In this blog post, I’m going to lift the lid on the core of my facilitation practice. I specialize in complex facilitation for addressing complex issues and this requires a special approach to working with groups. In the Art of Hosting world, we call this approach “hosting” to signify that it has its primary focus on the spaces and processes that we use to host dialogue rather than a more traditional facilitation approach that manages the content, meaning-making, and dynamics.
For me, this approach is defined by a focus on the two key dynamics of emergence and self-organization. After 15 years of trying to figure this all out, I think I finally have this down to a simple set of underlying principles that have been heavily borrowed and deeply influenced by the work of Dave Snowden and Glenda Eoyang.
I first learned the term “complex facilitation” from Dave Snowden. “Complex facilitation” refers to an approach to working with groups that is grounded in good complexity theory. It is an important approach to take when the work you are doing is complex. There is almost always a temptation, when confronted with the uncertainty of a complex system, to default to control in order to drive the process towards a comfortable outcome. This can often result in a process becoming so constrained that there is no possibility for the magic of emergence or self-organization to happen. The desired outcomes of good complex facilitation process are precisely these two states: emergence of meaning and understanding, and self-organization of a group.
Emergence means that a group of people leaves a room with insights that no one person brought into a room with them. When we are confronted with complex problems stemming from emergent phenomenon (culture, conflict, identity, shifting markets, new realities dictated by contexts we don’t control, interpersonal dynamics, “next level” anything…) we need to to create a process that invites emergence. Emergent problems are addressed with emergent solutions.
Self-organization means that a group of people organizes their time, attention and resources in ways that meet the urgent necessity of the moment. It is possible to create processes that allow for self-organization to occur by providing clear attractors and boundaries in a system. Self-organization represents an emergence of structure, which is what is needed to work with emergent ideas. It’s no good going away on an off-site retreat, creating a set of powerful new ideas, and then going back to the office and trying to fit them into pre-existing structures.
Creating conditions for emergence
When we work with complex facilitation Snowden gives us three clear heuristics that can inform design: work with finely grained objects, disintermediate sensemaking, and distribute cognition.
Working with finely grained objects means that groups both generate and work with lots and lots of data points. In my practice, these are generally generated from collecting a large number of small stories and anecdotes about situations. My clients can attest to the huge numbers of post-it notes we go through in group process work, for this reason. These are use to collect data grounded in reality (“tell a story of a time when you made this move…”) and such data objects can be collected together, individually or using online tools. Lately, I’ve fallen in love with Cynthia Kurtz’s approach of Participatory Narrative Inquiry, which is one branch of the work she started with Dave Snowden as they began to create methods for complex facilitation. Other methods like Liberating Structures and large group facilitation methods also help do this.
Disintermediated sensemaking refers to the principle that the people themselves should make sense of their own work. We try to create processes where people are in touch with the raw data objects, so they can find meaning and patterns themselves, without a facilitator or consultant imposing a framework on them. Interpretation of data should rest with the people who are using it. In complexity, how people make meaning of their context dictates how they will act. If a consultant writes a report with their own conclusions, it will always distort the sensemaking participants do. We help this happen in groups by having people hunt for patterns, clusters things into themes and really using tools like Glenda Eoyang’s Human Systems Dynamics and technology like Sensemaker or NarraFirma to help in this work.
Distributed cognition means decentralizing the thinking in the group so that many brains are put to work on a problem and many different perspectives can be brought to bear. This includes having groups of people working in parallel on different issues so that they can generate approaches free of influence from each other in order to enhance creativity. Creating the conditions for diverse perspectives and contradictory actions helps groups to choose general directions of travel together and to test hypotheses and learn more about what paths forward are helpful and which are not.
Creating conditions for self-organization
Complex facilitation works with “containers” which are bounded spaces and time in which emergence is enabled. Containers are made up from a set of constratints acting together to create patterns. Inside these spaces, groups must be able to self organize emergent forms of working if they are to work on emergent ideas. In complex facilitation, you can create the conditions for self-organization by working with the attractors and boundaries that make up the constraints of the container, the exchanges and differences that enable the flows inside the container, and the identities that people take on in the work.
I’ve learned all this from Dave Snowden’s ABIDE framework and Glenda Eoyang’s CDE model and lately, I’ve been blending the lessons and insights from both into a general approach towards working with constraints in facilitated spaces..
In a container Attractors are things that attract and enable coherence and Boundaries are things that constrain and contain, creating separations and allowing us to categorize differences. Think about an attractor as something we all gather around: a fire, a song, a strong purpose, a centre, a meal. Attractors bring us into coherence. Boundaries contain us: a rim, walls, a fence, a roadway, a rule, a fixed amount of time or money. They draw lines between in and out, between what’s included and what’s excluded, and what is the same and different. You cross a boundary when you are no longing sharing a space with others, or when a data object is no longer functionally similar to something else. Taken together, attractors and boundaries form the basic properties of containers, and you can add more or fewer attractors, deepen or lessen attachment to them or tighten or loosen boundaries to create or shift containers.
Exchanges and Differences describe the dynamics inside a container and also act as constraints. Differences give us tensions and potentials for change. You can create more diversity or more homogeneity in a container. The potential for change lies in the differences in a container. Homogeneous systems tend to be very stable and resistant to change, massively diverse systems tend to move and change quickly. Exchanges describe the connections between things in a container and also describe the flows of resources in a system. These might include information, energy, power, and money. Exchanges can be increased or decreased, or given more amplitude or less. They can be channelled through one pipe like a garden hose or distributed through a more intricate structure like a mycelial network.
Identities influence self-organization because they can change the way people think about problems or perform functions in the system. Sometimes you need to CEO to be the most influential person in the system and sometimes you need their staff to be the important ones. Changing and disrupting identities is important for undertaking the three functions that enable emergence. Identity can often be a powerful dark constraint in a system that can hold stuck patterns in place or enable the emergence of new ones. Breaking down existing identities is key before self-organization into new emergent structures takes place. But too much undermining of identities leads to existential chaos, so sensing is critical.
Any questions?
I’ll be hosting an online course with my pals at Beehive Productions next March on this topic, so expect a few more musings over the next several months as I put together that four-week program.
So we had a very interesting election yesterday in Canada and a couple of progressive American friends of mine were hoping from afar that we would reject the kind of right wing racist populism that has infected much of the western world at the moment. This is the response I sent them. For those of you not in Canada, perhaps it will help you understand what happened in our country, written from an unabashedly progressive standpoint. It’s just my take, but here it is for posterity.
We pretty strongly rejected the People’s Party of Canada, the one actual right wing populist party that was running, although the Bloc Quebecois (Quebec’s sovereignties party) gained a lot of support, making some headway on the basis of Bill 21 in Quebec. That provincial bill outlaws public employees from wearing religious symbols in public and is lauded by some Quebeckers as a commitment to secularism and the civil law code principle of “laïcité” which is poorly understood outside of Quebec, but which comes across as racist and discriminatory in practice when seen through the common law lens of our Constitution. (In Canada both civil law and common law have standing, a historical anomaly stemming from the colonial compromise between English and French legal codes) In Quebec the province had to invoke the notwithstanding clause in the Constitution to pass the bill, meaning that it wasn’t subject to the Constitutional provisions to protect minority rights. Many are calling the bill racist and are begging the federal government to take it to Court. While that seems like a practical thing to do, in this political structure, it’s going to be hard.
The BQ and the Conservatives together with a few Liberal abstentions from Quebec can seriously hamper the government on bills that negatively impact Quebec, and as a result this issue might actually be allowed to stand without a Supreme Court challenge in the short term. Likewise, the BQ might join the government in messing up the investigation of corruption and obstruction of justice that needs to go on around the SNC-Lavalin affair that saw Trudeau pressure his Attorney General to allow the company to have a deferred prosecution agreement around some massive corruption they were involved in internationally. That AG, Jody Wilson-Raybould, is an indigenous woman, and she resigned her position, called out the Prime Minister and ran last night as an independent and got re-elected. So she will be back in the House, with a mandate to use her voice.
The Conservatives’ problem was that they pandered to a ton of anti-Trudeau rhetoric in Alberta and Saskatchewan. This has meant that they have won provincial elections there in recent years, but the rest of Canada thinks they are now a narrow-minded, regional-focused, climate change denying, dinosaur party and so the prairies are triumphantly blue and, outside of rural southern Ontario, all alone. They failed to see that Trudeau was actually the only leader willing to both build the pipeline they want (the government bought it last year) and also appeal broadly to the rest of Canada with social programs and policies that could unite interests. Had they voted Liberal, they would have had tremendous influence in Ottawa. Had the Conservatives broadened their appeal nationally, they would have won. As it is, we’re fractured along regional lines again, much as we were in 1993 and Trudeau returns to Ottawa with a minority government and actually coming in second in the popular vote. Folks are saying it’s the weakest mandate ever given to a government in Canadian history.
As a result, the NDP holds the balance of power, which will help get a few big things over the line such as a national pharmacare program, and perhaps a national low income dental care program and possibly some housing and urban infrastructure programs. It will preserve the climate strategy the Liberals have put forward, but that is still too weak to meet our Paris targets. For social programs, it’s the best possible outcome I think, but even with NDP support, the government is in a very weak position and the partisan and regional attacks will keep coming from Quebec and AlSask. That may mean a weak government and another election in a couple of years, and if that happens my guess is that the Liberals will have a better chance to capture conservative voters in Ontario who just hate Alberta moaning all the time even if they are supportive of oil and big business in general.
Interesting times. The Liberal party has not been good on progressive issues, especially indigenous issues, despite their rhetoric towards reconciliation. When the centre-right parties are weak, they tend to move right to canibalize the Conservatives’ soft support. Having the NDP holding the balance will help check them, but it’s not a massive progressive repudiation of populism.
Maybe it’s fair to say that it’s a defensive play against hate and it seems like our election was relatively protected from outside influence, hacks and Russian bots. They were definitely trying, but we are blessed not to have a two party system. It means that when things fracture, they do so in a way that creates more diversity rather that staunch and stark divisions. Makes it harder to govern, but then I think that should be a feature of Canadian politics and not a bug.
If you’re Canadian, why not weigh in here and offer perspective for folks reading this outside of Canada. What’s your take?
My friends at Bring on the Zoo in The Netherlands publish a little series of bookmarks with resources for their clients and workshop participants. The asked me for a recommendation of 10 books to help you work with complexity and here’s what I came up with. I hope some of these are new to you.
Accessible Theory (Because you need theory)
Emergent Strategy, adrienne maree brown
A personal and vulnerable account of working in complexity with inspiration and resources you may have never seen before.
Simple Habits for Complex Times, Jennifer Garvey Berger and Keith Johnson
Accessible theory situated in stories that will help you relate to the leadership challenges posed by complexity.
Adaptive Action, Glenda H. Eoyang and Royce J. Holladay
Practical models and tools for understanding complex systems and shifting patterns
Facilitation (Because you need tools)
The Surprising Power of Liberating Structures, Henri Lipmanowicz and Keith McCandless
33 group methods grounded in good theory and practice which engage total participation
The Facilitators Guide to Participatory Decision Making, Sam Kaner, et. al.
The classic text for working through the stages of emergence in groups.
Going Horizontal, Samantha Slade
Applying participatory practices and methods to everyday organizational life.
The Circle Way, Christina Baldwin and Ann Linnea
The mother of all meeting methods, and the core of good facilitation practice.
The World Cafe, Juanita Brown et. al.
Beyond the method, and into the power of conversational leadership to transform.
Personal Practice (Because you need to keep it together)
Loving What Is, Byron Katie
A simple and profound practice for transforming your limiting beliefs
Comfortable with Uncertainty, Pema Chödron
Short teachings on how to stay present with compassion and courage when you don’t know what’s happening.
So there you go, that will get you started. And if you want to come over to Bowen Island to read them, and you want the view pictured above, come visit Zack and Renee at Tell Your Friends Cafe, on the pier.
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!