Emergent Strategy: Shaping Change, Changing Worlds

by Adrienne Maree Brown

At its most fundamental, facilitation is the art of making things easy, making it easier for humans to work together and get things done. “There is a difference between ‘simple’ and ‘easy.’ Simple as in the ‘relatively simple interactions’ of emergence, easy as in ‘facilitation is the art of making things easy.’ I don’t think they are the same, and I have a hunch the difference might be important and that maybe it should be explicit. Simple means that it boils down to relationships between individual people, objects, beings, truths. Ease has more to do with the amount of friction (or understanding) between the peopleobjectsbeingstruths. And part of what can clear a path to making things easier is to name the simple interactions at play in a complex system.” —Rachel Plattus