Category: Liberating Structures

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

A Community Considers the LS “What I Need From You”

I’ve promised myself to start blogging regularly this year. One way to get a jump on it is to finish drafts that I never got around to publishing. This is one of them! Is there something you’d like me to write about? Leave a note in the comments!

Skagit Bay – and colors change all the time…

What I Need From You (WINFY) is one of the Liberating Structures that I avoided for a long time. My own fears? Lack of clarity about how the structure would work, particularly in view of the presence or absences of trust in a power-dynamically lit situation? That said, once I actually started using it, it flowered open with many useful layers. I found some particularly great insights AND, when my fellow practitioners share their experiences, I see even more. This is the value of a community of practice, my friends!

For context for those of you new to Liberating Structures, I love the short and sweet description from The Liberators: “Liberating Structures are a collection of interaction patterns that allow you to unleash and involve everyone in a group — from extroverted to introverted and from leaders to followers.” The help us find the sweet spot between over controlled and under controlled group processes to access the intelligence and action of everyone in a group.

Our LS community of practice functions partially on a Slack instance, where we ask and answer questions for each other. At some point last year there was a great question and answer thread around WINFY that was SO VALUABLE I wanted to capture it before it aged off of our free Slack instance. (As so much does!) The players gave me permission to share so I’m going to share the actual thread, then close with a brief summary of my own. Italicized comments are mine to explain stuff that might not mean anything if you aren’t in the community!

OK, here is the transcript!

lolo
A question re (WINFY –> we use the icon as shorthand in Slack!): :winfy:
I’m not fully understanding the reasoning behind the “No discussion! No elaboration” piece of the sharing. Why wouldn’t elaboration or discussion be helpful? Or do people often follow up this activity with something else to address if a ‘no’ came up? I appreciate that if there’s a ‘whatever’ that it means that there’s a need to clarify the request and so a second round could be done, but “I will try” or “No” with no discussion or no elaboration feels like the opposite of building trust.

fisher
I tend to describe this rigidity as purposeful: there’s no need to justify why it’s a no. WINFY isn’t meant to be a negotiation. If you need me to get you a report by Friday at 12, and I say no. What more is there to discuss? Usually, people want part of the need met – “well we can get you half the report by Friday at 4”. That’s not the need. Do you mistrust the person’s initial request – do you think you know better than they do what they need? I find WINFY goes right at two types of trust. Do I trust that you how your own needs better than I think I can know your needs? Can I say no and deny you an essential need and believe we’ll still be ok relationally?

keithmccandless19
Saying no or whatever or huh in WINFY is an invitation to offer an honest and direct signal. So many of the explanations muddle the relationship and trust among people… particularly when you are working across functions that are very different. Also, getting very short answers out helps everyone see the interrelatedness of what is needed to move forward together. Each individual request is not sacred but rather part of a critically self-organizing set of entanglements. The next straw may break the camel’s back. Often one function or action must be sub-optimized to address the mix of needs expressed across the whole group. Last, it is a good idea to make space for more explanation and follow-on commitments after :winfy:. Helpful? Confusing? Nonsense?

lolo haha18
@fisher & @keithmccandless Thanks so much for your explanations!I appreciate what you bring in here, @fisher, around not only emphasizing the non-negotiation but also intensive negotiation happening where there’s a real need to pose whether you can really know the other’s need better than them, and whether you can accept the relational impact of saying no to their need. How have you experienced people with perhaps more positional power handle the added heat of that need?@keithmccandless I love what you’re saying here, too! I appreciate the need for a brief and non-confusing signal. What have you followed up with to offer space for more explanation or commitment follow-up after :winfy: ? I also welcome other feedback from those who haven’t commented yet!

fisher
@annajackson has some hard stories about using :winfy: with funders and grantees that were tricky given the power relationships. In my experiences, functional groups will often say “Yes” to a leadership team. If you are holding the structure, you often have to intervene a bit and gently nudge them to consider whether it is a request that is clear enough for a Yes or No – or whether it ought to be a huh. You can make it quite playful and eventually someone will say Huh or Whatever to the bosses and there’s usually a cathartic cheer. All of us tend to be underspecific in what our actual needs are and so you have be sometimes a little stiff in terms of supporting groups – especially those without positional power or authority to use No, Huh, and Whatever more frequently.As with most LS, frequent and consistent use of WINFY as a regular interactional or operational structure dampens the anxiety and increases the fluidity.

lolo haha
Thank you @fisher !!

Ziryan
@lolo haha, beautiful question. I have seen WINFY address two major assumptions within a company. People feeling comfortable enough to say Huh or No, and people feeling comfortable enough receiving Huh or No.I facilitated a workshop ones in which we wanted the sales team and development team to work together to sell more Agile contacts instead of fixed scope and deadline contracts. Almost at the end of the workshop, I asked the sales reps, including the sales director to state what they need from the development teams to be successful. The teams only had a few Yes while having lots of Huh and a few No. The sales director was not amused, and I had to intervene and address the trust issue. After the intervention, the sales director cooled down and was grateful for the honesty of the development teams that they did not understand what he exactly wanted from them. They decided to work together to formulate what the director needed and followed up by another WINFY to clarify if it is a Yes, huh or a No. Had I not intervened and allowed discussion, the development team would have been overwhelmed by the reasoning and negotiation power of the sales reps and director. They would end up frustrated and eventually giving in by saying Yes and still doing No. Or, making assumptions in what the director and sales reps needed. And most importantly, the issue of trust and lack of collaboration would not have been discussed and remain in the air like the elephant in the room.

lolo haha
Awesome anecdote, @Ziryan !! Thanks for sharing, sounds like it’s one of those that may need a good deal of added facilitation depending on the trust and communication skills within the team!:heart:1

fisher
I find :winfy: to be the most exhausting and actively held structure. In my experience, there’s quite a bit more hanging on during that structure than in some of the others.:+1:1

keithmccandless
Tempted to share more stories when the people with less power gave honest & risky answers and the people with more power responded with surprise/confusion/curiosity. (Working in healthcare is instructive because there are complex power dynamics). If there is a pattern, I would say the people with more power are unwitting and making unexamined assumptions about the relative importance of their role. Most often, the BIG WINFY insight revolves around interdependence. Eyes are suddenly open to what we need from one another to accomplish something important to everyone.

My Summary

As I read through the thread, the emergence of patterns of interaction – particularly those habituated through roles and power positions – help us see MANY things in a new light. If we can find simple ways, like WINFY and other LSs, to make patterns visible, then we can explore and act upon them. The SIMPLE part is essential, because it is so easy to get lost in a verbal analysis and miss the point.

This is why I love Liberating Structures!

Designing and Hosting Virtual Field Trips (MOIP #10)

Moving Online in Pandemic is now #MOIP! This is 10th in a series of posts about the tidal wave of moving online in the time of Covid-19. #1, #2, #3,  #4 , #5 , #6, #7, #8 and #9.

I’ve mentioned my work with the Floodplains by Design network over the past few years. We have been doing a lot of experimenting and practicing with online meetings and events over the last 11 months. We captured a few of our practices and now I’ve drafted an article on Virtual Field Trips. And yes, I’m looking for your review to help improve it. Right now it lives on a Google doc where you can comment. You are also welcome to comment generally here. Care to help? I’ll post the intro below. And THANKS!

1. Introduction

At the Floodplains by Design (FbD) Culture and Capacity Action Group (C&C) November 2020 meeting, we recently reviewed and reflected upon our experiences and value of field trips to FbD project sites. (See figure 1.) COVID-19 has curtailed our face to face field trips, demanding a new, virtual way of meeting these needs. 

With the C&C’s focus on building and supporting a learning network, we are interested in the overall set of learning and network weaving practices that can help spread and deepen IFM. This document offers insights and useful practices for designing and implementing virtual field trips (VTS) to support Integrated Floodplain Management (IFM). It also helps us share in general the value of, and practices around field trips which are useful in our work together whether we are F2F or together online. It builds on our first document on Virtual Peer Assists.

We hope that through these occasional articles/resource documents we can make our learning more widely available across the FbD network and beyond. 

The first section of this document  reflects more generally on the purpose and value created through field trips. The second section addresses specific practices for planning and executing virtual field trips. A resources section follows for additional information.

Figure 1: Harvest from the November 2020 brainstorm on VTS

We created this first draft of useful virtual field trip practices using four guiding questions. 

  1. What general immediate and longer term value is created through field trips in our integrated floodplain management (IFM) work? This establishes a shared baseline understanding of field trips in IFM. 
  2. What specific purpose(s) and value creation do field virtual trips serve in our work right now? With whom? Clear purpose drives how we design our VFTs.
  3. What useful field trip practices have we learned for VTFs?
  4. How might we know when we are making progress on this purpose? Like any practice, we assume that as we learn, we can improve our practice.

I’m happy to post more here if that is useful… and know the doc got pretty LONG!

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 #7: Virtual Peer Assists

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 , #5 and #6. This time a client has graciously allow me to share their story!

I’ve been having a great time working with the Floodplains by Design Network (FbD), particularly the Culture and Capacity Building Action Group (C&C in our shorthand!). C&C members have targeted peer to peer (P2P) learning as an important tactic for identifying and sharing knowledge. One form of P2P learning is to ask for and get help from peers. Peer Assists are one format for the giving and getting of help. They help tap both local and network wide knowledge, support local contextualization (no “one ring to rule them all” as Frodo might wish), and are easy to do. Some even say it is pleasurable! This Spring the C&C members have committed to at least two Peer Assists.  And to make them accessible across our wide geography, we decided to do them online. That turned out to be a wise choice given the Covid-19 outbreak. 

About Peer Assists

There are many ways to do PAs. You can simply call up another network member and talk about your challenge. This is helpful for matching specific expertise with a specific need — and we recognize we need to figure out a mechanism so FbD members can easily find each other for this sort of direct exchange. 

We also benefit from a diversity of views. Sometimes the most helpful ideas come from the “unusual suspects” and people who see and experience the world differently than we do. Here are some variations to consider:

  •  Troika Consulting , User Experience Fishbowl and Wise Crowds are three of my “go-to” peer assist variations. They create simple “containers” for people to get direct help on a challenge. The difference is that Troika works in an intimate trio, Wise Crowds uses rotating small groups to enable multiple people to get peer assistance, and Users Experience Fishbowl supports two layers of support – direct and indirect. It is a bit of hybrid option. 
  • If you are trying to elicit expertise, instead of trying to apply it in context, you can try  or Celebrity Interview. THis is not exactly the same thing as peer to peer assistance, but by asking people questions, we often get more and deeper insights than if they just did a presentation. It is more engaging for those watching as well. 
  • Appreciative Interviews help pull out current success upon which we can build. So maybe one watershed has really made huge progress, but we can’t quite figure out how to make that same progress in our watersheds. Discovery and Action Dialog can help us discover who is succeeding where the rest of us are struggling. (A way of surfacing positive deviance!)

C&C’s First Peer Assist

In early April we had our first Peer Assist, helping Kat, a member move her work on a strategy element forward. She was looking for ideas about how to frame and build a strategy element that reflected views FROM the network, so a Peer Assist seemed useful. She identified some people she wanted present and others from the C&C volunteered to be her consultants. To help shine a light on the process and add another layer of support we invited the whole C&C to be the “bowl” of the fishbowl. 

We convened on the Zoom video conferencing platform. In an hour Kat laid out her challenge, the “consultants” asked clarifying questions, and then Kat turned her back to her computer screen while her consultants talked about her challenge. After about 20 minutes she turned around, shared the key insights she gained and thanked her consultants. 

At the end, we debrief and came up with the following observations to help improve our next Peer Assist:

  • Great way of engaging. It takes courage — and you need to be truthful and honest about the feedback. Incorporate it in and be willing to accept the harsh reality.
  • Lesson: French Revolution – king reached out but didn’t do anything with the input! Input –> heard, seen, respected and USED!Suggest that problem statement for peer assist be elaborated in written text and distributed to panel in advance so they can gather thoughts / questions
    •  +1 Some of my best thinking happens during drives/walks/showers/doing the dishes…
  • From a Bowl person: Not quite sure how to engage, questions are relevant, but didn’t know what process looked like. How does this all work? (Lesson: not everyone got the same instructions in advance due to later additions of participants. Don’t let that slip through the cracks.)
  • If more time engage the outer ring
  • What would be a valuable question for a peer assist? Examples of questions, projects in different stages. 
  • How do we know about peer assist tool? Share more about the methodology (this article!)
  • In times of Covid and working at home with kids → Evening Peer Assists after kids go to bed
  • Humor: happy hour assists might cross certain lines, but the feedback would flow

Want more tips on how to do Peer Assists? Online and need to learn how to use zoom? 

Want the geeky process details? Here is an outline of how you can set up your own Peer Assist using Users Experience Fishbowl method:

Preparation: 

Identify your peer assistee. Ask if they have individuals they want as their consultants, and/or cast a net more widely. You do NOT need a large group. In this particular variation 3-4 consultants in the fishbowl with the peer assistee provides time for depth and sufficient intimacy for the conversation. Other useful folks are the “bowl” observing and sharing other ideas in chat which can be processed by the assistee later. 

For a small group, one person can guide the process and take note. If there is a larger “bowl” of people it can be helpful to have one person to take notes in addition to the facilitator.

Invitation: 

Send an invitation out. Draft copy below…

Thanks for being willing to do a peer assist. We are doing a peer assist variation called “Users Experience Fishbowl” where a small group of people support a person with a challenge or question (the “fish”) while other observers listen and respond afterwards.

Please come and help NAME OF PEER ASSISTEE think about her next steps with the CHALLENGE PERSON HAS. ADD THE PERSON’S CHALLENGING QUESTION HERE.

Technical Details: We’ll meet on a Zoom video platform so ideally you need a mic and a camera attached to your device. Best is a computer, then tablet, then phone. Log on a few minutes early if you are new to Zoom to make sure everything is running well. Due to the huge current loads on Zoom, sometimes it takes a few tries to get into a Zoom room… the days we live in!

Preparation: In preparation, we’ll send you WHATEVER YOU HAVE TO SEND. KEEP IT BRIEF to skim as time is available. Mostly bring your ears, your brains, experiences and insights from your floodplains work. 

The X NUMBER OF FISH – YOU CAN NAME THEM will be ASSISTEE’S NAME consultants.  Other interested folks will observe the process, staying off camera and just listen/ take notes in the Zoom chat.

How this will work: Tight 60 minute agenda

  1. 10 minutes: Brief introductions both of fish and “bowl folks.” 
  2. 5 minutes: PEER ASSISTEE shares their challenge. (It is helpful if this builds on what was sent in advice, versus telling the same thing again.)
  3. 3-5 minutes: Consultants ask clarifying questions (no ideas, suggestions or their own stories yet.)
  4. 15-20 minutes: PEER ASSISTEE will turn off her Zoom camera, turn around with a notebook and simply listen as you talk about her challenge. She will not nod her head, respond, rebut or interject in any way. JUST LISTEN. As consultants, talk amongst yourselves with advice, experience, comparable stories. Range freely and think boldly. Dive into your experiences and data. The notetaker/facilitator will take notes. 
  5. 5 minutes: PEER ASSISTEE will turn around and thank you, and if they want, share the most useful things they heard from you. They will share her next step in addressing their challenge.
  6. 10 minutes: Invite the observers to share any highlights or comments they noticed.
  7. 5 minutes: Debrief the process and outcomes.