I was back at St. Aidan’s United Church in Victoria yesterday, hosting another conversation in their continued evolution into their next shape. \u00a0Last December we worked together to explore four possible scenarios that were being proposed for the congregation. In the past few months they have been working on implementing one of these scenarios – the one which featured a plan to develop a Spiritual Learning Centre. \u00a0Yesterday was a short strategic conversation called to explore the shape of what that Centre could be and how it will change life at the church.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
As a process we chose to engage in a\u00a0two hour World Cafe as a form of brainstorming, the results of which were to be used by the planning committee to continue their planning work. \u00a0It was important to the planning committee to hear a wide variety of ideas and opinions on this initiative, rather than narrowing down choices. \u00a0It is too early for them to decide on what the centre will look like. \u00a0From a complexity view, they need a better understanding of boundaries and attractors to work with.<\/p>\n
About 40 people showed up and we went through the following process:<\/p>\n
1. Using world cafe we explored three questions over three rounds. \u00a0First round: “Tell a story of your own development of spiritual practice.”<\/p>\n
2. We then\u00a0switched tables and considered the question “What are you hearing about what was helpful to people in their own spiritual development?” \u00a0In this round we asked people at the tables to recorded every piece of insight on a single post-it note, with the small gaming incentive that each table of four was to try to produce as many as possible.<\/p>\n
3. After placing all their post-its in a pile in the middle of the table, participants switched again and spent the third round diving into the question “What possibilities have these conversations inspired in you?” \u00a0Again participants listened and recorded ideas on post it notes, adding to the pile in the middle. \u00a0At the conclusion of that round, the piles were dealt out evenly and randomly amongst the four at the table.<\/p>\n
4. For the round, people took their post-its and joined three others. \u00a0They were invited to group and categorize their post-its. \u00a0Each table was working with probably 30-40 pieces of data, so the pattern finding was rich. \u00a0Each table came up with a categorization scheme for the data they had, and recorded it on a piece of paper. \u00a0The categories were also written on small yellow posts-its. \u00a0That whole package was returned to the team.<\/p>\n
The team has several artifacts in hand now:<\/p>\n
The team is now set to meet and review the data. \u00a0The process I proposed for them is as follows:<\/p>\n
1.\u00a0Find \u00a0a place with a big wall an spread out all of the raw data. \u00a0begin to cluster the post its notes<\/p>\n
2. When you are done, work with the small yellow post-its, to see how those help you to understand your groupings. \u00a0This is a creative process, noticing the tensions between the team’s scheme and the categories that the group came up with.<\/p>\n
3. Notice commonalities and differences, emerging patterns, what already exists and what needs to be created. \u00a0Also notice the outliers – post it notes that seem to have no category. \u00a0Rather than dismissing these, a wise piece of action might be to inquire more deeply into these and see what they mean.<\/p>\n
4. What the group is looking for is boundaries and attractors. \u00a0In other words, what are the attractors that are emerging that become activities to understand and develop more deeply? \u00a0The team will be able to make some strategic decisions with experiments about the developing these ideas so that they can try new things, build on existing things (working with attractors) and create an invitation to a new minister who can help them live into this work and a further invitation to the congregation about what the Spiritula Learning Centre could be (working with boundaries).<\/p>\n
The team will be leading out formal and informal conversations as the congregation way-finds together.<\/p>\n
There are a few lessons to highlight here, relating to how this short strategic conversation\u00a0was informed by complexity theory.<\/p>\n
1. Obliquity grounded in story. \u00a0<\/strong>The team is in the development process of this work. \u00a0Asking people who have not been involved in this work to say directly what the Spiritual Learning Centre would be is not useful. \u00a0That would be to court opinions of folks that haven’t been thinking about the issue. \u00a0Instead, it’s more important that the team uncover and work with the way that people are engaged in their own spiritual development so that the can create strategic choices that are coherent with the story. \u00a0This is the absolute crux of strategic work in complex systems. \u00a0We got at those patterns using stories that were specific and grounded in people’s own expereince, something they are experts in.<\/p>\n 2. Data proceeded the frameworks. \u00a0<\/strong>It takes a while to get this one, but it is important. Regardless of what the team has been thinking, it’s important that a framework for this centre come from the congregation’s stories. \u00a0In the end it was clear that a framework based on categories like People, Facility, Resources, Practices was going to serve the work. \u00a0But that framework emerged and will continue to emerge from data. \u00a0i have often seen people engage in strategic conversations where participants are given the framework first and then their conversations are constrained by that. \u00a0One has to be very careful making that kind of design decision. \u00a0You have to be very sure that the framework is correct before you begin. \u00a0And in a complex system, it is more likely to reflect cognitive biases than objective reality.<\/p>\n 3. Working with data a fine level of granularity, and not mediating sense-making.\u00a0<\/b>Many times in world cafe’s the harvesting round engages in a convergence exercise whereby the tables come up with a small number of insights. \u00a0From this patterns and categories are made. \u00a0The problem with that approach, I now see, is that it eliminates the fine granularity of stories and ideas that allows for better strategic decisions. \u00a0There is a desire to not be overwhelmed by data, but in complexity work, being overwhelmed is actually a good thing as it causes you to disrupt your own patterns and to look again at the data. \u00a0Working with a fine level of granularity also means that the project team can look at outliers – ideas that seem to be outside the norms. \u00a0These outliers can gives us all sorts of information. \u00a0For example, unseen opportunities, innovative thinking, unspoken conflict and novel practice all appear as outliers. \u00a0Outliers are easy to dismiss, especially if they don’t conform to preconceived categories. \u00a0That is a dangerous temptation. \u00a0Continuing to work with the raw data at the fine grain level gives you access to multiple ways of sense-making without erasing the details that could be early warning signs, seeds for new practice or nascent opportunity.<\/p>\n It was a good day. \u00a0A short conversation for people that gave the team good data and built deeper community. \u00a0A home run in this kind of work.<\/p>\n The team is faced with the task of writing some more strategy documents but they have a rich source of data and stories to work from. \u00a0Planning these days is as much about ongoing sense-making and inquiring into the patterns as nit is decision making, resourcing and implementing. \u00a0These processes can make that work lighter, even if it feels like the work itself is more difficult. \u00a0But at least you get to wrestle with the right things (angels vs the devil in the details?).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I was back at St. Aidan’s United Church in Victoria yesterday, hosting another conversation in their continued evolution into their next shape. \u00a0Last December we worked together to explore four possible scenarios that were being proposed for the congregation. 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