Envisioning Something New?
Do you see a new initiative, practice or strategy on your horizon? Do you feel the need for collective conversation that is inclusive, open and generative? Are you looking for the tools with which to lead sustainable change?
Whether you are an organizational stakeholder, or a consultant who helps other organizations, Bruce Flye can design visual processes that create a framework for the group dialogue, synthesis and reflection essential to effective planning, policy-making and problem-solving. Making voices visible consists of:
- Visual Practices combine the real-time creation of large displays of images and text to support and energize meetings and other group interactions. Whether it takes an interactive form in Graphic Facilitation, or a more passive form in Graphic Recording, Visual Practice accelerates group learning and emergent insights. As the picture appears, we see the possibilities;
- Applications that work particularly well with Visual Practices include Appreciative Inquiry, Systems Thinking and the Osborne-Parnes Creative Problem-Solving Process. In their own ways, each of these approaches is enhanced as relationships are delineated and complexity becomes manageable. Positive cores burst forth in full color, tangled systems become navigable and metaphors supercharge ideation;
- Illustration and Visual Concepts that can make complexity comprehensible, fundamental points memorable and communications expeditious;
- Event Photography which, when used in support of any of the above, helps participants to later appreciate their role and presence in the context of the greater whole.
Working with a group does not have to be like herding cats. We all have creative ability, and when several of us come together under the right circumstances a collective thinking can emerge in ways that create fun, engagement, innovation and commitment. Your project can benefit from practices such as the Workshop Method, Focused Conversations and Idealized Design; conversations can include phrases like “Safe Space,” “Whole Systems” and “Why predict the future when you can design it instead?” Supporting it all is a solid foundation of making voices visible that will help your group see what it’s saying, hearing and learning and – most powerfully – where it’s headed.
