them for actions that they have no ability to undertake.
If you ask me again in a few months what I would say, it would probably be different, but this is a pretty reliable set of principles to guide design.
Recently I have had several jobs that have required large group complex facilitation. Sometimes this work involves using methods like Open Space Technology or World Cafe, and other times it requires new designs and processes customized for the work.
When I say “complex facilitation” I mean running group processes that are grounded in complexity theory and intended to move a group towards emergent outcomes. I first heard this term used by Sonja Blignault and Dave Snowden of Cognitive Edge, to describe this kind of facilitation. (Sonja has a great post on this stuff!) These are facilitation techniques and approaches that are required for large groups of people to engage in strategy, sensemaking, planning, and evaluation when the direction forward is unclear and the outcomes are unpredictable or unknown. It is a basic feature of all my facilitation practise, but when I’m doing new things with new designs, methods and processes, I’m most keenly aware of the nature of the work. So over the past few weeks, I’ve been able to reflect on both what complex facilitation is and what is required to do it well.
Here are a few thoughts.
Complex facilitation is highly participatory. Even in a large group setting, complex facilitation requires the active participation of everyone in the room. You will rarely find a meeting I’m running where you have the time to check your email, or just observe. I create exercises and use processes that require active and relatively equal participation. This begins with the invitation process, where we work hard to ensure that there is a diverse group of people, experiences, and perspectives involved in the project. It requires participants to be prepared to work in a participatory way, and it requires processes that ensure that everyone has a chance to meaningfully contribute to the outcomes. This means designing and using structures that move between large and small group sessions, and never leave people sitting and listening in plenary too long.
Outcomes are emergent and therefore unknown at the beginning. There is no pre-determined destination in complex facilitation. We may have the purpose of making a decision, producing a report, or assembling a plan, but the basic content of those outputs is emergent. It arises from the interactions between the participants. As a facilitator, I have to be very careful not to influence the outcomes of the work, especially when the work is making meaning of patterns that are important to the group. I have to avoid using examples to illustrate the exercises drawn from the group’s context. I spend a lot of preparation time thinking of examples to use that won’t colour the group’s sensemaking work. During the work, I have to be deeply conscious of the way I talk and interact with the group, so as not to impose my view of things on them.
Use stories and base the work in reality. One thing I have learned from my work informed by complexity practitioners like Dave Snowden, Jennifer Garvey Berger, Cynthia Kurtz, and Glenda Eoyang is to base your strategic work in reality. This means prepping strategic work with a process to collect stories and narratives from the organization or community. Over the past couple of years, I have started using tools like Sensemaker and Cynthia Kurtz’s NarraFirma to do this work. These tools have the advantage of collecting data from people in their context which means that when they come to a large group meeting, they are able to work with material that has been collected rather than generating stories in a workshop context that can sometimes be influenced by bias, habit, and other kinds of cognitive entrainment. I also work with methods that can generate narratives in the workshop itself, but if it’s possible, undertaking a narrative capture beforehand makes the work more meaningful.
Remember that all complexity work is about patterns. When working with complex facilitation techniques, I’m constantly designing processes and shifting them based on pattern intelligence. In designing and working with patterns, I rely on my version of the ABIDE heuristic: I pay attention to Attractors, Boundaries, Identities, Differences and Exchanges in a process. When the group needs shifting, these are the basic areas I get to influence. If unhealthy issues are arising in a group, my job is to try to shift the patterns to bring the group to emerging health and coherence (note: this does not mean suppressing dissent or conflict!). Work with patterns and you’ll avoid the temptation to meddle in the content.
Work with cognitive stress and overload. The word “facilitation” comes from the Latin word facilitare which means “to make things easy.” That is not the goal of complex facilitation. Instead, the facilitator works with cognitive overload and stress, deliberately shifting the process between mentally heavy activities and things that are lighter and allow for cognitive recovery. The reason for doing this is to ensure that participants are constantly challenging their patterns and biases. Especially in sensemaking sessions, participants who simply go to the easy answers are not finding the novel. Innovation is very hard work and requires people to both think and act differently. I’m sure many folks who have worked with me will testify about how much they struggled in sessions when we were trying to do new things. That struggle is brains wrestling with habits and preferences. Facilitators need to be skillful in introducing good stress and overload that doesn’t break a group but causes people to authentically find new things. Work hard and eat avocadoes and blueberries.
Not everyone will enjoy it. As a result of cognitive overload and the messiness of the room strewn with markers and posit it notes, you will find that not everyone will enjoy a complex facilitation session. I try to prepare people as much as possible for the work, and almost always warn them ahead of time that the day will be challenging, and they are invited to stay in it. But in a large group of folks, there will always be people who have a crappy time. Try not to create processes that have this result, but also learn and remember that not everyone is going to be thrilled to work in this way. I’ve been in this situation both as a participant and as a facilitator, and I’m okay with it.
You don’t have a safety net. The more experienced one gets at complex facilitation, the more frequently one operates without a safety net. It can feel risky facilitating in this way, even with a couple of decades of experience under one’s belt. I still often get nervous and fearful in these kinds of workshops, and I’m on high alert. I have developed good self-awareness practices to know when my anxiousness is seeping into my facilitation. This is critical for facilitators of all kinds but especially those who engage in this kind of work. It is not uncommon to find oneself receiving criticism and mistrust, especially as a group is going through a groan zone together. Have a good practice and you can remain a resourceful facilitator. That is the only safety net you get!
For many years I have been teaching Cynefin as a foundational framework in complexity and participatory leadership workshops and retreats. For me it’s the best and most accessible way to explain the differences between complex problems and other kinds of problems and why we need to make complexity-based interventions in complex systems.
And while there are great ways to start learning about ontology in a lecture format, or using te examples of a children’s birthday party, I’m rather inclined to playing games as a way of understanding different types of systems before we do any teaching at all. Especially when you are teaching Cynefin by referring to constraints, games are super useful because a game is really just a constrained system.
My go to games involve movement and various challenges inspired by theatre exercises, and I’ve documented them before. This morning I needed to create a new suite of games for a context in which free movement was itself constrained (two participants in wheelchairs and a room that was not big enough for good and open movement.) I went to my arsenal of improvisation games and came up with these three games. We did these in groups of about 6-7 people.
- In your group, recite the English alphabet in order one letter at a time. Go around the circle, with each person saying one letter at a time.
- In your group, this time you will construct a 26 word story by each person contributing a word that starts with the next letter in the alphabet. Go in order around the circle, one word from each person. The theme of the story is “Our journey to the retreat centre.”
- In your group you have 3 minutes to tell a one word story about a mythical and legendary community event. Each person contributes one word at a time and you go clockwise around the circle. I will let you know when you have 30 seconds left to wrap up your story.
You can see that these three games map on to the Obvious, Complicated and Complex domains of Cynefin and although they are variations of the same process, the way we use constraints is what dictates the nature of the game.
In the first game, there is a rule: recite the alphabet in order, one person at a time. There is no room for creativity and in fact a best practice – singing The Alphabet Song – help you to do it. If anyone in the group doesn’t know the alphabet, it’s easy enough to google it and show them so they don’t lose their place.
In the second game, there was more latitude for participants to ad something, but they were still constrained by the alphabet scheme and the rule of one word at a time, going in a circle. Again, expertise helps here, as people can remind others that they skipped a letter for example, but increasingly the story is emergent and there is more unpredictability in the exercise. It’s also worth pointing out how people game the system by schoosing words that fit the rules rather than words that contribute to the story. The rules are far more influential constraints than the purpose of the exercise. This leads to all kinds of discussion about why it’s easy in large system to justify your work by just doing your part rather than by what you added to the whole. This is a good example of governing constraints.
In the third game we free the participants from all constraints except one word at a time, in a circle. The theme of the story becomes more important, because word choice is ENABLED by the theme which constraints options. Enabling constraints are at play, and I offered people a couple of heuristics from the improve world in order to hep them if they were stuck:
- Accept the offer and be changed by it
- Make your partner look good by building on the offer
- Don’t be afraid to fail
One word at a time stories can sometimes be very powerful and moving as they emerge from people co-creating something together. You can see how small changes cause the story to go in a radically different direction and participants can often feel their desire to control the narrative dashed on the rocks of different offers. With fewer GOVERNING constraints in place, people feel freer to make mistakes and fail, especially knowing that others may be waiting to work with their material anyway.
So there you go: a new way to experientially learn ontology before diving into Cynefin to explain and make sense of what we just did.
Part seven of a seven part series on the seven little helpers for dialogue and action
- Part 1: Presence
- Part 2: Have a good question
- Part 3: Use a talking piece
- Part 4: Harvest
- Part 5: Make a wise decision
- Part 6; Act
7. Stay together.
Our final little helper in this series is maybe the most important and it perhaps brings us back to the beginning again. Quite simply, if you have taken the time to do good work, the best way to ensure that it is sustainable over time is to stay together. Important work requires a strong relationship between people that can hold the work as it moves, grows, changes, and sometimes fails. As my colleague Tuesday Ryan-Hart says, “relationship is the result.” Good work done in the absence of good relationship rarely fulfills its potential.
I remember watching an American sports broadcast of the FIFA World Cup in 2010, with German legend Jürgen Klinsmann reporting as a correspondant for ESPN from the French team’s training camp. The French team imploded that summer, a team that had squeaked into the Finals on a poor refereeing decision to begin with. The team scored only one goal in the group stages and lost all three of its games. The players revolted and brawled with coaches and administrators. It was horrible.
When asked why the team was performing so badly on the pitch by the American sports anchors, Klinsmann stared incredulously into the camera and said “because they don’t like each other; they are not friends.” The Americans blinked dumbfoundedly at an answer that seemed to come from a kindergarten teacher. But to anyone that has played a game like football, (or hockey or basketball and other “flow” sports) you will know EXACTLY what Klinsmann was saying: without good relationships, it is impossible for talent to perform at its potential. Staying together is everything.
So here are a few principles to keep that going.
Give equal attention to action and relationship. Relationship is sustainability. Developing and practicing good working relationships is essential. The fruits of good relations are borne when times get tough and if you haven’t been actively practicing as you go, it will be too late to draw on those resources when you’re in a hole. Find ways, in all of your strategic work, to also do the work of maintaining trust, respect, generosity, and honesty. Have string enough relationships that there is no fear to call each other to account, because you all know that it is for the greater good. Every planning session, every update meeting, every community consultation is a chance to generate good results and good relationship. Make sure you build in co-responsibility to care for the quality of relationship as well as the quality of results.
Check in with one another to maintain healthy relationship last based on openness, trust and support. There is a personal aspect to this, and team members should be doing their work to create productive and healthy relationships. Take time to celebrate and to socialize. Build in depth to your relationships. The best teams I have ever been on are with people who become trusted friends, and even if our work goes sideways or our working relationships crumble, we can walk away still holding each other in high esteem. It isn’t easy and that is what makes it worthy.
Whenever possible create and work with conditions for reciprocity, gifting and mutual support. The biggest lessons I have learned from healthy indigenous communities and organizations focus on this. Reciprocity, gifting, and mutual support are practically essential features of every indigenous group I have ever worked with. You simply cannot show up in these spaces self-centred, single-mindedly focused on transactional work, or unwilling to offer mutuality and support. Organizations and communities who hold a high ethic around these issues tend to be resilient and generative over time. So accept the invitation to decolonize your approach to relationships, especially when you walk into a place holding power and privilege.
I hope this series has been useful and inspiring. It’s been fun reading the comments and the additional insights. If you have more to add later but find the comments closed, please contact me and let me know.
Part six of a seven part series on the Seven little helpers for dialogue and action
- Part 1: Presence
- Part 2: Have a good question
- Part 3: Use a talking piece
- Part 4: Harvest
- Part 5: Make a wise decision
6. Act
The sixth of our seven little helpers is simple: Act. If you have taken the time to plan, talk, and harvest, you owe it to yourself and your group to honourably act on what you’ve learned.
Now it’s easy to get consumed by the cult of action, and to assume that every encounter needs to have a week defined action plan at the end of it. While that is simply not true – not every water cooler conversation results in action, but many are critically important in organizational life – when action is called for, be sure to act well. For whatever reason I find that many people have trouble with action. Perhaps it relates to the aversion and anxiety associated with decision making, but to act with clarity and commitment is kind. Here are some principles to guide your action. But be warned, these principles can take you down the road of planning to act, so be sure to keep it as simple as possible and get on with it.
Don’t confuse action planning with action. You would be surprised how many people confuse action planning with action. Often when I am contracting with a client and I ask for outputs, they will specify a document or an artifact, all the while emphasizing that they want to see action. Artifacts are pretty straightforward, and that is certainly something your consulting team can produce for you. But if you’re my client, I need you to understand that action is on you. That means thinking through how you are going to support action coming out of the work we do together. Recently I had a client place huge expectations on an off-site retreat. It needed to produce change in the organization’s culture designed over a three day gathering. I asked how the leadership was supporting people to make change (and to fail at it) and the client said “we have a really fear based culture here.” I warned her that without support from those in power to accept and even incentivize failure while people tried to change behaviours, meaningful action would be highly unlikely. She promised to go back to her Vice President for clarity and I never heard back from them. “We’re going in a different direction” is often the response I get from organizations not ready to put their money where their mouths are. That’s fine by me; I never want to be in a place of creating the conditions for merely performative action, when the people or the situations are calling for real change.
Action requires resources of time, money and attention. Don’t over promise commitments to resource action. In chaordic design, I call this work supporting the Architecture of Implementation. It seems to me that anything arising out of a participatory strategic initiative will require specific commitments of time, money, and attention to sustain it. If there is new work coming then new resources need to be in place to support it. I always caution leaders not to promise to “support all good ideas” that come out of a meeting if they can’t back that commitment with commensurate resources. How much time will your staff get to work on issues? What money do they have available to them? Who has the capacity for oversight and connection? If you fail to prepare a good architecture for implementation, you will burn out your people with added demands on their time and energy and no support. That’s cruel, and its a waste of time and resources. If you are committed to change you need to support change.
Distribute action plan and responsibility as much as possible. Use power to support self-organization and agency. It should be obvious, but participatory change should include participatory leadership. Sustained efforts to address sticky problems in organizations will often benefit from having many agents working on the project together. Use good organizational practices like the ones my friend Samantha Slate has shared in her book Going Horizontal to support leadership and action throughout the organization: share accountability, support personal leadership, give people space to work, ensure people have good conditions for collaboration, and practice good principles of equity and care
Be be mindful of PRICE. Because we love our five letter acronyms, use PRICE to design and check in with your architecture of implementation. Ask:
- How is POWER operating in this situation? Do we need more? Does is need to be more centralized or more distributed? Where is informal power and influence at work and how can we use it or mitigate it?
- What are the RESOURCES we need in order to act well? Who is in charge of these resources, and how to we get them onside to support our work early? What do they need to continue sending resources our way?
- How will we ITERATE our action? AS we try new things, what is the process for failing and trying again and improving as we go? How can we maximize support from those with power to allow for experimentation? Without thinking this through beforehand, people with power in a system are very likely to pull the plug on new initiatives the moment something goes wrong. Iteration is a crucial aspect to make things resilient.
- What CAPACITY do we need to develop? Where do people in the system need to undertake learning to work with the changes they are facing? What new skills and perspectives do we need to change the way we are working? Building organizational and community capacity is critical to sustaining creative and engaged work.
- How will we EVALUATE our work? Is our evaluation strategy in line with the kind of work we are doing? If we are working in complexity do we have good developmental evaluation and learning frameworks? If we are working with more predictable systems, do we have the right experts evaluating our work? How will we tell the story of what we are up to and communicate it well to those who need to hear about it? Evaluation is not something done in isolation at the end of a project but something done throughout. It’s how you document and share the story of what’s happening.
Taken together, these five things can support ongoing and sustained action beyond the report from the meeting or the project planning grant charts or the budget. True action needs support.
And then, when you are ready. Act.