Chris Corrigan Chris Corrigan Menu
  • Blog
  • Chaordic design
  • Resources for Facilitators
    • Facilitation Resources
    • Books, Papers, Interviews, and Videos
    • Books in my library
    • Open Space Resources
      • Planning an Open Space Technology Meeting
  • Courses
  • About Me
    • Services
      • What I do
      • How I work with you
    • CV and Client list
    • Music
    • Who I am
  • Contact me
  • Blog
  • Chaordic design
  • Resources for Facilitators
    • Facilitation Resources
    • Books, Papers, Interviews, and Videos
    • Books in my library
    • Open Space Resources
      • Planning an Open Space Technology Meeting
  • Courses
  • About Me
    • Services
      • What I do
      • How I work with you
    • CV and Client list
    • Music
    • Who I am
  • Contact me

Category Archives "Organization"

The two loops model of change, Part 2

January 15, 2024 By Chris Corrigan Complexity, Conversation, Culture, Democracy, Emergence, Featured, First Nations, Leadership, Organization, Philanthropy 6 Comments

Part 1 is an introduction to this model.

In the first post on this model, I introduced the basic model. In this one, I want to explain the way I think about the lines and the spaces between them

The big moves

The “two loops” referred to in the model’s name refer to these two arcs that essentially represent the rise and fall of influence over time. In the original, as I encountered it, only the bottom arc had labels for four big movements of an emerging system. They were the original Name, Connect, Nourish and Illuminate, based on the movements named by Deborah Frieze and Meg Wheatley in a pamphlet called Using Emergence to Take Social Innovation to Scale, which described the Berkana Institute’s approach to social change. The system took on a different form in each of these locations on the map. Naming was what “pioneers” (later changed to “innovators”) did. Innovators are in the wild, tinkering with new forms of being and not necessarily doing it with others. Once they create a shared identity – a name, like “Regenerative Economics” or “New Heretics” or “Decolonizers” – it is easier to find each other, and they can begin to connect. Connecting happens in Networks, where individuals connect and share information, usually pursuing their own ends. But when folks find each other and decide to team up, what can begin to emerge is a shared purpose and Nourishing that centre that, in addition to doing individual work, creates a Community of Practice. Get some big wins, and it might be possible that your community of practice evolves into a System of Influence which can Illuminate possibilities and hold the power and resources to help people transition from the old to the new.

It is always tempting to stigmatize the legacy system as run by a bunch of stuck-in-the-mud-old-timers who resist change. But truthfully, those who manage and lead the legacy system can often feel the same about the self-styled social innovators who want to “tear down everything around them” but haven’t yet understood what they are doing or what it takes to maintain something and even institutionalize it. So much intergenerational rancour comes from this dynamic. Naming the phases of the legacy system was an attempt to give it some recognition and respect. After all, the emerging system, if all goes well, will turn into exactly this kind of system, and in due course, will be replaced again. So it’s useful to know what it takes to keep a system in place to provide stability over time.

As systems begin to thrive and become predominant systems of influence, they attract leaders whose job is to steward and protect these systems and ensure continuity and stability. Banking systems, energy systems, and social systems that require a continuity of care of people all need good stewards who actually do their job by resisting massive changes. But there comes a time when all systems have outlived their usefulness and will begin to crumble. In this time, there is a decision point when it becomes clear that death is inevitable, and in that time, the best thing to do is welcome death by hospicing the system and helping it to die well. That means ensuring that folks can easily transition to the new system and that things that won’t make it over the bridge can compost well and be used as nutrients for the parts of the new system that require resources to get established.

Globally, we are in such a time right now with energy systems and economic systems too. There are also changes to democracy that are happening as authoritarianism and populism begin to erode democratic institutions and former democracies start to collapse into oligarchies, warmongering pariah states, and populist regimes incapable of robust governance.

The small moves

The two loops are constantly interacting on different scales and in different ways. The lines matter on this map, and so do the spaces. This is less a linear description of what happens next and more a map that can describe and illuminate what is needed at different times. So as we look at the small moves on the map, think about them and where the other loop is. Realize that the “higher” a loop gets, the more it tends to ignore the positions below it, whether those are inevitable parts of its future or the moves of the other system. Influence gives you privilege. The legacy system is rarely aware of how it came to power, what it took to grow, and indeed at what cost. Likewise, the emerging loop seems always to be aware of what the legacy loop is up to, but rarely has the full picture, and very often, people in the Name and Connect spaces often actively try to dissociate themselves from the legacy system, even as they continue to depend on it for their food, money, energy, services and institutional power. The whole

And so a healthy system has folks in all these places all existing simultaneously and actively engaging with other parts of the system. When I have people map themselves onto this diagram, I often see situations where it’s all just innovators or stewards. This represents a risk to efforts because it means that the cluster of people I am working with are not in a relationship with the world around them. They are likely to experience some catastrophic failure because they just can’t see what else is happening.

At any rate, we started naming different points on the map over many years of teaching and working with this model. These points represent leadership moves that are often required in this moment. Here’s a brief description of each, starting on the legacy system. Think of these labels as places where you are more likely to have conversations and where certain skill sets will be really welcome.

The Legacy system

The Stewarding phase of the legacy system is where leaders have conversations and undertake actions aimed at structuring, stablizing and resourcing operations. This is where institutionalization occurs, systems, policies and processes get formalized, and scaling is locked in. Innovation can continue to happen, but organizations here are generally invested in fail-safe planning rather than safe-to-fail planning. Risk is managed. These activities require good traditional managers, and a lot of the work here is done by people who traditionally fall into the “expert” class in the complicated domain of Cynefin.

Once the legacy system hits a peak, uncertainty begins to accelerate. This is a sensitive time in the legacy system because the rise of experts can often cause leaders to believe that we are immune from the changes that more volatile organizations suffer from. There is a desire to believe that everything we have done in the past will continue to work. At this point, you will feel the current stirring below you as the emerging loop takes shape. If you are engaged in good strategic scanning, you will have the situational awareness to know that the context is changing so being able to plan and work in multiple futures is very useful here. If you are a fossil fuel company, by the 1990s, if you hadn’t begun the transition to becoming “an energy company,” you were probably placing yourself at a massive disadvantage. Unsurprisingly, scenario planning was developed in industries like oil or the military, where operational uncertainty was causing established ways of doing things – along with massive amounts of wealth and lives – to be put at risk.

As the legacy system’s influence begins to fade, a period of struggle begins. Realists can see the writing on the wall. Denialists refuse to accept the evidence. Power complicates the conversations. If those who control resources refuse to accept the changes occurring, the system will be starved of what it needs just as it collapses. Collapse of the old in service of the new is inevitable. We see this with churches over the past 1900 years of Christianity. Forms of the church have come and gone over centuries while the religion has endured. Christians still gather around roughly the same stories and philosophies, but the form is very different. I have seen churches close and squander their legacy because those controlling the resources refused to accept this change. Promising that anything can be made great again is a form of denialism. If what you are really stewarding is life, purpose, the provision of energy, governance or services, then you can still do this in different forms in ways that help the transition from one for to the new. Still, only those who hold power and resources can see the writing on the wall. Hosting shadow and fear, working with emotionally charged conflicts and exercising a graceful use of power are all key leadership moves in this stage. Without this, a legacy system will experience a painful death at best, or cause a civil war at worst.

When the inevitable is largely accepted, hospicing, harvesting and honouring the system’s death is a kind thing to do. It allows those served by the system to move as easily as possible into the new emerging system. The Hospice and Transition phases go hand in hand, as anyone who has witnessed a good death will know. In the energy world, Just Transition is all about this. It is about letting go of the old ways we have powered the planet and ensuring everyone can cross over into the new ways. The kinds of backlashes we see to alternatives to fossil fuels are a good indicator that we are not yet in a health transition zone. Politicians and large financial interests will continue to hold on to their beliefs even at the cost of the planet’s health or the prosperity of their citizens. Watching the premier of Alberta rail against electrification is a betrayal of her responsibility to use her province’s creative and financial resources to continue providing energy and jobs to the world. Lines like “heat pumps don’t work in an Alberta winter and EVs are useless rural vehicles” are not rationales for abandoning electrification. Instead, they represent a failure of imagination that serves only to protect fossil fuel capital interests. The Alberta workforce, trained as it is in the infrastructure of oil and gas, is well placed to transition to industrial-scale electricty production in the province. Refusing to seek opportunities because you disagree with the premise is a great way to get left behind.

A seamless transition from one system to another requires a tone of stuff to go right. At the simple level it looks like the transition those of us in our 50s and older made from typewriters to personal computers. As long as computers ran on punch cards or other interfaces, they would not be widely used by the public. Creating a user interface that looked like the one on my typewriter meant that the transition from typing to word processing was pretty seamless. I love that my keyboard still has a “return” key. I doubt many folks in their 20s know why it is called that!

Transition in social systems like health and education and child welfare is really tricky, because you need to provide a continuity of care from one form to another. In Canada, the rise of public health care would have been a massive transition and doctors, hospitals, government bodies, and all the institutional support in place in the 1960s would have been needed to support the continued quality of care for patients even as the funding and governance models in the system were being transitioned from private to public. I’ve seen how tricky this is in providing Indigenous education, health, and child and family services. The necessity for a change to decolonize these fields is always urgent, but the pace needs to move at the speed of the clients.

When a legacy system really does die, the best thing that can happen is for the resources of that system to be repurposed and reused by the emerging system. Watching the rail system in North America be ripped up after trucks and highways became the primary ways of moving cargo across the land was heartbreaking. We are now in desperate need of rail corridors both within cities and between them and that means a massive reinvestment in re-creating infrastructure that we already had. Grieving what is gone and creating choices for what comes next is a beautiful way to support transition. In my work with large Foundations, I can see this happening. Money made in previous generations is held in trust for what comes next. If governments refuse to provide the support for innovation and development, foundations may be able to.

The Emerging system

While the legacy system is the dominant way of doing things there is always innovation happening in its midst. Folks must steward the legacy system aware of where the seeds of change are happening around them. Developing sophisticated sensing practices and being in active connection with folks who are not a part of the legacy system helps to ride the journey of living and dying well. The Naming phase oif the new happens when those labouring away outside of the mainstream find each other. These are often folks who have left the legacy system “walked out” or people who have been “left out” because they were never included in the first place. Those folks are always hard at work developing energy solutions, health care, new forms of food production or cultural revitalization. It is a lonely place until you find others to work with. THis is the world of safe-to-fail work and building prototypes of the new system. The trajectory of this curve is down to begin with because there is far more failure and frustration involved in large-scale innovation than when the legacy system is investing in incremental improvements. There are very few resources available; beyond that, the legacy system will often try to crush you. You might even find the heads of fossil fuel companies leading global conversations on climate change. While such power does need to be a part of the solution, everyone knows that the way to suppress a coup is to seize control over the process.

Naming alone doesn’t generate the ideas that are needed. Good relational work helps to keep people together during the struggle. Building trust and tolerating difference with grace is really important here. Any of us involved in social movements will know what lateral violence comes from the narcissism of small differences as social movements splinter and split like a Monty Python skit.

As innovators find each other and loose connections are woven together, networks start to form. Networks are powerful ways for individuals to support their purposes. Held well, a network enables the sharing of information and ideas, but it doesn’t sustain a level of stability without a central purpose. So when networks are created and supported to create new systems, keeping it together is an important move. That involves finding ways to repurpose resources from the legacy system that are finding their way into innovation, and it also means supporting people who have experienced many failed efforts at change.

When networks mature, and a shared purpose appears, Communities of Practice are the first inklings of new stability as an emerging system coalesces into a System of Influence. Communities of practice require participation and management, meaning that nascent structures that sustain the energizing purpose at the centre of the work start to appear. As Mary Parker Follett wrote 100 years ago, “common purpose is the invisible leader,” and indeed, it is that that requires continual Nourishment.

Increasing structure and stability creates more influence for new ideas invites others, and attracts the investment needed to make the new stable enough to be a destination for the Transition. So as these structures begin to appear, trustworthiness, experience, and security help a system to become the System of Influence that Illuminates possibilities and the opath forward. By now, choices have collapsed. Once a new energy source has been determined, others will likely fall away. Electric vehicles for example, are not new at all. Still, the internal combustion engine dominated the car market in the early 20th century by the way systems of power and resourcing became stabilized creating the economy of scale needed for these machines to become the default engines of our time.

Once the transition happens, the new system stabilizes and becomes the legacy system for the next cycle and on it goes.

Next, I’ll chart a bit of the model’s provenance and how I came to it. Like most of the tools and maps I work with, these are co-created by communities of folks making sense of their work in the world. 

Share:

  • Click to share on Mastodon (Opens in new window) Mastodon
  • Click to share on Bluesky (Opens in new window) Bluesky
  • Click to share on LinkedIn (Opens in new window) LinkedIn
  • Click to email a link to a friend (Opens in new window) Email
  • Click to print (Opens in new window) Print
  • More
  • Click to share on Reddit (Opens in new window) Reddit
  • Click to share on Tumblr (Opens in new window) Tumblr
  • Click to share on Pinterest (Opens in new window) Pinterest
  • Click to share on Pocket (Opens in new window) Pocket
  • Click to share on Telegram (Opens in new window) Telegram

Like this:

Like Loading...

Why complexity theory matters to me

August 30, 2023 By Chris Corrigan Complexity, Containers, Facilitation, Featured, Organization 6 Comments

A piece of public art in Berne, Switzerland. Two chairs facing each other in dialogue, but chained to the walls behind them so they can never meet.

At the conclusion of Alicia Juarrero’s new book “Context Changes Everything” she writes:

“Neither puppets nor absolute sovereigns, human beings and the material and social forms of life they induce are true co-creators of their natural and social worlds. We serve as stewards of the metastability, coherence, and evolvability of both of these worlds. Matter matters. History matters. Social and economic policy matters. Most critically, however, because top- down causality as constraint makes room for meaning and value-informed activities, our choices and actions matter tremendously. In acting, we reveal the variables and the values that really matter to us, individually and to the culture in which we are embedded. We must pay attention to what we pay attention to; to which options we facilitate and promote and which we impede and discard. We must pay particular attention to what we do.

The influence of constraints has been dismissed because they do not bring about change energetically. Because they can be tacit and entrenched, their Escher-like characteristics also make them difficult to track. As background constants that go without saying, they have also been taken for granted. Foregrounding these enabling and governing conditions, so different from but as effective as forceful impacts, has been a central goal of this work.

Facilitating the emergence and persistence of validated coherence, of adaptable and evolvable interdependencies that can continue to form and persist in nature, among human beings and between nature and human- kind, is among our most compelling responsibilities. Facilitating the emergence and preservation of a thoroughgoing resilience that affords to both the natural and the human worlds the conditions not only to persist but especially to evolve and thrive is the most pressing moral imperative facing humankind today.

Facilitating the emergence and persistence of validated coherence, of adaptable and evolvable interdependencies that can continue to form and persist in nature, among human beings and between nature and human-kind, is among our most compelling responsibilities. Facilitating the emergence and preservation of a thoroughgoing resilience that affords to both the natural and the human worlds the conditions not only to persist but especially to evolve and thrive is the most pressing moral imperative facing humankind today.”

Alicia Juarrero, Context Changes Everything, p. 237

I think this is a really important point because it brings a moral imperative to understanding and working with complexity, something I have long felt is important for law makers, policy makers and citizens to understand. Without understanding the nature of complex systems, one is at a loss to effectively lead, craft policy or other solutions to emergent problems that plague our world. From planetary climate change to individual mental health, working with complexity dynamics – constraints, and, in my work, containers – is critical to approaching complex problems. It should go without saying I suppose, but it needs saying anyway. And it’s the reason I want these tools and perspectives out in the world in the hands of as many people as possible.

Share:

  • Click to share on Mastodon (Opens in new window) Mastodon
  • Click to share on Bluesky (Opens in new window) Bluesky
  • Click to share on LinkedIn (Opens in new window) LinkedIn
  • Click to email a link to a friend (Opens in new window) Email
  • Click to print (Opens in new window) Print
  • More
  • Click to share on Reddit (Opens in new window) Reddit
  • Click to share on Tumblr (Opens in new window) Tumblr
  • Click to share on Pinterest (Opens in new window) Pinterest
  • Click to share on Pocket (Opens in new window) Pocket
  • Click to share on Telegram (Opens in new window) Telegram

Like this:

Like Loading...

Theory and a case study: constraints at play in an emergent container

June 15, 2023 By Chris Corrigan Art of Hosting, Complexity, Containers, Conversation, Culture, Emergence, Facilitation, Featured, Invitation, Leadership, Organization, Power, Stories

The three-domain version of Cynefin, originally published on Dave Snowden’s blog.

I’m trying to organize my thoughts on containers, complexity and constraints that span a couple of decades of work and grounded theory. In this post, I want to lay out how I see these phenomena in the context of anthro-complexity, largely articulated by Dave Snowden, with implications for complex facilitation, or what we in the Art of Hosting community call “hosting.”

I’ll lay out some theory first that I’m working on, link it to facilitation and then share a case study of a recent meeting I hosted to demonstrate how this plays out. You can let me know if you think there is a good basis for a paper here, and please feel free to ask questions and to poke and prod at these ideas.

Some definitions

  • “Constraints”: Constraints in complex systems limit the behaviours of system components but also enable certain patterns or paths to emerge.
  • “Containers”: In the context of complexity, a container is often considered as an environment or space (conceptual, physical, or social) that influences the interactions and dynamics of system components.
  • “Enabling constraints” and “Governing constraints” are part of Dave Snowden’s Cynefin Framework. Enabling constraints allow certain patterns to emerge and adapt in a complex system while governing constraints are applied to assure specific outcomes in more ordered systems.
  • “Emergence”: Refers to the idea that new properties, behaviours, or patterns can arise from the interactions among system components, which aren’t predictable from the properties of individual components.
  • “Chaos”: In complexity science, chaos refers to a state of a system where it’s difficult to predict the system’s behaviour even in the short term.

Some basic theory

Constraints form the foundation of what we call “containers” in dialogue and facilitation practice. A container is a stable environment in which actions and thought processes occur. In a complex situation, enabling constraints yield containers which exhibit dynamic stability, such as a dissipative structure, where the emergence of thoughts and actions takes place. The container shapes these thoughts and actions.

Containers that endure over time solidify into stable contexts and ultimately evolve into cultures.

Much of the existing literature on containers merely identifies this phenomenon without comprehending how these containers come into being and therefore, how they can be disrupted, stabilized or managed. However, the literature on constraints and complexity science provides useful insights for understanding and working with containers.

When operating in the realm of complexity, you need at least one effective constraint in place. Without any effective constraints, you’re dealing with chaos – an unbounded, essentially random state. Seen through the lens of Cynefin, Chaos is a state that is approached either from the liminal space of Complexity or from the catastrophic failure of highly ordered systems.

With the establishment of a manageable constraint, you can start creating a stable container with affordances to pursue a preferred outcome or direction. The more stable the container, the more predictable the outcome. When we cross through the liminal space between Complex and Ordered states, we move into governing constraints, and we employ constraints to ensure a specific outcome. Maintaining governing constraints requires power, resources, and control to suppress the emergence typically characteristic of living systems. Even ordered containers can be vulnerable to the emergence and unexpected events. Thus, they are often strictly bound, and the agents within the system are heavily constrained. The connections in these systems are controlled, managed, and monitored for any deviations. In situations where certainty is crucial, maintaining a governing container can be costly, but the benefits are significant, leading to safety, order, and control – key aspects of an ordered system.

Using anthro-complexity to understand containers in complexity

Containers can materialize in a multitude of ways. It may be beneficial to interpret containers through the prism of the three principal Cynefin domains: Chaos, Complexity, and Order.

In an ordered system, or an ordered container, the container can be pre-designed, often drawing upon good or best practices and demonstrating robust stability that actively resists change. Such containers may take physical forms, like buildings, pots, cars, and furnaces. However, they can also be social containers where interactions among individuals must be rigorously regulated and controlled. These could pertain to situations necessitating safety or for regulatory purposes, such as in accounting or law.

In Chaos, facilitation, such as it is, is all about applying constraints – sometimes draconian constraints  – in an effort to create some stability or safety and buy some time to find options for action. In this domain, the container can be experienced as being strapped to a stretcher, ordered to remain in place, or, in trauma responses, held in a way that enables self-regulation.

The development of containers within the complex domain progresses through a process of probing, sensing, and responding. In the complex domain, containers, often experienced as a combination of phenomena rather than strictly physical tangible objects, are shaped by the constraints at play. They emerge as phenomena due to these constraints.  Constraints at play can stimulate the emergence of this type of container, fostering patterns of behaviour and establishing a felt sense of stability. Within this stability, connections, exchanges, attractors, and boundaries will seem to have a more or less consistent presence over time. and give rise to the feeling or experience of being “in a container.”

When working with patterns in a container we can map or examine the container’s constraints that enable certain patterns to emerge over others.  Until a constraint stabilizes in a complex system, it serves merely as a catalyst, as described by Dave Snowden, stimulating a specific pattern of behaviour. If this pattern of behaviour is coherent with a “preferred direction of travel”, it will aid in establishing the felt sense of a container in a complex system that contributes towards useful dialogue, activity and other beneficial activities.

If however, the stability of the container produces emergent patterns of behaviour that are not desired, we can attempt to change the container by shifting constraints in order to stimulate different interactions.  While the facilitator plays a particular role in this situation, but the shift in the nature of a container can come from anywhere.

Complex facilitation, therefore, is the craft of catalyzing the emergence of patterns within a container which aligns beneficially with the preferred direction of travel shared by a group or a leader. In this craft, one employs constraints as catalysts and closely observe the nature of the emerging container through the system’s pattern stability. If unproductive patterns emerge, one can attempt to disrupt the container by modifying a constraint. If useful patterns appear, one can aim to stabilize that container to ensure continuity. Thus, the facilitator’s role primarily involves monitoring the situation, assessing the quality of the container, and occasionally using their influence to help stabilize and manage the emerging container in the service of the preferred direction. This is largely achieved by “creating space” for the group to engage in beneficial activities.

In a complex situation, the ideal is generally to utilize enabling constraints to facilitate emergence rather than governing constraints to control it. This requires awareness of the inclination to control interactions, possibly to reduce unhelpful conflict or balance power disparities. It should be obvious that the practice of doing this is fraught with ethical traps (more on this in later posts), and so undertaking this work without considering the values that underlie the ethical use of situational power is perilous. Rather than controlling interpersonal interactions, the focus should be on adjusting the conditions and constraints of the entire container to enable the emergence of different behavioural patterns.

A case study

Recently, I facilitated a meeting with a small group from an organization confronting an existential question. Should the organization continue in its current form, should it be wrapped up, or was there something in between?

Through interviews with board members and staff prior to the meeting, it was evident that the current situation was untenable. The organization had weathered turbulent times, with new board members and supporters who endorsed the founder’s vision. This vision, however, had been pared down significantly, resulting in an unclear purpose and direction for the organization.

On the day of the meeting, two critical conversations needed to occur. First, because many were new to the organization, we needed to discuss the organization’s current state and its projects, with a particular focus on the founder’s intentions. The second conversation had to address the next steps for the organization, providing clarity on a potential partnership that would determine their level of commitment.

I prepared an agenda featuring different ways to facilitate these conversations. The most facilitator-intensive way was to host a scenario-based process, where a small group of eight people would consider three different scenarios based on my interviews with almost all the attendees. The aim was to answer practical questions about implementation and examine implications for the organization, its projects, and its partners.

We began the meeting informally, with a light breakfast and casual conversations. After settling in, I introduced the meeting’s intentions. My decision was to guide us through a check-in part of the meeting, hear from the founder, then take a break and assess where we stood.

Building a relational container was a critical move since the group had never been together before. A well-designed check-in, with a question that elicited stories, was a good way to begin and allowed everyone to understand why they were part of this meeting and this work.

After the check-in, which took about an hour, the group had a more profound understanding of each other. It was clear to us the range of skills, talents, and interests present in the room.

The second part of the meeting involved the founder’s future intentions. It became apparent during the pre-meeting interviews that he had a significant influence on the organization’s course. His connections, desires, and investments were the organization’s driving force. As such, it was crucial to accommodate his interests, needs, and commitments.

Perhaps entrained on the pattern of the check-in, the meeting evolved into a rich storytelling session, where the founder recounted his career and the organization’s lifespan. This story-sharing segment was especially beneficial for new board members with questions about their roles and the organization’s work. This was a helpful direction for the day and kept the work and the inquiry open.

Once the founder finished his tale, a conversation unfolded, touching on the core mission and purpose of the organization and bringing forth existential questions about its future. Again this “natural” flow was likely partially entrained by the pre-meeting interviews, which gave participants a chance to think openly about the existential questions facing the organization.

After lunch, the group reconvened and began discussing different questions about the projects in which the organization was involved. It was evident that everyone had varying levels of information about these projects, which resulted in different levels of participation in addressing the organization’s existential issues. This is not a bad thing at all, as diverse experience meant that naive expertise – the ability to ask “dumb” questions – had a role in pushing the group to consider proposals that were outside of what was possible or desirable. In so doing, boundaries for the organization’s future work came into view.

This was an important moment because a well-defined boundary elicits authentic and informed commitment. Toward the end of the meeting, we discussed practical steps aligned with people’s commitments. It became clear that the next steps were focused on the sustainability of an essential project of the organization, not the organization itself.

The final discussion involved everyone indicating their level of commitment and role over the next 18 months and committing to spend some time formulating a plan and organizing work with simple project management tools.

In sum, this case illustrates how a facilitator can work with constraints to help an emergent container evolve for group work. The essence lies in understanding the connections, exchanges, attractors, and boundaries within the group and using these elements to guide the conversation constructively. The facilitator must negotiate the boundaries and the flow of power, work with strong attractors, and manage the dynamics of exchanges to achieve the desired outcomes.

Constraints at play

It should be noted that it is impossible to fully map all of the constraints that are working together to create a container, nor is it always clear which kind of constraint something is. An exchange can become an attractor, and a connection can become a boundary. The important thing is to carry an easily portable framework into a dynamic situation in order to better see and respond to emerging and changing constraints,

While there are many ways to analyze the constraints at play in the container of this meeting, In my own work, I use Snowden’s typology of Connecting Constraints (Connections and Exchanges) and Containing Constraints (Attractors and Boundaries) and here are examples of my observations and reflections. Dave uses “connecting and containing” as a spectrum. In my practice, these four types of constraints serve as heuristics to help guide my observation and decision-making while facilitating complex situations.

Connections:

  • Each board member shared a strong connection with the founder and had different connections with everyone else. The depth of their connection to the organization’s work varied greatly. For some, it constituted a significant portion of their focus, while others had little knowledge of the projects. For the founder, the organization’s work was all-encompassing.
  • Board members brought various connections with the stakeholders and the organization’s implementers to the meeting. These connections became crucial when participants realized they could leverage their networks to explore alternative ways to sustain the organization’s work.

Exchanges:

  • A critical exchange involved the transfer of information and power between the founder and the board. Over the years, this exchange had turned toxic. The board, in both its and the founder’s view, was focused on the wrong objective: the organization’s sustainability rather than its work.
  • After a wave of resignations during the pandemic, a new board was assembled. This board consisted of people the founder knew and trusted to prioritize the organization’s work, helping avoid the toxic relationships that had developed previously.
  • During the meeting, the exchanges were mostly linked to the founder’s vision and his commitment to the organization. The remaining participants related their commitments to his. This scenario can be described as a “broadcast flow” of exchanges: from one central person to many, with weak exchanges among the many. However, as we delved into the scenario planning exercise, stronger exchanges developed between participants. Still, the organization was not ready for people to work independently of the founder.
  • It became clear during the meeting that more power was being transferred from the founder to the board, along with greater responsibility for outcomes. By the meeting’s end, the participants had a strong sense of personal commitment to the work at hand, which was absent at the meeting’s beginning.

Attractors:

  • The founder was the key attractor around which the container emerged. From pre-meeting interviews with the staff and founder, it was evident that the founder’s thoughts and intentions would significantly influence the organization’s future. Sometimes a powerful attractor can distort the container’s work, making it impossible to explore possibilities or escape entrenched responses to the founder’s vision. We acknowledged the founder’s influence and occasionally disrupted this pattern using a lightly facilitated circle process, allowing other ideas and questions to surface and clarity to arise.
  • The room’s physical setup emphasized the two key attractors: the founder at one end of a long table and me at the other. The founder, being the closest to the work, naturally dominated past meetings. My role was to provide a counterbalance, interrupting when necessary to check the group’s clarity and occasionally asking naive questions.
  • Another strong attractor was the dual focus on the organization’s sustainability and the work’s sustainability. The board’s past focus on the organization’s sustainability had led to numerous conflicts and a toxic environment as the founder and board clashed over differing intentions. The crucial task for this meeting was to shift the focus onto the organization’s work and the potential for its sustainability without the core organizational structure.

Boundaries:

  • There were clear boundaries at play in the meeting. We had a six-hour time limit. We had a small group around a long table with the option to use breakout rooms if needed. As a facilitator, my responsibility was to enforce time boundaries, especially around the meeting’s end. With an event scheduled for the evening, I had to shift the group’s attention from open, free-flowing conversation to more concrete matters during the meeting’s final hour.
  • Initially, I requested the founder to give a “state of the union” type address based on several board members’ pre-interview requests. They needed to understand what they were contributing to. Setting some boundaries or enabling constraints around the work was essential to creating an invitation barrier, which Peter Block suggests, is key to eliciting authentic commitment to the work at hand. Clear statements from the founder about his willingness and unwillingness provided a framework for the board members to develop a plan that was both focused on the organization’s current needs and compatible with their commitments. It remains to be seen whether one or two of the members present will commit to continuing. However, the clarity evoked should aid their decision-making process.

I hope this gives a good overview of my current thinking and process around working with constraints, containers and complexity. I am continuing to unpack the ideas in this post in more detail and put them into both practical and theoretical contexts. Responses, questions and curiosities are welcome.

Share:

  • Click to share on Mastodon (Opens in new window) Mastodon
  • Click to share on Bluesky (Opens in new window) Bluesky
  • Click to share on LinkedIn (Opens in new window) LinkedIn
  • Click to email a link to a friend (Opens in new window) Email
  • Click to print (Opens in new window) Print
  • More
  • Click to share on Reddit (Opens in new window) Reddit
  • Click to share on Tumblr (Opens in new window) Tumblr
  • Click to share on Pinterest (Opens in new window) Pinterest
  • Click to share on Pocket (Opens in new window) Pocket
  • Click to share on Telegram (Opens in new window) Telegram

Like this:

Like Loading...

Using constraints in facilitation

June 8, 2023 By Chris Corrigan Art of Hosting, Complexity, Containers, Design, Emergence, Facilitation, Featured, Leadership, Organization 4 Comments

Someone asked me the other day about how to use constraints in facilitation and I thought I’d jot some quick thoughts down here.

Let’s start using terms from Cynefin. Group work falls on a scale between ordered tasks and unordered tasks (or complicated and complex). The first question I ask myself in designing a container for facilitation is, “how much emergence is desired in this field?” In most of my work, I’m working in highly emergent situations, but for folks working around issues like safety or legal issues, there may be a prescribed outcome that the group needs to work towards. And of course, there is a mix along the way, and a lot of work happens in the liminal spaces between these two kinds of work.

If the purpose of the gathering is emergence, then you use enabling constraints to create the conditions for emergent outcomes. If the purpose of the gathering is a fixed goal or target, then you use governing constraints to discourage emergence.

All group work is constrained. In other words it is not possible for “anything” to happen in a group, and every choice we make with the power we have has hosts/facilitatiors or leaders in a situation constrains the work. It behooves us to make ethical decisions about the constraints we use to structure group work. NOT thinking about these constraints, or not thinking enough about them, can result in a fatal lack of awareness. We can end up over-or under-structuring a meeting such that unintended consequences become quickly catastrophic to the purpose of the gathering.

What do constraints look like? Here’s a short set of lists of the thing facilitators typically make choices about when they are setting the conditions for a container.

Connections

  • Who are the people in the room and how do we connect them together? How do we break or lessen connections? How can we diversify connections?
  • What information, resources or artifacts are important to connect to people and the purpose of the work? What do folks need to know to participate well?
  • How much should folks in the gathering be connected to the outside world? How deeply do they need to be connected inside the gathering?

Exchanges

  • What are the ways in which we will share information in the gathering? Stories, data, opinions, interests, facts, dreams, experiences?
  • How does power work in this space? Who has it and who does not? What do we need to do to work with it well?
  • What is the nature of exchanges in the system? Collaborative, learning, debate, confrontation and conflict, appreciative, critical, supportive, dismissive?
  • Which media will enable exchanges in the space? Writing, drawing, body movement, song, play, reflection…

Attractors

  • What purpose is at the centre of the work?
  • What questions will we use to guide conversations? How open or close are those questions?
  • Do we need a single focus for the meeting or the conversation, or is this a space for multiple foci? How will we enable those conversations to happen?
  • What hidden attractors are in the room that may cause the group to self-organize in unhelpful ways? These are things like status, privilege, history and so on that form powerful centres around which people will make choices about their participation. Left unspoken, these attractors are powerful dark constraints in the system that can produce surprising results.

Boundaries

  • What are the time and space requirements that limit our work, for the meeting as a whole and for specific parts of it?
  • Who is in and who is out, and how do we make that determination?
  • What are the barriers to participation, and how are they helpful or hindering?
  • What topics are allowed or not allowed to be raised?
  • What personal and social boundaries need to be created or maintained or dissolved?
  • What safety needs have to be met for physical, emotional and psychological safety? How do we create the conditions for resilience in the container if people are required to stretch themselves away from their comfort zone or into a space that starts to feel challenging to them?

Where there are degrees of complexity or emergence in the container in which you are working (which is a lot of the time for most of us), your initial design choices will inevitably adopt and evolve over the course of the meeting. Each of these constraints is emergent and while we can start with choices, changes to those choices come fast and think. Sometimes you need to tighten a constraint by, for example, shortening the amount of time needed for an activity. Other times you need to break up groups that are falling into premature convergence together and perhaps getting “too cliquey” for the work at hand. In other cases, what looks like a “clique” is actually a group taking responsibility for its own safety, and in fact, you shouldn’t break it up.

There is so much more to say on all of this, but by way of tying the notion of my four kinds of constraints to facilitation, does that provide some clarity?

About HOW to do that? Consult my post on some of the basic competencies one needs to develop to work with complex facilitation. It ain’t easy.

Share:

  • Click to share on Mastodon (Opens in new window) Mastodon
  • Click to share on Bluesky (Opens in new window) Bluesky
  • Click to share on LinkedIn (Opens in new window) LinkedIn
  • Click to email a link to a friend (Opens in new window) Email
  • Click to print (Opens in new window) Print
  • More
  • Click to share on Reddit (Opens in new window) Reddit
  • Click to share on Tumblr (Opens in new window) Tumblr
  • Click to share on Pinterest (Opens in new window) Pinterest
  • Click to share on Pocket (Opens in new window) Pocket
  • Click to share on Telegram (Opens in new window) Telegram

Like this:

Like Loading...

The Four Fold Practice as a recipe for building dialogic containers

May 29, 2023 By Chris Corrigan Art of Hosting, Collaboration, Complexity, Conversation, Culture, Design, Emergence, Facilitation, Featured, Flow, Invitation, Leadership, Open Space, Organization, World Cafe 4 Comments

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.

Share:

  • Click to share on Mastodon (Opens in new window) Mastodon
  • Click to share on Bluesky (Opens in new window) Bluesky
  • Click to share on LinkedIn (Opens in new window) LinkedIn
  • Click to email a link to a friend (Opens in new window) Email
  • Click to print (Opens in new window) Print
  • More
  • Click to share on Reddit (Opens in new window) Reddit
  • Click to share on Tumblr (Opens in new window) Tumblr
  • Click to share on Pinterest (Opens in new window) Pinterest
  • Click to share on Pocket (Opens in new window) Pocket
  • Click to share on Telegram (Opens in new window) Telegram

Like this:

Like Loading...

1 2 3 4 5 … 35

Find Interesting Things
Events
  • Art of Hosting November 12-14, 2025, with Caitlin Frost, Kelly Poirier and Kris Archie Vancouver, Canada
  • The Art of Hosting and Reimagining Education, October 16-19, Elgin Ontario Canada, with Jenn Williams, Cédric Jamet and Troy Maracle
Resources
  • A list of books in my library
  • Facilitation Resources
  • Open Space Resources
  • Planning an Open Space Technology meeting
SIGN UP

Enter your email address to subscribe to this blog and receive notifications of new posts by email.
  

Find Interesting Things

© 2015 Chris Corrigan. All rights reserved. | Site by Square Wave Studio

%d