Full Circle Associates

Ole’s Session: Bigger Picture: A Visual Practitioner’s Full Circle Approach

(Usual live blogging caveats apply – spelling, not capturing everything, mistakes, etc. Synthesis and reflection come later! I’ll add in visuals as well. Flickr photos here.)

· Started with asking people why they are in the session. Intriguging that most came because of Ole’s reputation and interest in the technology aspect.

· I hope that I’ll both cover something new that inspires, then talk about Kaospilot and Pioneers of change.

· Full circle is not about circle practice, but using visuals in as many angles as possible. Wet dream of visual practitioner is to apply it an individual, group, collective levels; before, during and after, with and without tech. We might have a gold nugget a lot of leaders can learn from. Sit beside leaders and do synthesis with a visual approach and literacy.

· Ole tells the story of his grandparents who started as farmers. His grandfather wanted not to farm, but to do new stuff with cars. Grandmother was a clothing designer. Dad was first mainframe computer engineer, mom technical assistant in Red Cross. Ole is a Kaospilot, Pioneer and visual practioner. They married someone in the neighborhood. Ole married a Russian. Global society.

· Overview of his agenda: introduction, orienaation, case, facilitative leadership and burning questions and issues.

· Situations where visuals really work. Meetings, presentations, collaborative work where there are graphic facilitators to hold the conversation and allow people to take ownership of their conversation

· Ole works with a network of networks. World Café, Pioneers of Change, Chaordic Commons, Art of Hosting – all sorts of networks who think in similar ways, bring different skills. In Pioneers of change I have a unique contribution with visuals.

· Applies to all types of organizations, big and small, business and NGO.

· Values that guide Ole’s work – generosity, sustainaibilty, creativity, diversity. Concpets building on open space technology, wisdom of the crowns, systems thinking, open source, creative commons, united nations. Try to work with those values and concepts

· Shared picture of visual methods and tools. (Get copy of slide to share with blog). This “bigger picture.” Graphic recording, graphic facilitation, visual orientations. Sure there is individual track, support individual with visuals in their learning journey. As a conference or a change process over time. Supports collective co-creation and individual learning plus some dialog tools visual dialog tools, information that is meaningful to the topic. That feeds in, but also unfinished drawings that are hosting the conversation, meeting or process. This image is 10 years old at an Institute for the Future meeting with the large scale forecast project. Everything was made visual. Recognized this from what he did in 7^th grade, and when he was 18, where you finalize. Half of exams were with visuals. Half professors loved it, half did not like it. Came out with an average. In Denmark that may not be enough to get you into the university. That’s where Kaospilot comes in. 3 year university for misfits. People who don’t find their way in traditional boxes. Become who you want to be, just start doing it and we’ll try and provide what you want. Unlike universities, not free. You pay a third.

· More than visuals: deisgn and change dialog technology. Visual practitioners strategicall design learning tools for individual, group and collective. Distinction between group and collective – small group intensive with cause and a question that motivates. Collective across small groups. Business unit and the company.

· We can really play a role – can you come and be here for a day or two and draw, I say no. you need me on your design team. Why don’t our whole team come and facilitate everything you want to happen. Ole is always part of the design, the event and already plan for post event involvement. “I am your cohost,” Visualize me on your team. Help design team become clear on purpose – already have four platforms, how visuals support all the way through. Visioning across the process. During, host, facilitate, co create, synthesize and simulate. When you have visuals on wall easy ot understand within a short amount of time we can grasp and take ownership of them. If we have to communicate to outsiders, put aside 20% of the time in the during to play out the power of the visuals. Would not want them to receive a packet of visuals 2 weeks later and not be clear about it. Rather have the visual, understand it, put on wall and invite others into the conversation. Practice of that during the event. Participation in creating visual, capable as host convening conversation, structuring the dialog and documenting.

· The power of the visuals, when we create them, we are building a visual language for the client that speak to the organization. Use existing icons and add to that. Some could be online, tools available to a participant to use later, technology on how to interact – it becomes a desktop continuation. Pictures, virtual game, system to continue to participate in, templates, interfaces built up in the same visual language. Continue the life of the visuals.

· Q: How do you convince clients to dedicate 20% of the session for that post-preparation? To do the post work? Four murals over 2 days. The fifth on is a guide to using fhe first four walls. Close by kicking off the client. After close, even a visual debrief.

· Sometimes it is important to say no, that their investment won’t happen if they cut this important part of the process. Help them not fall to pressure from other people by really being consistent on what it takes for success. Ole does not do one day sessions with Kraft, but will do 2 day sessions. Part of it is learning over time for subsequent meetings. Use of templates. Learn to do it for themselves. Where it can cascade. Get the right people in the room at the beginning, set up the right structures then they can host and convene.

· Q: What have your clients most gone for eagerly? More and more to come and do all that thing, and at the end, synthesize. If we can get people to do that thing you do three times we can decide things. Can we have that guide for five simple steps for people to do afterwards. 2009 Denmark hosts Kyoto 2 around climate change. How to get everyone involved and on the bandwagon. They say “we need a synthesis, find the essence of the story, the three questions everyone can have compelling conversations about.” “We heard you did this nice drawing, we need more of that in our meetings. “

· Coaching hosts and facilitators to run conference.

· Case study – missed 5 minutes for a bio break.

· Board practices the process in advance so they run it. Break out groups. Collectively creating and synthesizing inputs. Key questions designed by design team. Groups had tools to finalize and finish their work. The leaders had practiced, tools to collect group stories at the event, then more collected after event. Tool to catch conversations around changes they thought they were good at but needed to do more of.

· The individual learning and reflection tool – used through out the process to keep the essence. Given time to do this – your learning and actions. Same visual language flows across all of the tools.

· Four collective murals (morning/afternoon each day)

· Ole shows us the visual artifacts and templates from a case. Each 20 person breakout has a facilitator and a graphic facilitator. Client participates as facilitation. Master visuals creating in parallel of full process. Team pulled all the different elements into the master visual.

· Three rounds of breakouts – out of 5. Leaders – gets them to focus on the most important, not everything. Facilitate and host and synthesize around the most important things. The tool helps and builds that skill in the leaders. That’s the social software we bring if we are good at designing the visuals and in the graphic recording during the process.

· Establishes credibility. Wow, this is a team from Namibia who did the follow up on their own and have the tools to follow up further. Done at a third of the cost. The learning is internalized. The tools and the visual language is there. Three months later they were clear which parts of it is important. Getting to that point sooner in the planning process.

· The main delivery is the “software” – it could be all kinds of conferences. Lets not have leaders present the finished questions but to raise the important questions and convene the conversation.

· Q: What is your learning edge in this process, Ole? “I never really get the color red right.” Laughter. This is what is coming now.

· I can’t send you this because there are company details. So don’t take pictures.. you will be killed. But happy to share other examples.

· The next step: a new approach. People love this visual language. How can this help us have more meaningful conversations that we need to have. Ole tells the story of the HR department sharing what they are doing, get the stories out, get people on the same page. What are the questions people ask HR? What do they need to get from HR/ Turned out to be on the screen, on the desktop. In one picture what HR is all about was the finished product. Facilitated each of the hosts of 9 HR stories and came up with the stories of each key function. Recruitment. Have a conversation about what that looks like. Do first sketch, unfinished, go out and get feedback, iterate next version, go out and talk and talk and get inputs, until there is a version that people agree that this is the best possible version now, but unfinished enough to invite additional input over tieim.

· We have a conversation online, on a table, here is a great tool, http://www.crossloop.com - I could be doing this presentation in Denmark. What I hear you say I draw in Denmark, you see what I draw. We had those in 9 HR processes. After we sit and talk I return with what I heard in a picture. Synthesis. The magic keeps coming back

· How can we as VP be good at creating unfishished platforms that ask the right questions, encourage conversation, synthesis and spread the conversation.

· We can do this in all different contexts and walks of life. I really believce there is one conversation we need tools that enable us to work faster. Forget about all the assignments we have – one case we need to focus upon: climate change. Need to come up with great bigger pictures. The further and faster we can get those conversations out the better. One year ago I was in SF. I picked up 5 magazines with the “green” issue. This year I have 15. Everyone is talking about it. Some talking in same old ways, some in new ays. Big mess that needs to be met and needs to have synthesis.

· What could IFVP professionals also be? Those in ened are the leaders. They are already doing a good job, but so many people have the job of spreading conversations that matter. If we were to go in – the collaborative tech platforms are there – but not the social connecxtive glue. If you look at YouTube, Facebook, Google earth, Myspace – they enable us to connect and ask the questions, but it has to be much more into the rooms and F2F meetings, but linked out to the desktop.

· How do we do this at a network level. Story – in Denmark, 12 images of Mohamed that stimulated huge conversations in networks in a negative connotation. How can we do that at a positive level?

· Nick: Went to the Norman Rockwell museum. A propagandist… did that kind of mythologizing of America and it created powerful statements. Purely visual. Very strong.

· Be strategic around this. How to get it out on networks.

· There is also a huge wave of that already happening. Any given month there is half a dozen wholeness memes that are new, moving along a certain trajectory. How to sustain the memes into a larger vortex?

· In DC, culture like academia where people are just talking to each other, not listening. Some of these tools have been used at World Bank and UNDP, there are huge opportunities getting some movement on some of the bigger issues that are mired, and hard to get momentum for the next steps. To the commitments. How do we get there? Start small and work up? There is a lot of frustration – people want a new way, but don’t know what that looks like. Seen hope there.

· David Sibbet – hopeful thing we stumbled into. The West Coast Green conference managed to attract 10,000 people. Green builders. Decided to see what we could do. Stumbled into this concept of putting the “action hub” into the conference. Café like. Wold find Tome or David – whole community – and do a graphic game plan on an action they wanted to do. 2-3 dozen proposals got generated. Near another place for informal networking. Then ended with hot idea section, brought ideas to hub, get feedback in small groups and then present. They baked it into the second one – this little side thing is now the thing they are most excited about. Did n’t take any one having to agree to it. Sits on the side. Trying to do this with multimedia for the world environmental conference in Barcelona. A whole media studio so people can wander in and produce media OUT of the conference. Hopeful ways of sneaking in, not asking permission and just tyring to see what is possible. Out of the last builders conf, a guy come from Apache nation, was living in car. He got so mobbed with attention in the hub, he has a vision of building sustainable housing on the reservation. In the middle of all this our IT director was sitting there facilitating and doing one of our template graphic things. Three sessions going over his ideas. He wrote back, this is a life changing thing. Another guy – he says I love to take showers and I feel guilty. I want a water recycling system for showers so I can take long showers. Start a company to do a shower recycling processor. Ole thinks he saw that picture on the net yesterday. Hot idea sessions. Patricia Shaw’s book, Changing Conversations in Organizations.

· In US Navy did something like that. Think you can’t do this stuff. Rooms – the oasis – floor to ceiling white boards, a creative space, anytime and work on ideas.

· Building a room for sharing ideas as a main tool for realigning a system. A playing room. What would this look like for a distributed group? Medicine wheel in 2^nd life.

· As of first of Jan 2008 only topic Ole will be working on is sustainability. The art of facilitatove leadership. Mastering the power of visuals, the white canvas and questions in desiging , hosting and leading engagein transparent and sustainable change processes. Offering this for any leaders that want this. Getting them down and understanding you don’t have to be good at visualizing, but good at listening. Do it simple so people can understand. Use the canvas as an empty sheet, but with a structure around it that get people up and engaged, your own templates. How to question, sytnethize, structure and facilitate dialog. Create consense, always collaboratrive. Always open, not finished, like the web. Everyone who engages takes ownership and sees themselves in the picture. They can take it out to another group, iterate and takes it out wider and wider. If we can do it paper and marker, we don’t need additional technology. That is important so the conversations can happen all over. Everyone is a facilitator. They come with questions, not answers. End up speaking the same, owned visual language that makes their actions easier.

· Our role is spreading this. That’s Ole’s edge. Instead of doing it myself, teach others to do it. Need leaders to be inspired. A very nice virus. And it all begins with this ideas of drawing one thing. It can be done in 6 days.

· What would this look like? What we believe in and how we work A course not only in leadership but authenticity. Clarity, efficiency, authenticity…