Confessions of a Bibliophile

I wonder sometimes just what so much reading has to do with visual practice. The two are inadvertently contrasted in one of the works I came back with: two brothers, both of whom go into medicine, one notes that medicine is a verbal curriculum while the other from an early age carries around a copy of Gray’s Anatomy and draws incessantly. You’ll have to read the book to see which one emerges as “special.”

The purpose of the trip was to sit in on a Systems Thinking workshop conducted by my friend and mentor Jean Tully. We've been talking about how we might make her approach more visual without reverting to a dependency on causal loop diagrams. I left home with:

• Thinking in Systems, by Donella Meadows
• Inviting Everyone: Healing Healthcare through Positive Deviance by the Plexus Institute
• The First Captain: The Story of John Paul Jones, by Gerald W. Johnson

In RDU there is a used book store called 2nd Edition that I always visit if I can. Sometimes I take one away, but this time there were three:

• Nelson in the Caribbean, by Joseph Callo (His Lordship is a hobby of mine)
• Billy Ruffian: The Bellerophon and the Downfall of Napoleon, by David Cordingly
• The Universe and the Teacup: The Mathematics of Truth and Beauty, by K. C. Cole

In the Rock Ridge area I was pointed toward Pegasus New and Used Books. I like serendipity: in Greek mythology Pegasus was tamed by Bellerophon. Three more books went into the stack:

• Shamans of the World, by Connor Kelly
• Six Thinking Hats, by Edward De Bono
• Magical Fabric Art, by Sandra McCraw Scarpa (for my quiltmaking spouse)

Jean and I stayed at the home of her friends Phil and Wendy where we talked about our reading. To my surprise and delight Wendy went out and bought me a copy of a book she had just read, Cutting for Stone by Abraham Verghesse. That one was fascinating enough to be the only one opened on the trip back. "But then you also get...," as they say on TV, Wendy shared a stack of titles with me that she thought would help with things I'm working on:

• Awareness to Action, by Geoge Tallon and Maria Sikora
• Mastery, by George Leonard
• Coaching: Evoking excellence in Others, by James Flaherty
• Fierce Conversations, by Susan Scott

Over the last 6 or 7 years my reading has been growing and growing. I can thank my friend Bob Thompson for that, and he's probably aware of the Edward Morgan quote on the card that Wendy gave me with the book: Reading is one of the few havens where your mind can get both provocation and privacy.

Expanding Visual Practice with Architects

While working at the TJCOG event described below, the Executive Director of AIANC, David Crawford, introduced himself and asked about my background. The encounter resulted in an invitation to make a presentation about my work at this year’s state conference, held last week in Asheville. As a few years have passed since the practice of architecture was my chosen modality for design I felt initially like the prodigal son. The warm reception I received helped me get over that pretty quickly.

To see the presentation's images, click on the Vimeo screen here.

Using this blog’s name as the title, my content went through a progression:
• Some history on how I came to be there
• Examples of work by others in our field
• A synopsis of the history of graphic recording and graphic facilitating, beginning with the work of architects
• An overview of its applications
• My own thoughts about what I’m learning
• Potential applications that would be useful to architects

There were three things that happened that were particularly enjoyable for me:
1. They agreed to participate in a short “Graphic Jam” like what we do at IFVP. They were given one minute to draw a metaphor for each word, and a few of their images are shown below.

All of their drawings can be seen by clicking on these links:
a. Analysis
b. Bio-Diversity
c. Intrusive
d. Clean Air
e. Combos
2. They used Leadership Metaphor Explorer as a way to have images inspire conversations
3. Most of the questions asked were about finding ways to have creative conversations at a deeper level, with clients in particular. Yes, they commented on the visual tools, but their real interest seemed to be relational.

There were a couple of things heard in other sessions that got my attention, and one was from Matthew Frederick, author of 101 Things I Learned in Architecture School. He quoted Marshall Berman: “The crumbling of social relationships, not materials, turns structures into ruins.”

Most throttling of all was a conversation I had with Harry Harrison and Darin Waters about the Young Men’s Institute in Asheville. Initially conceived as an African-American YMCA during the time of the Vanderbilts, it was the resourcefulness of the almost invisible African-American communityin Asheville that made it a success. Darin described finding three letters written by his grandfather in the Vanderbilt archives, and commented that “History is about identity.” That made me twitch a bit, considering that sometimes we do not want to be constrained or pigeon-holed by the past.

Later in the talk they quoted one of the early leaders’ confidence in the face of doubts about the viability of the center: “The verdict has not been written.” That’s more the way I like to think, but I asked about the seeming conflict between the two statements. What we ultimately determined is that our histories are never final, but always works in progress.

M1's Can Draw!

This past week the Brody School of Medicine's Class of 2014 arrived for orientation. Dr. Randy Renegar and I hosted a World Cafe in which these budding physicians thought through "Aspirations of Professionalism." The slideset above is a collection of their table graphics - I hope they're still drawing like that ten years from now! The Harvest graphic is below.

A Cool Tool: Prezi

Last week I gave a 10-minute presentation on what I've been doing at the Brody School of Medicine. Rather than the usual ppt slides, I used Prezi, an online tool.

BSOM Story on Prezi

IFVP 2010 - Day 2

IFVP Conference 2010 - Day 1

Scribing The Practical Futurist

In May I served as the graphic recorder for the 50th Anniversary Forum of the Triangle J Council of Governments, titled "Creative Possibilities: Regional Solutions." One of the featured speakers was Michael Rogers, aka The Practical Futurist. I had the privilege of getting to know him over dinner the night before, which is a real plus in terms of getting mentally ready to graphically record a presentation. As I'm now working on campus with a scenarios project, I was struck by one of his statements in particular: "The future might surprise us, but it should never dumbfound us."

CPSI 2010

Buffalo.
Innovation = implementing something new. Creativity = novelty that is useful. Creative thinking = connecting previously unconnected thoughts.
The more different kinds of things you put into one (side of the) brain, the more connections the other brain will make.
Entrepreneurial ventures for non-profits.
Nothing works without a focus on person-team-organizational enterprise.
Make companies better by making people better.
Those getting traction are those who explore how to improve their processes to benefit people, and how to really develop their own people.
Integrinators.
For creativity to happen we must search for the value in new ideas.
POINt:

• Pluses
• Opportunities, positive potential
• Issues (they come out best as questions)
• New thinking

The rite of passage for innovation teams.
The importance of being 12.
Fear - death = thrill.
Stay hungry, stay foolish.
Deliver more than what was paid for.
Simple questions are the most powerful.
Applied creativity is a process, and CPS is a model.
Creativity = knowledge x ideas x selection.
Rocks can hear.
Innovation: the implementation of an idea that improves someone's life and brings meaning to someone's life.
Find a way and train everyone.
Inspiration and possibility thinking are absolute musts.
Innovation relies on varied talent.
Stale ideas = stale group.
Resonance; it flows when there is consistency with values.
Explore your vision and use it to guide your way.

Thoughts on Sustainable Change

The leadership in a distinguished organization seeks to advance a large-scale change initiative. Among the foods for thought presented is John Kotter’s “The Eight Step Process for Successful Change.” The first step: “Create a sense of urgency. Help others see the need for change and the importance of acting immediately.”

For a couple of years I co-led the Step III workshop of the Planning Institute of the Society for College and University Planning, and Kotter’s book Leading Change was part of our framework. We occasionally debated the nature of the sense of urgency – does it stem from threats or from aspirations? My own reading of Kotter was that he saw a need to represent a negative force and stimulate our survival instincts.

My path subsequently wound through Peter Senge’s Fifth Discipline and the Society for Organizational Learning. Systems thinking would show that using a negative urgency to stimulate change will make that change unsustainable. If the idea is to engender preferred behavior to eliminate a threat – perceived or otherwise - the lifespan of that behavior is in doubt once the threat is eliminated. The best examples are in colleges and universities. There the preferred stimulus for change is a deficit-orientation, generally arising from assessment. In spite of growing attention to the process, things remain as described by a friend in the Center for Creative Leadership: “It’s easier to move a cemetery than to change a university.”

In the Step III workshop we also used Malcolm Gladwell’s Blink. One of the stories we did not discuss was a tragic example of how our focus narrows in the face of a threat. It can be argued that if the change needed is adaptive as opposed to merely technical – changing the way we think as opposed to just changing what we do – it is imperative that we widen our focus. According to Barbara Fredrickson’s work our focus widens and narrows as the positivity of our situation varies. A widening of focus is not only critical to our receptiveness toward new ideas, but it also drives an essential component of long term success: our creativity.

So, in what ways might a positive sense of urgency arise? It can begin with a question as simple as “What do we want more of?” It’s a simple phrase that holds the past, the present and the future together interactively, and it sets up a series of dialogues that engage the entire system. Once the usual conversations begin to change, the leadership can breathe normally in the confidence that things are on their way.

Thinking Through Positivity

I’m fully invested now in Appreciative Inquiry and the broader spectrum of strengths-based and positive approaches. Still, sometimes it’s a challenge for me to explain the rationale to others without that song coming up way in the back of my mind: Keep on the sunny side, always on the….. There’s far more to it than that. I’m also beginning to think that the power of a positive orientation is not as much of a secret as it sometimes seems.

The fundamental example for me is the artist. Michelangelo was not problem-solving when he made the Pieta; there was a lot more going on. When Picasso painted Les Desmoiselles d’Avignon, I doubt that it was because an accreditation agency identified a deficit of Cubism in the art world.

I see other signs. Recently a finance manager noted that if a company has numerous business units, and some are making money and others are losing money, you should not immediately invest in the weak ones. Invest in the strong ones and raise the worth of the whole much faster. In a recent New York Times article Dr. Tachi Yamada talked about the value in finding the positive attributes in analyses and people, and spending your time on those as opposed to just the shortfalls. In the book Born to Run, they point out that species evolve according to what they’re good at. In Scenarios: The Art of Strategic Conversation Kees Van Der Heijden points out that tomorrow’s core competencies come from today’s.

Sometimes when I feel like flying really low, I’ll claim that “No organization ever advanced itself by focusing on its deficiencies.” I have not a shred of evidence for such bombast, but I really do believe it. At the same time, one mustn’t paint with too wide a brush. As pointed out in Metaphors in Mind there are times when it’s appropriate to pull a few weeds.

I also believe that a positive approach ultimately entails really hard work. It’s really easy to call out what we don’t want, but have you ever found it hard to say what you do want? It can be a little tougher. And when we find our strengths, our abilities when at our best, that knowledge brings with it an obligation to always strive for that level. It’s not work for weenies, but our future depends on it.