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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Jan 18, 2007

Jan 18, 2007h in Visualizing, Web/Tech by

I have finished building out a Grove Gallery on an island sim in Second Life called Third Life Lab. The Grove is collaborating with Gary Merrill, one of our consulting associates to create this space dedicated to exploring the relationship between virtual worlds and real life, with an eye toward increasing our sense of interrelatedness and appreciation of natural systems.

6a00d834558f5869e200e54f87a7468834-640wiRead more…

Nov 25, 2006

Nov 25, 2006h in Leading Change, Organization Development, Strategic Planning, Visualizing by

I was working on a new exhibition for my Second Life studios and came across this graphic that I created with Lenny Lind, Meryem LeSaget, John O’Connell, and Sandra Florstedt in a Change Agent’s Cafe meeting in 2003. It was our 20th one or thereabouts, and we were all still reeling from 9/11 and the war in Iraq. All of our clients seemed buffeted by the forces of change. As a complement to the hopeful post about Coro below, I’m including this to point at the very real turbulence that provides context for everyone’s work and life. These are times of change, to be sure. They abound with potential for creativity and forward movement, but the risks are high. This map shows the future forces we were aware of, and on the right, some of the hopeful actions that we thought we could take in face of them. If you want a big version of this graphic, you can download it by clicking on this link. FutureForces2003.pdf.

Future Forces Map

 

Sep 14, 2006

Sep 14, 2006h in Graphic Facilitation, Visualizing by

This fall I get the treat of using my new book, Graphic Facilitation, to lead a Principles of Graphic Facilitation training in Baltimore. This has been a year of real completion for me with this work.

Twenty-six years ago in 1980 I wrote the first version called I See What You Mean: A Workbook Guide to Group Graphics®. That manual has shaped my and others’ facilitation careers more than I could have anticipated. It’s gone through at least nine reprintings. It was copied by the U.S. Army to train all their facilitators at Fort Ord in the 1980s. The developmental disabilities network trained by John O’Brien in England used it to build a platform for Person-Centered Planning. And it became a foundation product and course for The Grove as we’ve trained people worldwide. Now there is even an International Visual Practitioners Forum holding annual conferences.

Since that time my work has evolved quite beyond Group Graphics®, the brand name I and my colleagues gave the specific approach to graphic facilitation described in this book.

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