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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

International Forum of Visual Practitioners Conference 2008 - Day 2

International Forum of Visual Practitioners Conference 2008 - Day 1

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

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

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?

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

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

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.