The art of facilitating breakthrough in complexity
VASE framework inspirations
I’d like to share about a few thinkers and authors who have shaped my practices, and by proxy, the VASE Framework: Simon Wardley, Adam Kahane and Dave Snowden and Mary E. Boone.
I’d also like to share a more recent connection stemming from my reconciliation journey: the Indigenous Medicine Wheel.
Complexity
I learned about Dave Snowden and Mary E. Boone’s Cynefin framework in about 2008. As a junior employee I was offered a free ticket to training with Snowden since a director had to drop out last minute. Score.
A 2007 paper called “A Leader’s Framework for Decision Making” states:
All too often, managers rely on common leadership approaches that work well in one set of circumstances but fall short in others. Why do these approaches fail even when logic indicates they should prevail?
The Cynefin Framework is simple enough that I can sketch it on a whiteboard in a minute. Yet, it can open dialogue about strategy that can last hours.
The framework sorts the issues facing leaders into five contexts defined by the nature of the relationship between cause and effect. Four of these — simple, complicated, complex, and chaotic — require leaders to diagnose situations and to act in contextually appropriate ways. The fifth — disorder — applies when it is unclear which of the other four contexts is predominant.
VASE is intended to support people who are navigating together in complexity. However, the context for each of the eight VASE facets may not necessarily suggest behaving as though we are in complexity all the time.
For example, communication (story and signal) might actually be quite simple. Take notes, share them in the open. Every week. There’s a great practice for this.
Ideally, a facilitator is attuned to this dynamic and can support the group to move together with the approach they decide suits the context.
Breakthrough
I read Power and Love by Adam Kahane in 2009 when it came out. Selfishly, it helped me feel okay about balancing my own inner struggle with wanting to express power as a feisty young woman, while also embracing the care I felt we need in the world that requires collaboration. The book is more focused on helping groups find this balance.
Kahane has since gifted us Facilitating Breakthrough, which illustrates how to balance other complimentary opposites as a facilitator holding the potential for groups.
He describes horizontal (we all go together) and vertical (direction is provided) oppositional aims within groups. While often a source of tension, these can also be forces to appreciate and shift from or to broaden perspective before navigating to the context appropriate lens. (Spoiler: transformative facilitation lies in the middle.)
VASE might be a framework a facilitator offers to help guide a group to breakthrough tension. This could be between beliefs about what the context is (Cynefin) or why we would take one approach over another in a given facet.
I think it is helpful to use VASE as a guide to center those conversations. Bonus points if you can facilitate like you’ve memorized Kahanes’s book.
Artful Maps
Most recently, I became a Wardley Mapping fan. I’m a geographer, so yes to maps always. And, it’s not about the map. He expresses forcefully that it is about the conversation. The context and the decision making about what we do together emerge from dialogue.
What we put on the map is a choice. Are we making that choice in the open with those who will need to align to it?
The VASE framework started as a planning and strategy tool. Borrowing from Wardley’s mapping process, it was intended to be used in conversation. Because no one moves an organization or initiative alone.
Without asking you to take the (free and open) crash course in Wardley Mapping, I’ll cut to the chase and express that VASE is a tested value chain that has emerged as effective in my work, while I was Wardley Mapping.
If you follow Wardley Mapping, you’ll know that a value chain is a set of choices that link to delivering value of some kind. What informs those choices — to build or buy, for example — requires understanding the landscape and external forces, or climate.
Evolution is a key factor in deciding tactics. Doing something novel vs adopting a common product or pattern will depend on the aims of a group. And, these will change over time. So you need to keep having the conversation.
Additionally, Wardley has conveyed his research, testing, and learning in a doctrine of organizational behaviour that is useful to consider, and includes suggested phases with tactics related to:
- Phase 1: Stop Self-Destructive Behavior
- Phase 2: Becoming More Context Aware
- Phase 3: Better for Less
- Phase 4: Continuously Evolving
Interestingly, his curiosity in evaluating strategy led Wardley to Sun Tzu: The Art of War. It is an ancient text intended for military commanders that has been adopted by business strategists. It includes principles relating to adaptability, conserving energy, and human nature.
I have not read this text. But I have come to understand that Yin Yang is the underlying philosophy, which embraces duality.
I will say that while I do like Wardley mapping for the thinking part of the work… I have noticed that it has not quite hit the mark on the relational side. It draws out a tactical nature. It has lists.
In a male dominated space, trained by male dominated institutions more interested in competition, habit and culture drive people toward solutions rather than emergence or balance. Wardley advises on the process to avoid this, and I think an experienced Mapper/Facilitator is needed to get there.
But when I put the value chain in a circle… I noticed the conversation shifted without as much effort. The complimentary opposites became visible.
I think what happened here is that this particular play has been effective. It contains the kind of balance I’ve observed service organizations have success with. It focuses efforts where they matter most. It encourages adaptability. It makes strategy easy… because the landscape is already lightly sketched for people to build upon.
Indigenous Wisdom: the Medicine Wheel
I recently became aware of the medicine wheel a gathering of some Lab leaders and practitioners who have a far broader repertoire than I do. I’ve just been trying to change the public service I work in. They’re walking with people in communities who need multiple institutions to change.
In preparation for the gathering, Diane Roussin, Project Director at The Winnipeg Boldness Project, shared her observation of the need to sit with people and respect the power of oral tradition. At the event, she expressed the value of healing through intellectual, emotional, physical and spiritual ways of being.
If you’ve read this far and are experienced in facilitation I probably don’t need to write anything here about the power of sitting in circles.
I am curious about balancing circles with intellectual, emotional, physical and spiritual ways of being, though.
VASE as it stands now doesn’t assume these ways are activated in the conversation for drawing out what a group needs to create a better future together. It doesn’t assume people need to heal in the process… however, I’ve never met a circle of people that didn’t need at least a little love and repair.
I hope conversations around the VASE welcome people to feel safe, especially Indigenous people, to attend to all ways of being, as Diane offers.
If we are creating the future together, when else might we slow down enough to bring our whole selves?
“We change the culture by changing the nature of conversation. It’s about choosing conversations that have the power to create the future.”
— Peter Block, Author of “Community: the structure of belonging”
💐Heather-Lynn
