www.storycoloredglasses.com
Story coloured glasses She posits that all stories contain aspects and perspectives that allow us to explore all domains – each domain may be manifest in one story 6
- and perspectives and aspects of story (time, space,
movement, inter-connections) may be enhanced by referring to other frameworks such as feng shui metaphors, hero’s journey phases and dynamics, mess diagrams of direct and indirect connections. Her Participative Narrative Inquiry process sets out three essential and three optional phases:
• Planning the project • Collecting stories from the community/organisation • Preparing catalytic material for sense-making • Sense-making using the stories • Intervening to spur positive change as stories return to discourse • Return of a story or stories (multiple interpretations) to the community/ organisation
During the course of the process Cynthia makes astute use of a number of observation techniques, and both quantitative and qualitative analyses.
How do we as humans interact with these frameworks? Taking more than a measure of poetic licence, and turning complexity into simplicity for the sake of understanding, we like to look at how we might react when working through the frameworks that we’ve been discussing - in this way:
When addressing situations for the purpose of sense-making,
interacting with the frameworks, the left side of our story brains (rationality, structure, boundaries) will suffice for the simple and complicated (the ordered). The right side of our story brains come into play far more as we delve into the complex, the chaotic (unordered), and the flows between all of the domains. And our dolphin brains connect us more deeply to others during the process, making us receptive to different viewpoints and insights. Where chaos is dominant, the primitive brain kicks in as well. And disorder implies cognitive dissonance.
Enter story We humans are ‘hard-wired’ with story brains – critical to our learning, socialisation, development of meaning.
The left-brain is about solid boundaries, the right-brain is about
universal flow - the genie out of the bottle. What we imagine, see, hear, smell, touch, taste during the watching of a movie, telling of a story.
And story is a container that can serve to increase each individual’s exposure to many new perspectives related to a particular situation. A container that captures interest, engages, and allows insights to emerge. Where aspects of a situation reside
in more than one domain, and where organisation blends with self- organisation. Illustrative story allows us to travel the domains.
A farmer’s only workhorse runs away. His neighbour commiserates, “How terrible.” “You never can tell,” the farmer retorts. The next day the horse returns with a wild horse. His neighbour responds, “How wonderful.” “You never can tell,” the farmer says. The third day the farmer’s son rides the wild horse. The horse throws him and he breaks his leg. The neighbour laments, “How terrible.” “You never can tell,” is the farmer’s refrain. On the fourth day the soldiers recruit all the able-bodied men for the war. But they leave the son with the broken leg. And the neighbour says… and the farmer responds…
In this story how is the farmer’s simple life jumped in and out
of complication, complexity, chaos with each event? Each event impacted on his livelihood, his relationships, and his cognition. His responses are wise, but between each happening what are the array of (self-organising?) factors at play (behind the scenes) that move his situation from order to disorder and vice versa? Are the responses of the farmer and the neighbour simply a case of being negative versus being positive, or are there wider understandings and sense-making at play? Over time as the story continues, will the world-views of either change as a result of their interactions?
In applying the medium of story to the Cynefin domains, the
following may be useful in sense-making: Simple
Wisdom stories that contain cause and effect elements, that encourage lateral thinking, can get the creative juices flowing as groups tackle the sorts of decisions and problems that fit into this area. Case studies of successes and failures can also help. Metaphor is powerful here too, as are metaphoric (hero’s journey) stories that resonate.
Complicated Building a group story using Cognitive Kinetics. 8
This is the
visible, graphic capturing of clusters of ideas and connections between these clusters, in order to form and re-frame shared mental models that emerge during the process – say with the use of hexagonals on a magnetic board. It thus goes far beyond typical brainstorming and mind- mapping – the Kinetics aspect being a reference to getting the mind – instead of staying in one place – to moving around the subject, challenge, or an object of scrutiny - in order to gain different perspectives, a new overview, and an opportunity to re-map it according to new insights. This is much the same way as gaining new perspectives, and a new overview, by viewing a building from all angles - above, below, within.
May 2012 | Halo and Noose 9
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