Jan 04, 2008

Jan 04, 2008h in Collaboration Strategies, Graphic Facilitation, Strategic Planning, Visualizing by

As the rain and winds ripped trees down in our backyard and beside the Grove in our first serious winter storm, I left the VizThink web-conference exhilarated and thinking a lot about visual analogies and metaphors. My reflection was sparked by a question moderator Tom Crawford passed along from one of the 53 people participating. “What role does the third dimension play in your Storymaps?”

I illustrated my answer with the tablet sketch below. Let me elaborate.

Vizmetaphor_2 - Srategizing with Visual Metaphors

 

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Oct 20, 2007

Oct 20, 2007h in Collaboration Strategies, Graphic Facilitation, Systems Theory, Visualizing by

A couple of days ago Chrissa Merron called from the OD Network to talk about the fireside chat that I and five other award winners would have at the upcoming Organization Development Network Conference in Baltimore. “I’m interested in topics and themes that might be interesting to discuss,” she said. The question challenged me. What do I think is the most important thing to be thinking about as a profession?

What jumped to mind immediately were the deep roots the ODN has in systems thinking and looking at organizations as organic, alive entities. I then mused on why the network would give The Grove the Members Award for contribution to the field. What does visualization have to do with OD? A lot, I thought.

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May 01, 2007

May 01, 2007h in Collaboration Strategies, Community Building, Graphic Facilitation by

This last Saturday I had the honor of helping create a histomap of the life of Michael Doyle, my mentor and first supporter in business 30 years ago. He passed away this last January 29, 2007, and his wife Juli and a design team of colleagues created a special memorial day to honor his professional contributions. Some 60 people came from all parts of the collaboration spectrum.

Honoring Michael Doyle

We’ve been keeping a special blog in memory of Michael since he passed, and his history is posted there if you are interested in seeing it. Just click here to go to Remembering Michael Doyle.

 

Mar 25, 2006

Mar 25, 2006h in Collaboration Strategies, Leading Change, Sustainability by

Facilitating Social ChangeWhile looking through some past work I came across this Partners for Change model that I co-developed with Sissel Waage, then VP of R&D at The Natural Step. We’d worked together at a fascinating symposium at the Weatherhead School at Case Western University in late 2003 bringing together social scientists and activists who had deep experience in social change. This process drew on our long experience facilitating cross-sector meetings.

We came away convinced that people sharing stories across some of the traditional boundaries is critical in finding ways forward around the challenging issues of our time, like global warming and growing inequities between rich and poor. We realized that both big-picture thinking and deep dives into feelings and personal responses needed to come together to create any kind of shift in thinking and action.

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