Systems Thinking in Facilitation

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A key facilitation skill is to be able to frame your current meeting agenda in the larger context of your organization and the even larger context of the world in which you operate. For example, I once was on an ad hoc committee that was convened to discuss the future funding of a program within a nonprofit organization. The program had attracted the attention of a funding agency that had donated money to the program in the past and was interested in donating money for the expansion of the program into other counties and possibly statewide. As the meeting began, it was clear that the funding agency was missing the larger systems view. So as the conversation began, ideas began to be bantered but before any of the ideas got traction, I observed, “the program is being discussed as if it is an autonomous subsidiary of the lager nonprofit agency where the program is housed and wanted to check into that assumption.” As heads turned to me, we began to discuss a series of questions about the relationship between the program, program staff, program advisory board and the larger agency staff and board.  As it turned out, the degree of autonomy for the program was much less that perceived and together we identified the need for much larger organizational assessment of the short-term and long-term relationship between the program and agency.

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In essence, the real conversation was whether the aggressive growth of this program was congruent with the mission and vision of the parent agency and if not,  was the parent agency willing to spin off the program as an independent organization.

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So one of the tasks of good process facilitation is the ability to frame immediate tasks into the “larger bucket.” Without the ability to keep the larger perspective in mind, the range of thinking can inadvertently be truncated. For example, I have heard nonprofit organizations say, “Our budget is projected to be $65,000 short this year. We need to hire a grant writer to help us get a new grant or an event planner to help us put together a high profile auction. By not thinking about the system, such one-dimensional and linear thinking draws a straight line between the need and the solution often misses larger and more permanent solutions. In the case of the nonprofit a $65,000 revenue gap is not only caused by declining revenues or increasing expenses but is also caused by things such as shortcomings in evaluation and outcome data, misaligned public or institutional policies and mismanaged communications strategies.

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So thinking at the systems is important but the real question is how do we think at the systems level. I would like to suggest that facilitating using systems thinking includes the following:

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1. Keeping your mission, vision and goals living and dynamic. If everyone holds the vision, mission and goals in the present, then thinking about systems follows more naturally because vision, mission and goals inherently describe the larger bucket.
2. Build thinking about the system into your meeting agenda planning process. For each agenda item, consider the larger implications of the associated outcomes and where warranted make time on the agenda to place the item in a larger context. For example, you may be debriefing why a pilot project failed. Thinking about the systems context, you might want to revisit how the pilot project was part of your innovation portfolio of work and with this frame the goal of the debrief might change from a simple postmortem bringing closure to how the lessons learned can be applied to the next pilot project.
3. Become familiar with facilitation techniques that can reinforce systems thinking. Such techniques can include concept mapping, scenario planning and storyboarding can be used to consider the larger context for immediate tasks.
4. Bring in outside perspectives. There are strategic times when it is important to bring fresh perspectives and voices into your thinking process. For example, in the opening illustration where I was brought in to provide external insight to the growth of a program led to a dramatically different outcome of the meeting planning process and development outcome.
5. Finally, recognize that good meeting process supports systems thinking. Here is a link to meeting process tools.

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I once had a colleague who noted that, “inside every little problem is usually a bigger problem just waiting to get out.” Placing immediate tasks in the context of the larger system bucket helps solve the immediate needs and considers systemic interventions to address the root causes.
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