Complex Facilitation in Action: A Real-World Example

Complex facilitation in action: a real-world example

In 2004, I worked with Dave Snowden and Sonja Blignaut on a large education workshop using Cynefin and complexity methods.

It was 2004 somewhere in Australia

Some 350 people were gathered in a basketball stadium to discuss the future of the educational system in their state. They were a mixture of teachers, school principals, (government and faith-based) public servants (State and Federal government), parents, and community leaders.

The facilitation space served as a complex human or social system for as long as it was operating. To manage the boundaries of the system, facilitators led and monitored the process as it played out in the whole system. Everyone was always in the same space, so while we had many small groups, there were no separate breakout rooms.

There was enough space to move people around comfortably and sufficient wall space to accommodate a large amount of flip chart material and other data. Only one facilitator (Dave Snowden) had a microphone, Sonja Blignaut and I (Viv) remained on the mezzanine floor with an elevated view of the overall group, i.e., the system.

How we organized the workshop

1. The purpose of this gathering

We had contracted for a two-day process. We needed to help participants develop enough shared understanding of the current context of the education system, and its challenges, so that two things would happen. 1) there would be agreement on recommendations for action that would move the participants toward the desired new direction and 2) this would emerge throughout these two days.

2. The participants

The participants were from metropolitan, rural and remote localities and included some 30 indigenous representatives from the State educational system. They were very diverse in terms of status and levels.

The new chief executive (CEO) of the Education Department had been in the role for about six months and was from another state. Nobody knew everybody, everybody knew somebody, and everybody had an opinion on what should happen, as well as who was to blame for what had happened so far. For some of the 30 indigenous representatives, English was a second or third language. Narrative data had been collected from some, but not all, of the participants.

The three facilitators met the CEO the day before the workshop and I briefed the indigenous participants on what to expect from the process. The Minister was originally scheduled to speak on day one of the workshop.

3. The process

There was no presentation to open the session. The Minister, at our request, made his presentation later on day two. There was also no check-in or ground-rule setting. We just dove straight into the first activity.

Several Cognitive Edge complexity methods were used in addition to the pre-collected narrative data. These included Future Backwards and Archetype Extraction. Each method enabled participants to:

• Generate data from their own experience
• Make sense and attribute their personal meaning
• Seek patterns and themes
• Share insights and develop a shared context
• Use the Cynefin Framework as the decision support tool to determine priorities for action
• Develop recommendations based on the principles contained in the Framework

The critical elements of the design of this end-to-end process included:

• Seeking the Minister’s permission to move his contribution to day two to reduce the impact and lessen the effect of pattern entrainment.
• Allocating different colored hexagonal-shaped sticky notes (hexies) for different cohorts for all activities. These different colored ‘hexies’ from the various activities provided visual patterns of the different perspectives in the room, especially once they formed part of mixed clustered outcomes later on in the process.
• Starting with groups of people from similar organizations/professions (i.e., organizing for similarity) and then mixing across different cohorts (organizing for diversity) later.
• Multiple activities happening in parallel.
• There was a regular sharing of information across groups to socialize and share insights, but not to the whole group.
• Introducing the Cynefin Framework as the integrative decision support tool.
• Supporting the process by using artifacts like ‘action sheets’ based on the domains of the Cynefin Framework. They were used to capture recommendations for the final session. (In Cynefin-speak this is called ‘scaffolding.’)

4. Managing the process – complex facilitation principles in action

As facilitators, we had multiple activities happening simultaneously and we were using deliberate disruption to prevent premature convergence (coming to decisions too quickly). We achieved deliberate disruption by giving instructions like:

• Please select in each group the person who has contributed the most. Ask them to come to the front of the room for an important task. (This is also how we manage dominant voices).
• Move two people at random intervals from each group counterclockwise to another group.
• Form new groups by having one person step out from each group and have them come together in a new group(s).

On average, a group did not have consistent membership longer than 15 to 20 minutes. One or more members were regularly changed to another activity and/or another group. Of course, this contrasted sharply with more traditional approaches and contributed to rising levels of frustration.

With 40 different small groups, the whole system was monitored from the mezzanine level by Viv and Sonja, where one of the additional activities took place. There was constant communication with Dave on the floor of the stadium.

5. Be prepared for the unexpected

Some participants responded to the ambiguity by asking for examples or seeking a definitive answer from the facilitator. In this workshop, we resisted providing a model answer because we wanted participants to develop their own interpretations. Some of the questions we encountered included: “Can you give me an example of what you want?” Our answer: “No.” “Is this what is expected?” Answer: “Is that what has meaning for you and your colleagues?” “What is the expected outcome?” Answer: “There isn’t one”.

At one point on the first day, a small group of around 25 school principals looked anxious and somewhat angry. Their concerns were about not knowing what was expected and the anticipated outcomes. When told, “we don’t know,” “it will emerge,” and “trust the process,” they became increasingly angry and decided they would not come back the following day. They were protesting, in their words, “being treated disrespectfully.”

They did not come back on the second day. The CEO, who thankfully was a very pragmatic individual, commented, “At least I now know who is not comfortable with ambiguity.” In contrast, at the end of that day, representatives from the indigenous community expressed their thanks for creating a process where, “for the first time we have been able to participate equally in a planning process.” That was significant because indigenous communities often feel locked out of effective engagement by processes that privilege those who have been trained in complicated methods. The methods were intended to let participants contribute their own experience and meaning, including perspectives that more familiar planning methods could exclude. The positive feedback mattered, though the principals’ departure also showed that participants experienced the process differently.