Facilitating complexity with Nikki Silvestri

I'm thrilled to *finally* share my conversation with the amazing and electrifying Nikki Silvestri.

We connected back in early March and recorded our conversation in late May, at the height of the quarantine. It's been a process to find the time to sit with this deep conversation and pull together some insights for you.

A friend shared Nikki's work with me and I was hooked - Nikki was setting up a program to teach facilitation to Rural Women, and I was so curious to dive into her facilitation and leadership approach and her critical work.

Nikki's core metaphor is soil - the complex place that gives life to us all - the source of our nourishment.

Monoculture vs Food Forests

Soil can be thought of as a series of inputs - minerals, water, carbon, etc. A mathematical equation for creating a space for life. But rich soil is not simple. It's a complex, living thing that responds unpredictably to attempts to control it.

In agriculture we can have a food forest - a near-wild combination of plants and animals feeding each other and ourselves. Or, we can have a monoculture - sprawling spaces where we use as much science and technology as possible to sustain maximum outputs at all times and at all costs.

Nikki suggests, rightly, that monocultures can also exist in our own organizations...and that when we have such a monoculture, when we are not doing what she calls "basic diversity and inclusion work" innovation and creativity will be lost. 

Esther Derby, a noted Agile consultant, touched on this forest metaphor in our podcast interview - she said that she would rewrite her whole book about leading change using food forests and forest succession as her central metaphor.

Mechanistic thinking vs Complexity Thinking in Group Work and Leadership

We push this metaphor of soil and complexity deeper into growing personal leadership and holding space for deep group work. Nikki describes the central tension:

"I was trapped in mechanistic thinking because nonlinear complex thinking, it had too many unknowns and it made me too uncomfortable....With the amount of responsibility that I felt like I had, I needed to know. And frankly, I needed to know that I could manipulate my way into the linear outcome that I was looking for because there was "too much at stake" to not have that happen."

After all, control is rewarded. As Nikki suggests: "The people who are able to manipulate, and dominate, and control the outcome the most are the ones who are rewarded."

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Links, Notes and Resources

Nikki Silvestri on the web https://www.nikkisilvestri.com/

Nikki's TEDx Talk

Nikki on Soil and Shadow

Gestalt Organizational Development

Carter's Cube (free login required)