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- Herausgeber: John Wiley & Sons
- Kategorie: Fachliteratur
- Sprache: Englisch
Visualization—in your own imagination, on the wall, and with media—supports any consultant who is learning to design and facilitate transformational change, leadership development, stakeholder involvement processes, and making sense of complex challenges. This book, from leaders in the field, shows you how. Building on Peter Block’s Flawless Consulting, it explains how to visually contract and scope work, gather data, provide feedback, plan interventions, implement, and support on-going sustainability in organizational and community settings.
Unlike Block’s work, Visual Consulting addresses the challenging problems of guiding organizational and social change processes that involve multiple levels and types of stakeholders, with interests in both local and global environments. It demonstrates how visualization and design thinking can be used to get more creative and productive results that are “owned” by everyone. The practices described apply to organizational as well as diverse, cross-boundary consulting projects. In this book, you will. . .
- Learn powerful visual tools for all key stages of the consulting process, including marketing your services
- Understand the predictable challenges of change and how to successfully guide organizations and communities through them
- Learn how to collaborate with clients to get sustainable results
- Find tools for using visualization comprehensively, for both inner and outer work
- Successfully guide change in both organizations and communities
The fourth installment in the Visual Facilitation series, this book teaches you how to activate the full range of visual tools, methods, and models to support stepping into successful, contemporary consulting relationships.
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Seitenzahl: 522
Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2018
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The following are registered trademarks of The Grove Consultants International—Group Graphics®, Graphic Guides®, Digital Graphic Guides®, and The Drexler/Sibbet Team Performance Model®. Trademarks in use include Storymaps™, Visual Planning Systems™, Strategic Visioning Model™, Liminal Pathways Framework™ and the Seven Challenges of Change™.
Copyright © 2018 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc. All rights reserved.
Published by John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, New Jersey.Published simultaneously in Canada.
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available
ISBN 978-1-119-37534-0 (pbk)ISBN 978-1-119-37536-4 (ebk)ISBN 978-1-119-37533-3 (ebk)
This book is dedicated to all the visual facilitators,consultants, and activists working to make theirorganizations and communities more collaborative,creative, and compassionate places to work and live,and to Hannah, Thom, Val, Jerda, Phil, and all theirchildren as they face the new challenges ahead.
CONTENTS
Cover
Title page
Copyright page
Introduction
Acknowledgements
Part I: Imagining Visual Consulting Jumping into the Flow
Chapter 1: The Potential of Visual Consulting
Integrating Methods to Get Results
California Drought Calls for Change
My Way in to Water Management
Inviting a Conversation on Issues
Initial Draft Visualizations
How Dialogue and Generative Images Deepen Insight
Tools You Can Use
Involving a Graphics Professional
Illustrating the History
Humans Think in Maps and Itineraries
Patiently Getting Consensus
Moving to Implementation and Change
How Can You Begin Developing Visual Consulting Capability?
Chapter 2: What Kind of Consultant Are You?
A Collaborative Engagement Framework
Types of Change That Consulting Can Help With
Visual Consulting at the UC Merced School of Engineering
Classic Consulting Distinctions
Visualization Integrates with Process Consultation
Underlying Assumptions
Underlying Assumptions
Underlying Assumptions:
Underlying Assumptions
Be Clear About Your Role When You Contract for Work
Illustrating the Key Relational Dynamics Between the Consultant and Client
What is Elevation?
What Is Subordination?
Mutual Respect
Response at an Organization Development (OD) Conference
Our Approach at the School of Engineering
Shadow Side Applications
The Promise of Mutual Regard
Chapter 3: Capabilities You'll Need
Focus on the Fundamentals
Working with Visual Frameworks
Working Holistically
Integrative Thinking
Visual Consulting Capabilities and the Four Flows of Process
Being Aware of Attention
Tuning into the Energetic Flow
Understanding the Information Flow
Managing Operations
What About YOU?
Visualization Capabilities Needing Special Attention
Part II: Visualizing Change Helping Clients Look Ahead
Chapter 4: Finding & Contracting Clients
Succeeding at Initial Meetings
Change at University of California at Merced
Practices for Initial Meetings
Our Approach in This First Meeting
Moving to Preliminary Proposals
How Do You Find Clients for Visual Consulting?
Setting Up a Learning Relationship with a Client
A Collaborative Approach to Sharing Responsibility
Should You Be Formal or More Informal?
Keeping It Light at First
Getting Down to Business
Types of Contracts
What Does Scoping Involve?
Reflect Client Interests in Their Language
Visual Consulting Approaches
Chapter 5: Basic Patterns of Change
Navigating Between Old & New
Finding the Patterns of Change
Change Is Fundamental
Traditional Rites of Passages (RoP)
The Three Phases of Change
Liminality Can Be a Crucible
Implications for Visual Consulting
The Inner Process and Outer Structure of Change
The Role of Consultants in Supporting the Ambiguity of Change
Becoming Masters of Liminal Space
Visual Consulting Suggestions for Using the Liminal Pathways Change Framework
Chapter 6: Seven Challenges of Change
Seeing Repeating Patterns
Integrating Liminal Pathways & The Grove Organization Change Model
Unpacking the Visual Framework
Why the Bouncing Balls?
What About the Flows of A-E-I-O and U ?
Learning Your Way into Using the Full Framework
Part III: Visual Consulting Practices Responding to the Challenges of Change
Chapter 7: Activating Awareness
Recognizing the Need to Change
Assessing Where You Are in the Change
What Is Change Management?
Metaphors for Framing Change
Practice With Your Own Reflections
Where Are You Stepping In?
Tried-and-True Practices for Supporting Activating Awareness
Frameworks for Understanding Organizations
Context Mapping
Potential Interview Outcomes
Helpful Guidelines for Interviewing Behaviors
Beyond Activating Awareness
Chapter 8: Engaging Change Leaders
The Role of Process Design Teams
People Make Change
Design Clear Processes for Your Meetings
Setting Good Ground Rules
Introducing “Preventions”
Clearly Frame the Purposes & Patterns of Change
Enactment as Modeling the Change
The Importance of Meeting Venues
Working Remotely
What About the Vision?
Roadmapping the UC Merced Project
Other Strategies for Setting Pace
The Role of Regular Communications & Staffing
The Challenge of Moving into Change Creatively
Chapter 9: Creating & Sharing Possibilities
Designing Approaches, Strategies, & Visions
Establishing Some Language for Design
Predictable Inner Dynamics of the Creative Challenge
Exploring Assumptions
Embracing Resistance
Empathizing & Caring
Imagining Possibilities & Choices
What is an Attractive Entry Point?
Visual Models Can Help
Coming to Agreement on Your Case for Change
Changing Scope at UC Merced
Change Leaders Need to Have a Stake in the Outcomes of Change
Articulating a New Approach at UC Merced
Generic Approaches to Change Processes
Using Field-Tested Consulting Concepts
Distinctions in a Theories of Change Map
Another Way to Look at Elements of a Strong Container
UC Merced Roadmap
Portray Your Organization in Imagery
Prototype Three-Dimensionally
Visually Work with Scenarios
Co-Create a Storymap of a Vision and Change
Taking the Turn
Chapter 10: Stepping into a New, Shared Vision
Committing to Real Change
Nonobjective Aspects of Stepping into a New, Shared Vision
Supportive Structures for Stepping into a New Vision
UC Merced Articulates a Vision
Visioning with the Cabinet
First Draft of a Shared Set of Vision Themes
Holding Big Summits to Do Large-Scale Visioning
The Process for the Summit
Cover Story Visions
Faculty Summit
The Rest of the Story
DLR Group Agrees on a Five-Year Plan
The two-day process was the following:
Cal Poly Business School Strategic Initiatives
DLR Group Gameplan Session
Prioritization & Portfolio Analysis
Chapter 11: Empowering Visible Action
Involving New Leaders
It's Time for a Baton Pass
Cultivating a Living System Mindset
Need for Change at Cal Poly Pomona College of Business Administration
Beginning the Culture Change with a Design Team
Expanding the Conversation
Empowering Visible Action
A Surprising Visible Result
DLR Group's Five Year Plans
RE-AMP Institutionalizes Annual Meetings
Leading Change at National Semiconductor
Coaching Training at Headstart
Introduce Concepts that Catalyze Reflection
Chapter 12: Integrating Systemic Change
Take On New Processes & Behaviors
The Iceberg Model
Why Is Keeping the Whole System in Mind Important?
The Power of Positive Feedback
RE-AMP Reignites Energy Conservation
Otis Spunkmeyer Envisions Integrated Data
UC Merced Adopts Decision Process for Creating Alignment
Evolving New Rituals
Chapter 13: Sustaining Long Term
Evolving a New Culture
Discerning Types of Change
Rituals Can Cultivate, Harness, and Stabilize the Energy of Change
Full Rituals and Ritual-Like Activities
Why Are Rituals so Powerful for Shaping Culture?
The Challenge of Getting Excited About New Methods
Using Checkouts
Leave No Trace
Funeral for a Closing Plant
Work the Plow Section of Investment Portfolios
Balancing Maintenance with Innovation
Maintenance and Refinement of Capability
Part IV: Expanding Your Resources Continuing the Journey
Chapter 14: Toward Mastery
Purpose, Practice, & Passion
Working from Purpose and Intent
New Forms of Collaboration are Expanding Everywhere
Visual Consulting as a Path to Integrated Practice and Awareness
Combining Fields Is the Path to Mastery
Designing & Leading Change
Miracles in the Small Moments of Change
Start with the Little Things—Recognizing Crucibles
Process Is Like Music and Dance
Global Learning & Exchange Network (The GLEN)
Appendix
Links
Bibliography
Index
EULA
Guide
Cover
Table of Contents
Introduction
List of Illustrations
Introduction 1
Figure I.1
Figure I.2
Figure I.3
Figure I.4
Figure I.5
Chapter 1
Figure 1.1
Figure 1.2
Figure 1.3
Figure 1.4
Figure 1.5
Figure 1.6
Figure 1.7
Figure 1.8
Figure 1.9
Figure 1.10
Figure 1.11
Figure 1.12
Figure 1.13
Chapter 2
Figure 2.1
Figure 2.2
Figure 2.3
Figure 2.4
Figure 2.5
Figure 2.6
Figure 2.7
Figure 2.8
Chapter 3
Figure 3.1
Figure 3.2
Figure 3.3
Figure 3.4
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Figure 3.6
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Figure 3.11
Chapter 4
Figure 4.1
Figure 4.2
Figure 4.3
Figure 4.4
Figure 4.5
Figure 4.6
Figure 4.7
Figure 4.8
Figure 4.9
Chapter 5
Figure 5.1
Figure 5.2
Figure 5.3
Chapter 6
Figure 6.1
Figure 6.2
Figure 6.3
Figure 6.4
Figure 6.5
Figure 6.6
Chapter 7
Figure 7.1
Figure 7.2
Figure 7.3
Figure 7.4
Figure 7.5
Figure 7.6
Figure 7.7
Figure 7.8
Figure 7.9
Figure 7.10
Figure 7.11
Figure 7.15
Chapter 8
Figure 8.1
Figure 8.2
Figure 8.3
Figure 8.4
Figure 8.5
Figure 8.6
Figure 8.7
Figure 8.8
Figure 8.9
Figure 8.10
Figure 8.11
Chapter 9
Figure 9.1
Figure 9.2
Figure 9.3
Figure 9.4
Figure 9.5
Figure 9.6
Figure 9.7
Figure 9.8
Figure 9.9
Figure 9.10
Figure 9.11
Figure 9.12
Figure 9.13
Figure 9.14
Figure 9.15
Figure 9.16
Figure 9.17
Chapter 10
Figure 10.1
Figure 10.2
Figure 10.3
Figure 10.4
Figure 10.5
Figure 10.6
Figure 10.7
Figure 10.8
Figure 10.9
Figure 10.10
Figure 10.13
Figure 10.14
Figure 10.14a
Figure 10.14b
Figure 10.15
Figure 10.15
Figure 10.16
Figure 10.17
Figure 10.18
Figure 10.19
Figure 10.20
Figure 10.21
Figure 10.22
Figure 10.23
Chapter 11
Figure 11.1
Figure 11.2
Figure 11.3
Figure 11.4
Figure 11.5
Figure 11.6
Figure 11.7
Chapter 12
Figure 12.1
Figure 12.2
Figure 12.3
Figure 12.4
Figure 12.5
Figure 12.6
Figure 12.7
Figure 12.8
Figure 12.10
Chapter 13
Figure 13.1
Figure 13.2
Figure 13.3
Figure 13.4
Figure 13.5
Figure 13.6
Figure 13.7
Figure 14.1
Chapter 14
Figure 14.2
Figure 14.3
Figure 14.4
Appendix
Figure A.1
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The Wiley Visual Facilitation Series
Figure I.1
Visual Meetings: How Graphics, Sticky Notes & Idea Mapping Can Transform Group Productivity, was a best seller in 2009. It's been translated in more than a dozen languages and stimulated many to begin consulting practices using these methods.
Visual Teams: Graphic Tools for Commitment, Innovation, & High Performance followed in 2010 and explained how teams using visual facilitation function over time. It also explains the underlying Theory of Process that informs this and other process models designed by David Sibbet.
Visual Leaders: New Methods for Visioning, Management & Organization Change came out in 2013 in full color. It guides leaders on how to think about developing personal visual literacy and guide their organizations to become visually adept.
Introduction
This book is the fourth in a series sponsored by Wiley & Sons to comprehensively explore the rapidly expanding field of visual practice for facilitation, group leadership and consulting. (See Figure I.1). Visual Consulting: Designing & Leading Change (Figure I.2) builds on prior books, but assumes a more general level of understanding of the purpose and power of visualization than when the series began. Since Visual Meetings was published an entire body of literature has emerged with an ever-widening delta of practitioners, and attendant confusions about how these methods really work in practice.
Figure I.2
Visual Consulting: Designing & Leading Change explores the integration of visual facilitation, dialogic practice, and change work, as practiced by co-authors David Sibbet and Gisela Wendling, Ph.D. It introduces a new Seven Challenges of Change model.
A deeper purpose for writing Visual Consulting emerges from our experience of current events on local and global levels moving very quickly in complex and polarizing ways. We believe there is a need for practitioners who can be constructively involved in responding to these challenges and help guide change using the tools that visualization and dialogic practice provides. Both of us authors are fully engaged in long-term projects working on organizational and community change, often combined with supporting practitioner development. We feel called to share what we are learning more now than ever. We are eager to reach consultants in general who are becoming aware of the power of visualization, but also to visual practitioners who are awakening to the possibility of using their skills to help design and facilitation change in a more expanded way.
As with the other books, what we are sharing is based on experience enlivened by relevant theory. We know practitioners need concepts and light scaffolding to guide their developmental work, and specific, useful practices that can be applied. And we also know that reading stories of how these approaches work in actual practice can bring the theories, skills, and approaches to life.
Blending Three Fields
We are integrating three fields of practice in our conception of visual consulting: Visual facilitation—Dialogic practice—Change work (Figure I.3). Each of these fields has disciplines, associations, literature, practices, and special language. What makes it possible to integrate them is they share a need for process awareness and process thinking.
Dialogue
Figure I.3
Visual Facilitation
Visual facilitation is my (David Sibbet,) lifelong passion with decades of organization and community consulting across multiple sectors. I, Gisela Wendling, have spent my professional life researching and supporting change work with a continuous focus on integrating the principles and practices of dialogue in my work. We are excited to introduce readers to several new visual frameworks that have been especially powerful with our own work in this regard. One is the Consulting Framework for Respectful Engagement that will help consultants of any type understand their roles and the type of relationship they hope to establish with clients.
A second, the Liminal Pathways Change Framework, has grown out of my, Gisela's, research at Fielding Graduate University. It re-conceptualizes the basic archetype of change embedded in traditional rites of passages as a human systems change framework, offering insights not only into the phases and milestones of change but also inner process and outer process dynamics that accompanies it. This framework has been consistently eye-opening and useful to people who are participating in our workshops.
The third model is a Seven Challenges of Change framework that integrates The Grove Consultants International traditional organization change model (described in Visual Leaders) with the Liminal Pathways work.
Being Aware of the Inner & Outer Dimensions of Change
These frameworks and process models are outgrowths of our joint leadership of many change projects and our work of teaching process consultants about these methods. Over the course of our professional practice we have became increasingly convinced that one's own inner awareness and how this applies to the use of oneself as an instrument for change is as important as the supportive outer structures consultants create, including the hands-on practices and tools they use with clients.(Figure I.4) Of course this dual focus on the inner and outer dimensions applies not only to consultants and their development but also reflects the dual focus that is needed to effectively support change in client systems. As we began sharing these ideas, we found more and more colleagues coming to similar conclusions or feeling confirmed by what they have sensed or known all along but had not seen simultaneously well-integrated before. Throughout the chapters we come back to this dual focus and share specific approaches and practices to working with each of the seven challenges of change.
Use of Self
Figure I.4
Change Work
Anchored in Student-Centered Learning
We bring 70 years of collective, field-tested knowledge to our writing. Our methods have been refined through actual practice in the field, informed by reading and extensive exchange with colleagues. Underlying this we share rich, formative experiences in student-centered learning.
I, Gisela, as a student in the humanistic-oriented psychology department at Sonoma State University was part of a several-years-long extraordinary learning community modeled after the principles of student-centered learning. This community was guided by true elders in the field of humanistic psychology—William McCreary, who had been a student of Carl Rogers, and Arthur Warmoth, a student of Abraham Maslow. In this approach it is the learner and not the content, the instructor, or the institution that is at the center of the learning process. It taught me what it means to be an empowered learner, to locate my self-authority, to pursue my callings, and embrace community as a deep resource for personal and collective learning and development.
My passion for supporting transformative learning processes grew while I was in the masters program in Organization Development, also at SSU, learning the trade by participating in immersive action research projects—a program which I later directed. Being part of the scholar/practitioner doctoral program at the Fielding Graduate University further deepened my appreciation for self-direction and peer learning. My approach to working with organizations and fellow learners is deeply rooted in these experiences.
I, David, worked for many years with the Coro Center for Civic Leadership before starting my consulting firm, The Grove Consultants International, in 1977. Coro pioneered experience-based leadership development in its nine-month Fellowship in Public Affairs, now offered in six cities across the country. Many of The Grove's visual and other methods were seeded in that experience of helping Fellows learn from their own experiences.
Figure I.5
Colleagues from the Global Learning & Exchange Network worked extensively with David and Gisela in refining the core ideas in this book. The GLEN's purpose is to evolve methodologies of collaboration and change to better face the problems of our times. This network is supported by The Grove Consultants International. For more information about both check:
https://glen.grove.com
www.grove.com
This shared orientation to designing and facilitating empowering person- and client-centered approaches, along with her global perspectives and focus on human systems change led to Gisela joining The Grove as its VP of Global Learning. She and David launched a Designing & Leading Change Intensive at The Grove in 2014 to explore the integration of their fields of work. Response to this work resulted in them co-creating a Global Learning & Exchange Network (or The GLEN) with the help of a half-dozen colleagues and Grove consultants. Its purpose is to evolve methodologies of collaboration within and across organization, communities, and cultures to better face the problems of our times. Through eight on-line inquiries, or what we call Exchanges at The GLEN, we shared our emerging Seven Challenges of Change framework and tested it's depictions of the inner and outer challenges against the extensive experience of our colleagues.
Structure of the Book
In general, this book is oriented to the less experienced consultants in the beginning chapters, making the case for visualization, dialogue, and change working together and providing frameworks and explicit, practical examples of how to get started. As the book progresses we address the more subtle aspects of change, continuing with specific methods and tools.
The book is, itself, highly visual and designed to be scanned as well as read. We invite you to move between sections to find the parts that resonate with your current interests. But if you want to follow our main case (the UC Merced Vision & Change Alignment process) from beginning to end it is best to read the chapters sequentially.
SideStory I.1
SideStory Format
Throughout this book there are side stories that are formatted like this one, with a simple headline and a box of text.
These feature visual consultants, key concepts you can use in sketch talks, and explanations of graphics that illustrate various formats you can use.
Side stories and all graphic figures have a number in the upper right, so when this book is translated to electronic versions the text can link to the appropriate visuals. It will also work as a cross reference between chapters as you read. The sidestory and figure numbers are the chapter number followed by the number of the specific sidestory or figure in that chapter., i.e. SideStory 2.3 is in Chapter 2 as the third sidestory. The numbers are an additional way to know what chapter you are reading.
Part I: Imagining Visual Consulting, Jumping into the Flow, is written to orient you to this way of working.
Chapter 1: The Potential of Visual Consulting begins with a story of the California Roundtable on Water & Food Supply, and how Gisela, as a consultant who does not work on the wall graphically, extensively used visualization as a way to both support dialogue and catalyze new, holistic thinking to address some of the tough water issues California is facing. She eventually involved David as a visual facilitator, so this story embodies many of the themes of this book.
Chapter 2: What Kind of Consultant Are You? introduces the Consulting Framework for Respectful Engagement, an extension of Ed Schein's traditional definition of process consulting. This overview provides you with a sense of where you are entering this field.
Chapter 3: Capabilities You'll Need, orients you to capabilities we believe are needed to practice visual facilitation, dialogic practice, change work, and use of self. These are framed in the context of the four flows of process, a powerful set of distinctions from Arthur M. Young's Theory of Process that underlies this and all The Grove's other work. These capabilities deal with both inner practices and outer structures.
Part II: Visualizing Change, Helping Clients Look Ahead, heads directly into the challenge of finding clients, scoping your projects, and contracting for success, and at an overview level thinking about change not only in terms of stages of process, but also the weave between inner and outer considerations.
Chapter 4: Finding & Contracting Clients, begins with the story of a Visioning & Change Alignment project at the University of California at Merced. This year-long consulting engagement threads through subsequent chapters provides many examples of best practices for designing and leading change. This chapter is a must for anyone beginning the consulting journey.
Chapter 5: Basic Patterns of Change introduces theLiminal Pathways Framework, a way of looking at how traditional peoples have supported change for tens of thousands of years. This work is an outgrowth of Gisela's field study of indigenous rites and ceremonies in Peru, Africa, and Australia and her doctoral research. This framework applies to change in general and transformational change in particular.
Chapter 6: Seven Challenges of Change provides an overview of the framework that will guide Part III on visual consulting practices. It explains the integration of the basic pattern of change illustrated in the Liminal Pathways framework with The Grove's organizational change model (described in Visual Leaders). This framework evolved during the writing of this book as colleagues and others reflected on the themes that were most important for practitioners.
SideStory I.2
Practices & Activities You Can Do Look Like This
Throughout the book there are specific activities you can do to assess yourself, learn a new practice, or use as a checklist to remember key elements in a process.
All activities have either checkboxes or numbered steps.
Checkboxes look like this.
Numbered steps look like this.Part III: Visual Consulting Practices, Responding to the Challenges of Change, moves through the Seven Challenges of Change Framework one at a time, and elucidates core principles for working with inner process dynamics and outer process structures, as well as best practices for each.
Chapter 7: Activating Awareness Shares how to be aware of the surprise, shock, hopefulness, and preparedness. We describe outer structures for doing scoping, initial client meetings, mapping drivers of change, interviewing stakeholders, using conceptual models to hold a systemic perspective, assessing readiness, and contracting for change.
Chapter 8: Engaging Leaders of Change moves into the formation of design teams, visual stakeholder analysis, roadmapping, role clarification, and working with resistance. We speak to the fears, and feelings of uncertainty connected with this early stage. It continues the UC Merced case with explicit examples of charting, dialogic practices and overall design for a change process.
Chapter 9: Creating & Sharing Opportunities explores how to design and hold a strong container for design thinking, visual facilitation, visioning, scenario planning, creating large storymaps, and dialogue practices to support this challenge. Exploring assumptions, resistance, caring, and creativity are inner aspects. The UC Merced story continues, showing elements in practice that create strong containers for the work.
Chapter 10: Stepping into a new Shared Vision brings the UC Merced story to culmination as the University agrees on its vision and priorities moving forward. We describe how to stay connected to purpose, hold complexity, and cross the threshold in decision crucibles, and large-scale visioning processes.
Chapter 11: Empowering Visible Action looks at the importance of taking enough time to involve new leaders, support emergence, and learn from experience. It explores communicating early wins, keeping a clear rhythm, supporting work groups, building capacity, and facilitating learning opportunities. A case from Cal Poly Pomona's College of Business Administration shows how visioning work materialized in visible results for the college.
Chapter 12: Integrating Systemic Change uses the iceberg model to look into the systemic issues and mental models that need to shift to support change. How do you persist courageously, clearing old habits and nurturing new patterns of working systemwide? How can consultants amplify successes, clear blocks, design new processes, and evolve new rituals for creating and sustaining culture change.
Chapter 13: Sustaining Long Term moves into the challenge of evolving culture change over a period of time—both appreciating the gifts of change and living with impermanence. How do you evolve the culture, celebrate completions, invest in renewal, and maintain and refine?
Part IV: Expanding Your Resources, Continuing the Journey, contains a last chapter, the appendix, bibliography, and index.
Chapter 14: Toward Mastery wraps up with our hopes for where these concepts, principles, and practices will be used, and how you as a visual consultant can begin the longer road of personal practice and development in this field. It includes sidestories of consultants who are working at this level.
Appendix and Bibliography. The back of the book has a short overview of the Theory of Process, which underlies Grove models, as well as links and a bibliography of the references that have inspired us in writing this book.
Visual Consultants as Vanguards of Integrated Thinking and Practice
In a time of specialization and polarization, we are writing into the space of integration and collaboration. We have been hugely inspired by the response of our clients to this blending of dialogue, visualization, and change (Sidestory 1.3). Take any away and you do not have the potential we are describing.
SideStory I.3
Assumptions About Visual Book Design
This book, like the preceding ones, is rich with use of visual imagery that dances with the writing to bring across these new ideas. We actually “wrote” the book in Adobe's InDesign software, writing and drawing our way through the ideas, making sure the page text explains and bounces off the imagery. This will of course be reformatted in e-book form, but we have added figure numbers of all images so the links can continue.
Cognitive scientists agree that our embedded mental models and metaphors drive perception and behavior in fundamental ways. Active visualization of this material is a direct way to both uncover and upgrade your systemic thinking. If you actively sketchnote while reading you can get some of this value.
Visualizing as a process is already integral to design thinking, prototyping, strategy formation, implementation, change management, and planning in general, but it is not appreciated enough as a core thinking tool for leadership and social change. Nor is it sufficiently appreciated how powerful the person-hood of the practitioner is to getting results. We move to story telling to bring in this dimension, and exercises you can do on your own.
As you will discover, this is not a book about the traditional use of visuals as static pictures that explain things, but of
using visualization as an active language, central to the social construction
of what we consider valid and real, and understandable in the world.
This is not a book about dialogue separated from the work of the world, but about the
important integration of inner and outer ways of knowing
and relating while working IN the world.
This is not a book about change management—the smoothing of organizational transitions, project and process optimization, and the many operational capabilities needed to run any organization. It is
about stepping up to support change that transforms and touches the deeper currents of culture and the paradigms that we use to make sense of the world.
We hope you consultants and others who read this book can become adept at BOTH the use of visualization to guide consulting processes in a structured way, and the use of your own visual imagination to become adept at enhancing dialogic explorations, guiding consulting processes in a structured way AND using your own visualization to become aware of your and your clients' inner dynamics. For visual facilitators stepping into consulting, we hope you can come to see the path forward as a wonderful expansion of your receptive, improvisational capabilities, and learn to listen to parts that can't be visualized explicitly, but can be honored by how you show up and the quality of your being while holding the processes of change.
Acknowledgements
There are many people who have contributed to our collective development and the themes in this book. Alan Briskin, co-author of The Power of Collective Wisdom and GLEN colleague, had an initial perception that the bringing together of visual facilitation and dialogic practice was a new edge for our field. Subsequently he and a group of colleagues met over two years to evolve the GLEN and the core ideas of this book. They included Aftab Omer, president of Meridian University; Amy Lenzo of Clear Light Communications; Rob Eskridge, president of Growth Management Center; Bill Bancroft of Conbrio Consulting; Laurie Durnell, copresident of The Grove, and Rachel Smith, former Grove director of Digital Facilitation. This book was then greatly improved by these and additional GLEN members in Visual Consulting Exchanges held to test our thinking. Thanks to Bassam Alkarashi of ES Consulting; Bob Horn of MacroVu; John Schinnerer of the Sociocratic Consulting Group; Joy Keller-Weidman with the Udal Foundation; Karen Wilhelm-Buckley of Communicorp Consulting; Marco Ceretti of Otherwise; Mary Gelinas of Gelinas James, Inc.; and Phil Bakelaar professor of OD at Montclair University,
We owe special thanks to Michael Reese, f. vice chancellor of Business & Administration at the University of California at Merced, Chancellor Dorothy Leland, and Erik Rolland, f. acting dean of the UC Merced School of Engineering, for the wonderful case study that brings many of these tools and practices to life.
We also are indebted to the cohort of process leaders in our Leading Change Program at the Metropolitan Council of the Twin Cities in Minnesota, whose eagerness to learn about change inspired many parts of this book.
We owe special thanks to the visual consultants we feature—to Diana Arsenian and her work with Appreciative Inquiry; to Holger Balderhaar and his internal consulting in Hamburg; to Bassam Alkarashi of ES Consulting, bringing visual facilitation to transformational change in Saudia Arabia; to Bill Bancroft of ConBrio and his applications in strategic visioning and leadership development; to Maaike Doyer of Business Models Inc. for modeling adept use of graphic wall templates; to Rob Eskridge of Growth Management Center and his work evolving templates for strategic planning; to Mary Gelinas (Talk Matters) for her work in leadership and brain sciences applied to collaboration; to Meryem LeSaget and her work in deep visioning and sustainable organizations in France; to Dan Roam (Back of the Napkin; Blah, Blah, Blah; and other books); to Holger Scholz, founder of kommunikationslotsen in Germany, and co-founder of bikablo; and to Kevin Souza and his applications of visual consulting as director of Educational Services at the University of California San Francisco Medical Center.
We have collaboratively learned this field with some special clients. Thanks to Ann Hayden, senior director of the California Habitat Exchange at the Environmental Defense Fund; Barbara Waugh, f. HR director of HP Labs; Bryce Pearsall and Griff Davenport of DLR Group; Erik Rolland, dean of the College of Business Administration at Cal Poly Pomona; John Schiavo, f. CEO of Otis Spunkmeyer; Joseph McIntyre, f. executive director at Ag Innovations; Leisa Thompson, general manager of Environmental Services Division of the Metropolitan Council in Minnesota; and Rick Reed f. program manager of the Garfield Foundation, funders of RE-AMP.
We could not have written this book without the full support of our team at The Grove Consultants International. This includes Laurie Durnell, Tiffany Forner. Danielle Hansen, Megan Hinchliffe, Cody Keene, Malgosia Kostecka, Eddie Palmer, Robert Pardini, and Jan Thomas.
The many people who have influenced David and the growth of the visual facilitation field are well noted in earlier books in this series. For Gisela, special thanks to William McCreary and Art Warmoth, formerly at Sonoma State for their inspiration with student centered learning; to Fielding Graduate School's Fred Stier on reflexive research, Matt Hamabatta for love of qualitative data, and Charlie Seashore, on use of self; to Saul Eisen as early mentor in the field of OD; to Edie and Charlie Seashore, mentors at NTL; to Tony Petrella for moral support and consulting at the “C” level; to Kathy Danemiller for large-scale change; to Barry Oshry for helping “see” systems through his Power Labs; to Don Americo Yabar and Juan Nunes del Prado, meztiso paqos from Peru; to Bradford Keeny and his work with the Kalihari Bushmen, and Frank Ansel, an Aboriginal n'ankari, and Aunti Nellie Patterson, a traditional elder from the central deserts of Australia for direct experiences in indigenous ceremony.
In learning about the deep process of being a life-long consultant, Gisela has been part of Chakra, a peer circle of women committed to supporting each other through life's transitions— meeting three to four weekends a year since 1997. It includes Ann Dosher, Andrea Dyer-Miller, Kristen Cobble, Linda Boose Sweeney, Peggy Sebera, Ronita Johnson, Sarita Chawla, Stephany Ryan, Teresa Ruelas. David engaged in similar learning with the Pathfinders, a consultant developmental circle formed by Bill and Marilyn Veltrop in 2001. The initial cohort continues today as Pathwalkers, following a decade and a half of monthly, full-day meetings covering every theme imaginable. This group includes Amy Lenzo, Babara Waugh, Brian Dowd, Diego Navarro, Firehawk Hulin, Gary Merrill, Pele Rouge, Peter Gaarn, Susan Christy, and Vivian Wright.
Part I.Imagining Visual ConsultingJumping into the Flow
1.The Potential of Visual ConsultingIntegrating Methods to Get Results
You are about to begin a learning journey into an intersection of three fields that are giving rise to a new way of working we are calling “visual consulting.” One is the field of visualization, and visual facilitation in particular. A second is dialogic practice, as used in consulting. And a third is change consulting, specifically designing and leading change in organizations and communities. What they have in common is an orientation to process thinking and process leadership. Applied in the interests of clients seeking innovation, culture change, alignment on new visions, process transformation, and sustainable results, they come together as “visual consulting.”
Like anyone learning something new, you'll need to orient to what it will mean for you. What is your interest in visualization? What's your interest in consulting? And what does this have to do with designing and leading change? Stay with these questions as we begin with a real client story that illustrates the power of visualization in a consulting engagement (Figure 1.1). It contains a number of practices you can add to your tool set right away. Starting with a story will help make the later chapters come alive.
Figure 1.1
California Drought Calls for Change
In 2013 I, Gisela, joined Ag Innovation Network as director of Water Programs and took on the role of facilitating the California Roundtable on Water & Food Supply (CRWFS). It had 25 members. They were beginning their third year of dialogue identifying top water issues in the state and writing white papers to respond. The program was funded by the California Water Foundation and others. I would be acting as a process consultant/facilitator, with the support and help of Ag Innovations staff. The participants were leaders in big agriculture, small agriculture, science, environment, state and local government, lawyers, regulators, and general water managers from all around the state. They were already a trusting group appreciating the off-the-record safety of the Roundtable, and our commitment to publish only what they consensually agreed upon. Being a diverse group this was the challenge. What was the most pressing issue to focus on this year?
My Way in to Water Management
I began by using a tried-and-true group process, being experienced in large system change and a wide variety of organizational development practices and skills with extensive experience in process design and facilitation of dialogue. In spite of some early training in draftsmanship, drawing on the wall is not my forte. This story is about how the visualization I used helped the Roundtable come to significant consensus on a critical issue in our state—water management. It is also a story of how I reached out to David, who is very skilled in visual representation and facilitation, and together we took the work further, and began a professional journey that has convinced us of the power of more deeply blending these fields we are in. We'll share more stories about our findings as we go along.
I knew asking the right questions is the key to good dialogue. I asked, “Given what we are looking at, what key question should the Roundtable take on for this year?”. . . My question surfaced a deeper question that led to a new focus “What would it take to create connections, re-connections, or effective alignments to address these systemic issues?”
Inviting a Conversation on Issues
The Roundtable had already developed an explicit group charter. Building on that, as well as individual interviews with all members, I facilitated a series of half-day meetings. In these full-group sessions we sat around tables set in a big “U” shape that suggested everyone was equal. I would create agendas on a flip chart. Confidentiality was key. My first task was to invite a conversation about what key California water issues they had on their mind. “What key question should the Roundtable take on for this year?” was on their mind. Historically this group was best at re-framing issues. An earlier report had argued for moving from “water conservation” to “stewardship.” A second year they pushed to move from “water storage” to “retention.” To get the group going this time I asked everyone to go around and have each person speak to what they considered to be the top issues and crises. They began to realize how many ways the water system was broken and disconnected.
In a second meeting they broke into small groups and identified the disconnections on sticky notes. We then clustered them on a big wall and identified 18 clusters. The huge wall of disconnections vividly visualized the complexity and extent of the systemic dysfunction. We typed up the clusters into a meeting report that was then fed back to all participants.
Asking the right questions is the key to good dialogue. I asked a lot. My questions and their resulting dialogue then surfaced even deeper questions and eventually a new focus. “What would it take to create connections, re-connections, or effective alignments to address the wide range of systemic issues?” they asked. “What kind of thinking would be needed to generate truly new solutions?” Their inquiry led them to a new learning edge. Thinking about disconnection led to ideas about reconnection and eventually the exploration of a connectivity model. The wall was a doorway for them to look at things systemically. I think that the visualization of issues plus the dialogue worked together to catalyze this new focus.
Initial Draft Visualizations
In following sessions we dug deeper into on a system-level depiction of their insights about disconnection, drawing an initial diagram in PowerPoint of what I had heard them say about connectivity. This simple image (Figure 1.2) provided enough visual language for the group to engage more deeply at a systemic level, and is a great example of how visuals work in facilitation. My illustration showed the human systems acting upon the physical system, in which I included the natural ecosystem. Because they are both physical. I used a very simple action diagram format. BUT it was flawed. The Roundtable participants pushed right back. They saw that it reflected one of the most fundamental disconnects—the pervasively shared and often unexamined belief about the relationship between human systems and the larger ecosystem—that they are two separate systems, with distinct features and operational dynamics.
Figure 1.2
A Flawed View of the Water System
This PowerPoint slide shows my initial depiction of what I heard them talking about as the common view of connectivity, but it was flawed, and that was its value. It reflected and reinforced one of the most fundamental disconnects—the pervasively shared and often unexamined belief about the relationship between human systems and the larger ecosystem—that they are two separate systems, with distinct features and operational dynamics that act upon one another.
This two-systems point of view leads us to think that we use our human-created engineering, management, and economic systems to act upon the ecosystem to shape it in order to serve our human systems' needs, and that this ecosystem in turn impacts the infrastructure we build—i.e. dams and tunnels to bring water to urban areas and agricultural lands, and manage through the ecosystem's seasonal weather, precipitation, and hydrological cycles, including drought and other global warming impacts. I had reinforced this misconception by showing two separate entities and the interaction arrows (left side of Figure 1.3).
Figure 1.3
Connectivity Illustrated
This is my second illustration of the connectivity idea, using nesting as a way to show the human system embedded as part of the ecosystem.
Surfacing that this common belief may be wrong or insufficient, made it even more important that we clarify what is actually part of the human systems and the ecosystems and what the relationship between these two really looks like. I had follow-on conversations with members, and specifically a biologist who encouraged me that the right way to align these would be to put the human system as a subsystem of the ecosystem. This generated a more promising image of connectivity (Figure 1.3).
Note that the incorrect first draft is what precipitated this insight! Accepting this dynamic, of having your first drafts be challenged and considered “wrong,” is a first step in learning to be a visual consultant. But it needs to be paired with dialogic practice that challenges and surfaces deeply held assumptions.
How Dialogue and Generative Images Deepen Insight
Studies of the importance of dialogic practice in organizational change are emphasizing that meaningful change is always accompanied by a change in people's conversation. Diagnosis by itself is inadequate. But with inquiry, learning, and hearing all perspectives, a new, coherent narrative can emerge, and this is what shapes the change. Because systemic, transformative change is always an evolving and emergent process, sustained dialogue about possibilities is needed on an ongoing basis. Generative images and metaphors that result in new insights and action often emerge during the dialogue, but we have discovered that they can also be introduced purposefully.
During the Roundtable's ensuing dialogue on how to depict the system, the imagery evolved further. A water management specialist at the California Water Institute, said that if we look at water as a system we have to look at different uses over time that have led to the current water infrastructure. He provided a simple diagram (Figure 1.4) illustrating three types of water users who compete on water projects—the agricultural interests, the urban interests, and the environmental interests.
Figure 1.4
Water Users
This diagram was shared to illustrate three user categories.
I worked it into a Venn diagram with three overlapping circles (Figure 1.5), checked and refined it with the specialist, and shared it with Roundtable members. It showed single-use benefits and the overlap as dual benefits and the center as the “sweet spot” for connectivity projects. This visual was the seed of a depiction of “connected benefits” that serviced not just individual users but the whole.
Figure 1.5
The Roundtable Sweet Spot
Blended with the earlier connectivity diagram, this integrated view illustrated the CRWFS sweet spot.
Tools You Can Use
Let's step back from our story for a bit to look at the tools I was using that you can already begin to think about putting in your visual consulting toolkit.
Written agendas
Circular & “U” shapes
for meeting, visually suggesting equality of the voices
Small groups
generating their ideas on sticky notes.
A big wall
to post and cluster sticky notes
Written reports
afterwards (an Ag Innovations staffer took notes throughout)
Visual summaries
in the form of diagrams representing the key ideas
Concept graphics
to provide common, systems-level language
These are approaches you can use right from the start in consulting. If you are more experienced you may be realizing that you are already working visually, since most consultants would invariably use PowerPoint and flip charts. The key is being conscious of the impacts.
Involving a Graphics Professional
The CRWFS knew it was heading toward publishing a new report on the connectivity principle they were developing, so our attention was on describing and illustrating these emerging ideas in as interesting a way as possible, avoiding visual cliques.
At this point I reached out to David. He has a long history of helping develop conceptual illustrations. He explained to me that there are two kinds of visuals for this kind of purpose. One is detailed enough to be self-explanatory. The other is to create a visual puzzle that pulls out inquiry and asks the viewer to fill in details. He sketched out both possibilities in his journal at the time (Figure 1.6) and then developed two more concepts in detail (Figures 1.7 and 1.8).
Figure 1.6
First Sketches
These simple sketches of an abstract graphic invite imagination. The more complex ones showing detail raised issues.
Figure 1.7
Figure 1.8
When I presented these refined versions to the Roundtable we got it wrong again! Beautiful!. They said the detailed image that showed the shift from current perception to a proposed future perception was actually MUCH more complex in reality. Others said the environmental image (Figure 1.8) looked like a state of nature and water cycles that preceded European settlement and that the environment doesn't actually look that nice anymore. There are not water-related uses shown in the urban picture others said. As David pointed out after I debriefed the meeting with him, over explicit metaphors can run into these kinds of problems by triggering viewer disagreements.
The Roundtable agreed that maybe they shouldn't use the detailed pictures, but just show what needs to connect and we began to develop the more abstract diagrams (Figures 1.9 and 1.10). These images emerged and were used in the report. Colors were used to indicate the different uses, and intentionally dynamic arrows pointed toward the complexity of each area.
Figure 1.9
Figure 1.10
Resolution of a Connectivity Model
This depiction of the human systems embedded in the ecosystems represented the distilled essence of many hours-long dialogue over months. In full color these diagrams really caught the eye.
Illustrating the History
In parallel with our visualization of connectivity, we worked on looking at the three water uses in California over time: urban, agricultural, and environmental. This visual also clarified the historical progression from single to dual to connected uses and benefits (Figure 1.11)—another breakthrough in how to approach developing systemic solutions.
Figure 1.11
It is important to appreciate that a critical part of the process of writing the consensual report was dialogic, supported by powerful visuals and careful note taking...The fact that our sustained dialogue led to understanding and alignment among such a diverse group of stakeholders who were often at odds, lent the report unusual credibility.
Crises to Connectivity
The From Crisis to Connectivity report is available for download at the Ag Innovations website—http://www.aginnovations.org.
Simply search for “From Crisis to Connectivity” and you can download the report.
Humans Think in Maps and Itineraries
David pointed out during our sketching session, that humans want to think about systems and connections and also want to think about time. This divides graphics into two big categories—map-like images and journey or itinerary images. The final full illustration is shown in Figure 1.11. The result of the dialogue using drafts of images crystallized and confirmed for the Roundtable that the human systems need to be seen as a subset of the ecosystem, forming one interrelated system. This visualization of the two systems reduces the contradiction between the two and generates new ways of perceiving solutions.
Patiently Getting Consensus
Getting consensus on the From Crisis to Connectivity report (Figure 1.12) was a breakthrough for the Roundtable. It was an effort to capture the emerging shift in their fundamental thinking about water in California, at the paradigm level.
Figure 1.12
It is important to appreciate that a critical part of the process of writing the consensual report was dialogic, supported by powerful visuals and careful note taking. The project was running long, yet as the project began to move toward convergence several members were not comfortable with some of the language and points of view. Through dozens and dozens of individual conversations and more group meetings, I insisted that they hear each voice respectfully. With this level of care, the group did come to consensus. The fact that our sustained dialogue led to understanding and alignment among such a diverse group of stakeholders who were often at odds, lent the report unusual credibility. As a result of this alignment, the report has been widely circulated amongst top leaders in the water world in California.
Moving to Implementation and Change
After the report was published, the issue of groundwater was moving to the front of the Roundtable's attention, as years of drought in California were pulling policy makers toward policies that would respond to the problem. The Roundtable decided to look at specific cases through their new framework. The success we had in using visualization to focus consensus and dialogue in our report led me to reach out again to David and ask if he could support our conversation with visual facilitation. I asked him to help co-facilitate the next meeting.
The challenge in addressing groundwater across sectoral lines stems from the fact that farmers, hydrologists, politicians, regulators, environmentalists, and urban water users all have slightly different conceptions of how it all works. To even engage the issue in a systemic way the roundtable needed to develop some common language. We decided to use mapping to address this problem directly.
The strategy was to draw a picture of the hydrologic cycle, which is well visualized in many sources. David found one online that was at the right level of generality and created the large (4'x8') framework shown in Figure 1.13.
Figure 1.13
The Language of the Hydrologic Cycle
The CRWFS participants had a rigorous discussion about all this language, identifying and adding sticky notes to the general ones we provided. One of the challenges of cross-sector stakeholder groups is the great diversity in meaning for what sound like common English words.
We decided to intentionally leave off most of the labeling, except for the basic layers. These we put on sticky notes. The session involved having the group as a whole determine which labels were used for which part of the system, seen as an integrated whole, and adding labels we hadn't uncovered. Our hope was that the hour or so that the group spent wrestling with the map, they would come to an aligned view of the whole system before starting their discussion about what to do in a specific California region. This happened!
SideStory 1.1
Practices for Getting Started
Draw Out Your Own Case:
Pick a change or consulting project you have participated in.Diagram out all the steps you took on a large sheet of paper.Identify all the specific tools and practices you applied, a bit like we did here in this chapter.Scan books on Visual Meetings, Visual Teams, & Visual Leaders
It will be quite helpful to “see what we mean” by looking at the prior books. They are all designed to be read like magazines, as well as books. You'll find some of the underlying concepts helpful in extending the usefulness of this book.
The group went on to analyze a Kings Canyon groundwater case and the decision systems around it. This part of the work is confidential. Everyone found the process very helpful.
We shared this story to demonstrate how an internal consultant who is experienced in dialogue, can partner with an experienced, external, visual consultant. The fact that we are both experienced facilitators allowed us to understand each other and work the synergies. Our success with this pairing of dialogue and visualization in the context of change work led us to do other longer term projects where organizational change was the agenda. One of those, the Visioning and Change Alignment Process at the University of California at Merced will provide an integrative case later in the book.
How Can You Begin Developing Visual Consulting Capability?
Start with what you know already.
