Building an Integrative Collaborative Change Practice: A NEXUS for Change
— Transforming Organizations, Revitalizing Communities and Developing Human Potential
Perspectives on developing an Eclectic Integrative Collaborative Change Practice:
Consider a good mental health therapist: When I go to sit with my therapist, I am not interested in whether the questions she asks me are inspired by her conviction that maybe Freud was right and I have issues with my dad, or whether she is using a cognitive-behavioral approach to help me be my best self. My hope is that she uses multiple frameworks/ theories/ interventions from various schools and practice from Freud, Adler, Jung, Piaget, Ash, etc. to cognitive/ behavioral/ humanistic/ psychodynamic approaches and potentially even recommending chemical interventions - to get me to where I need to be.
While Warner Burke suggests that clients would rather hear about results than process, just like a good therapist will match her approach to the patient’s needs and will draw from Piaget to Jung and Erikson; a good collaborative change agent is able to also draw from multiple schools of thought, frameworks, and theoretical approaches. These may include Appreciative Inquiry, Whole Scale/System Change and Transformation, Polarity Thinking, Open Space Technology, and much much more.
Foundational Approaches
A collaborative change consultant will likely engage a team, or organization from more than just a single one approach or methodology. The field of collaborative change is admittedly younger than Psychology, so there is still debate as to what might be considered ‘foundational approach.’ Furthermore, many of the elements of this work are also rooted in OD, Industrial Psychology and what you might think of as other related disciplines, adding another layer of what experts in those fields will consider foundational approaches.
Here is one possible starting point of a list for discussion: This list is by no means exhaustive or complete, but they are some of the approaches that I believe deserve considerations as renowned or foundational.
Appreciative Inquiry [Cooperrider @Case Western]
Whole Scale Change/ Whole System Transformation [Dannemiller]
Polarities [Barry Johnson]
Open Space [Harrison Owen]
World Café [Brown & Isaacs]
Group Dynamics [Kurt Lewin and Ron Lippitt]
Open Systems Theory [Fred Emery]
Theory U [Otto Scharmer]
Design Thinking
Some of the measures that may determine whether an approach is foundational might include,
- how long-established they are
- how many people are using them
- how many newer approaches reference it as influential or building blocks.
For example, SOAR which can be leveraged for strategic planning - is clearly built on the principles of Appreciative Inquiry. This list is by no means exhaustive nor do I claim it to be complete. The dialog and discussion to determine an ultimate list of the ultimate collaborative change approaches could probably itself fill two days of intriguing interchange that we’d then have to organize maybe with an Open Space or World Cafe? Design Thinking, the last entrant on my list is an interesting example. You might reference the current work that is going on at IDEO [www.ideo.com], or you may trace Design Thinking back to brainstorming for teams - which is attributed to Alex Osborn in 1938.
Someone else might argue that, in some ways, Design Thinking is just a reframing of the scientific method. And we haven’t even mentioned Action Research. . . .
So how might one tackle sorting and conceptualizing the many approaches? More than 40 are currently represented in the Collaborative Change Library, with new ones being added every week - we are looking at more than 100 chapters by year’s end.
Modalities
One way to wrestle with the many approaches in the field is to look at their core modality respectively: How do they engage participants? What are they focused on in accomplishing? That is not to say that each method has just one modality of engagement, rather that most approaches have one primary modus of engagement.
Dialogic Approaches [Art of Convening, Future Search, … ]
Collaborative Learning [Change Days, Art of Hosting, … ]
Collaborative Personal Development [T-Groups, Constellations, … ]
Community Development [Collaborative Care, Abundant Community, … ]
Collaborative Mapping [Polarity Mapping, Idealized Design, … ]
Collaborative Arts [expl. Drum Café, Graphic Facilitation, Playback Theatre, . . .] submodalities: story, music, dance, visual, tactile
The collaborative arts are interesting in that they have rather clearly delineated sub-modalities: storytelling, music, dance, visual, and tactile arts. I.E. there are Collaborative Arts approaches that leverage music, others focus on visual engagement, many include storytelling and so forth.
There is also about the possible modalities of Collaborative Technology & Collaborative Data Science, Collaborative Gaming, and Collaborative Spirituality. During our recent webinar, author and thought-leader Roland Sullivan shared about some of the work going on in the Philippines and suggested that we need to also consider “Country Development and Transformation” as yet another modality.
Practitioner’s Lens
Another way to try to structure the approaches is from a practitioner’s lens or consultant’s point of view: You may be looking for a unique type of engagement to leverage for a project you are working on, and in doing so you might be more pragmatic: Let’s say you have a 2-day strategic retreat you need to plan for a leadership group of 14, but for some of the sessions, the group is bringing in the lead managers of an overseas subsidiary via Zoom video conferencing. What engagements can you leverage? You will likely want to know about the following when evaluating a framework or approach for this engagement:
The typical Length of Engagement for this methodology,
Number of Participants range,
Level of Application [small group - team - system],
Online, Onsite, or Hybrid use of the approach,
Synchronous or Asynchronous implementation,
DIY use vs. Required Trainings for you as the would-be practitioner,
Learning Community [size and accessability], and
Proprietary Nature of the Approach.
The method navigation chapter in the Change Library, covers all of these elements at some length.
So let’s assume you either have identified a number of tools you want to try, or you already have a couple of tools that are part of your routine practice. One guide to “stringing” those tools together can be found in Liberating Structures. I had a wonderful recent conversation with Carol Gorelick, the other Associate Editor of the Collaborative Change Library and Henri Lipmanowicz one of the co-creators of Liberating Structures - and he prefers the term “stringing” to the “blending” of tools and approaches.
The intent of Liberating Structures is to overcome the “big 5 conventional structures we often engage in -
And replace them with more meaningful collaboration and synergistic experiences, like for example;
Appreciative Interview,
Conversation Cafe,
Open Space,
Wise Crowds,
Action Dialogue,
Drawing Together, and
Improv Prototyping.
These engagements typically last an average 30 min. that can make the difference between yet another boring meeting and an impactful interaction. You might notice that each of the liberating structures listed here the right are based in a method or modality referenced earlier.
So one way you might want to organize that 2-day strategic retreat is with the following Liberating Structures. The example is from the Liberating Structures chapter in the Change Library - (Cady S.H., Gorelick C.K., & Stiegler C.T. Perrysburg, OH: NEXUS4change) by Henri Lipmanowicz and Keith McCandless:
Use 9 Whys - to hone in on Purpose,
Leverage Critical Uncertainties - to refine strategy,
Crowdsourcing - to match your strategy to some of the realities you are operating in,
Ecocycle Planning - to identify bottlenecks and opportunities, and
WINFY - to track commitments.
The Central Garden
Another way to look at the interactions of the methods and modalities is The Central Garden. If you are a more seasoned change practitioner, or method expert, this metaphor may make sense to you:
The Central Garden is one of the metaphors for the work that is at the core of what NEXUS4change is doing with the Collaborative Change Library and draws on an image of the garden in the center of many old Mexican haciendas. World Cafe co-founder Juanita Brown thinks of the doorways as different participatory practices. Once you step through your doorway, you enter the shared space of our common work.
The varied methodologies as well as our hosting capacities and practices, in my view, are simply windows into the awareness of and living within this deepest pattern of all that connects us to a common ground together in our lives and work…. beyond all methods and practices, powerful as they may be individually and/or in combination.”
—Juanita Brown
Craig Neal shared that he is noticing an increase in collaborative networks of many different labels, whether “collaborative” or “participatory” in a maturing field. The Convening Institute is one such resource. With our work overall, but with the Collaborative Change Library especially, NEXUS4change is looking to be the convener for all of these practices and perspectives.
NEXUS4change is aspirational in becoming the community of communities of all of the methods and their practitioners of collaborative change. Join us!
As an individual practitioner, you may consider this model from Amy Lenzo’s Beehive Productions. Please note that is one example of several - but one that I believe is meaningful to consider.
Amy is one of my favourite World Café and Art of Hosting champions, but she also co-developed this model to identify and strengthen the underlying capacities that are needed for what she calls creative collaboration and conversational leadership.
She offers 6 aspects to collaborative practice - and for each of those 6 - there are multiple approaches, tools, and methods you can leverage and make part of your practice.
Personal Practice - What personal practices do I need to cultivate in order to lead others?
Creating the Conditions - How do we create the right conditions for successful participatory processes and collaboration?
Hosting Conversations - What tools, methodologies, and practices can we develop to host conversations that matter?
Harvesting and Sense-Making - How do we collectively learn, make sense of, and share the results of our conversations and processes?
Understanding Systems - How do we understand and affect the systems we are part of and work within? And finally:
Collaboration - How do we work together to create teams and organizations that lead to more learning and meaningful results?
In our discussion, Bruce Mabee offered that his integrative practice focuses on “just three” critical elements:
Systemic Leverage: “Go big picture.”
Coalitions or Inter-Network Collaboration: “Who are the few people that will connect to the different groups that we need to connect to as a whole?”
Be Agile: “Let’s try something that won’t kill somebody and see what we can learn, so that we can iterate really quickly.”
Bruce shared that: “I really believe that there is sort of a revolution going on - and the revolution is that [most change practitioners] are practicing, fundamentally, the same kinds of things, we have different names for it, different names, and we start in different ways, but there is a leadership shift that we are all part of.”
So what is your collaborative or participatory change practice?
Check out NEXUS4change’s webinar series of 30-min. high-impact change tool talks. Check our events page [www.NEXUS4change.com/events] for more on the power of Design Teams, the Change Formula, Collaborative Roadmaps, Appreciative Benchmarking and more.