Maybe the loose end isn't a failure of facilitation
Tom was talking to me about his thinking about this post when we met up earlier this week to discuss next steps for TechFreedom, our joint project.
Essentially, the problem is that things like workshops, events, projects, and even programmes of work have an internal logic to them. This logic dictates whether or not they are designated ‘successful’. Whereas, the world is a messy and complicated place, and simply giving people opportunities to connect and think things through can have much more profound consequences.
Most of what happens in a workshop or a session is only ever useful if people can take it back into their own context and make sense of it there. A good facilitator will create rooms and spaces that support the workshop. But however well designed, the room is artificial. The real work happens when someone is back at their desk on a Tuesday morning trying to figure out what any of it means for the decision they’re actually facing.
If we resolve everything in the session with neat actions, clear conclusions, a satisfying arc, there is the potential we’ve artificially done the sense-making for them. We’ve removed the productive friction of trying to figure out what it means to me in my context outside the room. We’ve made it easy to file the experience away.
But what if we leave a question hanging, one that is genuinely & intentionally unresolved, not because we ran out of time but because we chose to? One that forces them to contextualise, to test an idea against their own reality, to keep thinking after the room has emptied.
Maybe the loose end isn’t a failure of facilitation. In some cases maybe it’s the mechanism.
Source: Tom Watson