Adaptive Strategy Development

Introduction

Designing in complex and emergent contexts challenges the traditional log frame approach. With a set of Liberating Structures we can create a more adaptive and  actionable strategy  for project design and development that contextualizes the plan into a fuller picture of the landscape within which it operates. This is a very belated follow up on the application of the process with the good folks at the University of Illinois for the INGENEAS project where we used this approach in April. 

Liberating Structures are easy-to-learn microstructures that enhance relational coordination and trust. They quickly foster lively participation in groups of any size, making it possible to truly include and unleash everyone. Liberating Structures are a disruptive innovation that can replace more controlling or constraining approaches. They are engaging, easily learned and replicated and “complexity friendly.” To learn more about Liberating Structures, please visit http://www.liberatingstructures.com.

With a fully engaged and flexible approach, challenges such as complex international development projects can work with emerging contexts, rather than struggle against them.  Business with rapidly changing markets can develop a portfolio of approaches to respond quickly and accurately. 

As a process, participants in all parts of a system can engage, probe and sense on the ground, and loop the learning back into the strategy e for iterative improvements. Monitoring and evaluation approaches that require flexibility to work in complex contexts are designed as part of the landscape, not afterwards.

Framing the strategic planning as an adaptive landscape versus a document situates the work in its complex setting. By complex, we mean we may not be able to predict outcomes, even with extensive expertise, and only understand causality after the fact. For example, most international development work operates partially and sometimes mostly in complex settings. So the use of complexity-based approaches helps us work more productively and adaptively in these contexts.

The Six Essential Questions of the Adaptive Strategy Landscape

The strategy landscape, or “knotworking” as it is increasingly called,  is framed around six essential questions and held together through the Ecocycle. These questions frame, drive and help us evaluate our strategy.

  1. PURPOSE: Why, why, why is this work important to us and the wider community?  How do we justify our work to others?
  2. CONTEXT: What is happening around us that demands a fresh/new/novel approach (creative adaptation and change)?
  3. BASELINE: Where are we starting, really?
  4. CHALLENGE: What paradoxical challenges must we face to make progress?
  5. AMBITION: Given our purpose, what seems possible now?
  6. ACTION & EVALUATION: How are we moving/breaking away from the present and moving toward the future? How do we know?

The questions, particularly the focus on purpose and ambition pull a group into possibilities as they make choices and identify next steps.  While they seem linear, there are feedback loops. As the group discovers new things, they may come back and modify earlier “answers.” 

The Ecocycle

The Ecocycle provides the glue across the six questions and helps us recognize that we are always working in emerging contexts. To fully exploit knowledge and practice that has been vetted and ready for scale (maturity), we also have to pay attention to what is no longer adding value (creative destruction), what is needing to be birthed (networking) and then iteratively developing those ideas (birth) until they reach their own maturity. The Ecocycle illuminates the pulling from gestation to birth to maturity to creative destruction where strategy-and-tactics are combined.  A new mindset pops into view. It can also help assess current state of activities, assets, relationships and resources, as well as identify future possible actions. 

Strings for Each Question

Liberating Structures are most often used in a combination. The six questions are engagingly answered through a series, or “string” of Liberating Structures. There are a range of structures that can be used for each question. Here are some examples:

PURPOSE: Why, why, why is this work important to us and the wider community?  How do we justify our work to others?

  • 9 Whys   – Make the Purpose of Your Work Together Clear. When we dig into our assumptions, our true purpose may reveal itself – and surprise us!
  • 1-2-4-All – Engage Everyone Simultaneously in Generating Questions, Ideas, and Suggestions. Thinking alone, clarifying in pairs then building a sense of ideas across larger groups help us step beyond the “usual” ideas and observations and facilitate input from all – even the quiet folks.
  • Drawing Together – Reveal Insights and Paths Forward Through Nonverbal Expression. We tap into different parts of our brain, may reveal new insights and prevent jumping to premature judgement or closure.

CONTEXT: What is happening around us that demands a fresh/new/novel approach (creative adaptation and change)?

  • Mad Tea – Connecting with others to reveal surprising truths and action steps. Using rapidly rotating paired conversations, we also provide a smaller, safer space to reveal initial ideas, fears, and issues.
  • Discovery and Action Dialog – Discover, Invent, and Unleash Local Solutions to Chronic Problems. We build on our strengths, even the ones we didn’t know we had!
  • Users Experience Fishbowl – Share Know-How Gained from Experience with a Larger Community. 

BASELINE: Where are we starting, really?

  • What, So What, Now What? – Together, Look Back on Progress to Date and Decide What Adjustments Are Needed.
  • TRIZ – Stop Counterproductive Activities and Behaviors to Make Space for Innovation.
  • Critical Uncertainties – Develop Strategies for Operating in a Range of Plausible Yet Unpredictable Futures. We get out of our “thinking ruts.”
  • Note: The baseline also gives us a starting point for monitoring and evaluation design at the start, not the end of our work!

CHALLENGE: What paradoxical challenges must we face to make progress?

  • TRIZ – Stop Counterproductive Activities and Behaviors to Make Space for Innovation. It is amazing how liberating it is to STOP something. We do too much adding…
  • Wicked Questions – Articulate the Paradoxical Challenges That a Group Must Confront to Succeed. Finding the AND instead of the EITHER/OR.

AMBITION: Given our purpose, what seems possible now?

  • 25/10 Crowd Sourcing – Rapidly Generate and Sift a Group’s Most Powerful Actionable Ideas. Get some initial ideas on the table rather than trying to design the perfect solution. Especially by committee!
  • 15% Solutions – Discover and Focus on What Each Person Has the Freedom and Resources to Do Now.  Empower immediate action, results and iterative improvement.
  • Troika Consulting – Get Practical and Imaginative Help from Colleagues Immediately. Sharpen ideas for launch.

ACTION & EVALUATION: How are we moving/breaking away from the present and moving toward the future? How do we know?

  • What, So What, Now What? – Together, Look Back on Progress to Date and Decide What Adjustments Are Needed. At the micro or macro level, for process and for the actual work or practice.
  • Ecocycle – Analyze the Full Portfolio of Activities and Relationships to Identify Obstacles and Opportunities for Progress. Situate the work.
  • WINFY – Surface Essential Needs Across Functions and Accept or Reject Requests for Support. Identify how we work together practically and honestly.
  • Purpose to Practice – Design the Five Essential Elements for a Resilient and Enduring Initiative. Get the work GOING!

The Visual Canvas

When working in complex contexts, there is often a lot to track and wrap one’s head around. Some of these things are simple next steps, clear data, and identified issues. Others are less certain. We have developed a visual canvas with Ecocycle at the center, surrounded by the six questions for capturing and making sense of the most important findings of the group as they work through the process. Keeping both the questions and the Ecocycle visible throughout the process helps ground and reground as the group progresses. Often post it notes are used so that as new data, insights, and challenges are surfaced, the canvas can be updated. At the end, there is a “story spine” that can support the telling of the strategy story to others.

The visual can be on a large piece of paper on the wall for face to face groups, or a digital artifact online with movable digital notes.

Examples from Other Groups

I have used this approach with a number of groups over the past three years. The results have been:

  • From the Fire Adaptive Communities retreat

    Surprising – One group not only entirely rethought their approach, but the use of Liberating Structures also reshaped their process.

  • Fast – Quick, iterative interactions revealed far more than traditional SWOT approaches. People are usually amazed at how much they can get done in a day in developing their strategy and implementation.
  • Possibly threatening – If one or more people come in to the process thinking they know the outcome and their agenda will prevail, this approach can destabilize them and stimulate sabotaging. It is important that everyone knows that Liberating Structures engage and unleash everyone and if you open that Pandora’s box, you need to be ready to listen to and respond to that engagement.
  • New questions –  Some of the things that have surfaced in this work include: how to mine the past without falling into thinking traps in complex contexts where the past may not help us understand our path towards the future; understand how this approach supports and makes visible the decision making processes and finally, how to weave it into developmental evaluation.

Inspirations/Resources

This was developed off of the initial inspiration from Keith McCandless, co-founder of Liberating Structures, and conversations with Fisher Qua and Eva Schiffer. The first draft was developed to support a strategic planning workshop at the University of Illinois for the INGENEAS project. 

Criticisms & Cures for Facilitating in Complexity

My friend and colleague Eva Schiffer asked the most delightful question after I wrote about Facilitating in Complex Contexts.  “How do you dive into and acknowledge complexity and then get s*&% done?”

I love that Eva framed this as a classic Wicked Question focusing on the AND versus either/or! I’m finally circling back to share what I learned. (Back in the writing saddle again!)

I enjoyed this article in Learning Solutions by Connie Malamed addressing  push back on Design Thinking. When I’m using Liberating Structures to enable design, planning, group process in complex contexts, there is this pervasive energy that shows up around the idea that “everything is complex,” and therefore there is nothing concrete we can do.” Another type of push back.

While I could blithely respond that they are missing the point, that’s not very helpful. Connie’s article broke down some of the resistance she has experienced with Design Thinking, so borrowed her approach and see if it works when trying to bring complexity friendly approaches to facilitation. Let me know…

Criticism: If everything is always complex and changing, how do you plan?

Cure: Discern what is complex, what isn’t and what can be “nudged” to a point of greater certainty or predictability. Using Agreement-Certainty matrix, the Cynefin Framework help in that discernment. If you think of your work portfolio in the context of an Ecocycle, there are things that are predictable (in the “Manage” quadrant”) AND there are things that must be destroyed to make room for innovation, innovation itself and the process of bringing that innovation into the Managed domain through iterative experimentation. If you can identify where each of your work processes fit in that ecocycle, you can breath a little easier because it is all connected… eventually!

Criticism: If I can’t predict outcomes, how will I know how to focus our work?

Cure: Utilize methods that help you discover possibilities in unexpected places such as Discovery and Action Dialog, those that allow you to iteratively move towards your goal or refine your goal. Consider Improv Prototyping or even Simple Ethnography. These can help us leap over our own cognitive biases — sometimes that alone is the problem, not complexity!

Cilliers wrote (again, via Chris Corrigan): “The elements interact dynamically by exchanging energy or information. These interactions are rich. Even if specific elements only interact with a few others, the effects of these interactions are propagated throughout the system. The interactions are nonlinear. ” This reminds us that our work is often non linear, even if our planning infers that it is. 😉

Criticism: If things are always changing, how do we make make ongoing decisions?

Cure: First, discern what kind of decisions you are making. Again, via Chris Corrigan / Paul Cilliers and complexity informed values: “Complex systems consist of a large number of elements that in themselves can be simple.”  Understand which decisions are the simple or complicated ones and make them. For the complex elements, use methods such as Critical Uncertainties to build a portfolio of options so you are ready to make decisions to shift if the conditions change. Finally, are you even conscious about HOW you make decisions? Look at that for a few surprises!

Criticism: And now Eva’s : How do you dive into and acknowledge complexity and then get s*&% done?

Cure: Acknowledge that this is the Wicked Question and then plan your next step. The beauty of  15% Solutions and similar approaches are that you can find the AND between complexity and your next move.  Use the Wenger-Trayner Value Creation framework to surface immediate value of your short term experiments rather than waiting for the “final evaluation!” You can use What, So What, Now What? to elicit the narrative fragments that can help you see the value created, even in uncertain or experimental moves.marbled swirs

One more from Cilliers/Chris: Complex systems are adaptive. They can (re)organize their internal structure without the intervention of an external agent. Chris notes that we must adapt – our plans, our actions, our strategies. So the bottom line is we have to move away from our adulation of certainty and just get on with it!

 

 

See also:

  •  http://www.hsdinstitute.org/resources/plan-in-uncertainty-strategic-adaptive-action.html

Chris Corrigan on Complexity Principles and Participatory Process Design

Ah, Kismet! Chris Corrigan posted a great blog a while back about complexity and participatory design process. I had slipped the quote into a draft post and rediscovered it today. I want to build on his brain dump! He is building on Sonja Blignault  blogging on Paul Cilliers’ work on complexity. See Cilliers’ seven characteristics of complex systems and the implications of complexity for organizations. In another post I’ll dip into these multiple layers! Stay tuned for my riff!

  1. Complex systems consist of a large number of elements that in themselves can be simple.
  2. The elements interact dynamically by exchanging energy or information. These interactions are rich. Even if specific elements only interact with a few others, the effects of these interactions are propagated throughout the system. The interactions are nonlinear.
  3. There are many direct and indirect feedback loops.
  4. Complex systems are open systems—they exchange energy or information with their environment—and operate at conditions far from equilibrium.
  5. Complex systems have memory, not located at a specific place, but distributed throughout the system. Any complex system thus has a history, and the history is of cardinal importance to the behavior of the system.
  6. The behavior of the system is determined by the nature of the interactions, not by what is contained within the components. Since the interactions are rich, dynamic, fed back, and, above all, nonlinear, the behavior of the system as a whole cannot be predicted from an inspection of its components. The notion of “emergence” is used to describe this aspect. The presence of emergent properties does not provide an argument against causality, only against deterministic forms of prediction.
  7. Complex systems are adaptive. They can (re)organize their internal structure without the intervention of an external agent.

See also: 

Building Online Meeting Muscles – chunking and practice

I’ve been both working with some distributed communities of practice and talking to different folks in my networks about online meeting practices. I’m feeling a resurgence of the kind of interest we saw in the earlier waves of online interaction. There is a pattern that I realize I use, but had not written about it. It is nothing new nor earthshaking, but every once in a while it is worth a moment of reflection and reification.

Many people have been migrating to Zoom for online meetings, both for its ease of use, decent video and chat, but also because it allows breakout groups, something that can be VERY useful for engagement and deeper work. Other groups are adopting tools like Slack and Trello.

So we have new tools. That means we either need new or adapted practices, especially if we are seeking to move away from top down, presentation oriented meetings. (My version of a waste of time!)  Here are a few heuristics I’m using to initiate and build the online meeting practices and muscles.

  • Experiment/introduce a new practice, then make sure you briefly debrief it. Use it again in the next meeting. It gets easier to do, and the work gets deeper and more meaningful. Encourage people to be curious and withhold judgement until they get to that moment of greater depth. Right now it seems that new practices really bear fruit on the third use.
  • In the second meeting of a sequence, use the first practice and add just one more. Then in subsequent meetings you start rolling off some practices to save for when they are most useful, and introduce others. Debrief, practice and then use discernment of what you should stop doing, keep doing, change or start over. This builds an online interaction repertoire.
  • Explain just enough so that people interested in using the processes and methods themselves have a starting point to carry the practices elsewhere. Offer links to resources or deep debrief to the interested. Don’t torture the others by droning on about process.
  • In debrief, some useful questions can be (drawn from Liberating Structures and elsewhere): what was liberated or enabled by this process? How was it structured? Where else might you use it? These three questions help people be aware the role process plays in their experience, success or failures.
  • Finally, don’t expect people, including yourself, to be instantly comfortable and competent with new practices. Take a learning stance. Be an experimenter. Laugh at and learn from failure. If you are leading the charge, role modeling this stance makes a huge difference.

Your ideas? Practices?

Joint Use in Online Spaces

An article in the New York Times caught my eye a while back about the power of joint use of schools and churches as community spaces for exercise, play and other community activities, particularly for communities where there is a lack of park space, or inability for the average community member to pay for private gyms and play areas. I’ve put a snippet at the bottom to lure you to read the whole thing because I think this concept of Joint Space may be a powerful antidote to what is happening with Facebook, Google and others being owners of the online spaces, and thus owners of our data.

Today, Stephanie West Allen posted (on Facebook, natch!) a link to Raph Koster’s work on games and the idea of the “magic circle.” (See https://www.theoryoffun.com/tfall.shtml ) Again, this piece about space being essential.

“The arena, the card-table, the magic circle, the temple, the stage, the screen, the tennis court, the court of justice, etc., are all in form and function play-grounds, i.e., forbidden spots, isolated, hedged round, hallowed, within which special rules obtain. All are temporary worlds within the ordinary world, dedicated to the performance of an act apart.”

Read the New York Times and Raph Koster pieces together and some tinglings of ideas start emerging. Are our online convenings “performance” — of “an act apart?” Or part of a larger circle that is both online and offline?

We have flocked to Facebook and other online spaces as a “third place” to connect, gather and do things together. Because of the way our social media spaces are designed, they tend to become silos of people most like us, rather than places where we might rub elbows with the diversity of our communities.

A common scenario is a swap in which a city will indemnify a school in exchange for the school opening its gates for community use, resulting in “a new park that’s been sitting there all along — taxpayer paid,” Winig said.

The concept also extends to rural churches, making fitness part of the lifeblood of these community staples along with meetings, weddings and funerals. At the First Missionary Baptist Church in Concord, N.C., Theoma Southwell, the parish nurse, worked with the county health alliance to include a mile-long walking trail and a fitness class for older people. “ If you don’t feel well physically you won’t feel well spiritually,” Southwell observed. “They all go together.”

Unlike Uber, Airbnb and other shared economy juggernauts — profit-makers all — opening up schools, churches and other buildings for public use during off hours represents something far more powerful: shared health programs in communities in which having a safe place to kick a soccer ball or unwind with an evening run has not been an option. It is also common-sense land use policy, representing the recycling of resources instead of building anew.

“Joint use is a winner because it is simple,” said Harold Goldstein, director of Public Health Advocates, a nonprofit organization based in Davis, Calif. “In policy jargon, we call it a no-brainer.”

Source: Sharing Public Spaces to Improve Public Health – The New York Times