Our
hosts during my vacation
this past weekend in McKenzie Bridge, OR were Charlene and Galen
Phipps. Charlene, it turns out, is a facilitator with an interest in
complex adaptive systems, and specifically the issue of how
an
understanding of social complexity can be applied to improving group
functionality.
Those familiar with this blog know the fundamental factors that
differentiate complex from merely complicated systems. Mechanistic,
complicated systems (like an automobile) have many moving parts, but
they can be fully identified and understood with study and effort. By
contrast, complex systems (like the world's climatic system, or a
community) are never completely knowable. They have too many variables
to ever fully map, and the n-to-n
connection between those
variables is too manifold and nuanced to fully appreciate. Further, in
complex systems, causality is never determinable; one can never
separate cause and effect. So while a dysfunctional automobile can be
'fixed' by assessing the cause or causes of the dysfunction, we can
never hope to do this with the world's climate, or with community
interactions or other social systems.
Nature's way of 'dealing' with complexity is to make these complex
systems self-managing.
A
balance is found, and as the infinite number of variables constantly
and inevitably change, the entire system itself collectively seeks and
finds a new balance, a new equilibrium. The physical and social systems
of our world are complex because, in Darwinian terms, they work. They
are less brittle than simple and complicated systems -- cars break down
much more easily and frequently than ecosystems and societies. If an
ecosystem has a quintillion components, it makes far more sense to have
all these components working collectively to resolve their problems
(the resolution is then said to 'emerge'), than expecting a single
superior intelligence, or even a single species, to try to manage the
system and impose 'solutions' on it.
In her work, Charlene summarizes the work of many social complexity
pioneers and then presents what she calls the Discovery Model, which
recognizes that groups learn and perform optimally when the people, the
environment and the capacity for self-organization are in sync, and
when information, interaction, and adaptability are present and working
to enable the group to continuously transform itself into one
sustainably suited to dealing with the issues of the moment. The
facilitator's role in this dynamic is to open up, unblock, encourage
and enable the group to be fully functional. S/he does this through
coaching, inviting, drawing out, connecting, challenging, articulating,
and building personal and group capacities.
This is a huge task, and while I do agree that the role of a skilled
and present facilitator is essential to effective group function, it's
my belief that this is largely because we have been indoctrinated to
believe that mechanistic, complicated problem-solving is the answer to
every situation (hence organizational hierarchies, and the simplistic
and dysfunctional decision-making methodologies that have
prevailed throughout our civilization), so we have never properly
learned (as I believe indigenous and non-human societies do from birth)
to self-manage, to allow resolutions to emerge naturally.
Reading Charlene's work and talking with her got me thinking about the model
of
social fluency that Chris Lott
and I co-developed, which is
illustrated above. Here's a brief re-cap of what it says:
Our
ability to impart
social value to
others is a
function of (a) our knowledge, (b) our thinking competency
(critical, creative and imaginative), (c) our communication skills
(conversation, presentation and demonstration), and (d) our ability to
integrate these three things.
This ability to
integrate these three things gives rise to
(i) insight, ideas and new perspectives (thinking competency applied to
knowledge), (ii) reportage and stories (communication skills applied to
knowledge), (iii) rhetoric and provocation (articulation of one's
thinking), and (iv) art (in its broadest sense, the re-presentation of
reality). We are all artists, performers, when we have the stage in a
social circle. This aspect of the social fluency model is from the
perspective of the actor (presenter,
demonstrator, creator, artist), and is shown in black in the model
above.
The corresponding
elements of social fluency from the
perspective of the re-actor
(audience, listener, student, learner) shown in red brackets in the
model above, are as follows:
Our ability to derive
social value from
others (i.e. to learn) is a
function of (a') our openness to others' knowledge and ideas, (b') our
learning competency (ability to learn), (c') our attention skills, and
(d') our ability to integrate these three things.
This ability to
integrate these three things gives rise to
(i') understanding (openness and competency to learn new ideas and
knowledge), (ii') appreciation (openness and attention to new ideas and
knowledge), (iii') self-change (attention/awareness of change
opportunities and the learning competency to apply them), and (iv')
improvisation (the real-ization of learning).
Again, this ability
to integrate is social fluency. We
exhibit social fluency inter-act-ively, as actors (though
art/presentation) and as re-actors (through improvisation/attention).
Just as individuals' social fluency is a function of these capacities,
so is that of groups. The best facilitators have the awareness and
skills to recognize the capacities and incapacities of the people in a
group s/he is facilitating, and those of the collective group.
It's been my experience that groups are more or less dysfunctional
depending on the presence or absence of certain preconditions. The work
of Dave Snowden and John Kotter supports this. These necessary
preconditions for functional groups include:
- a shared purpose;
- a shared sense of
urgency;
- the presence among at
least some in the group of each of 12
core capacities (I describe these in my book Finding the Sweet Spot):
excellent
instincts, critical thinking, imagination, creativity, attention,
communication, demonstration, learning, collaboration and
self-management skills, and a strong sense of responsibility and of
intention;
- sufficient information
about the subject to have a context
for learning and understanding (this is described in James Surowiecki's
book The
Wisdom of Crowds);
and
- a shared passion.
So my sense is that the role of the facilitator in dealing with complex
issues should include the following:
Being
aware of the
presence or absence in the group of the necessary preconditions for a
functional group.
Being
aware of the
presence or absence of social fluency among the members of the group,
and of the group collectively,
as described in the model
above.
Articulating to the
group the
presence or absence of these preconditions and the elements of
social fluency, so that they
are aware of their strengths
and weaknesses.
Suggesting
compensatory
ideas and methods (e.g.
bringing in people, knowledge or teachers) to strengthen
the group.
Most
importantly, enabling the group to
self-assess these
strengths and weaknesses and
to self-generate
ideas and methods to draw on strengths and alleviate or compensate for
weaknesses, to make the group
and its members stronger and
more competent to address the issues at hand.
I'm not suggesting that competent facilitators don't do this already,
just that there is a tendency for some facilitators to take the
inherent problems of missing preconditions and incapacities as a given
and hence not explicitly reflect them to the group, and also a tendency
to make that the facilitator's problem rather than the group's. It
seems to me that,
while the facilitator may be able to get the group started in this
self-assessment and self-management process (i.e. to facilitate it) the
process itself should be directed and managed by the group. This is the
very essence of managing social complexity.
For example, in my experience dealing with senior executives, they have
a propensity (often reinforced by others) to exaggerate their own
competencies and knowledge and to be blind to their incapacities and
areas of ignorance. In facilitated sessions, they tend to dominate
groups of subordinates and rush to conclusions. In such cases I have
tried to research their possible and perceived incapacities and areas
of ignorance in advance, and pull them aside before the session to urge
them to recognize the value of them holding back judgement, listening,
and helping draw out the knowledge, perspectives and ideas of others
(almost making them quasi-co-facilitators, to disable their dominance,
infallability and judgement behaviours). On rare occasions, an
executive will even lead off by confessing his/her incapacities and
ignorance as a means of leveling the power playing field and eliciting
active participation of others. On occasions where the group explicitly
acknowledges their strengths and weaknesses, the session can be very
productive. A team aware of its individual and collective strengths and
weaknesses will generally outperform a team that isn't.
Likewise, I have found that business groups in particular
often suffer from imaginative poverty, and that there is great value in
doing some quiet advance brainstorming with creative and imaginative
people, and then pre-seeding some provocative and credible ideas to selected group members,
so that these ideas emerge as their
ideas during the session and not mine as facilitator. Even better, if
the group acknowledges this (or any other factor) as a collective
incapacity, it can enable them to collectively invest more attention
and effort on that area of weakness, or bring in others who have that
capacity, or even follow a course of study or practice to acquire that
capacity.
Having spent many years in research, I've also found that groups tend
to think they are more knowledgeable about issues than they really are.
In particular, there is a tendency for bad news and information about
problems not
to be communicated vertically in organizational hierarchies. For that
reason it can be helpful to have the organization's research staff (or
group members with that competency) do an 'environmental scan' around
the issue, and pull together and present an objective and uncensored
precis of applicable facts and perceptions.
Of the three sets of elements of social fluency, in my experience the
one that is most often lacking in groups I have facilitated is
communication/attention skills. Many people come to these sessions with
their minds made up, but an inability to articulate the reasons for
their belief coherently and compellingly to others (often they don't
particularly care if others understand and share their viewpoint). As a
result they may convey their ideas, information and perspectives
poorly, or not at all, and disengage and be distracted when others are
speaking. There is no simple answer to this significant challenge, but
being aware of it, and recognizing it as a challenge explicitly, is a
first step. It is then largely up to the group to deal with this, and I
have seen groups do so very effectively. There is a technique, for
example, of requiring each speaker to summarize the point made by the
previous speaker before making their own point. The group can use a
'talking stick' to focus attention on the speaker and the importance of
courtesy and attentiveness. And if a point is poorly made, asking
clarifying questions can help, and can also teach the speaker how to be
more coherent and responsive in future. Some facilitators use mindmaps
displayed on a screen at the front of the session to ensure the points
made are captured coherently and collectively understood.
I know that many readers of this blog are facilitators, and would love
to hear your thoughts and ideas on how you have enabled groups
suffering from lack of necessary preconditions for effectiveness, or
lack of social fluency, or even total dysfunctionality, to become aware
of, name, self-manage and resolve these issues themselves. The word
facilitator literally means 'one who makes things easier'. How have you
made it easier for groups struggling with incapacities to make it
easier for themselves?
Thanks to Charlene
for inspiring this post, and to Charlene and Galen for their wonderful
hospitality.
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