Facile or felicitous?

February 3, 2017

I realise up front that there is a danger that this post may be misinterpreted. So to be clear I see nothing wrong in facilitation per se, I facilitate and I teach other people complex facilitation skills. However I am increasingly concerned – especially in the area of social change and engagement – with what appears to be an emphasis on facilitation as the agent of change with the feelings at the end of the event and/or the commitment to change achieved during that event, as a measure of success. As the deadline implies the Latin adjective facilis meaning easy to do also morphed into the english facile which has a more pejorative meaning. That in term comes from from the Latin verb facere meaning to make, and therein can lie many a tale.

Techniques like participative action research have attracted criticism from anthropologists (such as David Mosse) as privileging those who match the expectation of the facilitator. I’ve sat through sessions where the goal of the workshop was subsumed in enforced participation in the method chosen for facilitation at the cost of the wider objective. I’ve seen people from communities who are inarticulate but understand what needs to be done, de-privileged by more verbally adroit members of that community. Yes dancing for the first time can be liberating, but it can also be chronically embarrassing, especially if you lack the skills and so on (I could have take any other art skill to make this point).

In addition any workshop is an artificial environment. Within that context we can agree to anything, but whether it will translate to sustainable change once the event is over is more questionable. In particular workshops tend to the ideal over the pragmatic to return to my theme of yesterday. So in workshops I am currently planning around citizen engagement in South Wales I am focusing on providing tools and methods to activists in the community, with the outcome not a part of said workshop. I’m looking to move from major events, to triggering capability for micro-change at a local level; to allow for making through a distributed network of identities and individuals with a feedback mechanism. It may be a lot less satisfying for the facilitator, but it should create more sustained capacity.

The cartoon speaks for itself …

4 responses to “Facile or felicitous?”

  1. martinowen says:

    Dave, yoou may be interested in the etymology of the Welsh word training Hyfforddiant. “Hy” is derived in the same root as hyblyg -easily bent (ie flexible) and ffordd – road. It connotes making the road easier.

  2. martinowen says:

    ie hy-ffordd easy road

  3. Vida Razavi says:

    I am planning to use SenseMaker for collecting data in my PhD thesis (emergence of civic culture in modern democracies), very interested in knowing more about the study on citizen engagement in Wales. Anywhere/how I can get more details on that?

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Recent Posts

About the Cynefin Company

The Cynefin Company (formerly known as Cognitive Edge) was founded in 2005 by Dave Snowden. We believe in praxis and focus on building methods, tools and capability that apply the wisdom from Complex Adaptive Systems theory and other scientific disciplines in social systems. We are the world leader in developing management approaches (in society, government and industry) that empower organisations to absorb uncertainty, detect weak signals to enable sense-making in complex systems, act on the rich data, create resilience and, ultimately, thrive in a complex world.
ABOUT USSUBSCRIBE TO NEWSLETTER

Cognitive Edge Ltd. & Cognitive Edge Pte. trading as The Cynefin Company and The Cynefin Centre.

© COPYRIGHT 2024

< Prev

Don’t prescribe sainthood

One of the many things that has always frustrated me about too many organisational change ...

More posts

Next >

A Nantlle Ridge circular

I’m up working in Bangor at the moment bracketing a weekend which gave me the ...

More posts

linkedin facebook pinterest youtube rss twitter instagram facebook-blank rss-blank linkedin-blank pinterest youtube twitter instagram