Facilitator Pack B — Convening Collective Resilience

G1. Convening, not facilitating

Facilitating an organisation's reflection is hosting. Convening a place is politics — in the honest sense. Before any session design, four things the live programme treats as load-bearing:

Who calls the meeting matters. An infrastructure body convening can read as territory; a funder convening can read as instruction; a cohort convening its own guests reads as ownership. In the live model, the cohort introduces what they've been working on — not the facilitators. This is their story.

Guests work alongside, not observe. Invite partners, funders and infrastructure bodies as participants with skin in the game. At the end of the day, everyone makes commitments — guests included. "They are coming to work alongside us, not to observe."

Name what's usually avoided, on purpose. Build explicit space for it (the "what we've avoided" block): infrastructure that also competes for funding; who speaks for the sector; power dynamics between large and small; the organisations that may not survive; what the new investment means in practice — and what it doesn't.

Hold the stance line from the principles: we may act together, alongside, or step back on purpose. Stepping back is a legitimate move, not a defection. Saying so out loud early changes what people are willing to propose.

G2. Programme shapes

Two field-tested sequences plus a standalone — choose by the state of trust in the room:

Shape 1 — "Just us first" (the Great Yarmouth sequence). Day 1, cohort only: build internal clarity before exposure. Day 2, guests join to explore what was found. Choose this when the group's own relationships are still forming, or when there's anything raw to name that shouldn't be named in front of funders first.

Shape 2 — "Guests from the start" (the Telford & Wrekin sequence). Day 1 with guests, working as mixed groups from the first hour; Day 2, a shorter cohort-only morning that makes it practical. Choose this when the cohort is established and confident, and when guest commitment is itself a primary outcome — energy and accountability arrive together.

Shape 3 — standalone half-day partnership session. For an existing partnership wanting a first structured look: check-in → definition + "collective resilience here means…" → four capacities mapping → Need/Have/Like on one capacity → commitments. 3.5 hours.

Day 2 in both two-day shapes is the same job: take everything from Day 1 and make it practical. What needs to happen? Who does what? Not the vision — the first three steps. When do we check in with each other? And: who follows up with each guest commitment, and when?

G3. The session blocks

(Verbatim designs with live timings — assemble per shape.)

Reconnecting & connecting (30–45 min). Cohort: what's changed since we last met — in your organisation, in the place, in you? Guests: what do you do, who do you serve, what's your connection to collective resilience here, what are you curious about today?

What is collective resilience? (30 min). The definition; NOT/BUT framing; then the write-in everyone completes before discussion: "Collective resilience in [place] means…" — collective resilience will look different in every place.

Surfacing common challenges (45 min, mixed groups, gallery walk). Three sheets: challenges we share (what do we face that no single organisation can solve?) · what's already working (collective action almost always exists before anyone names it) · what we've avoided. Capture on large sheets. Name the patterns honestly.

The four capacities — who holds what? (30 min). Per capacity: who holds this for the sector here? Where are the gaps? Land the design point: these could be held by different organisations. Not one body — a distributed model.

Need / Have / Like (3 × 30–45 min, GY format). Against each capacity in turn: what do we need that we can't solve alone ("if someone said 'how can I help?' — what would you say?") → what do we already have, formal and informal ("what happens informally that nobody organises?") → what would we like to build ("not what gets done to us — what we build for ourselves").

Scenario stress testing (60–75 min). Sketch → pass → test → strengthen. Frame it exactly as the deck does: "This isn't pessimism. It's inoculation." The learning is in the pattern of what breaks across multiple tests. Scenario bank: the funding cliff · the infrastructure body competes · the external partner reshapes priorities · the ground shifts (reorganisation; key contacts move on) · someone steps back (the person who sends the emails burns out) · tensions rise (does the trust hold?).

The collective pre-mortem (45 min). Two years on, the effort has quietly withered — what went wrong, what early signs did we ignore, what do we most need to protect?

The Bullseye (45 min). Prioritise everything generated: centre ring (we actually do this), middle (next), outer (parked, deliberately). A collective can do two things well or seven things badly.

Commitments (30–45 min, always last). Specific and real — a conversation, a connection, a door opened. Named, dated, witnessed; guests included. Agree the check-in date before anyone leaves.

G4. Running the Collective Health Check

The Health Check (Pack B, B6) is self-serve for a mature partnership; convened, it needs these handled:

• Collect separately, always. Partners complete Parts 1–2 before the room meets. The first time anyone sees the spread of answers is together — that's the moment the method earns its keep.
• Divergence is the agenda, not a problem. Present scattered Rose/Bud/Thorn responses as the system showing where understanding, trust or information isn't flowing. Never average them.
• "Nobody" is a finding. When no one holds a capacity, resist the room's instinct to nominate the infrastructure body by default — that's how the "infrastructure that competes" pattern starts. Hold the gap open until Need/Have/Like.
• The convenor collates but doesn't interpret. Themes go back to the room verbatim; the room does the sense-making.
• Watch the quiet organisations. In collective scoring, small organisations defer to large ones. Solo writing before any discussion, every time.

G5. The place-based question bank

(Verbatim from the principles refresh — the tagged, asset-based set, written for facilitated place work. Use these to deepen any block in G3; each principle has an Anticipate/Prepare/Respond-or-Adapt arc. The set's own stance note: language is asset-based and recognises we may act together, alongside, or step back on purpose.)

Purposeful — (A) Where do our purposes already work well together in this place, and what strengths can we build on for local people? · (P) What simple shared message about our value will help partners and communities pull in the same direction? · (R) When things move fast, how will we keep our shared "why" visible — even if some act together and others step back for a time?

Decisive — (A) Which early signs from communities, data or frontline practice should trigger a joint move — and which suit a small group first? · (P) What pre-agreed flex (scope, timelines, budget) can partners offer within days, and who can call it? · (Ad) After action, how will we share what changed and what we learnt so the next choice is clearer?

Collaborative — (A) Where are the trusted nodes and strong links we can reinforce (by theme, neighbourhood, community), and where are we thin? · (P) What light-touch basics (contacts, fair data habits, referral routes) do we keep in place in calm times? · (R) When demand jumps, how do we share people and resources fairly and avoid duplication — using what already works here?

Intentional — (A) Which current funding/contract rules support good system behaviour, and which might steer us off-course later? · (P) What shared dos and don'ts help us say yes to the right offers and no to the wrong ones — together or alongside? · (R) If a large pot appears, how will we run co-ordinated (not identical) bids, allowing some to opt in while others step back?

Diversified — (A) Where are the financial strengths in this place (flexible funds, local donors, trading), and where are we exposed? · (P) What balanced pipeline (grants, contracts, trading, social investment) will we grow across partners? · (R) If one income stream dips, how will we offer short-term cover or re-profile effort to protect the most important work?

Protected — (A) What are our shared strengths on risk (reserves, safeguarding, legal support), and what risks matter most next? · (P) Do we have a clear view of headroom across partners and simple ways to back each other up? · (R) When a risk appears, how will we share info without blame and agree the first safe step quickly?

Bold — (A) Where does power sit well (fair voice, trusted leaders), and where does it concentrate or exclude? · (P) What practices will balance voice and power (community seats with real votes, paid participation, clear delegations, safe challenge)? · (Ad) Which small governance tweaks (consent rounds, rotating roles, shared decision logs) will we try next, and how will we review them?

Supported — (A) Where do people already feel strong and trusted, and what pressures might spread if ignored (workload, winter, safeguarding)? · (P) What shared offers help now — training, supervision standards, backfill pools, time to test ideas? · (R) When teams are stretched, how will we offer quick cover, debriefs and practical help across organisations?

Flexible (source header reads "Learn & adapt" — normalised per ruling) — (A) Which early, positive signs (local voices, small wins) tell us change is coming — before the lagging KPIs? · (P) What light-touch ways will we use to share data and stories and make sense of them together? · (R) When we try something together, how will we decide quickly to stop, tweak or grow — and who else needs to hear?

G6. Power, conflict and decisions between organisations

• Bring the consent process across from Pack A (Bold) — it was designed for exactly this scale problem: acting together without requiring enthusiasm from everyone. "Can you live with this? Any objections?" works between organisations even better than within one.
• Pre-agree the urgency protocol (the consent deck's Prepare framing): who gets to be in the room, what counts as a valid objection, how urgency is handled — agreed in calm times, used in turbulent ones.
• The stress scenarios double as conflict rehearsal. "Infrastructure body competes" and "tensions rise" let a group practise its hardest conversations as hypotheticals before having them for real.
• When tension is live rather than hypothetical: smaller rooms first, the stance line on the table (together, alongside, or stepping back on purpose), and commitments scaled down to the next conversation only.

G7. Materials index

Organisational Resilience Programme · Tom Watson · CC BY-NC 4.0