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. ArchEx 2011 on Prezi
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.
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.
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: a
s 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:
(Note: this last image is deliberately low resolution as the content does not lend itself to broadcasting.)
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.
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.
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.
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:
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.
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.
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