Category: collaboration

Uncertainty/Agreement Matrix

I have started going through the 419 draft blog posts sitting in my WordPress dashboard. Some are simply links of things I found interesting, and alas, many of those links (2006, 2015) are now dead and those drafts are deleted. There are a few nuggets.

I came upon this little doodle that emerged from/by people at the 2008 gathering of process practitioners, Nexus for Change. (Nexus continues to grow and thrive focusing on the domain of whole systems change. There are three videos which try and tell the story of its evolution.)

The image is of an agreement/certainty matrix based on the work of Ralph Stacey. I continue to use it as part of my Liberating Structures repertoire and it has infused and informed many other process approaches.

What attracted me to resurrect this image and post it is that there is still such resonance for me today. Much of my work of the past five years has been in this area of low certainty and low agreement – the stuff in the upper right hand side of the image. And of course the invitation into each piece of work has often been in the lower left – clients thinking they were working in higher agreement and certainty, only to discover they were not.

This shift of understanding where we place and understand our work (play, relationships, etc.) is both liberating, daunting and, sometimes, frustrating. It calls upon different skills and expertise. The lessons of the COVID era illustrate this. Just when we think we understand what is happening and how we might respond, things change. We have to find that space between “just do something useful today ” and live with the uncertainty and “unknowing.”

Photo of a hand drawing of an Agreement-Certainty matrix in various colors of pen.

From the Principles Chart on Flickr – Photo Sharing!

At the same time, this does not mean we ignore the lower left. There are things we can do with some amount of certainty. One that seems to have been somewhat abandoned is the choice to care about every person around us, and to act with kindness. Our uncertainty seems to have nudged many of us (USA I’m looking at you) towards self-preservation, or even outright selfishness, as if we deserve something. In uncertainty, all bets are off, including our past sense of entitlement.

What does this image tell me today? Keep ahold of the principles of our best selves and practice them together, with certainty and agreement. And let go of things that prevent us from seeing and experimenting with possibility in the areas of high uncertainty and disagreement. A classic wicked question and filled with potential dissonance. And possibility.

Part of a larger photo set from Nexus for Change in 2008 https://www.flickr.com/photos/choconancy/albums/72157604309184882

Not another “how are you?” Alternatives from Kat Vellos

Brilliance from Kat Vellos https://www.instagram.com/katvellos_author/ and https://twitter.com/KatVellos/status/1392606023718825986/photo/1 (Her blog post about it here.)

I think I now sleepwalk through someone asking/answering “how are you.” That said, sometimes I’d love a meeting where I can skip ALL check-ins, check-outs and just get the work done and the meeting OVER WITH. This is a unique kind of pandemic-induced fatigue for me. I seek not the gathering place on some days, but the cave.

Interesting…

What does consent look like to you as a facilitator?

“Consent is key. Relatedly, whatever you do, get consent from the local government and the local community. Involve them in the decision-making and processes. For example, in a humanitarian crisis (outbreak, environmental, or manmade), development organizations and INGOs (e.g., UN, Save the Children, IRC, MSF) aren’t allowed to enter a country to provide support until the country has invited them or accepted their offer. This is one example of tapping into existing structures, which are in place for a reason, as well as the importance of consent.” https://www.fsg.org/blog/covid-19-seven-things-philanthropy-can-do

I’ve been thinking more and more about how I have controlled and oppressed others through my well-meaning facilitation. I jokingly call it “facipulation,” and seek to be very transparent about how I approach facilitation. But that is no excuse to ignore my filtered and often biased approach.

I have been working to understand how better to work with the Tribes in my state as it relates to my work with an integrated floodplains management network. Informal conversations between the consultants and the leadership team have opened up many new and nuanced vistas about what consent means.

As I begin to glimpse the complexities of sovereign nation relationships (thank you Bobby), the relationships within and between tribes, and practices of who can or does speak for whom, it is clearer that I based most of my sense of “inviting people in” on my white, American, female and other identities, without having a clue how they were received by others different than me. More importantly, WHY they are perceived the way they are. My personal value was to ensure that “everyone speaks.” Does that, in fact, equal egalitarian engagement? Not necessarily.

In my belief in networked and multi-nodal approaches, I often dismissed existing power structures as oppressive, without even understanding HOW they worked. I lumped them into the buck of obstruction and sought to work around them.

But what happens when working around them makes matters worse? While you might not agree with me and I with you, dismissing the way we each wish to engage does nothing for moving forward together. So what does the path “between” look like? How do we flock together and hold our uniqueness and diversity intact? How does that inform consent and group process?

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!”

Artifacts from the KM4Dev Session on Peer Assistance

Note: My threat/promise to blog weekly has suffered a bit. I’ll try harder! What do you want me to blog about? Tell me in the comments.

A few weeks ago I wrote a provocation on Peer Assistance and Mutual Support in preparation for a KM4Dev Knowledge Cafe. I really enjoyed thinking more deeply about the power dynamics of peer assistance. Thanks to the great KM4Dev team here are the artifacts from the event. ‘