
Just a picture of the ordinary full moon I took a few years ago through my binoculars.
The moon will rise tonight, about the same time the sun sets, hence tonight is a full moon. This happens every 28 days or so. It will be a “supermoon” because about three or four times a year, the moon’s orbit carries it to a point where it’s closest point to Earth coincides with a full moon – as it will tonight – making this full moon appear a little bigger in the sky than the 9 or 10 other full moons. And it will be a “blue moon” because in this case, it is the third full moon in a calendar season that contains four full moons, which is one of the two definitions of a blue moon, the other being “the second full moon in a calendar month,” which this one isn’t.
Take away the calendar and here is what happens. The moon rises every day at different times an in different phases. Every time the moon orbits the earth it does so in a little wobble that carries it between about 405,000 and 363,000 kms from us. The solar seasons also happen every year, as the earth tilts on its axis and oscillates between the June and December solstices and the March and September equinoxes.
So that’s what is happening, but it’s only when we import meaning on to these different events are colliding at the same time that we end up with some mild excitement about a “rare blue supermoon.“
So first, what is rare about the moonrise tonight? Well, this particular seasonal blue moon, actually happens about every 18-24 months. The next one after tonight will occur on May 20, 2027.
Supermoons occur about 3 or 4 times a year. Super seasonal blue moons occur on average about every 10 years, but the next one will happen in March 2037. So what is physically happening is pretty rare, in terms of human lifetimes. But unless you knew all this it’s unlikely you will notice anything different or care.
The whole origin of the term “blue moon” is worth diving into because it’s a mix of colloquial expressions, etymology, misheard and misunderstood words, and superstition. It is in fact this history of meaning that makes tonight’s moon exciting. All your news feeds today will be full of articles, like this one you’re reading, explaining what is happening. You’ll also come across lots of other meaning making, especially in the realms of astrology and other meaning-making endeavours that project all kinds of singular and special effects on this moment, making it a special time. The search for causality never rests!
Try a little experiment today. Get really excited with people about the super blue moon and see what happens. See who cares and who doesn’t. See what the different responses are. Notice your own reactions to people who have different reactions to what you are telling them.
As I was reflecting on the extremely mild delirium around this rare blue supermoon, it reinforced once again how much human behaviour is influenced more by the meaning we make of what is happening rather than the events that are actually happening. Understanding how we make meaning of things is critical to understanding why we behave in certain ways. The physical events will all coincide right now as I am writing this, at 11:26 Pacific Time. As the moment came and went I noticed nothing different happening in myself. I can’t even see the moon right now because it is midday. The only effect this whole thing has had is to make me think enough about why our sensemaking frameworks have such power over us to make meaning of things that are otherwise run of the mill physical events in the world in which we live. So I wrote a blog pots.
Humans impart meaning constantly. To understand our individual and collective behaviours, we need to understand that meaning making part of us. And then we need to go have a look at the beautiful moon.
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A detail from a surf board on display at the Nazare Surf Museum, Nazare, Portugal.
If you have been working with me over the past five years or so you will have heard me reference and use the work of Cynthia Kurtz in the work we are doing. Among other things Cynthia is the originator of NarraFirma, the software I most often use for narrative work on complex topics. She is the author of one of my favourite papers on Cynefin, The New Dynamics of Strategy which she wrote with Dave Snowden back in 2003. She wrote her own books on Working With Stories and Confluence a brilliant book about her own approach to working with complexity. Last month she posted some news about her current work and life. She is in the process of downloading her work into four different versions of Working with Stories, and thinking deeply about a transition in her life and work. I encourage to read her post.
Cynthia has been a key mentor in my own life and work, especially as the pandemic changed our approach from in person to online. Last year I took her practicum course on PNI which deepened my appreciation for the depth of these tools that she shares. NarraFirma in particular has been a godsend as a tool for me to work with my clients. Because it is open source and Cynthia and her husband Paul have their hands on the code, any updates or bugs I have experienced with the software get corrected right away.
So I thought I would take a moment to offer folks an introduction to her work and point you to the resources that she has shared. Cynthia is an incredibly deep and generous thinker and has made it her life’s work to provide accessible tools to people struggling with complex challenges because at the core of human community should be the delight in the way we work with our stories.
Her work on complexity
Cynthia began her work in the world as a biologist studying social behaviour in animals until an injury in the field prompted a career change. Already pre-disposed to curiosity about complexity and with some skills as a programmer, she teamed up with her husband Paul Fernout to write environmental simulation software to help people learn more about the natural world. Later, seeking more security, Paul took a contract job at IBM and showed Cynthia a job posting relating to organizational storytelling and she applied. Her skills as a researcher, and knowledge of social dynamics through her science background quickly became the foundation of her work.
Cynthia worked at IBM as the company was discovering complexity and the role of storytelling and her ideas found a rich ground alongside many other researchers and thinkers who were helping to explore and develop the field. The paper she wrote with Dave Snowden from this time, The New Dynamics of Strategy, starts with a deep dive into theory and why complexity challenges conventional forms of decision making. It then goes on to describe the Cynefin framework in detail and discusses how to use it with a series of practices and applications. Together this represents a pretty comprehensive foundation for understanding the role of Cynefin and the methods for using it when it comes to strategy and decision making. The paper itself contains Cynthia’s ideas on control and connection which are key aspects of her own sense making framework
Although her work is deeply informed by theory, it wasn’t until 2021 that she finally published a book that describes her approach to understanding complexity, or more precisely, the relations between self-organization and intentional organization. The book is called Confluence and it describes a set of tools and approaches for thinking about the intersection of organizational planning in a self-organizing world. True to form, it is not just a theory book, but a book of well-documented thinking tools illustrated by stories and knowledge gleaned from a wide swath of human experience. It’s a delicious and lingering read. It cuts close to the bone. The last section addressing conspiracy theories might be one of those things that saves democracy. (It also helpfully addresses jargon and complexity theory in an incredibly thought provoking way!)
While it took her a long time write Confluence, she has been a productive and generous blogger for decades and her thoughts, ideas, ramblings and clear gems of wisdom are collected at her blog, Story Colored Glasses.
Working with stories
Cynthia’s focus in the world has been consistently on the role of stories and narrative and so her work has been driven towards the deeply practical. She has created, co-created or piloted dozens of methods for working with stories in groups, many of which are standard practice in our field now. Her magnum opus is Working with Stories in your community or organization and is a comprehensive introduction to her own research method, Participatory Narrative Inquiry (PNI). Working With Stories (WWS) has a whole website devoted to this book and some of her latest iterations, which include a simplified version and an advanced version, a collection of story forms and will soon also include the fourth edition, which she is currently preparing.
WWS is a constant companion on my desk and there is a lifetime of learning in this book. I’m astounded at Cynthia’s capacity to document her own process and her knowledge and present it in accessible ways. That isn’t to say that the material isn’t dense and rich. This approach is not simple to understand or work with until you have unschooled yourself a bit in research methods, epistemology and facilitation. But as a body of work it is immensely transformative for research, engagement and strategy.
WWS is a worthy investment of time and money and is a useful guide to anybody seriously working with story, social patterns and change making in complex settings.
Software for working with stories
Cynthia’s interest in uncovering patterns and connection in stories along with her training in statistics and her experience in programming led her to create the early programming behind Sensemaker Explorer while she was at Cognitive Edge. Later she and Paul Fernout created their own software for gathering stories and discovering patterns. Eventually their efforts became NarraFirma, an open source software package that is really a project management tool. NarraFirma includes hundreds of screens and tools to plan and carry out a PNI project, including the ability to create story gathering surveys, perform catalysis on the results, prepare materials for sense making sessions, and reflect on and report on projects. One of the best features of NarraFirma is the context specific help screens that enable users to not only navigate the software but learn about the practice as they are doing so. I’ve never seen anything quite like NarraFirma.
Although the software is free to use and requires only a WordPress site to install as a plug in (my preferred option) it takes several days to really learn how to use properly and years of experience to use well. When you use NarraFirma you are not just building a survey tool for story collection, but you are immersing yourself in Participatory Narrative Inquiry. I have done probably thirty or more projects, from one time story collections for strategic planning or engagement around complex issues like opioid use and crisis response to a four year long inquiry into changing workplace culture. Every time I dive in I learn more about how to work with this approach. The software not only helps me run my project, it makes me a better practitioner as I’m doing so.
I’m immensely grateful to Cynthia for putting her work out in the world and I highly recommend anyone interested in this field explore her thinking, offering and tools.
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A sign at the government wharf in Tofino, BC reserving parking for Elders from the Indigenous communities of Clayquot Sound.
Yesterday I was on a call with one of our Complexity Inside & Out participants who was getting started with Participatory Narrative Inquiry and NarraFirma. Like I do with everyone, I pointed him to Cynthia Kurtz’s websites on these topics and then walked him through an installation of the NarraFirma WordPress plugin.
My friend wanted to use PNI to gather stories related to his family. He comes from a big family who have regular reunions at which more than 100 people come together, all of them descended from one particular couple four or five generations ago. The idea was to collect the stories that have flowed in the family over the generations. We brainstormed some really delightful activities that they could do if they had a couple of hundred stories and an upcoming reunion.
Mindful of Cynthia’s observation that PNI should be delightful, we came up with several options for working with stories and by the end of the conversation I was almost begging for an invitation to the next reunion! Short of that, I thought I’d record and share some of these ideas so if you are doing something similar this summer, you might think about doing this.
First, we discussed making the story collection as accessible as possible. NarraFirma is fine, but so too is a Google Survey, especially if you aren’t planning to do much catalysis with the story collection. In this case the idea was to collect many stories. There could be some signification, such as when this happened, or where. The main thing in this instance is collecting lots of anecdotes that can be used by the family in different activities.
Second, we discussed making the stories beautiful. Lay them out on colourful card stock so that folks can pick them up and read them. Turning up at the next family reunion with a deck of story cards perhaps including photos would get everyone interested and curious. So what could you do with them? Here are some ideas.
Here is a list of the ideas you shared during your conversation about sense-making with family stories and activities at family reunions:.
- Timeline and Map Activity: Create a big map and timeline where family members can pin stories in spatial and temporal context, helping to visualize the family’s history.
- Story Sorting Exercises: Print out story cards and have sorting activities where family members can categorize stories based on themes like transitions, love, or intersections with world events.
- Interactive Story Sharing: Use family reunions for sense-making by setting up walls where people can pin stories, sit down, read to each other, and learn from the shared experiences.
- Storytelling Prompts: Hand small groups of family members a few stories and see if they prompt more. Provide specific prompts to elicit stories, such as asking for memories that descendants should hear eliciting additions to significant moments in a families history by inviting others to share their perspectives on those events.
- Intergenerational Bridging: Use the stories to bridge generational gaps by having younger and older family members interact and share their perspectives on the same events.
- Creative Expressions: Encourage younger family members to create art, rhymes, songs, or other creative expressions based on the family stories, fostering a connection across generations.
- Recipe Sharing: Collect and share family recipes, along with the stories behind them, to preserve the culinary heritage.
- Games and Activities: Incorporate games that involve storytelling, such as a “pin the tail” style activity with story elements, or clustering stories by themes to see collective family patterns.
- Publishing Stories: After gathering and sorting stories, consider publishing them in a booklet or online platform for family members to access and cherish.
Colour these ideas firmly in the “positive experiences” category as activities that can be done at a big reunion full of barbecues, kids playing, other games and activities. Of course there are many families for whom this could be a deeply emotional and traumatizing experience, but these ideas can be used for those kinds of gatherings, just with a lot more intention around the invitation and hosting of the process.
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The three-domain version of Cynefin, originally published on Dave Snowden’s blog.
I’m trying to organize my thoughts on containers, complexity and constraints that span a couple of decades of work and grounded theory. In this post, I want to lay out how I see these phenomena in the context of anthro-complexity, largely articulated by Dave Snowden, with implications for complex facilitation, or what we in the Art of Hosting community call “hosting.”
I’ll lay out some theory first that I’m working on, link it to facilitation and then share a case study of a recent meeting I hosted to demonstrate how this plays out. You can let me know if you think there is a good basis for a paper here, and please feel free to ask questions and to poke and prod at these ideas.
Some definitions
- “Constraints”: Constraints in complex systems limit the behaviours of system components but also enable certain patterns or paths to emerge.
- “Containers”: In the context of complexity, a container is often considered as an environment or space (conceptual, physical, or social) that influences the interactions and dynamics of system components.
- “Enabling constraints” and “Governing constraints” are part of Dave Snowden’s Cynefin Framework. Enabling constraints allow certain patterns to emerge and adapt in a complex system while governing constraints are applied to assure specific outcomes in more ordered systems.
- “Emergence”: Refers to the idea that new properties, behaviours, or patterns can arise from the interactions among system components, which aren’t predictable from the properties of individual components.
- “Chaos”: In complexity science, chaos refers to a state of a system where it’s difficult to predict the system’s behaviour even in the short term.
Some basic theory
Constraints form the foundation of what we call “containers” in dialogue and facilitation practice. A container is a stable environment in which actions and thought processes occur. In a complex situation, enabling constraints yield containers which exhibit dynamic stability, such as a dissipative structure, where the emergence of thoughts and actions takes place. The container shapes these thoughts and actions.
Containers that endure over time solidify into stable contexts and ultimately evolve into cultures.
Much of the existing literature on containers merely identifies this phenomenon without comprehending how these containers come into being and therefore, how they can be disrupted, stabilized or managed. However, the literature on constraints and complexity science provides useful insights for understanding and working with containers.
When operating in the realm of complexity, you need at least one effective constraint in place. Without any effective constraints, you’re dealing with chaos – an unbounded, essentially random state. Seen through the lens of Cynefin, Chaos is a state that is approached either from the liminal space of Complexity or from the catastrophic failure of highly ordered systems.
With the establishment of a manageable constraint, you can start creating a stable container with affordances to pursue a preferred outcome or direction. The more stable the container, the more predictable the outcome. When we cross through the liminal space between Complex and Ordered states, we move into governing constraints, and we employ constraints to ensure a specific outcome. Maintaining governing constraints requires power, resources, and control to suppress the emergence typically characteristic of living systems. Even ordered containers can be vulnerable to the emergence and unexpected events. Thus, they are often strictly bound, and the agents within the system are heavily constrained. The connections in these systems are controlled, managed, and monitored for any deviations. In situations where certainty is crucial, maintaining a governing container can be costly, but the benefits are significant, leading to safety, order, and control – key aspects of an ordered system.
Using anthro-complexity to understand containers in complexity
Containers can materialize in a multitude of ways. It may be beneficial to interpret containers through the prism of the three principal Cynefin domains: Chaos, Complexity, and Order.
In an ordered system, or an ordered container, the container can be pre-designed, often drawing upon good or best practices and demonstrating robust stability that actively resists change. Such containers may take physical forms, like buildings, pots, cars, and furnaces. However, they can also be social containers where interactions among individuals must be rigorously regulated and controlled. These could pertain to situations necessitating safety or for regulatory purposes, such as in accounting or law.
In Chaos, facilitation, such as it is, is all about applying constraints – sometimes draconian constraints – in an effort to create some stability or safety and buy some time to find options for action. In this domain, the container can be experienced as being strapped to a stretcher, ordered to remain in place, or, in trauma responses, held in a way that enables self-regulation.
The development of containers within the complex domain progresses through a process of probing, sensing, and responding. In the complex domain, containers, often experienced as a combination of phenomena rather than strictly physical tangible objects, are shaped by the constraints at play. They emerge as phenomena due to these constraints. Constraints at play can stimulate the emergence of this type of container, fostering patterns of behaviour and establishing a felt sense of stability. Within this stability, connections, exchanges, attractors, and boundaries will seem to have a more or less consistent presence over time. and give rise to the feeling or experience of being “in a container.”
When working with patterns in a container we can map or examine the container’s constraints that enable certain patterns to emerge over others. Until a constraint stabilizes in a complex system, it serves merely as a catalyst, as described by Dave Snowden, stimulating a specific pattern of behaviour. If this pattern of behaviour is coherent with a “preferred direction of travel”, it will aid in establishing the felt sense of a container in a complex system that contributes towards useful dialogue, activity and other beneficial activities.
If however, the stability of the container produces emergent patterns of behaviour that are not desired, we can attempt to change the container by shifting constraints in order to stimulate different interactions. While the facilitator plays a particular role in this situation, but the shift in the nature of a container can come from anywhere.
Complex facilitation, therefore, is the craft of catalyzing the emergence of patterns within a container which aligns beneficially with the preferred direction of travel shared by a group or a leader. In this craft, one employs constraints as catalysts and closely observe the nature of the emerging container through the system’s pattern stability. If unproductive patterns emerge, one can attempt to disrupt the container by modifying a constraint. If useful patterns appear, one can aim to stabilize that container to ensure continuity. Thus, the facilitator’s role primarily involves monitoring the situation, assessing the quality of the container, and occasionally using their influence to help stabilize and manage the emerging container in the service of the preferred direction. This is largely achieved by “creating space” for the group to engage in beneficial activities.
In a complex situation, the ideal is generally to utilize enabling constraints to facilitate emergence rather than governing constraints to control it. This requires awareness of the inclination to control interactions, possibly to reduce unhelpful conflict or balance power disparities. It should be obvious that the practice of doing this is fraught with ethical traps (more on this in later posts), and so undertaking this work without considering the values that underlie the ethical use of situational power is perilous. Rather than controlling interpersonal interactions, the focus should be on adjusting the conditions and constraints of the entire container to enable the emergence of different behavioural patterns.
A case study
Recently, I facilitated a meeting with a small group from an organization confronting an existential question. Should the organization continue in its current form, should it be wrapped up, or was there something in between?
Through interviews with board members and staff prior to the meeting, it was evident that the current situation was untenable. The organization had weathered turbulent times, with new board members and supporters who endorsed the founder’s vision. This vision, however, had been pared down significantly, resulting in an unclear purpose and direction for the organization.
On the day of the meeting, two critical conversations needed to occur. First, because many were new to the organization, we needed to discuss the organization’s current state and its projects, with a particular focus on the founder’s intentions. The second conversation had to address the next steps for the organization, providing clarity on a potential partnership that would determine their level of commitment.
I prepared an agenda featuring different ways to facilitate these conversations. The most facilitator-intensive way was to host a scenario-based process, where a small group of eight people would consider three different scenarios based on my interviews with almost all the attendees. The aim was to answer practical questions about implementation and examine implications for the organization, its projects, and its partners.
We began the meeting informally, with a light breakfast and casual conversations. After settling in, I introduced the meeting’s intentions. My decision was to guide us through a check-in part of the meeting, hear from the founder, then take a break and assess where we stood.
Building a relational container was a critical move since the group had never been together before. A well-designed check-in, with a question that elicited stories, was a good way to begin and allowed everyone to understand why they were part of this meeting and this work.
After the check-in, which took about an hour, the group had a more profound understanding of each other. It was clear to us the range of skills, talents, and interests present in the room.
The second part of the meeting involved the founder’s future intentions. It became apparent during the pre-meeting interviews that he had a significant influence on the organization’s course. His connections, desires, and investments were the organization’s driving force. As such, it was crucial to accommodate his interests, needs, and commitments.
Perhaps entrained on the pattern of the check-in, the meeting evolved into a rich storytelling session, where the founder recounted his career and the organization’s lifespan. This story-sharing segment was especially beneficial for new board members with questions about their roles and the organization’s work. This was a helpful direction for the day and kept the work and the inquiry open.
Once the founder finished his tale, a conversation unfolded, touching on the core mission and purpose of the organization and bringing forth existential questions about its future. Again this “natural” flow was likely partially entrained by the pre-meeting interviews, which gave participants a chance to think openly about the existential questions facing the organization.
After lunch, the group reconvened and began discussing different questions about the projects in which the organization was involved. It was evident that everyone had varying levels of information about these projects, which resulted in different levels of participation in addressing the organization’s existential issues. This is not a bad thing at all, as diverse experience meant that naive expertise – the ability to ask “dumb” questions – had a role in pushing the group to consider proposals that were outside of what was possible or desirable. In so doing, boundaries for the organization’s future work came into view.
This was an important moment because a well-defined boundary elicits authentic and informed commitment. Toward the end of the meeting, we discussed practical steps aligned with people’s commitments. It became clear that the next steps were focused on the sustainability of an essential project of the organization, not the organization itself.
The final discussion involved everyone indicating their level of commitment and role over the next 18 months and committing to spend some time formulating a plan and organizing work with simple project management tools.
In sum, this case illustrates how a facilitator can work with constraints to help an emergent container evolve for group work. The essence lies in understanding the connections, exchanges, attractors, and boundaries within the group and using these elements to guide the conversation constructively. The facilitator must negotiate the boundaries and the flow of power, work with strong attractors, and manage the dynamics of exchanges to achieve the desired outcomes.
Constraints at play
It should be noted that it is impossible to fully map all of the constraints that are working together to create a container, nor is it always clear which kind of constraint something is. An exchange can become an attractor, and a connection can become a boundary. The important thing is to carry an easily portable framework into a dynamic situation in order to better see and respond to emerging and changing constraints,
While there are many ways to analyze the constraints at play in the container of this meeting, In my own work, I use Snowden’s typology of Connecting Constraints (Connections and Exchanges) and Containing Constraints (Attractors and Boundaries) and here are examples of my observations and reflections. Dave uses “connecting and containing” as a spectrum. In my practice, these four types of constraints serve as heuristics to help guide my observation and decision-making while facilitating complex situations.
Connections:
- Each board member shared a strong connection with the founder and had different connections with everyone else. The depth of their connection to the organization’s work varied greatly. For some, it constituted a significant portion of their focus, while others had little knowledge of the projects. For the founder, the organization’s work was all-encompassing.
- Board members brought various connections with the stakeholders and the organization’s implementers to the meeting. These connections became crucial when participants realized they could leverage their networks to explore alternative ways to sustain the organization’s work.
Exchanges:
- A critical exchange involved the transfer of information and power between the founder and the board. Over the years, this exchange had turned toxic. The board, in both its and the founder’s view, was focused on the wrong objective: the organization’s sustainability rather than its work.
- After a wave of resignations during the pandemic, a new board was assembled. This board consisted of people the founder knew and trusted to prioritize the organization’s work, helping avoid the toxic relationships that had developed previously.
- During the meeting, the exchanges were mostly linked to the founder’s vision and his commitment to the organization. The remaining participants related their commitments to his. This scenario can be described as a “broadcast flow” of exchanges: from one central person to many, with weak exchanges among the many. However, as we delved into the scenario planning exercise, stronger exchanges developed between participants. Still, the organization was not ready for people to work independently of the founder.
- It became clear during the meeting that more power was being transferred from the founder to the board, along with greater responsibility for outcomes. By the meeting’s end, the participants had a strong sense of personal commitment to the work at hand, which was absent at the meeting’s beginning.
Attractors:
- The founder was the key attractor around which the container emerged. From pre-meeting interviews with the staff and founder, it was evident that the founder’s thoughts and intentions would significantly influence the organization’s future. Sometimes a powerful attractor can distort the container’s work, making it impossible to explore possibilities or escape entrenched responses to the founder’s vision. We acknowledged the founder’s influence and occasionally disrupted this pattern using a lightly facilitated circle process, allowing other ideas and questions to surface and clarity to arise.
- The room’s physical setup emphasized the two key attractors: the founder at one end of a long table and me at the other. The founder, being the closest to the work, naturally dominated past meetings. My role was to provide a counterbalance, interrupting when necessary to check the group’s clarity and occasionally asking naive questions.
- Another strong attractor was the dual focus on the organization’s sustainability and the work’s sustainability. The board’s past focus on the organization’s sustainability had led to numerous conflicts and a toxic environment as the founder and board clashed over differing intentions. The crucial task for this meeting was to shift the focus onto the organization’s work and the potential for its sustainability without the core organizational structure.
Boundaries:
- There were clear boundaries at play in the meeting. We had a six-hour time limit. We had a small group around a long table with the option to use breakout rooms if needed. As a facilitator, my responsibility was to enforce time boundaries, especially around the meeting’s end. With an event scheduled for the evening, I had to shift the group’s attention from open, free-flowing conversation to more concrete matters during the meeting’s final hour.
- Initially, I requested the founder to give a “state of the union” type address based on several board members’ pre-interview requests. They needed to understand what they were contributing to. Setting some boundaries or enabling constraints around the work was essential to creating an invitation barrier, which Peter Block suggests, is key to eliciting authentic commitment to the work at hand. Clear statements from the founder about his willingness and unwillingness provided a framework for the board members to develop a plan that was both focused on the organization’s current needs and compatible with their commitments. It remains to be seen whether one or two of the members present will commit to continuing. However, the clarity evoked should aid their decision-making process.
I hope this gives a good overview of my current thinking and process around working with constraints, containers and complexity. I am continuing to unpack the ideas in this post in more detail and put them into both practical and theoretical contexts. Responses, questions and curiosities are welcome.
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This is a picture of me, puzzling something out.
I’m about a third of the way through a 20-week Participatory Narrative Inquiry practicum with Cynthia Kurtz. We’ve been spending a lot of time talking about story, and story collection, because that is a really important aspect of generating the magic. As Cynthia said today “magic is amazing but all the folktales will tell you that it is always supposed to be hard.”
Today she shared an old blog post on the work being “too hard” and it’s worth quoting in depth:
Story work is hard. It is not clean or clear or simple. It is high input, high risk and high output. I find there is a tendency, probably common to all human beings, to jump past the first two parts of that sentence and pay attention only to the last part: high output. But all three parts are equally important. If input is not high enough — yours and every participant’s — or if things go wrong, the potentially high output of story work could be low or nonexistent, or even negative. Nobody should work with stories in organizations or communities without a full awareness of this fact. The reason story work digs deeper than other methods of inquiry is the same reason it is more likely to fail than other methods of inquiry. It is hard because it is good, and it is good because it is hard.
All of this makes working with stories hard to popularize. It’s not an approach that spreads like wildfire. I’d rather it be slow than wrong, and I’m not in any hurry to change the world, so I don’t mind if the majority of people stand off and view story listening from a distance…
…soak yourself in stories. Why? First, because before you have a good long soak in stories you can’t see the values they bring to inquiry, so you can’t sustain the high input required. Second, because until you understand the life of stories you won’t know where to place your high input, and you won’t know where the risks lie. Like a gardener who tries to grow food without learning to love the soil, you will bring failure upon your own efforts. Most of the people I’ve seen come to story work from other fields have not been willing to be with thousands of stories and learn how they live. They just want results, and that’s part of why they get frustrated. They aren’t in the world of stories to settle down, just to visit. But the world of stories doesn’t open itself to casual visitors. Only the locals know the soil, and only the locals grow the best tomatoes.
This has been my experience too. The amazing insights that come from working with stories together are like magic, but it is a lot of work to get it going and make it sing.