Five phases, with return journeys
| Phase in the Flawless tradition | Practical work |
|---|---|
| Entry and contracting | Establish the relationship, purpose, mutual requirements, and a workable agreement. |
| Discovery and dialogue | Develop information and understanding with the people who will use them. |
| Analysis and decision to act | Make sense of the findings and choose what to do. |
| Engagement and implementation | Support participation, action, capability, and review. |
| Extension, recycling, or termination | Decide what continues, changes, transfers, or ends. |
These phases organise attention; they do not describe a conveyor belt. Discovery can change the contract. Implementation can reveal a different problem. An ending can require another discovery conversation. Participation, ownership, and learning begin at entry.
Participation with a purpose
People need to understand why they are invited, what they can influence, and what is already decided. Do not call a consultation co-design if the important decisions are closed. Where genuine discretion exists, make it visible and give people the information and conditions needed to use it.
Block’s community work offers six useful kinds of conversation: invitation, possibility, ownership, dissent, commitment, and gifts. They direct attention to how people enter, imagine, take responsibility, disagree, choose, and contribute. They are not a compulsory workshop agenda or a way of manufacturing consensus.
Dissent is part of ownership. People may accept responsibility while rejecting a proposal. A commitment is more meaningful when a person can say no.
Design an intervention before choosing an activity
Ask what must become possible, for whom, and under what conditions. Then choose the method. A workshop, a series of interviews, a live experiment, a decision meeting, or a change to a routine may each do useful work. An energising event cannot compensate for missing authority or a sponsor who will not act.
- Clarify intent, desired outcomes, and tangible outputs.
- Understand the people, their relationships, power, history, and access requirements.
- Agree the container: boundaries, participation, confidentiality, decision rights, and ways to disagree.
- Prepare inputs and pre-work; test your assumptions about readiness.
- Design sequence, timing, environment, and alternatives for predictable difficulties.
- Plan reflection, follow-through, ownership, and review before the event.
The facilitation and workshop-design work develops these skills in more detail. See the connections without treating all intervention as a workshop.
Permission, support, and risk
Useful work may require people to take interpersonal or organisational risks. Match challenge with support, permission, and protection appropriate to the setting. A declaration that ‘this is a safe space’ does not remove reporting lines, histories, or the consequences of speaking.
Do not assume depth is always better. A group may need a clear decision process before a deeply personal exchange. Equally, a superficial activity may avoid the contradiction that prevents action. Choose the level of work consciously and within your competence.
A pre-mortem asks people to imagine that the work has failed and explain why. Use it to surface concerns and improve the design. Reducing the discomfort of each immediate interaction can sometimes leave a larger risk unaddressed; test that possibility rather than assuming it is true.
Make the next action ownable
Connect decisions to an owner, authority, capacity, and a review point. Distinguish an action you can directly deliver from an outcome that depends on many people and conditions. A service or organisation may need changes to routines, information, resources, or management decisions as well as individual skill.
Use short cycles: frame an intention, act, notice what happens, reflect with others, and adjust. Keep evidence about the effects on people who use the service, not just the convenience of the change team. Look for unintended consequences and uneven effects.
Consultants can help people act, but should avoid becoming the load-bearing wall that keeps the whole arrangement standing. Ask what would continue if you stepped away, and what support the organisation would still need.
End, transfer, or agree new work
- Review the original purpose, what happened, and what remains uncertain.
- Agree what the client will continue and who holds each responsibility.
- Leave usable records, methods, decisions, and access to the work.
- Discuss what both parties learned about the relationship.
- Name any continuing dependency or risk plainly.
- Make an explicit choice: end, extend for a defined purpose, or return to a new contracting conversation.
A satisfied client and a longer engagement are not the only indicators of good work. An informed decision to stop, a useful challenge, or a client who no longer needs you may be a valuable result.