Collaboration by Design with Philippe Coullomb and Charles Collingwood-Boots

Alexis:

This is Le Podcast on Emerging Leadership, I am Alexis Monville. The challenges facing humanity are growing in complexity. Collaboration is offering us to tackle more complexity by getting diverse minds to work together. How to gather people to facilitate successful collaborations?

Philippe Coullomb and Charles Collingwood-Boots design the way individuals come together to create innovative and sustainable outcomes to address complex issues.

Alexis:

Hello Philippe and Charles. That's great to have you on the show.

Philippe:

Hello.

Charles:

It's great to be here.

Alexis:

So Philippe, let's start with you. What is your role and how would you describe it to someone you just met?

Philippe:

If only I knew, after all these years. I sort of define myself as a collaborative designer. So in a nutshell my role is to design collaborative journeys to solve complex problems or make complex decisions in a multi-stakeholder context, and most of the time it takes the form of workshops, but not only.

Alexis:

Thank you. Your turn Charles, same question: what is your role and how would you describe it to someone you just met?

Charles:

I have the same challenge as Philippe. The way I describe my role is: I design the way individuals and organizations come together to solve or navigate complex problems. Just like Philippe, a lot of the time that involves workshops, but sometimes it's designing simple conversations to make sense of complex problems.

Alexis:

It's really interesting, I'm excited about this conversation! Can you tell me what was the pivotal moment that led you to write the book Collaboration by Design?

Philippe:

It's actually a funny story. We got approached by a client in Singapore who wanted a training, so we designed the training and we thought we needed a deliverable for the training — and that it would be great if the deliverable was co-written with the participants. So we produced a sort of 100-page booklet, primarily aimed at the participants of that training. Everyone else in our network who saw that booklet said: "Look, it's amazing, we really need something like that. There's nothing written about the practice — could you make that available?" We couldn't, because it was a client artifact, but we thought we had something pretty good. Let's put in a few weeks of work to make it a little bit better and turn it into a book.

Of course, Charles and I being who we are, what we thought would be a few weeks ended up being a year. We turned a 100-page booklet into a 360-page book, and every time we touched a topic we came up with a list of 10 things we believed had to be described or illustrated, and we went on and on until one day we thought: okay, we have to stop here. We cannot keep adding. So initially it started from making a prototype and people around us loving it and asking us for more.

Alexis:

That's really beautiful. That's really serving the needs of people!

Charles:

And maybe just to add to that — people often didn't fully understand the way we did things and the intent behind it, so to some extent it was about trying to codify what people saw as a simple workshop, but in a way that really drew out the depth of practice and procedure that sat behind it.

Alexis:

Excellent. So when I think of facilitating successful collaborations, I picture the facilitation that happens during the gathering. Would you say it is the most important aspect?

Charles:

From my perspective, it's one part of it, and certainly a great deal of emphasis needs to be placed on the workshop — the manifestation of all the work — but I wouldn't say it's the most important. For me, it's the process leading up to it. It's the work with the sponsor, or the owner of the problem, or indeed the solution that you're trying to work towards. Really unpacking with them and facilitating the process by which they come to understand the problem, and then starting to design from there. So the facilitation at the front of the room is an aspect, but I wouldn't say it's the most important.

Philippe:

To build on that, at the beginning of the book we take the analogy of the iceberg, and I think it's quite telling. What you see — the part of the workshop that you see, which is a facilitator, a group, and a set of activities — is the visible side, the tip of the iceberg. And under that is a lot of pre-work and a lot of background work to make the experience meaningful and the delivery seamless.

Alexis:

So what happens before the gathering is really important. You spoke about engaging the sponsors. Can you tell us a little bit about what that means? What are you doing when you are engaging the sponsors?

Philippe:

The first thing is to select the sponsors and make sure that you're working with the right group of people that represent enough perspective, that together show enough leadership, so that you have the right conversation partners to co-design the session. That's not a small task — selecting the right group.

When you have them, the process is both quite straightforward and quite complex. Quite straightforward because all you can do is have a series of conversations: you schedule a number of conversations through which you unpack the context, clarify the objectives, and progressively develop convictions on what to do and how to do it in the workshop. Quite complex because through those conversations you usually uncover a whole lot of contradictions, ambiguities, and complex stakeholder dynamics that either the client is not aware of, or is aware of but is closing a blind eye to. You cannot afford to bury that under the carpet. Whatever you identify, you have to address — you have to make it explicit and then address it — otherwise you'll pay the price later. So a straightforward process in terms of mechanics, but conversations that are quite tricky.

Alexis:

And that's what will really change the dynamic during the gathering. When I read the book, to be honest, I realised some of the things that happened to me during workshops or meetings were clearly linked to that preparation. So during the gathering, now that you've engaged the sponsors and designed it, what is really important to you?

Charles:

Through that preparation you've developed an understanding of the client, of the problem, and enough of an understanding around the content to navigate the conversation. But for me, the primacy is engagement with the participant group: creating the right conditions at the start of the workshop that enable an open conversation. A freedom for the participants to explore, to challenge, to ask questions, to make sense. For me, it's important to really set the right context up front, and to clarify your position as part of that group in navigating and facilitating them through the journey you've set out in the agenda.

Alexis:

So setting the context is part of what the facilitator will do, and part of what the sponsors will do.

Charles:

Correct. Your role as a facilitator at that moment needs to be clear. People need to understand what they can expect of you, the role you will play, and you need to establish yourself in that position across the course of the workshop. Equally, the drivers behind the workshop — the work the participants are doing, the expectation of the sponsors on the participant group to engage in the best way possible to get the best outcome — is a key part. So setting that conversation up front with the sponsors and the group is all part of creating the right conditions for participants to engage. We've all been through workshops that are dull and dreary, where you're not really sure what you're there to do. Sometimes the activities are a little bit disconnected, or you're not sure what they're about. So enabling the participants to be confident in the journey they're about to embark on — even if it's a little bit unknown — confident in you as a facilitator to lead it, and confident in why they're there and why their perspective is important.

Philippe:

And even for the part that is on the sponsor's shoulders, we do have a role to play. It's not always natural for sponsors to know how to properly set the context for such a workshop. So we need to coach them through that, to make sure they adopt the right posture and convey the right messages. Sometimes it will be evident to them, sometimes not, and we need to check — and if it's not, help them find the right tone.

Alexis:

Okay, that's simple, I love it. With the pandemic, a lot of things had to happen remotely. When I picture facilitation or collaboration I think of people in a room. What are the main principles to observe when you design and facilitate a virtual gathering? What is changing, what stays the same? Philippe, do you want to start?

Philippe:

Well, I'm not a huge fan of virtual collaboration, but like all of us, I've done a fair bit. What doesn't change is the absolute imperative to get the sponsorship right and to get the design right. However you deliver the experience, making sure you're looking into the right questions in the right way is an imperative, and you follow the exact same process to achieve that.

The main difference is in the intensity of the experience and in the interaction with the content. I haven't experienced yet the same intensity of interactions between participants digitally — and it takes a lot more effort, thought, and time to get to intense interactions digitally than it takes physically. You need to take that into account when planning and when sizing the delivery team. We have, for whatever reason, this image that a digital delivery should be leaner than a physical delivery, and I don't think it is.

Content-wise, there's a completely different way to relate to ideas. In the physical world, we have whiteboards and there's this physical connection to the idea. You draw something, it's extremely easy to iterate, everyone's engaged, you feed from everyone's energy. This doesn't happen online. Digital collaboration tools like Mural, Google Jamboard, all of these offer the possibility to collaborate on the same objects, but the dynamic is slightly different — and the adoption of the tools can be a real nightmare. No one needs an explanation to grab a marker and use a whiteboard. The adoption of a Mural board, as simple as it may seem to some of us, can be a big hurdle to others.

Charles:

The big thing from my experience is: you cannot design a virtual workshop through the same means as you would an in-person workshop. The demands of energy, of mind space, are completely different in person than virtually. There are also a myriad of barriers people can create for themselves — putting yourself on mute, taking your camera off — all these things create distractions.

So the way you design needs to be very different, the activities, modules or tasks need to be different. They don't have the same effect in person as they do virtually. One upside of Covid is that the tools are getting much better and more effective in driving greater engagement. Like Philippe, I'd take an in-person workshop over virtual any day. However, the nature of our work — and of work more broadly — increasingly involves a distributed participant group, so we need to lean into virtual more, and into hybrid, where you have some virtual and some in-person, which is a whole other layer of challenge and complexity.

Alexis:

Tell me more about that hybrid setup, where people are either joining in the room or remotely. I assume that with some people coming back to the office and some wanting to stay home, it will happen more often. What other things should we take into account when it's hybrid?

Charles:

The first thing is: it's really hard. It is very, very challenging. The role of technology in support of cross-platform engagement — between those virtual and those in the room — is critical. The way you design and configure the discussions needs to be carefully considered. It is very easy to default to: those online are one group having one type of discussion, those in the room have a different one. To get a cross-pollination of thinking and perspective, you need to weave the two together. A lot of the time that's enabled by good tech in the room: multi-directional mics and cameras to support breakout discussions, mobile virtual participant devices, and so on. But the technical support and prowess required to manage that is really important, otherwise it becomes another fault line in the work that derails the conversation.

Philippe:

I would totally emphasise the point on tech. You can have 4 people in a room and 1 person remote — that completely works. But if you have a workshop of 50 people and 10 groups like that in parallel, what is the technological ability of the client or the venue to have ten spaces with seamless audio in and out, seamless video, and seamless digital collaboration boards? The technology exists, but the setup it takes for 30, 50 or 100 people to collaborate effectively in hybrid mode — most clients are not willing to put in the price.

The main challenge is the integrity of the experience. People in the room are in a different energy from people at home. I have an example: I did a session two or three weeks ago where we were a delivery team of seven. Five team members were colocated in Italy, I was the lead facilitator from Malaysia, and the graphic facilitator was in the UK. So a team of seven, but in reality we really felt it was 5 + 1 + 1. The five people in the room had a quality of collaboration that did not extend to the other two — and even worse, because they had that quality of on-site collaboration, they were not putting as much effort as they should have into the digital channels. This is at the level of a team of professionals who are experts at collaboration. Imagine if you replicate that across 5, 7, 10 groups in parallel with people who are not professionals of collaboration.

Alexis:

Yeah, I can totally empathise with that. I remember switching from one team to another: one team was at ease with all the electronic tools, they used a chat channel as a back channel for all their conversation in the room when the meeting happened. I switched to a team where the habit was to use one-on-one back channels, and I knew there was something happening because I could see their faces changing — they could see people speaking about things that had not been discussed before. It took me a long time to realise that just that habit of having one-on-one back channels was really hurting the dynamic of the team.

Alexis:

I really wanted to cover the part on hybrid or remote meetings because that's part of our reality, but I agree with both of you — I would prefer in-person interactions all the time. Do you believe companies will realise that and invest more in off-sites to get to the perfect space? Do you feel space is also important when you are in person?

Charles:

100%. Space is a key facilitation lever that needs to be designed just as much as the agenda, because it enables meaningful effectiveness and a pleasant experience for those in the room.

Will clients revert back to in-person? I think so — not necessarily because they understand the value of in-person collaboration, but simply because as a society we've been so disconnected from each other that the simple act of being in a room, which was once probably overlooked, will make people understand just how good human interaction and human connection is. That said, the fact that we've been collaborating virtually effectively across Covid means people will see it as a means to continue working that way too. So there's a balance to strike.

Philippe:

Regarding space — I couldn't agree more with what Charles said. One of the things that makes it particularly challenging is that for us, space is part of the design exercise. We know how essential it is to choose and set up the right space for the job. Often in the heads of our clients, space falls in the logistics bucket — the same type of consideration as catering or transport. They usually don't instinctively realise that space matters, that you cannot ask people to lock themselves in a windowless room of an average hotel in the suburbs of a city and from that place invent an exciting future for the next five years. There's a profound dissonance — and while it seems obvious to us, it's not always obvious to our clients. So there is a challenge for us to help the clients realise that space is in service of the business intent and of the objectives of the session.

Alexis:

It reminded me — I had the chance to organise a gathering of about 300 people in Boston, and I was lucky to work with someone in the events team who was really engaged in trying to make the experience really good. She found a space at the top of the building, with windows on both sides. The first person who entered the room said "but how will we present anything?" — but she used a LED screen, so we had perfect visibility of the content in a room with windows all around. That was an absolutely amazing experience compared to all the things we had before in those ballrooms in hotels where you are in the dark for the full day.

Philippe:

To build on that, there are some universal minimum attributes you would want from a space for workshops. You want a lot of daylight, you want plants, you want space, you want line of sight so you can always see through the entire room and feel the energy. Regardless of what you're going to do, you want people to be at their best — create a space that's conducive of that.

Then the next layer — and we seldom have that opportunity, but when we do it's absolutely amazing — is: first you define the objectives and the high-level design, and then you find a space that is meaningful in relation to the design. By space, I mean space and location: the choice of city, neighbourhood, country, type of building. Then everything about the space is in service of the intention, and that's when your event starts getting a sense of wholeness, where everything you experience — where you are, what you eat, what you see, what you feel — is in service of a specific goal. When you have that luxury, it's just amazing.

Alexis:

Wow, so that's totally different from going back to the office and having a meeting. Okay, so let's say we did it: we engaged the sponsors properly, we designed the perfect agenda, we found the perfect location and space. The gathering is done. Are we done, or what's next?

Charles:

Then we begin. The workshop itself is almost like walking a tightrope between what you planned to do and the reality of that plan in the face of the participant group. There's only so much you can develop in terms of insight or perspective in advance. The real test is when the people you're designing for engage with that agenda. Sometimes the agenda fits well and the conversation goes just as you imagined — only richer and with greater depth. Other times, what you thought to be true isn't, and you need to adjust and pivot as you go.

Your connection to the content, to the agenda, to the energy needs to be extremely close. You need to sense what's going on, listen, and constantly balance between what you had planned, what you're hearing, and what shift might need to happen. Sometimes it's a small thing — you change the language in some assignments. Other times it requires a reshaping of the agenda itself. So facilitation isn't a simple act of following a script. That's what really differentiates a workshop where you're simply executing on the agenda from a workshop that is responding to the living participant group, and as a result gets the right outcome based on the desire and ambition that emerges from the group. It's never over, even when everyone has had their celebratory drinks and headed off into the world. The workshop is just a moment in time, and something needs to happen with all the hard work and content that emerges from it. The preparation prepares you for the moment, but your role as a facilitator is a demanding one — and a very rewarding one in the end.

Philippe:

And that's when having a team takes all its meaning, because to be able to do what Charles is saying you need to be supported by a team that has the agility to pivot. If the changes you make are marginal, you might be fine on your own. But if you realise you need an entire shift of the agenda, there's not a chance you can do that without a team. That also explains why — and again, it takes time to convince sponsors of this — your workshop for 40 participants can have a delivery team of 4, 5, 6: because you're buying the creativity and the agility to pivot and respond to everything you sense from the group.

Alexis:

Excellent. And what comes after the gathering? You mentioned the booklet that was the origin of the book — so I assume something important comes after the workshop.

Philippe:

The workshop is never a purpose in itself. A workshop is in service of something else. So you have to ask yourself: how do I feed the outcome of the workshop into whatever is coming next? Usually what's coming next is some form of action, because the outcome needs to be implemented — it can be part of a project, a programme, a strategic direction, but actions have to be taken. At the end of the workshop you simply ask: who is going to do what with what came out, and as a result, what are the most useful artifacts we need to produce to facilitate their work going forward? Sometimes it's super sleek things with a communications purpose. Sometimes it's pretty rough documents because they're going to be iterated the next day by the same people. It's all a matter of creating what's most useful for the outcome.

Then there's also the work to help sponsors fully leverage the potential the workshop created. Part of that potential is tangible — decisions, outcomes — and that's valuable. But there are also intangible outcomes: leadership momentum, alignment, relationships, energy, that need to be nurtured by the sponsors. Some sponsors will do that naturally, some will not. You need to assess that as a facilitator, and if they don't do it naturally, you need to help them do it in the best possible way to maximise the value.

Alexis:

Philippe Coullomb and Charles Collingwood-Boots are the authors of the fantastic book Collaboration by Design. I highly recommend it to all of you. Thank you, Charles and Philippe, for joining me today on the podcast, and for having written that book. Thank you.

Philippe:

Thank you very much.

Charles:

Thank you very much.