Black Coconut Blog
22 April 2025facilitation is the strategy
Rewoven: Facilitating Change & Emergent Futures
by Adanma YisaWhen I first started doing strategy work, I thought the “real work” happened after the process. That it was the steps that took place once the vision was crafted or once the strategic goals were agreed upon, maybe even once the deck was final.
But something kept bothering me: after a facilitated session, we’d leave behind beautiful strategy documents and hours of discussion filled with wonderful ideas and then too often once we’d return to work, nothing would actually change. Those words, strategies, and drive ceased to bring us together or move us forward.
And upon reflecting further, that’s when I realized that actually, facilitation changed everything. And instead of just thinking of it as the process that happens before the strategy, I needed to reframe facilitation as the strategy.
🌱 Strategy isn’t something you design, it is something you nurture
My experience as a facilitator taught me that a strategy doesn’t begin within a slide deck, but rather it begins in the meeting room: How are people invited in? Does trust exist? Is power shared? Is there space and agency allowed for people to dream big and make those dreams reality?
I began to realise that facilitation was not a soft skill next to strategy but that facilitation was the strategy and for the strategy to be fulfilled to the best of its potential, facilitation was needed to get it there. Facilitation from the minute a new strategy is needed, to designing the new strategy, and then implementing it.
🧩 Implementation is facilitation made visible
At Black Coconut, we offer implementation support, not because we want to seamlessly or easily ‘roll out plans’, but rather because we know that implementation is where the beautiful and expansive strategy meets the real world.
This process happens in practice, not in theory. It can shake you up and challenge you, it can be ambiguous, it can re-shape power and culture. And this is where our praxis - bringing together a critical approach to facilitate systemic change.
For us, facilitation and implementation are a two-fold praxis, not just a theoretical or abstract exercise. It is where the vision of the strategy comes alive in our daily interactions and work. It is where your thinking becomes clearer in your daily doing. And it is where your leadership’s ability to hold the process is part of them taking action.
We facilitate implementation by:
Coaching leadership teams through periods of uncertainty so they can lead with courageous decision-making
Supporting facilitators to guide strategic sessions with strategic clarity
Helping organisations build up their own facilitative muscles
Keeping strategy alive and shared through ongoing implementation and follow-through coaching.
🔥What makes a strategy stick?
A strategy sticks when everyone feels connected to it and as though it is co-owned because there is a significant level of safety, trust, room to breathe, and room to challenge. This also means that there is space to test out different iterations, try new things, fail and learn from failure.
Strategic facilitation can help you do all of that so that your strategy stops being an endless list of to-dos that you tick off listlessly but rather an exciting opportunity for you and your team to learn and grow as it cemets itself within the bones of your organisation.
✨ Do you want to experience this?
I’m offering a few free 1:1 Thinking Environment® coaching sessions this month — no pitch, just space to think deeply about what you're holding.
🎯 Or if your team is sitting with a strategy that’s struggling to land — let’s talk about a Discovery Session.
This is the work I love.
In change and courage,
Adanma