Are you a facilitator or a conversation designer?
We asked our conversation designers how their work differs from those of facilitators.
At Second Road we have a group of practitioners who create and hold strategy and innovation workshops for a diverse range of clients. We call them conversation designers and we’ve noticed that other design firms seem to be employing ‘conversation designers’ too.
But what are they? How do they differ from facilitators? Are they mutually exclusive? Interchangeable? Complementary?
We’ve interviewed some of our own conversation designers to gain an insight as to what differentiates facilitation from conversation design. The consensus though, is that great facilitation is a necessary foundation for conversation design but the latter requires much more. Here are some key differences. You might find that you have the makings of or are in fact, a conversation designer.
A deep understanding of the rhetorical situation
The facilitator’s role is to guide participants through a predetermined process, pushing and probing until it is established that a group has reached consensus, after which the group can move on.
The case is slightly different with conversation designers. Conducting strategy and innovation workshops necessitates not expertise, but competence in the subject matter. This may entail having knowledge of a rigorous design process, or what makes good or bad strategy. Embedded in this is the importance of value judgement. In the case of innovation a conversation designer must recognise and lift thoughts into ideas and ideas into implementable concepts. In the case of strategy, this might be pushing participants until they get out of a business as usual mindset to thinking about what an organisation’s noble purpose is really to be in the future.
Value judgement however is not undertaken in an inconsiderate way. Conversation designers will employ a set of heuristics, frameworks and thinking tools that at times are subject area specific, that serve as ways to frame arguments and take people on a cognitive journey.
Room for hypotheses
A conversation designer will have sufficient background knowledge and experience to have an inkling about what the outcome of the workshop is to be. In some cases, if they believe that this is the outcome to reach, they will lightly steer workshop participants towards this, while understanding that this hypothesis can be debunked. This hypothesis though, will be driven by experience and qualitative research done in preparation for the workshop.
Vested interest and the importance of synthesis
At Second Road, we often refer to the three voices. It is the conversation designer’s job to harness the voice of intent- the driver of the initiative, the voice of experience- the users of the system, and also play a critical role in design themselves (the voice of design). Key to this role is synthesis. Being able to make sense of contributions and cast them out again in the form of preliminary models of change. All on the spot.
Pre and post workshop preparation.
Conversation designers don’t work alone and nor is the majority of the work undertaken during the session. Most of the work will occur before and after the workshop- preparation, design research, interviewing, the visualisation of inputs and outputs and heavy synthesis.
Conversation design involves all of these things. So are you a conversation designer or a facilitator?
We are a strategic innovation consultancy helping organisations design and deliver new futures
