This month, I attended a two day workshop on Strategic Planning Facilitation using Technology of Participation (TOP) methods.  TOP facilitation methods are inclusive, surface thinking, draw out the wisdom of the group and build collective engagement and buy-in.  In using  TOP facilitation methods to lead groups over the past few months, I have honestly been little bit awed by their effectiveness: Group members participate, they see that their opinions and perspectives matter, and the group comes together in inspiring and powerful ways that move work forward.

The TOP approach to strategic planning is a multi-step process.  First, the facilitator and organization plan the scope of the engagement. Second, there’s a Visioning Workshop to create images among the group.

The third step of the process, called Underlying Contradictions, is most intriguing.   Underlying Contradictions involves brainstorming about factors that block us from accomplishing our vision.  The key, though, was that we cannot not use “lack of” to describe those blocks. Instead, participants think about the factors inherent to our organization that block progress.

This was challenging and an amazing exercise for real life! In my experience, it’s fairly common to hear the staff of organizations talk about how the “lack of” money or staff, or money and staff prevent the organization from moving forward.

What replaces “lack of”? The Underlying Contradictions workshop encourages participants to think about the roots of the challenges, using the words in the image above. So, for example, we reframed “lack of connection with businesses” as “uncoordinated collaboration with businesses.”  The process helped the group to shift the responsibility for these blocks to internal factors that we could control and change. And the next few steps of the strategic planning process addressed these Underlying Contradictions directly, moving the group to action.

Since participating in Underlying Contradictions workshop, I’ve been noticing how often I hear “lack of” thinking among organizations and individuals. Each time I hear about the “lack of” something, I wonder to myself, what’s underneath that? And how can we reframe this challenge to notice, and address, that which is in our control?