Making Voices Visible

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.