Making Voices Visible

BSOM Scenario #3: The Land That Time Forgot

2012-01-03T16:30:00.000-08:00

A view from 2015.........a world where government regulates healthcare but does not financially support compliance. As healthcare becomes rationed, physicians and other caregivers who choose to continue their practices give up the traditional hierarchies, strict segregation of roles and predictable work circumstances. Those tough enough to endure do so by way of new forms of collaboration and innovation that embrace communities as well as medicine.

This is one of 4 scenarios conceived as part of the Strategic Conversations Project at the Brody School of Medicine. To read a text version, click here.

BSOM Scenario #2: The Magic Kingdom

2011-12-23T08:31:00.000-08:00

A world where the private sector capitalizes on a booming economy to lead healthcare innovations that serve bottom lines. Government is just a spectator, and the universities are little more than that. A two-tiered healthcare system meanders along, with the affluent pleased and well-cared for, and everyone else settling for barely getting by.

This is one of 4 scenarios conceived as part of the Strategic Conversations Project at the Brody School of Medicine. To read a text version, click here.

BSOM Scenario #1: Life After Floyd

2011-12-07T14:19:00.001-08:00

The view from 2015, of a world of deteriorating nationalstatus where larger concerns relegate healthcare reform to the back burner.People are angry and moved to action, sometimes doing more harm than good. Asense of urgency in healthcare spurs a climate of innovation and radical shiftsin the roles of the major players.

This is one of 4 scenarios conceived as part of the Strategic Conversations Project at the Brody School of Medicine. To read a text version, click here.

Making Voices Visible at ArchEX 2011

2011-11-05T06:17:00.000-07:00

After making two presentations on visual practice at last year's conference of architects in North Carolina, the Virginia conference accepted my proposal to make a similar presentation as one of their many offerings this year. The Prezi file can be viewed below although it will be difficult to follow without the narrative.

An outline of the content:

A bit about my role with visual practice in a medical school;
A sampling of the work of others in the field;
The roots of the practice;
The various forms that visual practice takes and the functions it serves;
Some of my own observations and findings (presented as "my humble but correct opinion");
What this could mean for practicing architects;
What it has enabled me to do.

I made the case that these are skills and insights that architects are uniquely poised to take advantage of. In particular I stressed the differences they could make outside their field, while also improving their own professional practice environment. They were shown shots of Brandy Agerbeck working on with a green economy, told the story of Dan Roam going to the White House and shown shots from a 250-person World Cafe; after each I said "This could be you."

They also "tasted" the work. After the first third of the session they went through a 4-word graphic jam, and later they used Leadership Metaphor Explorer to interview each other one on one. Rather than immediately taking questions at the end I told them I would be the one asking the questions, and I walked them through a POINt conversation about what they had just seen and heard. They were a really good group - and on a Friday afternoon at that!

ArchEx 2011 on Prezi

A Little Bit Goes A Very Long Way

2011-10-11T02:35:00.001-07:00

Sometimes it seems like my entire inventory of wisdom is a collection of one-liners from old movies. In this case, there was the scene in Gunga Din where Victor McLaglen's elephant, Annie, was not feeling well. As he began to give her medicine, the attendant interceded, cautioning "No, Sahib, little bit go very long way."

During the NACUFS workshop described in the post below, we reached the point when each team was charged with developing and articulating its Idealized Design. As opposed to creating a vision in the way of many practices, the Idealized Design uses the systems knowledge acquired in previous steps to articulate a future and to explain how it works. In this instance, one group asked for additional instruction and clarification as they began.

I offered a quick sketch on an easel, suggesting that they imagine students interacting with their ideal food service. As they visualized the points of contact, they could also look for the next point of contact beyond, and then beyond again, etc. Eventually a fully interactive system would emerge. The explanation only took 2 or 3 minutes.

A little while later this incredible assemblage was on the wall. Many of the post-it notes had been accumulating earlier, so they began to organize them in relationships. The rings were pretty straight forward, but the dowels were a fascinating addition. They were left over from an experience we used a couple of nights before to show the importance of focusing on what it is you want. Afterwards, everyone had been bringing their dowels to the sessions. This group realized a new use for them and made the most of it.

Leadership Metaphors Guide Food Service Design

2011-07-18T16:36:00.000-07:00

In June I conducted the week-long Planning Institute for the National Association of College and University Food Service for the third time. As a framework for understanding planning processes we use Russell Ackoff's Idealized Design. This year, I decided to experiment with a reflexive activity on leadership.

Idealized Design begins with a systems analysis of the current situation, in this instance provided by a fictional case study representing a campus with an assortment of issues. Once their analyses were complete, we asked them to consider the current leadership culture. To do this we used Leadership Metaphor Explorer, a tool developed by the Center for Creative Leadership with a little help from yours truly. All of the cards were spread out on a table, and we asked the 18 participants to review each. They then picked the one that seemed most like their situation or, if none seemed to work, they picked the card that spoke to them in some way.

As they were working in three groups of six, we asked them to return to their groups and then share their cards and their thinking in turn. Each group was then asked to agree on two cards from their six that seemed to best represent the leadership culture in place on this fictional campus. We then took the two cards from each group and set them aside without discussion.

As the week went by they developed their Idealized Designs. Rather than beginning with the usual mission statement, we worked with Steve Haeckel's Reason for Being. Pretty quickly, they produced this statement: "Walnut College Food Service exists to provide students with healthy and sustainable food options in an environment that enables them to become successful individuals." Once each group had drafted its Idealized Design, we borrowed from Appreciative Inquiry and crafted Provocative Propositions to guide the subsequent work as opposed to the traditional gap analysis.

Once they had worked their way through the additional details, we asked them to return to a question of leadership: "What is the leadership culture that will give life to the Idealized Design and its Provocative Propositions?" We repeated the selection of metaphor cards, and then posted both sets for comparison.

The original six, as they described them, depicted a conservative and insular environment. "A Confluence of Agendas" to them represented people each getting something for themselves while the larger whole slowly deteriorated. A "Leaderless Orchestra" to them was an indication of a poorly functioning entity. With the new set, they were quick to see a distinct shift toward an interdependent leadership culture. Even metaphors not normally associated with interdependency had a role in creating it: "Nurturing Parents" reflected the fact that someone would have to teach these new skills and behaviors; "High Performance Engines" described how the college's senior leadership was going to have to step up its game in order to keep up with the dining services group.
I often describe the use of these cards and their companion, Visual Explorer, as greasing the wheels of conversation, and this was no exception. In fact, in their closing reflections one participant described how his usual difficulty with verbalizing concepts was completely overcome by having an image to work from.

Visualizing Information with VUE

2011-05-11T13:51:00.000-07:00

Over the last several months I have been experimenting with VUE, free software from Tufts University. Generally, it has been used when we needed a group to identify all the pieces and parts of complex projects. For that kind of work it’s much more versatile than scribing on the wall, and it’s easier to clean up and share than sticky notes. The resolution seems to be really good, although I am getting spoiled to using it on a Smart Board.

Most striking, however, has been the way people engage with it: as the information begins to accumulate and breed more information, attentiveness to the screen builds. There’s no other practice I’ve used that seems to create that kind of rapt attention and mental processing. Having recently used it on an especially complex and important initiative here in our medical school, I asked two senior leaders who were involved to share their thoughts via a POINt inquiry:

The most positive aspects? Could get ideas out quickly, and begin to see myriad interactions and decision issues; “It was kind of fun, too;”

Opportunities? Good for early stage planning, especially on projects that are at all dynamic in time, or have significant complexities;

What issues are there? Not linear enough to assure completeness, and too informal to be completely comfortable with its reliability; sometimes ideas flowed faster than the keyboard operator could capture them;

What new thinking might address the issues? Add another layer of organization - develop a map with the group when it is brainstorming and then ask someone to put the information into a more traditional format with chronological tracking of some kind.

(Note: this last image is deliberately low resolution as the content does not lend itself to broadcasting.)

Positive Image, Positive Action

2011-04-10T09:34:00.000-07:00

After many, many miles of running I decided to completely change how I was doing it. I couldn't quite pull it off until I observed how my dog does it, and then carried that image in my head.

In late 2009 I read Christoper McDougall's book "Born to Run," a first-class yarn whether one runs or not. He argues convincingly that homo sapiens became dominant because they could run, but not on their heels as most of us do these days.

It was almost a year later before I began to explore it for myself with any diligence, and I'm still into my 6th month of learning how to run all over again. The ah-ha came when I watched my dog one morning - dogs get it. The photo here (Kevin Moloney for The New York Times) shows the contrast perfectly: you can see the dog is on his forefoot, but the "advanced" species behind him is on its heels.

Progress is made anytime I can "see" the dog's feet in my mind and simultaneously feel what's happening on the ground. It becomes more stroke than stride, more pull than push, more caress than impact. I can't think of a better example of positive image leading to positive action.

Visualizing Scenario Thinking

2011-03-22T12:25:00.001-07:00

In April I'll make a presentation to the Joint Meeting of the Groups on Business Affairs and Institutional Planning in Philadelphia. The topic will be the progress to date on three-pronged project at the Brody School of Medicine that we are calling "Strategic Conversations." The portion posted below is on the work we've done with scenario thinking.

In late 2009 the Dean sent me a review of Scenarios: The Art of Strategic Conversation by Kees van der Heijden. His note said simply “A different form of visioning?” I was still relatively new, and I wondered what his intent was, but I decided I better get a copy and read it.

The approach advocated was stunning, in part because the rationale merged many things I had learned in other disciplines. The principles of systems thinking, visual language and Appreciative Inquiry were coming together although not necessarily explicitly. Overall, the strong argument for emergent practice and participative approach resonated.

“The formal planning process cannot in itself produce change. More is required……..most of the decision making takes place through informal contacts in which most of the strategic conversation takes place.”

“The main purpose of creating a planning system in the organization is to create a conversational process around these issues, mobilizing the totality of the organizational knowledge toward an emerging solution to this complex optimization problem.”

While reading Strategic Conversations, I was aware that BSOM “had a strategic plan,” but I was also aware that the Dean, having been here just two years, was already thinking differently. In many ways he was in a mindset of Ackoff’s Idealized Design. Wouldn’t it be great if we had a few more people to think along with him? Engaging with Scenarios would allow us to map the current system and the trends in the external context. One thought led to another until a white board was filled; a snapshot is shown here.

The vice-dean and I brought the dean in to present this as planning approach. Characteristically, he asked to just study it on his own for a few minutes. He then turned to us and said “What do you need from me?"

To assure relevancy in the scenarios we began with one-on-one interviews of 26 of the leaders in our BSOM community –faculty, chairs, administrators, board members and hospital executives. The protocol was designed to elicit what they were thinking about and paying attention to. Handwritten interview notes were then transcribed into mindmaps, and these were then separated into external and internal subject matter, with the internal being those over which we can exercise some control. The external issues were organized by the themes that seemed to emerge from the interviews. This was done by a qualitative analysis using the mind maps to explore relevancies. After informally testing these for reasonableness with a few individuals, a report was compiled for distribution to the scenario team.

To assemble the team, the Dean emailed a vague invitation to 25 people who were good thinkers and who collectively represented a cross-section of the school. Using the “Hidden Gorilla” video to set the tone, these individuals were asked to notify us if they chose to participate.

Another component of van der Heijden's process is The Business Idea, typically a visual depiction of a positive reinforcing loop that describes what we believe is actually happening when we perform well; it also translates into a simple narrative. Transcending static statements of values and vision, it portrays a living “engine of success” as we see it. One way of testing the accuracy of a Business Idea is to ask “Is it reflective of how we think and act as an organization?” An accurate depiction is useful in that it can be compared to the scenarios and adjustments made accordingly. It’s highest and best use, however, is in stimulating conversations about the relationship between thinking and acting.

The Business Idea here was shared in a short workshop with the department chairs. In small teams we had them converse about the depiction and the questions it raises.
At the end we asked for a “fist vote” of how well it represents our thinking. Although there was confusion about the Business Idea versus a business model (and even a vision) we seemed to be fairly well on target.

Until this point all of the analysis, preparation and distribution had been done by just me; now it was time to turn it over to the Scenario Team. Contrary to the norm, the first workshop did not begin with presentation and debate about the findings to date. We stipulated in advance that the material must be read before the workshop, and we began processing it with a focused conversation designed to see what people were thinking without the need to get to any kind of agreement.

Working in small groups, the team was tasked with a process of working with the 11 themes in the report and deriving the Critical Uncertainties that should be considered in our stories. These then were the material for a second workshop in which we invited John Prescott to come in as our “outsider” and comment on the Critical Uncertainties. John stayed and worked with us as we identifies important drivers of the future, their polar outcomes and ultimately the two dimension around which we would develop four scenarios.

As we reached this point close to the holidays, writing the scenarios took three separate workshops. Our first was a “beta” with just a few of us to test the methodology. One of the things we discovered was that visual tools helped the necessary conversations take off really fast.

The next two scenarios were written in a Monday morning workshop just a few days before Christmas. We helped two small groups through a process wherein they first developed an end state, and then they crafted a narrative around how it would come about. To capture their narratives without bogging down over writing, we had a videographer come in at the end of the meeting to capture the stories as they were verbally presented using the graphic material on the tables.

The last scenario was written in a bar. In an effort to get people together quickly after Christmas, I offered to buy the beer; I was also curious about the interaction of alcohol and creativity. In some ways, this evening produced an especially crisp view of the future.

This work grabs some but not others. The interviews with the leadership were almost all lengthy and intense, with the leaders energetically engaged. The initial workshop with the scenario team was also a high engagement event; however, only two thirds of that team stayed with us for the duration.

The energy in these conversations about the outside world suggest that although it’s not the school’s usual subject matter we are constantly thinking about it. Naming the four scenarios seemed to help have more presence in our interactions.

The workshops themselves were carefully scripted, but the actual work was carried out by self-organizing teams. They were quick to grasp the intent, and willing to work hard. We found that we really can interact in forms other than debate, and that there is a higher than expected tolerance for ambiguity.

Doing this work as visually as possible seemed to be a real help. Graphic templates made the more complicated components easily manageable by the teams. Visual tools like Visual Explorer and Leadership Metaphor Explorer seemed to actually productively jump-start conversations.

The final narratives were posted on a website along with details of the process. Attention is being called to them in arenas such as the full faculty meeting and the Dean’s Blog.

Since their completion, they have served as the launch point for a strategy initiative that will focus initially on the creation of Premium Partnerships for the School. It is anticipated that the Business Idea will resurface as a framework for new directions.

Confessions of a Bibliophile

2010-10-03T13:20:00.000-07:00

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

2010-09-21T14:29:00.000-07:00

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!

2010-08-15T06:55:00.000-07:00

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

2010-08-09T05:46:00.000-07:00

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

2010-08-05T18:22:00.001-07:00

IFVP Conference 2010 - Day 1

2010-08-04T22:13:00.001-07:00

Scribing The Practical Futurist

2010-07-08T10:13:00.000-07:00

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

2010-06-27T07:13:00.000-07:00

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

2010-04-10T08:42:00.000-07:00

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

2010-03-01T16:42:00.000-08:00

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.

S.O.A.R. Meets Visual Explorer

2009-10-01T03:31:00.000-07:00

I recently worked with an information technology services group in thinking through the changes emerging in their work. The design approach was framed around Appreciative Inquiry and S.O.A.R. The "A" is for Aspirations, and to work with that we used Visual Explorer.

The group had worked through an extensive Discovery phase over the summer, and prior to this session a few came together and synthesized their findings into Strengths and Opportunities. Working from those, we then articulated the group's Purpose. They were then asked to think for a few minutes and create a mental image about what life would be like if they were fluidly deploying those Strengths and Opportunities and serving that Purpose.

Around the room we had scattered the Visual Explorer cards, and we invited everyone to select one that best represented their mental image. They then worked in pairs to share their selections and thoughts, and subsequently the whole group worked with a cardstorming process to describe its shared aspirations.

Five Aspirations emerged. Once they were on the wall, they were asked if one of their selected Visual Explorer cards seemed to describe each one; some merited more than one image. They were then asked if there was a single image that seemed to represent the collection of aspirations, and they chose two: a picture of puzzle pieces as a description of where they are now, and a photo of Stonehenge to represent the firmness and completeness of their future.

Aspirations

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Quick'n'Dirty PowerPoint

2009-10-01T03:16:00.000-07:00

Have you ever had a mildly complicated point that you wanted to get across to just a few people? Have you ever felt trapped and confined when someone turned on a projector? I recently confronted these puzzles and explored a low-tech approach: index cards. The logic I was presenting had 9 or so steps, so I wrote each in very simple phrasing on a folded index card. It took about a minute and a half to talk through them, standing each on the table as though dealing from a deck. At that point they were a lot more useful than a slide show because they were all on the table together, instead of one at a time. As the conversation continued we could refer to them, move them around and otherwise work from a complete picture.

I'm thinking a next step might be to find do-it-yourself business cards that are made with a fold, and try using more refined text and images.

A World Cafe for Entering Medical Students

2009-08-19T13:03:00.000-07:00

Last week our newest class of first-year medical students arrived for week of orientation. One of the expectations placed on them is that they will make an early and formal commitment to a set of professional behaviors that they will honor throughout their education and then on into their professional lives.

The Senior Associate Dean for Academic Affairs asked if I would help her work with the group - 80 in all - to fashion an agreement. I suggested that we might not do justice to something that deep with so many in so little time - they had allotted two hours - and that we would do well to instead hold an exploratory conversation that would produce the content around which a written agreement could be drafted afterward. In that light a Cafe Conversation seemed perfect.

The session began with a presentation on the essential professional behaviors expected of physicians. These were described as Aspirations of Professionalism and I used those as a starting point on the graphic record drawing them in ahead of time.

Using a tent card, each table was designated as the site for one of the six aspirations. The students were instructed to then rotate each time to a different aspiration as well as to a different group of people. They were asked to reflect on this question with each aspiration: What commitments are we willing to make to our professional development and professional competence?

As I strolled the room during the table rounds, I began to be concerned as a couple of the sixteen tables were a little less engaged than the others. I didn't know quite how to read it, as this was only the second cafe I'd held with so many people. In many ways this particular week is a grueling boot camp for these young men and women, so I wondered if they were just running out of gas. Of course, I also had to second-guess the design.

The Harvesting, however, eliminated all doubts as the Cafe Magic kicked in. The reflections were slow to come at first, but as the outflow steadied it also grew deeper. By the time we were done the attendees not only expressed their satisfaction (and I love applause) but also took it upon themselves to designate a small group to craft the agreement that they will subsequently sign.
The graphic record moved the next morning into one of the classrooms they would be using during the day. Parents were on campus to see the "white coat ceremony" at days end, and I had the pleasure of seeing some of the students bring their family in to see the chart. the image will be included in their written agreement, and then kept around in poster form for the duration of this class's time here.

Mindmapping The Whuffie Factor

2009-07-03T08:10:00.000-07:00

I recently read Tara Hunt's The Whuffie Factor, and it reminded me of one of the cards from Leadership Metaphor Explorer. From there I signed on for a trial copy of Buzan's iMindMap and gave it a whirl.Most of the mapping I've done so far has been with Mindjet. It's really powerful software but I'm thinking it just doesn't exert the same kind of energy as a more organic and free flowing form.

Toward a Diagnostic for Process Design

2009-06-28T07:48:00.001-07:00

We've all been there: a carefully orchestrated change process is suddenly steered into another direction in the interest of "more action and less talk." Having embarked on an engagement designed to use Appreciative Inquiry and completing a first Discovery session, the decision was made that there would be no topical interviews and a revised schedule had no Dream phase. What happened?

Two things come to mind for future improvement: being more circumspect about taking "yes" for an answer, and becoming much more rigorous about jointly developing an agreed-upon change agenda. In this particular incident, AI was warmly viewed as an excellent tool for the issues at hand; however, it's possible that the AI solution was on the table before the task was fully analyzed. For instance, my assumption was that the change agenda had been previously determined as bringing Change, Progress and Renewal to the issue at hand. It was much later that I finally realized the intended message: the issue needs CPR. This is not the positive orientation upon which AI builds its success, and it seems to be a contributor to how things ran off the track.

The revised approach for this project will move more immediately into specific content and analysis; again, a pressure that many clients face for varying reasons. The choice that has to be made is around the value of a "deeper dive" that creates the capacity for fundamental change. For instance, we know that if new thinking doesn't permeate our conversations, our images don't change and therefore neither will our practices. We know from the Anticipatory Principle that there is huge potential in moving toward what we value as opposed to away from what we dislike. It can also be shown that the creation of images of ideal outcomes reveals alignment in group thinking; recent brain research shows higher levels of creativity in such positive atmospheres as opposed to the usual orientation of problem elimination.

A pattern that appears in a large body of work is that of a distinct "turn" in collective thinking under certain circumstances. Thomas Kuhn described it as the result of sufficient dissonance; Arthur M. Young showed it as a 90-degree turn, such that the new direction is equally different from its original destination and its source; Drexler and Sibbet described it as a point of commitment, Scharmer as the opening of will, Block as the point at which "the answer to How? is Yes!" Mapping these will often show a "u" or "v" shape, with various levels along the vertical dimension, and to these levels can be added those of the iceberg used in systems thinking.

The horizontal dimension can be described as moving from intention to action, as shown in the Enneagram work by G.I. Gurdjieff among others. So what's wrong with focusing on that direction? It's certainly how our day-to-day pressures present themselves. It's OK sometimes, but when? That's where a careful diagnosis of a situation merits as much attention as the process design itself.

So where might one begin? At a fundamental level, Heifetz's Leadership Without Easy Answers offers a starting point. In describing when to use technical versus adaptive practices, he suggests we consider the extent to which the challenge is well-defined and the likely solution already known. Similarly, Carlson and Bailey describe the use of the processing mode of thinking for when the variables are known, but the application of the flow mode for when they aren't. A diagnostic tool that allowed a designer to chart a client's situation among such markers would be invaluable.

Additional resources can be found in the literature on various approaches. For instance, on the AI Commons can be found advice on when NOT to use AI: predictable, linear process and outcomes are required; problem-identification/problem-solving is the preferred method for change; there is lack of support for passionate dreaming and inspired self-initiative.

The Creative Problem Solving Process may be a place to start with the development of such a diagnostic tool. In what ways might we use that process to design process?

CPSI #55

2009-06-27T10:15:00.001-07:00

The 55^th running of the Creative Problem Solving Institute was held this past week in Danvers, MA. It's the oldest conference most of us know of, sustained annually by the high energy that participants bring as well as their commitment to the sponsor, the Creative Education Foundation.

We heard Sarah Miller Caldicott talk about Thomas Edison, his charismatic optimism and his use of the analogical thinking that the human brain really enjoys. Claude Stein reflected on the Essence of Leadership: identifying a message, finding true heart and then convincing and persuading others. Dean Kamen distinguished invention, which is usually about technology, from innovation which is usually about people. He also had the best one-liner for the week: the difference between genius and stupidity is that genius has limits. Keith Sawyer told us about the creative power of collaboration, using improv theatre as an example of how it's not so much the individuals as the interactions between them. His experience suggests that everyone can be creative, and that creativity always emerges over time and always involves sharing and collaboration.

For the week I attended the Tools and Techniques component of the Facilitating Creative Leadership track. Our large and revved-up group learned about the work of Guy Aznar; his flow from concept to image and then to sensation is one I'll explore further in the context of Theory U, Arthur M. Young and systems thinking's iceberg. Especially cool tools were the Ladder of Abstraction, How-How and the Problem Police.

As usual, I captured what I could in my journal from day to day. To some extent it was hit and miss because we were rarely allowed to just for long periods of time without getting up and doing something. Many kind people commented on what I was doing, expressed curiosity about it and asked if they could take a look at week's end. For them, the pages are reproduced here through Picasa.

NACUFS Meets Idealized Design

2009-06-16T17:08:00.001-07:00

Last week I conducted the Planning Institute for the National Association of College and University Food Service (NACUFS), one of an impressive array of offerings they have for their members. Originally scripted with NACUFS as well as the Society for College & University Planning and conducted in 2007, the workshop uses Russell Ackoff's Idealized Design as a platform for learning about issues in planning.

Part of our rationale in choosing this model was based on the assumption that food service operators should be able to quickly grasp the systems analysis with which the process begins. In 2007 we actually struggled with this piece moreso than any others, so a redesign was in store this time around. Here, we mixed very simple approaches with modest requirements for results, and when this was coupled with the extraordinary work effort that NACUFS members bring to these events the results were incredible. Dubious at first, they all saw their sticky notes transition from chaos to order.

One of the struggles I currently have with this particular approach is that it begins with a deficit orientation; in fact, most of the training I've had so far in systems thinking emphasizes problem-seeking. Rather than just sell Ackoff short, attention was called to that issue as they were asked to reflect on how heavy the atmosphere was as we "designed the mess." We also asked for their own experiences in dealing with positively focused issues as opposed to the usual negative orientation.

They toughed through relatively mindfully, and continued their solid work. The mission statements they developed were as good if not better than most I've seen in the "real world," and they produced them with a minimum of wordsmithing. As they discovered the need for collaboration among groups, they began with a few representatives at first, and eventually entire teams were pairing up to work through issues. The systems thinking approach apparently helped them, as their proposals and solutions clearly had an eye on the total campus context, and not just dining.

We introduced them to a variety of tools. A trends analysis was done by assembling and analyzing a large collage made from magazine clippings. We used Creative Problem-Solving as a reference for careful sequencing of the work, and then added some fast brainwriting to quickly seed idea sessions. CCL's Visual Explorer was used with one group to write the story of "the mess," and with another to help start the Idealized Design. Rather than use the traditional gap analysis to move from Idealized Design to Means Planning, we borrowed from Appreciative Inquiry and helped them collaboratively write Provocative Propositions.

It's often the case after an event like this that we go home full of excitement, but then it passes in the face of the next week's demands. To confront this head-on, we designed a set of reflective questions, based in concept on the Dream stage in AI but blended with Idealized Design, and asked them to work in pairs to write and share a story about what the next year would be like for each of them. Some of the thoughts we heard were:

The quote I'll remember: It's easier to tame down a wild idea than to wild up a tame one;
The provocative propositions work was really nice. We NEVER write down these things;
I have a great team! I can do this! Let's think bigger!
Sometimes a peak experience begins with a setback;
We're all in this together;
I can start my own story now;
A cookie cutter approach is not what we did this week. Thank you, Bruce!

The Selected Works of T. S. Spivet

2009-05-31T06:17:00.000-07:00

I'm curious if anyone has seen this book. A review showed up in today's newspaper, and it included this paragraph:

T.S. Spivet - his initials stand for "Tecumseh Sparrow," which is fully explained - is a rather peculiar 12-year-old boy, narrating in his inimitably charming voice. He lives with his family on a ranch in Montana, where he spends his days immersed in cartography. No topic is too esoteric for his intricate maps and diagrams, displayed in the book's margins. (They were created by the author and Ben Gibson, who designed the book's quirky typography.)

There is also a very cool website.

A Tip o' the Hat to Squarespace

2009-05-26T16:32:00.000-07:00

I first set this blog up right after reading The World Is Flat. It seemed so easy that I then went after my own website, but that's been a little different story. Even software that I call "web tools for dummies" made updates a chore if not an event to be dreaded.

While prowling in Lifehacker I found Squarespace and gave it a try - it didn't take long to convince me. So far I've found it relatively easy to use, and I'm continuing to figure out just what I can do with it. The best part: I can update and experiment constantly.

Their customer service is really strong. They were quick and expansive when I asked questions before signing up. When I blacked out my whole site by putting the wrong code in the wrong place (nothing is completely idiot-proof, huh?) they fixed it and had me back up in an hour. Highly recommended!

Picasso's War

2009-03-09T14:19:00.000-07:00

A 5-for-$15 sale at BetterWorldBooks landed a copy of Picasso's War, by Russell Martin. It tells the story of the village and the painting, from 1937 up through the work's return from exile to Spain in 1981. Among the things I learned was that Dora Marr photographed the painting at various stages. Those images are shown in the slideshow below, and a lot more can be found on an extensive website belonging to David M.Hart.

Those tic marks on the horse? They were added by Marr working along with Picasso, and it's believed to be the only time he ever allowed anyone to work on one of his canvases.

"Third Loop" meets the World Cafe

2009-02-18T09:24:00.000-08:00

Subsequent to the discussion with the campus group described in the post below, a committee of energetic and creative people was appointed to plan the event. Although I'll lead the cafe event itself, I figured out very quickly the best thing to do was to give them a few pointers and then get out their way! I am not accustomed to such strong, positive forces in a university setting, and it is a TREAT!!!

They've created an event as well as a video teaser, graphics and a t-shirt design. They've identified themes for framing the event. We'll have 175 students and another 75 staff, parents, faculty and alums. Holy catfish - what a crowd!

The challenge to come: designing the cafe's question.

A Third Loop

2009-01-19T12:39:00.000-08:00

With some groups I've been using a planning process taught by the Institute for Cultural Affairs. Known as ToP Strategic Planning, it lends itself to a generative way of thinking. In particular, the sequence for developing purpose, mission and values has so far produced succinct results for my groups without the usual tortuous wordsmithing.

As ICA presents it, it's a sequential process, and that bothered me initially. Although they point out the importance of acting on our values, it seemed that those two pieces needed a stronger connection. There was also a need for "reality" to get in there somewhere. It eventually occurred to me to think of this process as two loops that connected through Reality, and I drew it for myself as shown here.

This process is taught for use in a facilitated engagement. To ICA and others who have presented similar sequences I have always inquired: "I work in a university, and we claim to require data. Where does the data come in here?" There's never been a satisfying answer. Recently I was asked to help a campus group talk through the start of a planning process, and their first and highest concern was how to tackle what appeared to be a an enormously complex situation analysis. In the scripted process they were using, this piece of work was near the middle of the sequence. I scribbled out the ToP methodology for them and asked "What if we looked at our situation first, instead of later?" What emerged in the conversation was a third loop that may well answer my questions about data and other tools for getting at reality.

It seemed to me that we might best start by looking at the situation very broadly, and then "noticing what we notice." By taking stock of emergent issues we spend our time on things that are more likely to be important. In this instance, I recommended a World Cafe that might be quite large to assure that we had the entire system in the room. Knowing that a carefully crafted question would yield a cogent collection of topics, we could drill down as needed. Data-gathering and validation methods could be chosen to suit the issue: focus groups, surveys, Walkabouts just to name a few. The findings could then be synthesized and converged into "the story," an elegant narrative easily told by anyone that accurately describes the situation we're about to work with. Once we can do that, we should have a solid and shared context within which to ascertain our organizational identity.Such a whole system/divergent/convergent process has features worth paying attention to. First of all, it doesn't really care about top-down thinking, and instead allows important issues to emerge on their own. It doesn't respect silos either, and there is little that will be off-limits. It can be a hugely creative experience with persistent dialogue among those doing the data-gathering. Although the book Good to Great is sometimes accused of having done harm because it gets used as a cookbook, the really fascinating story in it is about how they discussed and probed their findings in dialogue with each other in order to develop their conclusions.

A few days after this discussion, I began getting ready for a teleconference about a workshop I'll present in June. For this particular association, we use Russell Ackoff's Idealized Design as a framework for surfacing the many issues that arise in university planning. This third loop that has emerged offers some similarities to "designing the mess" as described by Dr. Ackoff. If we were to find a place to insert a bit of systems thinking into this emergent approach to a situation analysis it just might really become something!

Feeding Our Mental Models

2009-01-03T09:49:00.001-08:00

Thanks to Richard Karash I’ve been reading O’Connor and McDermott’s The Art of Systems Thinking. I have to admit that as a novice on the topic I found the first few attempts challenging, but that was before mainlining on systems thinking at the Pegasus Conference. I sat down with it again yesterday and it now reads like a novel!

In their explanation of generative learning, they describe the changes that can take place in our mental models. The change occurs in response to feedback that can only be received through our senses. This might be from messages in our body such as pain, discomfort or general un-ease. It can also be messages from other people’s bodies by way of tones in speech or body language. Unfortunately we each have thresholds in that sensitivity, often a product of our mental models themselves, that cause us to miss the feedback.

In what ways might we improve that sensitivity? I’m thinking a place to start is with a change in the medium. In a post below is a description of using Visual Explorer as a tool for finding a message inside us. We can also learn from our own images as described in Fox and Ganim’s Visual Journaling: Going Deeper than Words. Their process begins with noticing the messages from our bodies, and visualizing what those sensations might look like. I have found that as I work into the depths of their program, images and messages have appeared that were astounding. They seemed to have been imported from somewhere or someone as they just didn’t “fit” my usual lexicon. Among my mental models is one that says when I surprise myself, it’s time to pay attention and learn something.

Such visual work can go even deeper if we use Tsultrim Allione’s Feeding Your Demons. As in Visual Journaling one begins by noticing an internal sensation, and then visualizing it. The next step is to then personalize the image by looking for its living features like eyes, ears, hands a mouth; at that point one of your Demons has appeared. A conversation follows that leads you to offering the Demon what it tells you it needs, and then seeing it transform. Under certain circumstances, an Ally can emerge at the end of this exchange.

Among the reasons I was drawn to the book was a conversation I had with Diana Whitney. I had tossed out that old line about how people resist change, and she issued a pointed rejoinder: “People don’t resist change. They resist any situation in which they’re not getting something they need.” Might we work with our Mental Models as with our Demons: by giving them what they need and allowing the transformation to unfold?

Getting "The Bends" from Young, Sibbett, Kim, Block.......

2008-12-26T08:01:00.000-08:00

In November I attended the Pegasus Conference with the intention of learning how to do systems diagrams; things went a bit beyond that. At the end of the week I attended a 2-day workshop presented by Kristina Wile and a couple of her associates, and they showed a cycle of moving from Events, to Patterns to Systemic Structures, and then back through Patterns and then to Events. They illustrated this with a little diagram that was like an upside-down “u.”

I had never seen those steps illustrated like that before. Flip it over, add Mental Models and Vision, and the works of Daniel Kim and others have room to appear. Theory U is easy to connect with, especially as it comes from the same community of practice. Squint at it only a little and the Drexler/Sibbett Team Performance Model peaks back, taking one to Arthur M. Young’s Theory of Process. Buried in Young’s work are references to Thomas Kuhn’s Structure of Scientific Revolutions, a book loaned to me by a dean and a subject that recently keeps coming up in otherwise unrelated instances. The ICA’s Focused Conversation hangs on this framework nicely, too.

Are these similar but otherwise diverse thoughts and processes, or are they one truth showing through different voices? Lori Arviso-Alvord spoke here in November and I noticed in her presentation many aspects of Navajo spirituality that sounded very much like things I have recently read on Buddhism. I had the good fortune to chat with her afterwards, and she said she, too, had noticed similarities between these very separate worlds. I immediately wondered if these separate worlds were in fact observing the same phenomena.

What might we make of all this, some sort of Unified Field Theory? Einstein passed without ever realizing his hopes for that in his discipline. Is there a unifying visual process that can be built here? Well, there’s already a Group Graphics Keyboard.

My current thinking is that there is other work to be done, and other questions to take up. What does Kenneth Boulding’s The Image add here – the suggestion that the bottom tip of the form is like the keel on a racing yacht? Is Appreciative Inquiry using that bottom as a starting point? Should we take Jeff Conklin's Dialogue Mapping as an indication that sequences cannot stand up to our innate tendencies? What tells us how deep to go, when and under what circumstances – Ron Heifetz’s Leadership Without Easy Answers? Or The Center for Creative Leadership’s GOLD Model? Where does the Osborn-Parnes Creative Problem-Solving Process fit in? Was Peter Block thinking about the difference between the right and left sides when he wrote The Answer to How Is Yes? Is this a way to get at double-loop learning as explained by Roger Schwarz? If we navigate the entire cycle, what makes it stick, what keeps us from backsliding?

I’m thinking it’s like that story about the two little boys, where one was an optimist and the other a pessimist: there’s a pony in here somewhere!

Peagsaus Day 4 - Emotion and Communality

2008-11-21T04:20:00.000-08:00

Anne Murray’s forum was entitled To Understand Performance, Follow the Joy, and she built again on the true nature of the systems we’re studying. Anne noted that organizations are networks of living systems, and she made me remember my dentist Randy Fussell. Randy periodically works with dental students in their clinical, and he’s convinced they are thoroughly knowledgeable about each and every tooth and how it works. The role he assumes in that setting is one of making sure the students understand that there is a human being attached to that tooth. So it is with systems.

What kind of network are you in? Are there power issues? Any hoarding of information? Are people anxious to leave? If mapped, would it look like a wheel and spokes? You’re probably in an Ambition Network.

Or do you see trust and excitement? Is there a generative or even magical atmosphere? Is emotion freely displayed? Is there an emergence of well-being? Would a network map show star patterns? If so, you’re in a Collaborative Network. Think of the high accomplishments in your life: was there a prominent social aspect, and waves of emotion?

How might we move forward in either of these? Ask a few questions. Are you inspired? Where do you feel joy? What are you conserving in your manner of being with others? Are you a mindful and compassionate leader?

And then, try something really revolutionary, something your OD and HR people will not like: stop using the word “change.” Ask instead “What do we need to conserve?”

I was left with a question: what does this tell us about what we should capture in our graphics with groups. There is a saying that content is king, and some of us work as if taking depositions. Is there another layer that - if not represented - we should be showing the way to?The conference closed with Betty Sue Flowers and Peter Senge on Connecting with Meaning to Fuel Our Highest Performance. Human systems start in thought, often in untested assumptions. “Grow or die” for example. These thoughts are evident in our stories, and it is on our stories that our lives depend. Those stories can change shape with changes in perspective; the hero story is different from the victim story which is in turn different from the learning story, even if the players are the same.

We may now be caught between two stories: the one from the Industrial Age, and an emerging story of a universe that is alive, with an irreversible trend toward communality and increasing connectedness. This new story is ecological in form and substance; its actors are creators and its mode is expressive. It is a story becoming aware of itself.

Pegasus Conference - Day 3

2008-11-19T04:47:00.000-08:00

Last May I attended SoL's Foundations for Leadership Workshop, and heard Peter Senge make the distinction between the mechanical systems that characterize many management structures, and the human systems that are being discovered and validated by the best and brightest organizations. This conference builds on that by repeatedly showing that if we're interested in the quality of what's being produced, we need to get really interested in the quality of human energy that goes into it through the systems of relationships that support it all.

Tuesday began with Sarah Lawrence-Lightfoot speaking on Respect as an Active Force. Her memory from childhood, "I'm going to school - will anyone know who I am?" became a guiding theme in the work she's done in studying relationships. Of the 6 dimensions of respect, she highlighted curiosity as evidenced in the work of photograher Daiud Bey, an element that invites connection, unmasked experience and reciprocity. Of the eight lessons she has learned about respect, dissonance was the most surprising. She pointed out that it should not be avoided as it illuminates, and that there is value in disturbing the inertia by saying the unexpected.

A team working with Harvard Medical Associates told how Culture Eats Strategy, citing data that showed how performance problems can be coupled with a compliance model that is especially strong in medicine, and how an overwhemingly disrespectful environment makes matters even worse. They had an anbelievable quantity of content that they actually completed coherently in their presentation, but one piece stood out for me: The Heirarchy of Joining a Team begins with "What do I get?" So often we tell others or are told ourselves to set this aside and think of the greater whole, but systems thinking challenges that duality. We can't take care of ourselves with out taking care of the whole, and we can't take care of the whole without taking care of ourselves. It's not an either-or situation.

Skip Griffin and David Marsing conducted a daunting forum on Inspiring Coherence in Communities by Shifting the Way We Come Together. We speak our social worlds into existence. What we believe is what we can do. Wanting change is very different from wanting life, and there's never nothing going on.

The day ended with Atul Gawande presenting Better: Lessons from Medicine on Performance under Conditions of Extreme Complexity. As the B-17 was originally condemned as "too much airplane," are we now in a situation where there is more medicine than we can handle safely? Why do we fail? One of two reasons: because of what we don't know, or because of what we don't do with what we do know. Complexity in medicine and saving lives demands increasing attention on the latter, and that can take the form of three commitments: to measure ourselves, to seek ingenuity and to "give it a try" - asking ourselves if we can make that change. Complexity - sneaky when it's growing - can be managed through organization, and organization is not a resource-dependent approach; the data shows it.

Pegasus Conference - Day 2

2008-11-18T03:39:00.000-08:00

Finally, I get to hear Adam Kahane. His book “Solving Tough Problems” made a fundamental shift in my thinking about the possibilities in sharing our deepest thoughts with each other. Today he talked about addressing our toughest social challenges from the perspectives of power and love. He quoted Paul Tillich’s definition of power as the drive in every living thing to realize itself, and of love as the drive to unify the separated. He said that when these are coupled, they are generative, but they are degenerative when they exist independently of each other. Martin Luther King was quoted as saying that power without love is reckless and abusive, and love without power is sentimental and anemic.

Adam called for us to be bilingual with these, or even bipedal like the scarecrow learning to walk, one foot in front of the other, lurching for awhile but eventually learning to dance in unconscious competence. Like Nashon stepping into the Red Sea just before it parted, some of us will have to stop sitting on the bank and go ahead and get our feet wet.
Anne McGee-Cooper and Gary Looper hosted a session on “Claiming Bold Dreams” and told the story of how Texas Instruments used servant leadership to exceed its own expectations about the cost of resource-conscious design. They gave a brief overview of the concept by comparing a non-servant approach of hired hands, hierarchies, ego and competition to a servant-leader awareness of engaged hearts and minds, mutual trust and shared visions. That trust will allow a collective to see a way out of hard situations, even though if leaders are servants they are not controlling.

Shaunna Black, TI’s VP for Facilities talked about that organization’s decision to build a plant in the US with one eye on the cost that could be realized in the far east and the other on breaking new ground in sustainable design and operations. Once the head shed at TI was made aware of the value of a sustainable approach, they empowered the project team by taking a servant leadership approach that shared the vision, was open about the unknowns and displayed the trust necessary for high innovation. Systems thinking helped them set aside the usual first-cost/operating-cost debate and instead realize huge economies by fundamental alterations in traditional models. In this case, a LEED certification did not cost the oft-cited 20% extra.

Judy Ringer presented on “Managing Conflict with Presence and Power” using Aikido as a basis for taking the negative energy and responding to it with connection rather than resistance. With an eye fixed on what matters, our energy can redirect opposing forces toward that same goal instead of wasting ourselves resisting external circumstances. Although she was using this approach as a way of dealing with conflict, I’m thinking it could also apply to how we hold all the “stuff” that competes with our visions and often overwhelm them.

Peter Senge, Jeff Hollender and Darcy Winslow ended the day with “Purpose Beyond Profit,” a discussion on SOL’s current thinking about transforming the practice of management to one that supports life. Although the sum of all efforts is still a drop in the bucket, businesses are waking up to the fact that not only is climate change happening but that climate change is only part of the story; the real question is becoming one of how we will all live together. Some scientists insist we have only three to four years to make a significant shift, and hope lies in the belief a few small targeted changes will set others in motion. It does not take large majorities to bring about significant change over time, but that does make it incumbent on some of us to get off the dime and lead. Somehow we have to get out of the “eye of the needle” syndrome that suggests we have to give up something, and instead start looking at what we have to gain.

Pegasus has a poet and a musician working with us as a form of reflective capture, and today they closed with “Where did you go? What was the flow? How did you grow? Where did you start? Where did you grow in your heart?”

Pegasus Conference - Day 1

2008-11-16T18:36:00.000-08:00

We spent today with Mike Goodman and David Stroh in their workshop "Applied Systems Thinking to Facilitate Change." Finally, those mystifying causal loops make a little more sense to me now. As with many things, "the map is not the destination," and the process of enabling people to talk through their systems is far more valuable than the final product. We learned that focusing questions evolve as that process goes on, and that the graphs and charts make that question visual. Although the drawings are powerful, their value lies in their ability to help systems thinking to emerge through stortytelling.

I had the good fortune to do my hands-on work with Riet from the Netherlands. She's involved in a cross-organizational puzzle as I am, so we learned quite a bit in our exchange. Some of the photos below are of her presentation of the work we did together. An added bonus was hearing from another group that explored mandated time-to-appointment in a healthcare system, something I've seen before locally.

VUVOX and the Orchestra Forum

2008-10-01T16:03:00.000-07:00

I was lucky enough to be able to work with David Magellan Horth and the Center for Creative Leadership in their Orchestra Forum leadership development program. As I captured content from the dialogues and placed it on the wall, David made videos using a little Flip camera as he also helped guide the discussions.

I took a pass at posting the work in VUVOX, a Web 2.0 app that was demonstrated at the IFVP conference. The graphic record can share the same space as downloads and videos. Pretty neat stuff!

Visualizing Circles of Cairns

2008-08-12T13:18:00.000-07:00

A SoL Consultants Convergence was held in August in Manchester, New Hampshire on August 10 and 11. During the first day’s Capacity Lab, Carol Mase of Cairn Consultants demonstrated her “Circle of Cairns” tool. Stated very briefly, a 3-circle venn diagram is drawn on a piece of paper, and in the center triangle is placed a word representing the issue to be worked with. Next, three additional words are chosen as drivers of the issue in the center, and each is placed in one of the three circles. The person (or group) is then asked to choose a word that fits the overlap between any pair of circles.

The next step is to derive a word that describes the combination of each pair of circles and their overlap. The three emerging “outer words” are then considered in pairs along with the two overlap terms between them and the original issue. These final three words may represent key themes or insights, but there is a dialogue with the resulting graphic to see just where the most powerful combinations emerge. A copy of one of these, on legal paper, is shown here.

As we discussed these in our groups, it was hard for me to hold so many words together. (It reminded me of ordering at a drive-thru for a car full of people.) I started thinking pictures might work better for me, and I just happened to have a set of Visual Explorer (VE) cards with me. I then found a willing subject, whom I’ll call “M.”

We began by laying all of the VE images on the floor, and I asked her to pick the one that spoke to her at this time. We placed it in the center of an easel sheet, and I asked her to describe for me what was in the picture, in terms of its raw data; I then asked her to describe how it connected with her. I knew immediately I was on to something when her description of the data differed considerably from mine. Next, I asked her to select three images that represent drivers for the issue that had emerged in the first image. We placed those on the sheet around the first photo, and she described all three as she had the first one. From there, we proceeded with the rest of the process as Carol had originally presented it, and the resulting graphic is shown here.

As we were completing it, Carol walked over and joined us. As M was about to explain what was represented, Carol stopped her, and asked me to use the graphic to tell to M the story we had created together. The confidence with which I could do it astonished me.

It was a totally engaging experience. I watched M and listened in total fascination, wanting to “participate” in her thinking and creating but remembering that my role was to be just the guide. There were tears, and hugs. I’ve never done or been trained in any way for peer coaching, but if this is what it can be like I want to start now!!!!

What else might follow? This is a wonderful “system of insight” that Carol has developed, and I’m thinking that graphic images might just electrify it if we continue to explore that avenue. How about you?

International Forum of Visual Practitioners Conference 2008 - Last Call

2008-08-09T13:14:00.000-07:00

After everything was packed up and put away, Brandy invited us over to her backyard to celebrate the completion of this really strong conference. Most would know this backyard as Milennium Park, and we spread blankets and goodies on the lawn in Frank Gehry's Pritzker Pavilion as the orchestra opened with Grieg's Piano Concerto and the sun fell like a curtain on our week's performance.

International Forum of Visual Practitioners Conference 2008 - Day 3

2008-08-08T19:52:00.000-07:00

International Forum of Visual Practitioners Conference 2008 - Day 2

2008-08-07T17:55:00.000-07:00

International Forum of Visual Practitioners Conference 2008 - Day 1

2008-08-06T19:26:00.000-07:00

This year's conference is in the Windy City, right on Michigan Avenue. As is always the case, we have a good mix of seasoned hands and new talent in development. In such an atmosphere there's often something that emerges that's just begging for attention.

For me, that issue arose in a question posed in a post-session discussion: where are we internally when we are recording and fully locked in? It didn't quite fit the agenda so it went into the parking lot, but for me it's the meat of the matter. Why? Because if we understand how we arrive in such a present moment, we can learn to help those we serve do the same.

Here are some snapshots from the first day of this year's conference.

ZZ Top Meets Visual Process

2008-08-04T06:43:00.000-07:00

I have a 3-block walk to work, and I listen to music that I think I "need" for starting the day. One day last week it was ZZ Top - Sharp Dressed Man, etc. I was pretty surprised at how it infected me so quickly.

I came in to draw up a poster for a meeting, and started with a sketch in my notebook. When it came time to put it on large paper on the wall the earplugs went in again. It became impossible to draw without juking to the music, and rather quickly the sketch went out the proverbial window as another idea emerged altogether. I had a ball!!!!

I'm not sure how all that looks when a 54-year old guy is doing it, but who cares? Powerful stuff.

Tipping Points

2008-02-10T11:49:00.000-08:00

On our IFVP conference planning site, Nancy Margulies noted “Also, we in the Bay Area are exploring what the Tipping Point for our profession might be—how it might grow rapidly, how it might contribute to substantial large scale change, etc.”

Just maybe I’ve inadvertently pushed on that edge a little by using maps to aid in story-telling. In the Retreats and Videos post below I described a session with ECU’s Division of Research and Graduate Studies. To begin planning the event, I asked the Associate Vice-Chancellor, Paul Gemperline, to tell me what was going on. As he talked I just drew on the wall with a big fat piece of lead. We eventually decided to start the event with him telling “Paul’s Story” about the Division and its current situation. He used a much cleaned up version of the map in his presentation, and to begin the Focused Conversation about it we had each participant come up and add to that map.

In the Visual Process Meets Mortality post immediately below, I interviewed the 15 participants ahead of time with a protocol that borrowed from Appreciative Inquiry. I put all of their responses on the 11-foot long graphic, and then added illustrations of things that struck me. In the back of my mind was an instance described in the book Appreciative Inquiry and Organizational Transformation
in which the interviewers wrote parables. In the session here, we set aside time for everyone to stand and study the graphic. Next, I talked about the images very briefly and we then repeated the Focused Conversation process described above.

So what does this have to do with Nancy’s note? Both of these graphic records turned into stories that were returned to the groups for an afternoon’s work. As stories they took on another form, and then each dealt with them in their own way. I’m thinking there are emotional aspects as described below in SoL in Tucson: we react when we see what we’ve said written down by someone else; we react to color; some react to visuals, others to words and stories. Some might suggest that the space between emotion and reason is where presence exists. Can we develop these practices to aid large scale change? Paul Gemperline seems to think so.

Visual Process Meets Mortality?

2008-02-09T12:50:00.000-08:00

Monday morning, halfway through my quarter-mile walk to work, my left leg began to ache. Cramp-like, on the side of the calf. No explanation, no indication of a running injury. I hobbled across the street, and then on and off the pain was worse, the kind that periodically takes your breath away. Blood clot? Stroke? I got an appointment with my MD, and as I walked in I noticed the pain leave. No doubt about it. An x-ray showed a slight misalignment of two vertebrae in an area where sciatic symptoms originate. It was explained that I apparently got something just a little out of place, and then it went back into place on its own.

How did that happen? My 20-hour weekend graphic-on-the-fly? I had spent the previous week conducting 15 one-hour interviews with participants in a coming planning workshop. I had only the weekend to process the info for presentation and discussion, so early Saturday morning I sat down and began grinding it out on the tablet PC. Under normal circumstances I’m a noodler, reflecting and second-guessing, but there was no time for that here. I noticed each idea and acted on it. Far fewer breaks than normal, even during the 12 straight hours on Sunday. The graphic was successful – all 11 feet of it - but at too high a price?

The Man In the Maze

2008-01-18T08:57:00.000-08:00

The diagram below was found painted on the wall in the museum of the San Xavier Mission in Tucson. The explanation that follows was provided by a local silversmith, Joe Begay.

To the Tohono O'odham, the man at the top of the maze symbolizes the birth of the individual, the family, the tribe and Iitoi (our Creator). As the figure goes through the maze (a person's life), it may encounter many turns and changes. Progressing deeper and deeper into the pattern one acquires more knowledge, strength, and understanding. As the figure nears the end of the maze it sees death approaching (the dark center of the pattern). Interestingly, it is able to bypass death and retreat to a small corner of the pattern. It is here that it repents, cleanses itself, and reflects back on all the wisdom it has gained in life. Finally pure and in harmony with the world, it accepts death. As a person journeys through their life (the maze), they can feel comfort in the fact that Iitoi is always there to help and comfort them.

SoL in Tucson

2008-01-17T15:56:00.000-08:00

Some of us SoL Consultant members met on a ranch in Tucson this past weekend, and the experiences peeled back the covers from some things I had inadvertently put to bed. Activity-wise, we spent a day with horses in a way in which they reflected back to us the energy that we project universally. During that session I had a stunning encounter with a handsome specimen named Kai Master that was especially unambiguous in the way that he “chose” me.

We spent the next day in sessions using exercises designed for theatre ensembles, wherein we experienced contact with each other in ways I had never seen before. At a very deep level, the transparency and awareness produced something much like what I experienced in a workshop with Roger Schwarz & Associates and his Skilled Facilitator practices. The vocabulary and the actions were completely different, but the levels of contact were eerily similar.

Add that to a book I just happened to be reading at the same time, “For the Love of a Dog: Understanding Emotions in You and Your Best Friend,” and I have come home with a few thoughts and special observations:

I’ve been underestimating the power of emotions in communications. The theatre person working with us talked about how little information we get verbally in comparison to seeing and sensing people. As Roger Schwarz would say, “When emotions run high there is lots of good data”;
With the horses it was suggested that those emotions are actually observable energy, as explored by Dora Kunz;
Yes, we use our images as improvements over the spoken word, but what do we know about the emotional power? I’m thinking now that just adding color to text could trigger hormones and emotions;
Separate parts of our brain are responsible for emotions and reasoning. Studies of brain injuries have shown that when these two parts cannot communicate, an individual is incapable of making decisions;
I haven’t even begun to understand just how far images can carry us.

Retreats and Videos

2007-12-27T14:46:00.001-08:00

I worked recently with a university division, helping them through a day-long planning retreat. We did some things I hadn't tried before, most notably having the group design its own focus question at the start of the day as opposed to working with the design team in advance. Attached is a short - and small - video of how a day like that looks, with some post-event mindmaps thrown in for complete capture.

IFVP 2007

2007-10-23T16:16:00.000-07:00

This was a really good and especially welcoming event. To be sure and honor the gifts I received, I'm placing here several things I promised people:

Un-retouched snapshots of Leslie and Rachel at Bandelier are in Flickr;
Steve can find info on quick-draw artist and all-around entertaining guy Jon Pearson on his site;
The book Dialogue by William Isaacs that I described to David can be read about here;
For Rob and Laurie, my experiences with ORID - Objective, Reflective, Interpretive and Decisional - modes of thought are based on material and training from the Institute for Cultural Affairs and the Focused Conversation. There is also a post below this one about my most recent experience with the Focused Conversation;
Also on the ICA site, Lynn can find a book on the Workshop Method;
I promised Brandy I would see if SoL could recommend someone for a program on listening for next year's conference. Just in case a fall-back position is needed, I found in one of the museums a well-credentialed speaker with ready-to-go material.

Did anyone besides us manage a few spare minutes in Albuquerque to see any of the work of our predecessors?

Focused Conversations

2007-09-23T06:49:00.000-07:00

The Institute for Cultural Affairs includes in its workshops the practice of Focused Conversation, a process for shared reflection that sets the stage for subsequent action. The idea is that each of us prefers one of four modes of thought: objective, reflective, interpretive or decisional. When you find yourself in a meeting that seems to be going all over the place, the odds are that all four of these voices are trying to play out simultaneously. The Focused Conversation offers a way of working through these different thought styles in sequence so that each can make its contribution for the benefit of the greater whole. I have used the process with results that range from the spectacular to the regretful. As the method as presented is verbally oriented, the potential for images is an ongoing question in my own mind.

Recently I served as a graphic recorder for a planning workshop. As I had also been asked to facilitate a closing discussion, I chose the Focused Conversation method. With this particular group of university faculty and practicing professionals it was very difficult to hold them to the sequence, as their minds were clearly in an interpretive mode. They were polite and respectful, but I was not successful with the process as planned. Just before I turned the meeting back to the organizers I was asked to walk them through the graphic record. In just a minute or two, the ambience changed drastically, attaining the engagement through the graphic that I had sought through conversation. Afterwards, I realized I had not taken advantage of other lessons.

During the spring I worked with a graduate program on a strategic plan, and at one point I was asked to present the committee’s work to their faculty of about forty. This transition from the committee to the stakeholders is always a dicey proposition, and I decided to take a blended approach to the Focused Conversation. I briefly presented the planning to date, using a very large graphic around which our planning process had been built. At the end of my remarks, I put this big group through a brief mind-clearing exercise, and then presented the objective question that begins the process; however, rather than asking each of them to speak their response, I asked them all to come up and write it on the graphic itself. We then completed the conversation with them standing around the image and their notations. The resulting atmosphere created some insightful discussion, including a couple of ah-ha’s and – most importantly – the group’s decision that the committee should continue along its current path.

Image Encounter

2007-06-03T08:45:00.000-07:00

He traveled far to attend a meeting, a meeting of people who were highly skilled in areas of which he was becoming both aware and extremely passionate. Two days in relatively intimate collaboration with people he did not know – this was new, and a break from well-entrenched past patterns.

The group used various processes for establishing inner connections as part of the creation of a “safe space for dialogue” where one could “open the heart.” In one instance, the group was asked to go into deep concentration and, with the eyes closed, draw an image of how they saw their highest dreams. This was followed by a second image, again made with the eyes closed, that would describe what it would be like to overcome the obstructions to those dreams.

In the first image the man immediately saw himself as the Gandalf or Obi-Wan Kenobi of this group’s skills, mastering the vast energy and potential of the human condition and using it to do good things in the world. In the second image, the man sought to describe what it would be like to throw off the constraints, self-imposed and otherwise, that held him back. There was an immediate nagging doubt that this image was already jaded.

Just a short time later, the man wondered “Did I draw what I thought I was drawing?” Was he really visualizing throwing off bonds so that he could extend himself? Was it possible that the image was telling him that breaking through containment to extend oneself was not the issue, but that the path lay might lie in removing his own barriers to accepting and embracing the world, its people and its conditions? In other words, is his task not one of breaking out, but of letting in? A task of opening his heart?

An Experience with the Center for Creative Leadership

2007-03-28T15:23:00.001-07:00

Opportunity does knock from time to time. This blog, set up in December 2006, was found in February by the Center for Creative Leadership (CCL) in Greensboro, NC. They were planning a day and a half event wherein leaders who had experienced Hurricane Katrina would share their experiences in the interest of uncovering lessons for leading in times of crisis. Among the ways that CCL wanted to capture the event was through the use of a graphic recorder, and we subsequently agreed to work together.

Funding was provided by a private donor who asked that CCL consider something “edgy,” so the event design was a lesson unto itself. Ten leaders who had dealt with the storm and its aftermath were joined by a “discussant” team of about twenty made up of CCL faculty and representatives of various agencies. The work day began with David Horth leading a Fish Bowl, wherein participants took turns observing and participating in dialogue. That was followed by a Visual Explorer exercise, wherein participants selected an image that conveyed meaning about their experience in the storm, and then conveyed those feelings comprehensibly to others. This first day ended with an abbreviated form of Open Space Conversation, and then the next day began with a Mind Map created by the entire leadership group.

The event concluded with a summary of the lessons learned, using a method of dialogue in which everyone could “talk and listen” at the same time. When the event began, the discussants were on networked laptops connected to each other by groupware. They could do things like keep personal journals and text message others in the room about what they were seeing and hearing. Eventually the leaders were able to join in, and this final morning concluded with everyone live and online. Specific questions were framed by a second facilitator, Jerry Abrams, and as individuals typed their thoughts into the system at the bottom of the screen, they could see what everyone else was saying at the top. Literally, about thirty people were all talking and listening at the same time.

At back of the room, things were a little simpler: markers, chalk and wide roll of paper. Usually I have to either lead the facilitation or at least co-facilitate while also producing the images; it is rare that I get a day and a half to just draw, so I made the most of it, filling about 70 square feet of paper, including the sketch pad used during the Open Conversation. In the presence of all the sophistication and technology “just drawing” felt pretty crude – at first. I was absolutely unprepared for the reactions that were to come.

As the day wore on, there was constantly someone watching what I was doing, and there were small crowds at breaks. There would be comments like “That’s how it was!” Near the end of the day, David Horth asked if I wanted to talk about the work. I suggested instead that he invite the participants to take a “gallery walk” by it all, and that he might even invite them to sign it. That’s what they did, over the course of several heart-felt minutes. One of them observed “The technology certainly captured the facts, but the drawings captured the emotions.”

What Can Planning Learn From Design?

2007-03-04T09:25:00.000-08:00

If you ask for volunteers to participate in the design of a new building you’re likely to have plenty of takers, especially if your audience has a stake in it. Now, imagine asking that same group to help with a strategic plan – odds are the response will be much less enthusiastic. Why is that?

In my still-limited experience, it’s because architecture is generally approached with high expectations of creative endeavors, whereas when planning involves the non-physical the images that come to our minds include boring meetings, wasted time and nice books that end up on the shelf. For purposes of this discussion let’s narrow our field of reference: the setting is a university campus, the design involves a prominent new building and the planning involves the institution’s strategic plan.

What could the planning learn from the best of design?

There’s an evident commitment up front: someone believes in what’s about to take place, money has been put on the table and there WILL be results. Can we say that about most strategic plans?
Processes are in place to facilitate creative activity. The selection of designers is based on talent, for example. And what’s the favored mode of communication? Visual images! What do the best teams do? They “draw” our thoughts and dreams out of us right before our very eyes. How was your last strategic planning conducted?
The act of construction requires a thorough assessment of context, as it is recognized that the building interacts with and depends upon its immediate environment. Think of what’s considered: soils, materials availability, weather patterns, local trades, traffic and sight lines. What was in the last environmental scan that your campus did? You did do one, right?
In recent years the entire idea of context has taken an additional form that merits a bullet on its own, and that’s Sustainability, where higher levels of thought are given to the life of a structure and the demands that it – as well as its uses – will make on systems, resources and future generations. How would most university planning look different if we believed – especially in the public sector – that we had to sustain ourselves rather than assume someone else would carry the freight?

Let’s not be totally one-sided, however; what could design learn from the best planning practices?

When planning is committed to discovery, generative processes are often used that forestall “problem-solving” in the interest of problem design. The result is a level of authenticity that creates shared visions and a belief in the possible outcomes.
The resulting shared visions are maintained as a frame of reference throughout the work. Many design teams begin this way, but few can keep it alive for the duration. Architects become overwhelmed by tradespeople, the campus leadership that began the work gives way to bureaucrats, and contracts become inflexible barriers rather than the enabling tools intended. Before you know it, participation and collaboration are equated to herding cats, and the most important goals are to be “On Time and On Budget!”
Planning can be an iterative process, continuously involving large groups. Agreed: the expense of design and construction dictate that iteration is eventually ended well before completion, but there is room for improvement. In an article entitled “ChangeIsNow,” AIArchitect describes how a disproportionate number of decisions are made late in design, when possibilities are constrained and mostly the “experts” are involved. The author suggests it is time to “shift the curve to the left.”
Planning can actually use prototypes that can facilitate the early wins suggested by John Kotter. There is an opportunity to try something out, see if it works and either make adjustments or proceed with confidence. In most design projects, the building IS the prototype. What design practices are out there that will let us take an idea out for a spin?

Change and the Past

2007-01-28T14:03:00.000-08:00

End times are tricky things to deal with, Bear said. – Charles Frazier, Thirteen Moons

If end times are tricky, the past is even more so. When we are working with change, it can take varying roles but one constraint applies to all: our pasts must be respected.

Sometimes the past has to be confronted so that we can be released to move forward. Poignant examples can be found in Adam Kahane’s Solving Tough Problems, where leaders and change advocates had to face painful memories and their individual responsibilities in them before all could focus together on new futures. Situations far less resolved can be found quickly if you live in the South, where some of us have yet to get over the Civil War. “Southerners are funny about that war” said the late Shelby Foote.

Sometimes the past is restated by those who profess to lead change but are fearful that they need an edge in the process. Past leaders are denigrated and their efforts are condemned, the good with the bad. Decisions from a very few years before are proclaimed as poorly thought through and inconsiderate of stakeholders. Whatever the initiative now at hand, it’s might be called “Our first ever…..” Maybe the accusations are true, or maybe they are designed to eliminate any risk that the achievements of the past might cast current projects in an unfavorable light.

In this latter case, harm is done in several ways. In the mystery Mister White’s Confession, by Robert Clark, Mister White has a lifelong defect in which he cannot accumulate memories of any duration. Clark observes that we cannot possess the future as it is not here yet, and the present is even more resistant. The only thing we truly own is our past.

If we succumb to the temptation to tarnish the memories of others to brighten our versions of the future, several kinds of harm can occur. Past relationships and accomplishments are suddenly a dangerous topic of conversation. Stories that hold people together with their “tribes” can no longer be told.

You don't have anything / if you don't have the stories. / Their evil is mighty / but it can't stand up to our stories / so they try to destroy the stories - from Ceremony, by Leslie Marmon Silko

Far from honoring while also departing from the past as described by William Bridges in Managing Transitions, the foundations of our present are good for nothing but the dustbin. Grieving, a natural part of change, cannot take place, and healing and renewal are impeded. Changing ourselves in the interest of a different future is hard enough without also having to make needless changes in our memories.

Not only might we do harm to others, we can also shoot our own selves in the foot. Kahane quotes Bill Torbert: “If you’re not part of the problem, you can’t be part of the solution.” That theme is expanded upon in Presence by Peter Senge, C. Otto Scharmer, Joseph Jaworski and Betty Sue Flowers, where the point is made that by disassociating ourselves from ownership of the present by blaming it on those who came before us, we externalize the situation and resultantly those who are truly a part of it. By taking this low road we do not empower ourselves as change agents, but become powerless instead. In addition, those who have had success with methods of Appreciative Inquiry know that the past typically holds successes that can fuel momentum toward the future.

As stated at the beginning of this piece, sometimes the past and our relationships to it have to be confronted, but it has to be done with respect. For those of us who hope to lead change:

Don’t castigate the meaning that individuals attach to the past only as an effort to lure or prod them to your vision of the future;
Don’t diminish your ability to lead change by separating yourself from those who need your help by failing to respect the past and its place in our present and future;
Where a group’s view of the past merits hard and painful reconsideration, they have to do that for themselves. As leaders of change we can help them, but we can neither force it nor do it for them.

Concepts from Graphics

2007-01-07T06:13:00.000-08:00

I think I just had a first-time experience with a graphic producing a totally new concept. I was asked to record a meeting about a possible new research center. 70 people had been invited, but there was no way of knowing if even 5 would show up. The meeting's leader didn't want to commit to any form of process, so it was agreed we would play it by ear.

That's a tough approach for me. Frequently accused of being anal, I prefer to go in with at least one plan that will work, and then alter as needed based on circumstances. On this occassion I had recently been reading some of the Grove material about the improvisational aspects of this business, so I decided to give it a whirl. I also decided to try harder to "build an image" as opposed to just large scale note-taking.

47 people showed up - really great for the issue at hand. The leader gave an overview, and then invited the attendees, almost all of whom were research active-faculty, to introduce themselves and describe what they were doing. As you might expect, this consumed the entire meeting. What I did not expect was that the energy level never went down. No one left during these endless monologues, and the last to speak was as enthusiastic as the first. As all of this was going on I was recording at the front of the room on a 4' X 16' sheet of paper. Several people came up afterwards and commented on how much they liked it, and in reply I asked a few questions to ascertain how helpful it might have been.

Near the end of the session there were key comments made about the overall goal and about the use of "other people's money." I began to regret that the goal item was so far away from the start-up notes, as it seemed really central. Then it occurred to me that the money item was extra-significant as well. All this bubbled up in my brain about 15 minutes before a follow-up meeting two days later with the meeting leader. I can't work that fast in Photoshop, so I used a scissors and some scotch tape and away I went.

I showed my paste-up, and asked if this was all about improving health care in eastern North Carolina and using other people's money to do it. "That's a mission statement!" she exclaimed. The Photoshop version of what she was shown is here to the right.

How they do it at the Stanford School of Medicine

2007-01-01T06:34:00.000-08:00

I've been talking to various medical colleges about how they manage their planning processes. Recently I spoke with David O'Brien at Stanford, who shared a very generous amount of his time describing their background and processes, and answering my questions. Below is a diagram made to help with future recall of the conversation.

Thoughts on Heifetz, Kahane and Lewis

2006-12-27T13:52:00.000-08:00

The opening session at the 2006 IAF Conference in Baltimore featured a panel discussion around the relationship between leadership and group facilitation. Strong cases were made for the possibilities that could lie in combinations of the two, and the demand for “facilitative leadership” was heard. Those chickens have all come home to roost as I have recently read two books and part of a third in sequence and over just a few days. What follows is much less a review of them than a suggestion to go and take a look.

I have always been circumspect if not cynical about the importance that so many organizations attach to leaders and leadership. Just a little reading about the likes of Horatio Nelson and Thomas Jefferson is convincing that even the “great ones” are at least as flawed as the rest of us, and we should be careful to use the broader society to assure that most of what emerges from leaders is good. The first book added some necessary layers to my simplistic view.

In Leadership Without Easy Answers, Ronald Heifetz describes leadership as “mobilizing people to tackle tough problems.” A distinction is made between “technical” and “adaptive” leadership, terms also used in the Baltimore discussion. Whereas technical leadership is a matter of knowing what to do and when to do it, adaptive leadership involves conflicts in values, or gaps between values and reality, neither of which lend themselves to easy answers. In adaptive work, change and transformation are the preferred outcomes, and these require work by the many rather than the few or the one.

Beginning with an assessment of “the gap,” a leader can take a path of shifting and/or sharing the work of major change to those being led, taking care to provide a productive environment and to match the rate of the presentation and discovery of issues to the capacity of the collective to deal with them. From a facilitator’s standpoint it makes for fascinating reading as it provides insights to a leader’s constraints and risks that actually come from both stakeholders and subordinates, as in the final analysis both are the sources of the leader’s authority.

Two of the case studies Heifetz uses are the Civil Rights movement and the Viet Nam War, issues – as well as leaders - seemingly far larger than most of us in this business will face. The relevance of the messages was improved, however, by the next book, Solving Tough Problems. Adam Kahane has not been involved in the Viet Nam War, but has instead dealt with national-scale issues in places like South Africa and Guatemala. His book describes his experiences in dealing as a facilitator with large-scale adaptive issues, involving groups both large and powerful.

Kahane describes his experiences and the lessons learned in how groups can come together to talk and listen meaningfully. The huge challenge and subsequent value of adaptive processes such as “generative dialogues” comes through in the quote from one participant: “We did not put our ideas together. We put our purposes together. And we agreed, and then we decided.” If there are doubts about the feasibilty of the approach described by Heifetz, Kahane begins to show what actually occurs among people that makes transformations possible. Of particular note were the ways he describes “listening,” such that I’m now trying to relate that to occasions when I was using graphic recording as a tool for tuning in my own attentiveness.

The third book in the trio, Excellence Without a Soul by Harry R. Lewis, sharpened the messages of the other two by way of contrasts. I may try again later, but so far there has been little appeal in what comes across – to me at least – as a hatchet job on Harvard. (Oddly enough, Ronald Heifetz works at Harvard.) In all fairness, this is a book about the issue of purpose in great universities and not about planning or leadership per se. The book has value, however, at least as a reminder of the inability of much of the world to appreciate facilitative leadership.

“They discovered that a great curriculum does not crystallize out of scribbling by bureaucrats or squabbling among professors if the leaders cannot breathe into it direction and purpose.” Should we not think of a leader as someone who can mobilize the discovery of direction and purpose? Compare the quote, and its implied dependency upon leadership for purpose, to the experience described above, where a group put its purposes together. The need is argued for a leader whom “others will follow, not unquestioningly, but with confidence and respect.” Faculty, students and staff are then compared to “volunteers” who need motivating accordingly. It recalls Kahane’s broadened description of apartheid systems as well as Heifetz’s explanations of how adaptive challenges can be mistakenly treated as technical issues.

The need for enlightened and enabled leadership proclaimed in Baltimore is ever-present. Some of the tools for creating it, however, are before us in two of these books.

Experiences with Different Visual Methods

2006-12-27T12:52:00.000-08:00

My post of December 23 broached some of the questions I have about graphic facilitation and its use. At the same time that I’m in a hurry to see how really good I could become at it, I still seek an adequate understanding to make sure that groups really benefit from it. It would seem way too easy for it to become a slick trick that electrifies everyone on site but is immediately forgotten “back at the store.”

I’ve talked to a couple of faculty in our School of Art and Design. Gil Leebrick teaches photography and is also the gallery director, and after meeting Jennifer Landau I asked him if this stuff is real. His response: “What is the root word of imagination?”

Mike Dorsey, a painter and dean emeritus, was also encouraging, citing the emotional power of images. Mike suggested that the fact that the wall graphics are being produced live and with the risk of error adds a way of capturing attention. For this reason, he suggested caution in facilitating with digital tools: they lend the ability to fix an error, a group knows that and the effect is diminished. Hmmmm…..I’m not totally positive, but it does add to the worry I feel over just how few blank flat walls are available on a college campus.

I wonder too if a group shares the experience of the facilitator’s contact with the paper. In an earlier post I told of the experience of artist William T. Williams touching a canvas, and occasionally I experience something sensual when I really mash the wide side of a stick of cheap chalk across clean white paper. Can a group have that same kind of feeling, and obtain a sort of affirmation not only from seeing the record of their thoughts but also from a near-tactile experience of the recording?

In recent months I’ve had opportunities to graphically record and facilitate, and I have also used The Workshop Method on a Stickie Wall. I don’t understand the difference in the way groups respond to each method, and an experience in a session in Tempe is one example.

I co-facilitated the meeting with Phyllis Grummon for the Society of College and University Planning. After a lot of discussion she and I agreed to begin the session with the Stickie Wall and cards, and then move more loosely into an open-ended discussion. Thinking that we would do everything with cards, I was without my roll of paper and had to “collage” with easel sheets instead. A “final report” with a little PhotoShop work is shown here.

The card session was rather detail-oriented. We pulled a lot of information out of our participants, and then worked through a process of getting it organized into meaningful content. As usual I was amazed and impressed with how well it works. Following that portion, Phyllis led a very open conversation exploring a broader context, and I recorded what went on. At the end of the day, we had produced a distinct but unanticipated rationale around which we will undertake the task at hand. We were all pretty pleased.

Before letting everyone get away, I asked for reflections on the methods we had used and their effectiveness. I don’t believe anything was volunteered about the Stickie Wall and cards; I asked a question or two about them, received a short positive answer and then the conversation floated right back around to the graphic recording, which went on for a while. One comment that stands out in my mind was that no one had ever seen notes AND relationships among them coming together at the same time.

From a personal standpoint, that recording session let me go off into some other world. Phyllis managed the conversation, so all I had to do was act like a “flow-thru tea bag.” So, yes, it was good for me. I’ll keep trying make sure this kind of effort is as good if not even more beneficial for the groups contributing to it.

Graphic Facilitation as a Planning Tool

2006-12-23T06:23:00.000-08:00

Some of us can’t take yes for an answer. We could teach Doubting Thomas a thing or two about circumspection. That said, is there a place for graphic facilitation in strategic planning?

In the year and a half that I’ve been working with groups using 4 feet wide rolls of paper, markers and chalk I have yet to leave a meeting without hearing positive comments about the graphics. I consider myself more of a draftsman than an artist, but I was lucky to have picked up markers from The Grove and some very ordinary chalk that give good results without a lot of fuss. But still I wonder: is it really meat or just sizzle?

The first architect I ever worked for could really draw. With a Scripto mechanical pencil containing a piece of 2B lead, he could create a perspective sketch that you could walk into, and do it as though he were tracing. He once said “People are fascinated by the ability to draw. Once you start drawing in a meeting, you can absolutely control the situation.” OK – is that good, or could it be not so good?

In the Spring of ’06 a couple of us worked with an academic department on their strategic plan, and we used wall graphics exclusively. Six months later I visited the Chair to inquire about what the lasting impact had been, and in the course of the conversation I queried him on the use of the graphics. His response was “It’s very powerful, but you’ll have to be judicious with it.”

That very evening, UNC-TV broadcast an interview with the artist Herb Jackson. (See this post also.) He talked about how we grow up with images in storybooks and such, and they are always shown to us as a “picture of” something. As we make our first drawings, we are always asked what they are pictures of. Jackson noted that music is an art form that is not hamstrung with that requirement, and that he spent much of his early life learning how to break from that constraint.

It would seem that as graphic facilitators we have to embrace that constraint, as our value is in representing what the group is feeling and saying in a way that makes it real through visibility. We carry images of our past, and we hold onto images of what we think the present is; both are constructed from things we have seen in the world. There is no “directly observable data” about our future. By providing the images, we can begin to make that third element of time competitive with those other two.

It would seem that relationships can be helped in the same way, whether they are among facts, ideas or people. A form of reality is created with which we can interact.

The following observation appeared in an AIA newsletter, attributed to Robert M. Beckley, FAIA, professor and Dean Emeritus at the University of Michigan: A designer’s communication skills – the ability to listen, speak, write and represent ideas – provide insights into how well he or she can function within a professional practice. The last, representing ideas, is what distinguishes architects from others. In the final analysis, architecture is our ability to turn ideas into representations. Whether the representation is in the form of a diagram, sketch, rendering, or physical or digital model, the architect’s ability to represent precedes the construction of reality.

Arguably, architects can be somewhat encumbered by the eventual need to produce construction. Graphic facilitators have both the privilege and the challenge of a much broader expanse of possibilities.

One Rationale for Working with Groups

2006-12-21T07:24:00.000-08:00

In the last 20 months there has been a confluence of ideas and concepts from various sources that seem to contribute to common themes, although not with absolute clarity. In the last three weeks four of these seemed to come together in two realizations about living out a future.

Elaine Stover, a workshop presenter for the Institute for Cultural Affairs: Facilitation is about honoring, about profound respect……participation through honoring and trusting what the group is capable of, individually and collectively.
Studs Terkel, quoted as saying: Work is about a search for daily meaning as well as daily bread, for recognition as well as cash, for astonishment rather than torpor. In short, for a sort of life rather than a Monday through Friday sort of dying.
William T. Williams, a painter seen on a broadcast of UNC-TV’s North Carolina People, described an incident in which he had paint on his hands and accidentally touched a canvas. It brought back memories of contact with his grandmother and elderly women in the church when he was very small: What it reminded me of was the whole idea of the laying on of hands, that affirmation of me as human being………affirming life in the face of all the adversity in the world.
Tom Friedman, in The World Is Flat: ……be a good collaborator, leverager, adapter, explainer, synthesizer, model builder, localizer or personalizer……be able to learn how to learn, to bring passion and curiosity to your work, to play well with others and to nurture your right-brain skills…

The first realization to emerge is that as planners we can think in terms of helping an organization make sense of its outside world by working with the connections among the people that make up its inside world. This would be particularly true for a planning office in a university.The second recognizes that we all have these desires of being honored, treated with respect and attaining our affirmation; some of us are more conscious of our own thirsts for these than are others. Those of us who feel these needs the most are among those with an obligation to help the world by creating experiences wherein people can meet these basic human needs.

And this is all about.........

2006-12-20T11:45:00.000-08:00

In the Spring of 2005, I was working with a group of med school department chairs on a really thorny issue: how to objectively allocate research space to investigators. In one of a long series of meetings that was progressing along the usual frustrating lines it suddenly occurred to me that they were fully justified in being hard to get along with - they had a stake in the outcome and I didn't. I later made a call to someone (who would subsequently become my mentor) and asked for advice on training in facilitation.

On her recommendation I went to the IAF Conference in Tampa, and the first workshop was on something called graphic facilitation, taught by Jennifer Landau. Life has not been the same since.

In the Fall of 2006, after more training experiences including one with the Grove, I began to try to make some kind of sense of what was going on. In assembling the graphic above and collecting all the names and phrases that I had run into, I began to see that I was moving back into creative opportunities that I had not seen since leaving the School of Design at NC State in 1976. I also saw what I was feeling: ideas, questions and challenges are spiraling out faster than they can be managed and sorted through.

We'll see if this blog helps.