Category: change

Hey Networks! Don't underestimate relationship

In strolling through the archives of unpublished blogs posts, I came upon one which was simply a link to a great blog post from the Interaction Institute in 2017. And boom, it is still resonant today.

Network members making sense of their own data…

The wonderful author, Curtis Ogden, offered 10 principles for thinking like a network. I want to pull out a few things in each one to share with folks in some projects I’m working on. So why not share it here too? This is dynamically incomplete… be forewarned!

The groups I have been and am working with are quite different in some ways. One is an internal organization. Another is a tripartite collaboration that is ready to grow into a network. A third is a group that has done amazing F2F training and capacity building and has had to regroup in a COVID-Virtual world. All three, however, are motivated to act their way into their purposes in new ways. So first is the mindset and practices. In a later blog post I want to explore snap-back, the falling back into our old ways of being and doing.

Curtis’ intro to the article is great context:

Over the past several years of supporting networks for social change, we at IISC have been constantly evolving our understanding of what is new and different when we call something a network, as opposed to a coalition, collaborative or alliance. On the surface, much can look the same, and one might also say that coalitions, collaboratives and alliances are simply different forms of networks. While this is true, it is also the case that not every collaborative form maximizes network effects, including small world reach, rapid dissemination, adaptability, resilience and system change. In this regard, experience shows that a big difference maker is when participants in a network (or an organization, for that matter) embrace new ways of seeing, thinking, and doing. 

https://interactioninstitute.org/thinking-like-a-network-2-0/

I think we all confound different forms of collaboration, try to be all things to all people and then we are frustrated when our ambitions are cut short. Working in new ways requires two things: discernment about what is possible, and a repertoire to make the possible real. I think these principles from Curtis support both these things. I encourage you to read the original article, because below I’m short cutting into some specifics.

Adaptability instead of control

This shows up so strongly in “strategic planning.” We tend to equate a detailed, task descriptive plan as a proxy for strategic action, especially in grand funded projects where plans, and executing on the plans, are key points for accountability. Yet, most work these days is in complex and changing contexts. Can we shift to adaptive planning which defines the purpose, direction and then iterates forward with strong accountability during, not just at the end?

Contribution before credentials

Equity has been in so many conversations. What seems to constantly block equity and its precursor, access, is that we continue to worship at the alter of credentialed expertise, rather than tapping all kinds of expertise. Whoops, look at the word “tapping!” We have extractive approaches to knowledge generation. How do we move to more contribution versus extraction that honors all, regardless of the title certain parts of society wish to attach to some and not others?

Giving first, not taking

See above about extractive mindsets!

Resilience and redundancy instead of rock-stardom

See above regarding stepping away from single views of expertise for the rock stardom stuff, but the resilience and redundancy needs a post of its own. The practice-based approach I’ve been working on for this is that we backfill for each other across departments, organizations, networks. No one these days can afford to hire all the skills they need at any one time. Trading labor across our networks builds redundancy and a sense of mutual support. There is a limit to this — we can’t keep ADDING work without taking something away.

Diversity and divergence rather than the usual suspects and forced agreement

This is why we work in networks!

 Intricacy and flow not bottlenecks and hoarding

I struggled with this one until I went back and read Curtis’ words on this one. The word that emerges for me is abundance. (In all senses of the word, including mindset.)

I’m running out of steam, so I’ll leave the last four for YOU to flesh out, annotate, expound upon. If I leave this as a draft for another year… well, you know what happens!

Self-organization and emergence rather than permission and the pursuit of perfection

Shift focus from core to the periphery

From working in isolation to working with others and/or out loud

 From “Who’s the Leader?” to “We’re the Leaders!”

MOIP #9: What I’ve Learned This Spring

Working from home… in the bedroom version!

I wrote this short article for our Liberating Structures extended network of practice. I thought it might be useful here too!

The last few months have been rich with lessons for our amazing global network of LS practitioners, and all the sub-communities it holds. Here are my lessons that have been surfacing:

  1. Creative destruction RULES. DEConstruct before trying to REConstruct offline events into the online space. TRIZ is our friend!
  2. The six knotworking questions are SUPER useful at this moment in time for developing flexible, emergent plans.
  3. Critical Uncertainties was MADE for this time!
  4. This is an oldy, but a goody: slow down to go fast. While we can dance with abandon at the novelty as we move and reframe different Liberating Structures online, we must also hold space for people to move forward together when the moment calls. This translates to fewer structures piled into an online meeting, holding generosity to extend our practiced F2F timings and keeping technical options at the min specs, vs max specs. (Purpose to Practice is helpful here!)
  5. Ask for help. Ask specifically and offer your first ideas. This way people are more likely to respond and respond generously. As our Slack community grows and grows, we want each person to find and offer value. So ask as specifically as you can. Show you have done a little thinking already…
  6. Offer help! The connections we create through these asks and offers weaves our network.

There is a LOT more… right now I’m processing what I’ve learned through three series of rather intense online events, thinking about time, space, embodiment, humane-ness and all sorts of good stuff. So more to come. But if I wait to “finish” this, I will never finish this!!

What have you been learning?

MOIP #8 Reflecting With a Peer: Conversation with Rosa Zubizarreta

Moving Online in Pandemic is now #MOIP! This is 8th in a series of posts about the tidal wave of moving online in the time of Covid-19. #1, #2, #3,  #4 , #5 , #6 and #7.

In early April, Rosa Zubizarreta made a wonderful offer. She would interview me on what I’ve been learning and reflecting upon and then write it up for me. What a gift! Of course, I said yes. What started as an interview rapidly turned into a conversation! Rosa promptly returned with the notes and there they sat for two weeks. I kept thinking I’d “process” them into a blog post, and then realized the reality is to just SHARE them, as is.

Rosa Zubizarreta

When a friend offers to help you reflect, say yes!

Rosa’s practice is DiaPraxis: Awakening the Spirit of Creative Collaboration coaching in participatory leadership • advanced group facilitation services & learning opportunities . I first knew Rosa’s work around Dynamic Facilitation. Over the years we have intersected (to my great joy) in different contexts. So enough for context, here are the notes, as is from Rosa.

Conversation with Nancy White

A theme that has been coming up for you in your work, as you help NGO’s move all their work online, is “this is a time of creative destruction”. 

And so the questions this brings up include, “What is the role of “creative destruction” in these times? How do we engage constructively with  “creative destruction”, in our personal lives, in our work, and in our communities?

A first step you identified, can be to focus more clearly on our purpose. As we do so, we can come up with new ways of meeting that purpose, rather than simply “transposing” what we were doing in the brick-and-mortar world, to the online world…

One simple example is the “check-in”, This is often the initial part of a group meeting, yet it can feel wearying if we are not clear on the purpose.

The purpose of the check-in is to center, settle, let go a bit of the anxiety we are all carrying,

So we can, as a group, figure out our next “right step” to take…

How can we best do so, in these times where we are all facing such diverse challenges, some of them very profound… we need simple and effective ways where we can at least briefly acknowledge and honor the challenges that each of us is facing at the moment. 

***

Right now there is a great deal of shared anxiety… while at the same time, we are all anxious about different things. So how can we constructively and gracefully acknowledge emotion, without getting bogged down in it? Especially in a large group, emotions can drag us into a downward spiral. Yet sometimes, especially when we can hold them more intimately in  a smaller group, there can be an upward spiral that happens from acknowledging the motions we are feeling.

So some of the check-ins you have been doing with people, include reflective writing that people do on their own, using  short prompts or sentence-starters, and then share in pairs. 

Another alternative is to invite people to type in their responses to the short prompts in the chat box, while also asking  them to wait for the signal from you, so that everyone can “hit enter” at the same time. Then you offer a minute or two for everyone to read over, one another’s entries in the chat box….

***

And then there are our bodies… the bodies that carry our feelings, and that also get stressed out from being in front of the computer, staring at a screen, for long periods of time… and so in  breaks between each main part of the meeting, you have been inviting people to take a series of belly breaths,. Taking three deep breaths, allowing your belly to press against the vagus nerve, which brings calm to the reptilian brain… 

And stretch breaks: inviting participants to take a moment to stand up, and  move your body in a way that feels good for you… either turning off your camera, or simply turning  your back to it, whatever allows you to relax and not be self-conscious. 

Paying attention to our bodies is a helpful practice always, yet in these times of crisis, it is especially important to do so. It takes a lot of attention to be looking at a screen; we need to be careful about not being online for too long without breaks. Making sure people  have plenty of “fluid adjustment breaks” — water in, water out — really helps our bodies in these times of stress. And paying attention to our body rhythms, allows our energy to last longer. 

Similarly with paying attention to emotions. Of course people have differences in how comfortable they are with emotions; some people may welcome expressing emotions, while others may need to say, “I need a break from emotions.”  Part of emotional literacy is being able to make room for those differences, as well… even simply to acknowledge them…. 

So this is one way in which “creative destruction” is showing up… the old paradigm of showing up for meetings only “from the neck up” is something we are being called to let go of…

While at the same time, refocusing on the power of attentive listening.

***

Another realm of “creative destruction” has to do with the constraints of formality… instead of three-piece suits and ties, people are now calling in from their  homes, with their dogs and their kids. You have been noticing how much easier it is, to feel immediately closer to them. There is an intimacy of popping into people’s living rooms… while it too has its downsides, we can also celebrate all that it makes possible… 

And at the same time, need to keep in mind, how we help clients who don’t have online access, to also access services…

***

“Creative destruction” is showing up in other realms as well, not just with regard to meetings… also with regard to children’s education, as parents are exploring learning in a different way than schooling… 

And, as we let go of the things that we had previously designed, and were attached to, –whether they were designed well or not — there are emotions that come up: there is fear, and there is a grief process…  

And so a question we need to ask ourselves, is how much time do we want to spend, acknowledging the fear and the grief, and how much time in moving forward?

And then, when we are looking at moving forward, there is the task of choosing the “right next step”, from among a million possibilities. There is the challenge of decision-making in a time of  transition, and the awful responsibility of it.

For example for an individual, it could be, when to isolate? 

For an organization, it could be, do we transfer all planned training from offline to online — or maybe, do we want to rethink training in general?

One helpful approach here is the importance of appreciating what is working. This is part of seeing  what is possible. If we can’t appreciate anything, it makes it harder to see what is possible. 

Discovery & action dialogue is a way of applying AI and positive deviance. 

When we are working with the  15% pattern, we are looking at a) what is my challenge? b) what is  the 1st step I can take toward meeting it? (The first step toward, what is possible); and then c) How will we know if we are making progress? We are not talking about randomized controlled evaluation here, but rather attuning to simple indicators… 

Then, after we have chosen a right next step, as well as the indicators that will let us know if we are making  progress, it can be helpful to distill our message, and find clear and succinct ways to communicate; right now we are all suffering not just from information overload, but also, from disinformation overload…

***

Misc… 

From a larger perspective, we are seeing that the same stuff that flattens the  curve with regard to the Corona virus, also flattens the curve with regard to the climate crisis… 

MOIP #6: Get and Give Help Online With Liberating Structures

I’m shortening the title… Moving Online in Pandemic is now #MOIP! This is 6th in a series of posts about the tidal wave of moving online in the time of Covid-19. #1, #2, #3,  #4  and #5. Slides for the event mentioned here. And chat...

I do get enthusiastic… and then things go fast and other things fall behind. VERY SLOW. How is it that March 21 can seem so far away? How is it I started drafting this on March 31 and now it is April 13th???

Our Liberating Structures community has done so many experiments, moved the practice of using Liberating Structures online SO FAR, SO FAST, that time is playing tricks on me. I’m trying to circle back and at least share artifacts and a few reflections, if not a fuller description of what happened, what that means and what is next.

Here goes a super hurried drafty effort for our gathering 3/21/2020 to explore how to use Liberating Structures online to give and get help. The purpose of the gathering was to engage people in experiencing how even strangers can give and get help, we can do it online, and we can do it humanely. Slides and built in-created-in-the-moment harvest/notes here: https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1SPIaIjyu2_6bf0AIU1KZJJ_eqcB9-plERZQq79CTjLk/edit?usp=sharing

The slides lay out all the process should you want to try this. The What? So What? Now What? harvest slides #19-24 are totally worth reading through. I am still trying to process it all, but if I wait for that, this blog post will NEVER get posted!

What? So What? Now What? Small group harvests

I’m going to use What? So What? Now What? as my own reflective structure. Feel free to amplify in the comments!!!

What Happened?

  • We mobilized a volunteer team from the Liberating Structures community to facilitate, tech host (manage all the zoom breakout rooms), harvest key insights, and generally help people as needed. Those with Zoom experience renamed themselves with a * in front of their names so people could private message those folks for help.
  • We set up a set of slides with instructions for each LS we planned to do, along with some “punctuation” in between. In LS language, punctuations are little connective tissues pieces between LSs themselves.
  • We had a very large group… I think it peaked at 68 but I lost track. My sense was it was diverse – familiar folks, new folks, folks experienced with LS and some brand new, some tech familiar, some not.
  • We all were getting a little frazzled with all the Zoom events, so our punctuations all focused on taking a breath, being in our bodies, even as we were connected electronically. We used “Just Three Words” to get settled and present. (For more on Just Three Words see https://fullcirc.com/2014/03/04/faciliplay-play-as-an-online-facilitation-technique/)
  • To identify WHAT we wanted to get help on, we used 15% Solutions.
  • I rolled out 15% pretty awkwardly and confused a number of people.
  • We did Troika Consulting in breakouts of 3 people.
  • We debriefed with What? So What? Now What? in groups of six people (two troikas joined up).
  • People captured their WWW in the slide deck, one slide per group.
  • We informally said goodbye and some stayed on for a longer, informal debrief.
  • We did NOT record – we decided less recording was a little freer, more intimate.
  • We DID capture the chat notes to share.

So What? What meaning to we make of it?

  • No matter who shows up in your triad, there is always something of value they bring. It astonishes people, yet it is real.
  • Don’t do this alone. If I had not had my friends as my team, this would have been a mess, particularly since it was a large and heterogeneous group in every sense of the word.
  • Breathe. Breathe. As we paused, slowed down, we could go more deeply and thoughtfully. The stress of the initial response to moving things online in Covid19 time has amped many of us up, winding our clocks a little too tight???
  • Small groups/breakouts are essential to scale large groups, creating both a broader shared experience AND deeper interpersonal connection and intimacy.
  • Clear instructions, Nancy, CLEAR instructions. Will I never learn?
  • WWW in small groups seemed to work well – with a little confusiasm. It needed more than 6 minutes of breakout time.
  • Tech note: need to figure more graceful ways of dealing with the “two user” problem when someone is on video through their computer and audio through a phone. Zoom treats them as separate users and when you automatically do breakout rooms, they often end up in two places and the video is a “ghost.”
  • Time, time, time. I wrestle with that wicked question of “how is it that time constraints make us sharper and we need more time.” (Or is it simply right now we crave more time in the smaller conversations?”

Now What? What is the next step?

  • I’m working on a series of online “peer assists” for a client in the natural resources sector and I want to encourage them to do Troika Consulting. There is an inclination towards wanting consultation from wider sets of stakeholders, or focused “experts.” What happens when we resist those inclinations and simply turn to each other?
  • How can people quickly find and convene Troika Consultations in these crazy days? What can function as matchmaking/matchmaker?