Working with a client tonight who is beginning a process of trying to find some questions for moving forward. The client is a group of churches who are exploring how they might collaborate to undertake their joint mission together. There are a number of factors at play, and the environment they are working in is diverse. Tonight, with a few short hours, we’ll do a little story gathering. We’ll begin by exploring an uncontextualized Cynefin framework and then invite small anecdote circles to form around the question of “What are the challenges and role of our Churches in this …
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A great quote from a post by Mark Simon: The more power you have, the more people will lis ten respectfully to your story. Consequently, listening to some one’s story is a way of empowering them, of validat ing their intrinsic worth as a human being. ~ Kay Pra nis A very important principle for design work.
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Yesterday I had a chance to grab lunch with Dave Pollard in our local coffee shop on Bowen Island. One of the things we talked about was the supremacy of analysis in the world and why that is a problem when it comes to operating in complex domains. I have been intentionally working a lot lately with Dave Snowdon et. al.’s Cynefin framework to support decision making in various domains. It is immensely helpful in making sense of the messy reality of context and exercises like anecdote circles and butterfly stamping are very powerful, portable and low tech processes. Cynefin …
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I am preparing some questions tonight for an exercise I am running, and I rediscovered this elegant and simple process for constructing questions that elicit stories, courtesy of the Ultimate Guide to Anecdote Circles. Build the question. People remember events when they can picture an image reminding them of a specific situation. Combine this idea with the suggestion of adding emotion and you have the two building blocks to create good questions. First start with an image-building phrase: “Think about…” “Imagine…” “If…” “Consider…” For example, ”Think about a time when you were given advice by your manager.” Add an additional …
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Stories that run deep within a culture arise out of the basic and unquestioned metaphors and archetypes that provide the foundation for a culture. This is true in all kinds of communities, including nation-states and villages, organizations and families. You can discover some of those foundational metaphors in your own communities by asking yourself “We are a community and that means…” As someone who has been working with the cultural narratives of the United States over the past few years, Rob Paterson has cast his eye on the way out of the rhetorical tennis match that passes for conversation on …