Warmer and Colder
Last month, I hid Easter eggs in the backyard for my son to find. As he searched for the trickier ones, he asked me for a little help.
“You’re getting warmer...warmer.”
He inched across the yard.
“Colder…colder.”
He froze and changed directions.
“Warmer again…warmer…hotter!”
He moved confidently, spotting the egg.
Later, the Easter egg hunt brought me back to a two-day strategy session I had recently facilitated for a nonprofit. We framed our work using the Liberating Structure What, So What, Now What? (1) During the “Now What” portion, participants moved through three iterative rounds of World Café conversations, exploring questions like these:
What do we want more of?
What’s emerging?
How might we expand what's working?
How might we connect more deeply to work that matters?What do we want less of?
What needs to shift or stop?What do we want to stay the same?
What’s working that we want to protect and continue?
These conversations were about both choosing next steps and practicing the kind of culture participants wanted to create together. In other words, based on what we’re learning, where are we warmer? Colder? What is the next wise set of moves?
In complex work, learning (and unlearning) is the output. Some initiatives take hold. Some don't. Each effort tells us something about the context we are working in. We notice what is opening up, what is getting stuck, and where there is energy to move. Adam Kahane, who writes about collaborating in high-complexity, high-conflict contexts, describes this as working with the breakdowns and the bright spots. (2)
It’s incremental, until it isn’t. As cultural strategist, artist, and facilitator Sage Crump writes, “Success in a process is not about finding the one, big, perfect solution. Emergent strategy is amplifying the importance of the incremental to impact the monumental.” (3)
There is something else here too. In the Easter egg hunt, the sensing was embodied, not just cognitive. Change efforts can involve this kind of sensing too. As Dave Snowden has written, “We always know more than we can say, and we will always say more than we can write down.”
I know, at least, that I want more moments like this one in our backyard.
Keep exploring
Read more about the “What, So What, Now What” Liberating Structure.
This is drawn from Adam Kahane’s book “Collaborating with the Enemy: How to Work with People You Don't Agree with or Like or Trust” (2nd edition).
This quote is drawn from Sage Crump’s chapter, “Facilitation as Experiments in Culture Creation,” in the book Holding Change by adrienne maree brown.
(Image description: My son, wearing a hoodie sweatshirt and jeans, runs across our backyard on an overcast spring day with his back to the camera. A wooden fence and tall evergreen trees stretch out behind him.)
