Complex In the complex space, impressions, experiences, emotions, perspectives using history lines provide insights. As we gather anecdotes and personal stories around a situation, find threads relating to values, meaning, sentiments and emotions, we are also telling ourselves (consciously and unconsciously) who we are, the ups and downs that we’ve experienced, how we feel about the situation. Knowledge and experiences that cannot be transferred in other ways, happens. This may be done in ‘anecdote circles’, café table conversations and campfire chats.
The exploration is not about what happened, how it happened,
nor how it led to the current situation. Rather it is to unearth how players made meaning of what has happened and what prevails. And the accent (for both process and content) is on self-organising. In some ways this narrative inquiry is similar to cognitive kinetics, the difference being that in the latter methodology, the accent is on collecting words and phrases - instead of anecdotes, metaphors and stories.
Chaos Outrageous ‘What if?’ questions, accompanied by mythological analogies (knights on a quest), and the meaning that arises from often counter-intuitive actions, can assist in promoting action.
Disorder In this ‘awaiting further collective insight’ space, a story:
A man returns home to find that thieves have set fire to his house. His son had been at home at the time. He sees the charred remains of a body. The father grieves the death of his son and puts the ashes in the locket. He wears this around his neck. Now what happened, was that the thieves did burn down his house but they abducted the son. The charred remains could have been the body of a passing tramp. The son escapes his captors and finds his way home. He knocks on his father’s door. “Here I am father. I’m home.” The man looks at the youth then looks at the locket around his neck. Holding the locket in his hand, he says, “Nonsense. You are an impostor. My son died in the fire. Go away.”
The father and son hold different viewpoints although they are part of the same story. Their understanding, knowledge, perspectives are at odds. How do they get to making joint sense of the situation? How do they share the building blocks of their experiences and emotions to arrive at a common history-line? In our book 9
two workshop participant’s comments on this story: “In my culture the father made two mistakes. One was not to
recognize his son. The second mistake was that he did not say, “I do not believe that you are my blood son, but you do not have a father and I do not have a son. Come inside.”
“I can tell you exactly how that story played out in our company.” She spoke of someone who brought an alive, innovative idea. The company rejected it because they wanted to stay with the old dead idea. So the man left with his idea and founded a thriving business.”
Metaphors to describe the fluidity and movement between the boundaries of the domains may be used effectively to stimulate thinking and sense-making by participants. 2
To initiate thinking around the dynamics of frameworks such
as Cynefin (and two-way movements between domains) and Confluence Sense-Making, the ancient Chinese five energy elements trigger a lot of fun:
• Metal can carry Water, be rusted by it • Earth can contain Wood or tree roots can part it • Earth can cover Metal or be carried in it • Fire can melt Metal, or Metal can be hardened by Fire • Wood feeds Fire or can be treated and made immune, turned to coal • Water can put out Fire or be heated by it • Earth can absorb Water or muddy it • Water can rot Wood, Wood can channel water (irrigation) • Metal can chop, shape or penetrate Wood (nails), Wood can receive, blunt, contain Metal • And Fire can burn itself out (self-organise)
And personal stories emerge: “I remember when…”, “The more I did the worse it became…”, “When the fire broke out...”, “We got into trouble trying to navigate the river…”, “Once, the only way we could overcome his stubbornness…”
Here is a story that may serve to illustrate some aspects of ‘holistic’ sense-making 9
:
A young woman lives happily with her father in a cottage on a beach, famous for its black and white stones. One day the local tyrant, without reason, (tyrants - corporate or other – don’t give reasons) takes her father and throws him into jail. The young woman requests an audience with the tyrant.
Because she is beautiful, he agrees to meet with her “on the beach of black and white stones.” When they meet, the tyrant explains, “This is how it works. I will pick up two stones from the beach – a white stone and a black one – and put them in my bag. You close your eyes, put your hand in my bag and select a stone. If you choose the white stone, then I will release your father and give you 1000 gold pieces. If, however, you choose the black stone, then I will behead your father and you must be my concubine.” The tyrant stoops down, picks up two stones and drops them into his bag. The young woman notices that they are both black stones. The young woman reached into the bag, took out one of the
stones and deliberately dropped it. She turned to the tyrant, “In my nervousness I unfortunately dropped the stone that I chose. But, look inside the bag. The stone that I chose will be a different colour.”
we share The story starts and ends where there is stability, order, control.
But at the end all the characters will have journeyed to places different from where they started. There is disruption into turmoil and chaos, into the uncontrollable. What are the different intentionalities of the characters and do they change during the story? What options are present for the daughter - running away, complying, or attempting to negotiate? At what point does a shift from the known to the knowable occur? What domains are spanned – simple, complicated, complex, chaos, disorder? Where is there is change, challenge and learning (conscious and unconscious)? Stories used during sense-making explorations should be ‘fit for purpose’ in other words, with the accent predominantly on the personal.
One story can cover the entire sense-making space. Holding this paradigm can be very useful. Here is one application story: 10
10 Halo and Noose | May 2012
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