This is the third post in a series about how we learn from our work. The first one is here and the second here.The popular Internet discussion site, Reddit.com has a practice called "Ask Me Anything."(http://www.reddit.com/r/AMA/) It is a discussion thread where either some notable is invited in or a member offers their expertise and the other members can ask them, well, anything! It is so popular it even has a mobile app so you can follow the AMAs. Some of the AMA’s are amazing… the insights that emerge when someone asks us a question seem to leap over anything we can prepare. I’ve done a ton of keynote talks, and the best ones have been when someone interviews me. They pull out things I had no idea I knew, and I was able to express them naturally and easily.What is it about someone asking us questions that surfaces great, sharable knowledge?This is the question that is part of the second of two experiments we are running with the of Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation grantees of the Water, Sanitation and Hygiene program. (Read about the first one here.)We have started interviewing ourselves on the KM team, and have offered to interview any grantee to help tease out and share their insights with other grantees and stakeholders. It is a simple, low risk experiment to learn together and share knowledgeOur hypothesis, or Theory of Change, for the peer interviews is fourfold.We are often unconscious about what we know (see Dave Snowden’s great piece on "we know more than we can say and we say more than we can write.") When someone asks us to "tell them a story" about our work, we are able to on the spot reflect, surface and share insights that might otherwise just stay stuck in our heads.We are short on time so we are reluctant or unable to stop, reflect, write and share. For whatever reasons. If someone can ask us and even help us write it up, we may be able to jump over that barrier.Pithy write ups of the insights can be valuable ways to cross pollinate learning in a grant portfolio, particularly if they come in small bites in greater frequency than the formal knowledge sharing instruments of regular reports and journal articles.Interviewing each other is a generative practice. This is because people like to know they have been heard. Not to freak out my dear science brethren and sisters, but the Dalai Lama once said that human beings "need to be heard, seen and loved, and in that order." (As quoted in a story from Mark Jones, told to Peggy Holman and noted in her book, "Engaging Emergence.") In the work world, we often swap in "respected" for loved, because talking about love at work seems taboo in many of our cultures. All the same, when we take the time to interview each other, to listen and to capture the insights, two things happen. One is the person who speaks often makes concrete, as they speak, thinking that was not yet fully formed or articulated. The second is that when people are heard, they are more likely to offer their knowledge in the future. So interviewing becomes a generative practice.So far I have interviewed our KM team leader, Pete Cranston. On my to do list is to interview our client, the BDS portfolio lead (who is a pretty freaking amazingly open guy, so I look forward to this), and, after our last call (see blog post 2) I want to follow up with one of the grantees who is asking this same question: how do we surface and share our learnings more effectively. He calls it "process learning." Some folks call it "working out loud."So another experiment has begun. I’ll keep you posted. In the meantime, do you have any stories or insights about peer interviewing as a learning and knowledge sharing method? Please, share them in the comments!

What do we mean by engagement online? was one of those old blog posts that keeps surfacing. Tomorrow I’m doing a web meeting with a group of people who are designing, stewarding and facilitating globally distributed online communities of work, practice and information sharing. I’ve been revisiting old posts and thought this one from 2009  was worth a re-run. By the way, there is great stuff in the comments from 2009, so I’m also copying that below. What, in your experience, has changed since then? What is the same?What do we mean by engagement online?Candace Whitehead, the Facilitator Support Specialist for the Florida Online Reading Professional Development project  funded by the Florida DOE and housed at the University of Central Florida  http://forpd.ucf.edu contacted me last month inviting me to participate in a web meeting with the cohort of online facilitators working in learning and particularly around literacy issues. The chance to have a conversation with practitioners is always an automatic YES for me. When we talked, Candace suggested the topic of "engagement." This blog post is a little bit of "thinking out loud" prior to our conversation later this month.Some rough definitions…First, it is helpful to clarify what we mean by "engagement" online or offline. For me, it ranges from active participation in a group activity, to the subtle and often invisible internal engagement of listening, thinking, or taking and using what one hears from a group and applying it within or outside of that group. One one end you have very visible ways to observe and measure engagement. At the other end you rarely even know it exists.I also believe that we engage with people AND with content. So when we talk about "encouraging engagement online" we should be clear what type of engagement we are talking about.  They are different!That said, I think MOST engagement in both online and offline groups tends towards the invisible side. Think of the quiet person at the party or lecture, the kid on the fringe of the group playing. They are having an experience of being with a group, of experiencing the communications (verbal and non verbal) of the group.This engagement may be perceived as positive and/or negative. We must let go of the romantic notion that all engagement is positive to the individual and the group as well as the expectation that all online engagement is positive. It isn’t. Trust me on this one!So why should we care about engagement? Particularly in the context of learning?Well, my guess is no engagement = no chance of learning with others or from content. Again, this hinges on my belief that we learn through engagement both with people and content or the myriad of combinations. Many of us learn just fine by ourselves. Many of us need the social aspect of engagement with others to learn, work and play. I’ll leave the academics and people smarter than me to put the proof on the table. I’ll state as a practitioner, engagement is important for learning for individuals and groups. Period.How do we encourage engagement online?Now that some very crude and un-scientific definitions of engagement are on the table, let’s look at how we, as facilitators, can encourage engagement online. And how we encourage specific types of engagement in the service of learning.  For this blog post, I’ll focus on social engagement, rather than solo learner engagement with content. Because this is what I suspect Candace is looking for!Social engagementFirst, remember and use what we know about offline engagement. While these may manifest differently online, we should not forget them. And it is odd, but we often do forget them!Address people by name - they are more likely to respond than a generalized comment thrown out to the group. For example, in a web meeting, toss questions both to the group and to individuals.Acknowledge and reciprocate contributions given to you as an individual and to the group. This is especially critical for first time contributions. Online, it is a way to indicate that you "heard" someone, which might be a subtle nod offline.Ask good questions …. and then shut up and let people answer them! I fail at this one often because I love to ANSWER questions.  This is where self awareness and even separation between the role of facilitator and "knowledgable person" (some say "expert." I resist that a bit.).Paraphrase unclear contributions to check for meaning (if you are lost, it is a good chance someone else is!)Vary the modality or media to accomodate different needs of participants. Be aware that the way you like to  communicate may or may not reflect the needs of others. Vary and see the response to get a sense of what works for individuals and the group. There are always trade offs to accomodate both.Nibble. Break up delivery of content and intersperse activities. For synchronous engagements, consider 7-10 minute chunks in your plan. Online, resist the urge to offer pages to read and think in terms of paragraphs. People generally learn in smaller bites. Think of the overeating trap at buffets! Not so nice, even if you grabbed three lobsters, two steaks, a pile of asparagus and 5 chocolate desserts.Role model passsion, and your own engagement.Now, how does this change online? There are two areas that beg for some deeper exploration about engagement, one on the software or tool side and the other on the process side. They are very related, so I’m going to mix them up a bit.Offline we have non-verbals and body language to assess the state of people in the room. Online we have to do this with both software and process. From a process standpoint we cannot assume we know the state of the others in the group.For example, silence may mean someone is shy, angry or their microphone doesn’t work -> each of these begs a different facilitation strategy. Process wise, we have to ask more often, to "check in. Build this into your process, especially at the start of an interaction when people don’t know each other and technology issues may not yet be sorted out.Use the metrics tools in the software you are using to keep an eye on page views, online indicators, and other measure that can at least tell you if someone has logged on.Use "text" and visual "body language" online in your own communications to help others enrich their use of text.   Yes, even emoticons,  no matter if you don’t like them yourself. They can give tone to text, especially for people who are less experienced at clear writing. (For example: "I am leaned forward towards my screen, devouring this thread, but I’m not sure I undersand fully what you mean by XYZ " as compared to "What do you mean?" - which could be read in a serious or mocking tone and perhaps leave the other person thinking you don’t care.) I like including images and small audio clips to help assure we are "hearing" each other accurately.Time is different online. People who are always on and respond quickly experience online interaction differently than those who log on less frequently. (Gilly Salmon called this  " snowflake time".) The latter can experience a sense of overwhelm and being "left behind." Make this dynamic visible to the group and encourage the fast posters to slow down a bit and the others to log on a bit more frequently. Understand that if this gap persists, the group may  splinter. If that is the reality, consider sub groups and weave ideas between them as their facilitator.Punctuate time. Alternate synchronous with asynchronous as a way to keep the "heartbeat" of a group going. Like a first time runner, groups "heartbeats" have to be faster at first to build relationships, establish norms and patterns of interaction. Over time as the runner "trains" the heart beats slower. So with the group.  For example in a three week online workshop I like a  minimum of one synchronous telecon interspersed with asynchronous activity. This is a simple matter of attention - which we always find is in short supply!Yikes, this is getting long.  And I haven’t even touched on identity! Maybe it is time to stop and ask how you engage others online? Share with us your useful practices and tips!Blog Comments from 2009 Janeon 08 Sep 2009 at 1:51 pm edit thisHi Nancy, Great comments and insights. An area that strikes me about online communities versus face to face meetings is the power of questions, provocative statements or interesting artefacts. It’s interesting to see how a question can transform a group - a powerful question can take on a life of it’s own re-energizing a dormant group. I’ve watched this happen over the years with the online facilitators community. The more controversial, the better - conflict online which seems to be fast and furious provides incredible learning not too mention, engagement.Awhile ago, I read about a posting on ebay about antique hair pins. Fascinating to see the number of hits this post received and each time someone added to the knowledge on antique hair pins - (an internal wiki for ebay, I suppose) Who woud have thought a posting on hair pins would have generated so much content and engaged a community of followers. I’m not certain how long the community stayed together but I’m also not certain this matters. Online communities was and wane, dropping in and out of conversations as they please - this peripatetic lifestyle drives dynamic dialogue and ensures engagement - (even if only, fleetingly # Nancy White on online engagement | Social Web Strategieson 09 Sep 2009 at 3:45 am edit this[…] White of Full Circle Associates has made a very useful blog post asking what we mean by engagement online. Nancy is the preeminent online facilitator, and her answers to her own question are a great outline […]# Why do we care about engaging online? « Rattle and Humon 14 Sep 2009 at 8:51 pm edit this[…] in communities, vocational education and training at 4:51 am by ednavet Nancy White thinks that engagement in any community is on a spectrum from active participation in a group to […]# Marcia Truitton 17 Sep 2009 at 4:27 am edit thisNancy, Your mention of tone is very important. In English classes we were hit with tone and many students did not get the message which is so important in this time of online and text communication. Since voice inflection is missing in online communication participants and facilitators must be very careful with their word choices. Since we are often in such a hurry to finish a task we often are careless with word choice. In face to face communication so many more cues are available.# Cynthiaon 17 Sep 2009 at 8:17 am edit thisNancy,In online learning, one of our hurdles is when we ask our participants to do group activities. Many balk and find reasons why they cannot get together with others for group activities online.Seeing your concept of time online (thank you for the visual-it’s awesome), I wonder if you have some insight on quelling these "yeah, but" type responses to group activities in online learning. I think the problem is entangled in the time issue.Cinde# Nancy Whiteon 19 Sep 2009 at 4:50 pm edit thisMarcia, yes yes yes — I think in our hurry we cheat our own communications.Cynthia, it is funny you mention this because this ended up be a topic of conversation in an online gathering this past week with a bunch of educators in Florida.A couple of the things I do with "yea, but" are:1. Start with small, well defined collaborative tasks that build up trust, reciprocity and visibility of the value and interdependence of group work. I find people will be less likely to "let down" someone they have gotten to know a bit. The socialization seems to matter (from my experience working with adults.)2. Debrief the initial collaboration to identify what made it work/not work. Sometimes I ask tough questions like "what would happen if you did not participate in this activity?" or "what are the consequences of your non-participation." (social pressure)3. If the group is not being generative in the assignment, "flip it." So ask for work that is counter productive to the desired outcome (which people often find amusing and think I’m joking). So if your goal was to design a lesson for 10th graders on Beethoven, ask them to design the perfect lesson where students would learn nothing. Absolutely nothing. What could faillsafe this goal? They generate the list. Then ask them how many things are in place for failure in the work they are doing now. Prioritise the top one or two things they can do something about and then they redesign their learning context to support, rather than defeat, participation (ask me questions if I did not explain that very well. ) I learned this from Keith McCandless - he calls it TRIZ.# Tip of the Week: What do we mean by engagement online? « iTeach @ Leewardon 23 Sep 2009 at 5:46 pm edit this[…] via Full Circle Associates » What do we mean by engagement online?. […]# — Informal Learning Blogon 02 Oct 2009 at 4:26 pm edit this[…] What do we mean by engagement online?- Full Circle, September 8, 2009 […]# Transforming Management DEV » Blog Archive » links for 2009-10-07on 07 Oct 2009 at 2:02 am edit this[…] What do we mean by engagement online? | Full Circle Candace Whitehead, the Facilitator Support Specialist for the Florida Online Reading Professional Development project funded by the Florida DOE and housed at the University of Central Florida http://forpd.ucf.edu contacted me last month inviting me to participate in a web meeting with the cohort of online facilitators working in learning and particularly around literacy issues. The chance to have a conversation with practitioners is always an automatic YES for me. When we talked, Candace suggested the topic of "engagement." This blog post is a little bit of "thinking out loud" prior to our conversation later this month. (tags: tm_picks IDEA engagement bestpractices online_learning online_facilitation) […]# Lei Zhang » Blog Archive » [TMatMBS] Links for 2009-10-7on 07 Oct 2009 at 4:45 pm edit this[…] What do we mean by engagement online? | Full Circle […]# Lucy Garrickon 20 Oct 2009 at 11:12 am edit thisNancy,Enjoyed this post - and your experiences are quite helpful as this is the area that fascinates me most in virtual collaboration.I have formed a collaborative learning group on Linked to explore this topic in a socially open forum. I hope you and your readers will consider joining and engaging with this group to share your experiences, knowledge and questions.Here is a link to the group http://www.linkedin.com/groupInvitation?groupID=2350136&sharedKey=19C1004846E9OR once signed into LI, search on groups for Radical Inclusion - Open Virtual CollaborationAll the best.# Jeff Hurton 22 Oct 2009 at 7:03 am edit thisNancy:Wow, there’s some great stuff here. I’m a meeting and event professional that focuses on the education design of face-to-face and virtual experiences. I’ve been thinking for some time about how to make our face-to-face events more social, allowing more horizontal, peer-to-peer collaborative learning. So much of conference time is spent sitting passively in chairs listening to an expert "sage on the stage." Participants want more dialogue and less monologue.I’ve also been playing with hybrid meetings, integrating the virtual with the face-to-face to extend the learning experience and allow people to engage with each other and the content. So you’re post resonates with me a lot.Dr. Davis Fougler calls "snowflake time" "supersynchrony." He says supersynchronly allows online attendees to control the level of synchrony with parallel interactions, which magnifies learning opportunities and retention. No longer do learners need to use "turn-taking in discussions," where words follow words, paragraphs follow paragraphs, people taking turns to speak. Instead of following a single one-way linear straight line fixed presentation, online learners have the ability to break and restore communication linearity. They can scroll back from the moment the statements was posted, while interacting presently in the here-and-now, resulting in several conversations happening all at the same time allowing for additional data flow and increased productivity. He and other researchers call this online productivity "bending time" or "hyper time through polylogues."Those of us that say that is information overload, too much information coming at us at once, have not yet mastered what many Gen X & Ys have: information synthesis. Information Synthesizers don’t feel overwhelmed by information - they either use it or they don’t, but they don’t whine that there’s too much. Oh, wait, that’s a different post than this one about engaging with content and people.Thanks for being a springboard for more thinking and allowing me to run with some thoughts here.

Let me confess right up front: I really don’t like webinars. Too often they feel "done unto me." I am powerless, at the mercy of the organizers. I may have access to a chat room (Thank Goodness!) But more often than not, these are content delivery mechanisms with token participant interaction in the form of crowded Q&A segments or polls with varying degrees of relevance. What is worse is that I have been a perpetrator of these practices so I continue to try and change my evil ways.Changing ingrained habits requires some reflection - of self and of the state of the practice of these so-called "webinars."  Recently I had the chance to offer feedback on a webinar I experienced as a recording.  I’ve edited/generalized my thoughts to share. In a follow up post I’ll reflect on my own practice — this is where I need to cut to the bone! 1. Us/Them: It is logical for an organizer or organizing agency to want to  appear well prepared for sharing their work. We all like folks to know we "did our homework." We get our slides spiffed up and appropriately formatted for the webinar tool we are given. We time our remarks. We practice speaking clearly and at an appropriate pace.The challenge this presents is that the end product puts the speaker and/or the organization at the center. We create an us/them dynamic before the event even starts. Think about set ups where the only ones who can use the voice tool to communicate are the organizers. Those who bear the presentation file are in control of the message. The tool administrator(s) control the process (i.e determining that they speak for 60 minutes, then there is Q&A.)The use of a one way style of presentation reinforces the power dynamics of the speaker/expert/organization as central, and everyone else as "audience." All too often, the audience is never heard. Is that a good use of precious synchronous time? Why not send out a video or narrated PowerPoint? An online gathering is time better spent as a multi-directional mode of "being together" — even online. This does NOT diminish the importance and value of content we "deliver" to others. Here are some options to consider.Options: Move away from meetings that are primarily broadcast which holds control with the presenter. Sharing information is essential, but synchronous time should always have significant multi directional interaction. For my colleagues in international development, I think everyone has values of inclusiveness and shared participation. We have to "walk this talk" in webinars as well.Small things can create or break down us/them.  For example don’t just show where you are on a map at the start of a webinar, add dots for all the participants and their locations. Better yet, use a tool that allows them to add their own dots. Help the group see not only you,  but "we" - all the people working together about something we all care deeply about.Because we lack body  language online, it is useful to really scrutinize our language.From the wording in the slides and by the speaker, consider changes in language so that it is more inclusive of the participants. 2. Strive for  good practices for learning/engaging online. Webinars in general run the risk of being even less engaging than a dark room face to face with a long PowerPoint. There is a saying in the online facilitation world "A bad meeting F2F is a terrible meeting online." So we need to be even more attentive to how we structure online engagements to reflect a) how adults learn b) the high risk of losing attention (especially due to multi tasking) and c) the cultural and power diversity inherent in your group. Quality content is important, but it alone is not a reason to use an interactive platform — you can deliver content in many ways. Choosing a synchronous mode, to me,  implies interaction.Options: Consider keeping online meetings to 60 minutes. If not, do a stretch break every at 30 and 60 minutes. Say "let’s take a 60 second break." Stand up, stretch, look away from the screen and give your body a moment of respite. We’ll call you back in 60 (90-120) seconds (sometimes a bio break is useful!)A useful rule of thumb is to break up information presentation with some means of audience engagement/participation every 7-15 minutes. Use polls, chat, "red/green/yellow" feedback mechanisms, hand raising, checking for understanding, etc. This may mean you have someone facilitating these other channels if it is too distracting for the host and speakers. (Over time it does get easier, but practice is critical!)Take questions approximately every 15 minutes vs holding at end. People stop listening carefully and are thus less prepared to ask questions after longer periods of time. (They are also more prone to multitasking, etc.)Don’t just deliver information - use narrative. Stories hold our attention better than a series of bullet points. In fact, ditch those boring slides unless you are using the printed information to make it easier for people coming from a different first language.Deliver the useful content in a different manner and use the webmeeting entirely for questions and interactions. Send a recording introducing the team. Send a narrated PowerPoint about the topic. Keep these content packages smaller. For example, if you were trying to give an overview of a portfolio of projects, you could break it up into some sub packages. 1) about the team 2) strategy, 3) project descriptions, 4) monitoring and evaluation strategy, etc.Secondary tip: Do not think of these information products as polished products — don’t waste energy overproducing. That sucks the human element out of it. Imperfection is a door to engagement… seriously. Moments of uncertainty, tough questions — these engage the participants.Stay relaxed as a narrator and speak at useful pace for understanding, particularly for those who have English as a second (or third, fourth) language. Keep that human touch. Add little bits of personal information and affect. Be human.Let participants ask question verbally, not just in chat if possible. While there are many technical complications and sometimes the burden of accents on unclear audio channels, voice brings again brings in that human element. (Video does too, but there are bandwidth considerations. When you can, consider using it.)Encourage collective note taking in the chat room or with complementary tool. When people share this task, they listen more carefully and the begin to learn about each others strengths and insights as people add additional information or annotations.When someone asks a question, note who asked the question. This helps everyone see that people are heard, even if the audio option is not practical (for various reasons, no mic, etc. )  At the end of the call, specifically thank by name those who asked questions to encourage the behavior for future interactions.In Q&A sections, consider a visual to help people pay attention. Use the whiteboard for noting the questions, answers, links that refer to what has been spoken about, etc.There are a few ideas. What are yours?Also, here are some previous posts about similar issues:Quick Revisit of Web Meeting Tools - What is your favorite?What does it mean to facilitate an online meeting?Debrief: the role of visuals in online community managementSynchronous Scheduling Trips in Larger Distributed GroupsTelephone Conference Call TipsDesigning and Facilitating Online Events (old, but still of some use…)What do we mean by engagement online?Raising the Bar on Online Event PracticesMonday Video: Strange Meeting (and a few comments on teleconferencing)Why chat streams are critical to live events

There is a useful post on the HBR blog by Thomas Wedell-Wedellsborg that is a good follow-on to yesterday’s post about webinars. Thomas talks about the mismatch between the intention for interaction with the audience, and the poor design of most Q&A sessions that happen after keynotes or talks. Here is a snippet, then I have some amplifications below.Some solutions to the Q&A dysfunction already exist. Some hire a professional moderator or use software tools to crowdsource the questions. Others experiment with radically new ways to run events, such as the unconference movement. However, those solutions are often expensive or time-consuming to deploy, making them infeasible for many types of events. Here are four techniques that I’ve used with great results, and that can be deployed without any kind of preparation:Do an inverse Q&A. An inverse Q&A is when I the speaker pose a question to the audience, asking them to discuss it with the person sitting next to them. A good question is, "For you, what was a key take-away from this session? What might you do differently going forward?" People love the opportunity to voice their thoughts to someone and unlike the traditional Q&A, this approach allows everybody to have their say. It also helps them network with each other in a natural manner, which is something many conferences don’t really cater to.Ask for reactions, not just questions. When you debrief on the small-group discussion, insisting on the question format makes it awkward for the people who just want to share something. As you open the floor, specifically say "What are your reactions to all this? Questions are great, but you are also welcome to just share an observation, it doesn’t have to be in the form of a question."Have people vet the questions in groups. An alternative to the inverse Q&A is to ask people to find good questions in groups. Simply say, "Please spend a minute or two in small groups, and try to find a good question or a reflection you think is relevant for everybody." Then walk around the room and listen as people talk. If you hear an interesting reflection, ask them to bring it up during the joint discussion, or bring it up yourself.Share a final story after the Q&A. Given that even the best-run Q&A session is unpredictable, it is best to have the Q&A as the second-to-last element. I always stop the Q&A part a few minutes before the end, so I have time to share one final example before getting off the stage. That way, even if the Q&A part falls flat, you can still end your session with a bang instead of a fizzle.The above methods can help you turn any keynote into a better experience. What other techniques — ideally simple ones — have you seen or used?via 4 Ways to Fix the Q&A Session - Thomas Wedell-Wedellsborg - Harvard Business Review.The first thing I really want to amplify is the focus on questions - thinking about them and forming them more intentionally, both from the presenter and from the people formerly known as the audience.  Crap questions generate crap responses. People seeking to be heard often respond in kind with crap responses because they were so busy getting ready to speak, they weren’t listening. So we also see a relationship between crap questions and poor listening. As a speaker, it is your/mine/our job to bring value by offering good questions and to both role model good listening when we hand off the mic, and to make it easier for people to listen well.How do we make it easier for people to listen well?Present well. This is covered well other places, but if we are rambly (spell check suggested "brambly" which also fits!), unclear or just off point, we will have lost the audience well before the Q&A. Why not aim for having people SO EXCITED by the time you finish speaking…...so that the only solution is to let them have a conversation. Start with table or pair conversations so this energy can be unleashed, rather than squelched by passing a single mic and constricting/controlling that energy?Harvest. The presenter’s job is then to harvest what was generated out of all that energy, and Thomas’ suggestions are spot on. You can also do post it note harvests, capture visually, among many options. The point here is you steward, you become of service.

Fear has played an interesting role in my life. Or better said, confronting my fears has given me the opportunity to do things I would have never done before. For example I was afraid to go to Brazil as a 16 year old exchange student for a year, but it was a life changing experience - for the better. I have been afraid to be "unknowing" and vulnerable when facilitating groups, but those have often been pivotal moments. (By the way, the picture is of me there, many many moons ago!)But fear within groups and between members has never shown up  generatively. It seems to create tight fences between individuals in the group. Then I read Shawn Callahan (of Anecdote) recent post  about An indicator of group fear in organisations and a wee insight arrived.First of all, click away and read the post AND take the time to view the video. Do the little exercise. It is worth the 30 seconds of cogitation.Shawn’s conclusion is that fear is killing creativity. He writes:Ed Catmull, the CEO and co-founder of Pixar made this point clear in his recent book, Creativity Inc., that this biggest killer of creativity is fear.I’d say that fear blocks more than creativity. It blocks aspects of collaboration, cooperation, knowledge sharing, learning and even the simple pleasures we CAN have working with each other.I’ve worked with a number of organizations where fear is palpable. Sometimes it is in the more day to day relationships between team members. Sometimes it is hierarchical, but not always. It isn’t always "the boss" we fear. It may be someone on the team who is bullying or harassing (consciously or unconsciously - most the latter in my observation.) Sometimes it is the very culture of the organization, often from the top, that permeates everywhere.Slight side note: I want to make a clear distinction that I do not equate fear directly with dissent, diversity or critical thinking. They may show up together. But the absence of fear is not necessarily bland indifference, ok?  In fact, when fear is not present, I think we can better use our disagreements and diversity. So I don’t want to fall into the false trap of surface "niceness." That kind of niceness can be a response to fear to cover it up and that doesn’t work well either! I’ll also state for the record that being "nice" as in using compassion and respect is something I’m all for. The word "nice" is a tricky one.What really interests me are the people who seem to be resilient to fear. They don’t let fear of being dismissed, or not "liked" keep them from their own personal brand of excellence.I find it hard to combat top down fear, so maybe I should pay more attention to those "positive deviants" who seem resilient. Have any clues on why they are that way? How we can nurture more of the resilience?  

Yes, I think so. Including the Nancy White’s whose email I often get! So in the spirit of work avoidance, which I’m avidly practing today, I send this out to all my fellow Nancys. We are in our prime, right?How to Tell Someone’s Age When All You Know Is Her Name | FiveThirtyEight.

Stephen Downes posted this link in his OLDaily today. Take a moment out of a busy day and look at the images that Greg Dunn has created from images of the human brain. This quote says it all:Through his art, Dunn hopes to give voice to scientists whose work usually isn’t appreciated by the general public, he said. "Art has the power to capture people’s emotions and inspire awe [in a way] that a lot of charts and graphs don’t have." Credit: Greg Dunnvia Dazzling Images of the Brain Created by Neuroscientist-Artist.

What follows is a mish-mashed report on an online event from December 2014. I know better than to procrastinate this long…Last month Laurie Webster invited me to do a web gathering with her as part of a free series she has been offering. She is a pro with all sorts of quantitative processes and particularly the use of Sense-Maker ®. I like the way she thinks/does and she was totally open to a wild-hair experiment. I was not offering to share what I KNOW, I wanted to think together about what is tickling my brain.Our pitch was simple: come play and think out loud with us.Join me and Nancy for a fast-paced event that promises to be both practical and playful. Nancy will begin by describing how she uses visual methods in a variety of facilitative settings. Then we will discuss how these methods can both supplement and complement sensemaking and the use of SenseMaker®. The real fun will begin when registrants are invited to join Nancy in the sandbox for a real-time, "safe-to-fail" experiment using a shared online drawing tool.Her clever partner, Stephen DeLong came up with the most imaginative title, Sensemaking + Graphic Facilitation > The Sum of its Arts. I bow down to this cleverness, and it well expresses the idea that Laurie and I had been wondering about: what is the role of visuals in the sensemaking process.We started by introducing our fields - graphic facilitation, and sensemaking. Of course, I was being a goofball as usual. This is deliberate. Low status body language with high status verbal language = people listen differently. They can’t quite pin things down from past experience, so they are open. Thank you, Viv McWaters! That insight you shared a few years back at the Applied Improvisation conference has borne much fruit! http://www.fullcirc.com/wp/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/output_2TFUrB.mp4I’m a huge fan of graphic recording and graphic facilitation. Visuals are powerful tools. By that I mean all those wonderful things like pictures can initiate great conversations, they aren’t so explicit that we can assume we understand so we ask each other questions, "tell me the story" here, etc. Visuals are openers.At the same time I have become increasingly troubled when I sense that MY drawing is actually taking sensemaking agency away from the people I’m supporting. My drawing, as hard as I try to be a faithful, neutral reporter, still carries my interpretation. It is what I hear and how I make sense of that. Sometimes my interpretation and synthesis can be useful. But when the drawing (or other visual approaches such as photo cards, collage, Draw With Me, etc.) is in the hands of everyone, we can both take advantage of the power of visuals, and disintermediate the sensemaking. Tracy Kelly picked up on this topic and posted a very thoughtful blog post on "Graphic Recording: how to disintermediate." Do hop over and read it!Combine this with the work that Laurie and her colleagues have been doing with sensemaking through the use of narrative fragments, we start getting some interesting "science fair experiments." We started wondering out loud if people can draw their narrative fragments and if we could apply sensemaking processes to those visual fragments.The jumping off point is we have to be comfortable drawing our silly little stick figure pictures. Oh, how repressed we are about drawing in public. So we dumped everyone into a drawing environment. No hiding!The real fun started at about 30 minutes in. You can see a video of the whole process here, but you must register and log in. There is a 1 minute teaser for those of you who don’t want to register. (I understand!) We left the "webinar" environment and moved to BoardThing, a wonderful invention of Dave Gray and friends. We accidentally erased all the drawing we did, but I’ll share a few screenshots below. I wanted to not just TALK about participant-generated visuals, but to DO them.First we introduced some of the functionality of Boardthing, which is a wonderful mash up of online card sorting, a shared whiteboard and a chat room. (The chat of the event is attached for your reading pleasure. ChatFromDecVizSensemakingWebinar ) We did a wee bit of card sorting (on the left of the screen shots). Then I invited a group of 9 people to start drawing on the whiteboard. We then debriefed from both the drawers’ and observers’ perspective. If you peek at the transcript, you will see that this first round was not particularly comfortable for those drawing, and a bit hard to make sense of by the observers. Then I sketched in a grid and gave a second, more focused drawing prompt. The images came faster and were easier to use to engage in the sensemaking process. We then chatted about the power of constraints!     The hour flew by and we did not come to any momentous insights, but based on page views of the video and followup emails Laurie has received, I think we hit on something resonant. I’m not sure what to do with it next, but I plan to think/play/experiment some more. There is some distance to travel between the whole "getting people drawing" thing, and the more sophisticated sensemaking processes. My main conclusion is that using the drawings helps prevent people from prematurely coming to interpretations and conclusions. There is sufficient ambiguity to stimulate us to learn more and dive deeper, and sufficient novelty to shake us out of our "thinking ruts." That’s good stuff. The question now is how to apply these insights usefully. For sure, it will be fun.Finally, Susan Stewart recently started a Facebook group about webinars and reflected a bit on the process. She said it was OK to share here! Susan Stewart’s reflectionsSusan StewartDecember 10 at 8:34amJust finished the webinar with Nancy White … she’s such a willing risk-taker. (We used two platforms: GoToWebinar and BoardThing (in Beta) - BoardThing for drawing together.) Many take-aways from the webinar, I will share two and I hope others who participated will share some, too!1. TRY DRAWING: I have used white boards for things like having folks write their thoughts, plot the intersection of their previous learning experiences and their comfort with current content, dragging their name to a chair as a way of taking role and letting them claim a space in the conversation (Thanks, LaDonna Coy!)… I have not invited folks to draw…but I think I will try giving them a prompt and some instruction on how to use the tools, then invite observations by those not drawing and also by those who have done the drawing.Interestingly, this is not about high quality art, but about iconic scrawls. Even the most rudimentary images can represent some profound understandings.Nancy noted that drawing sometimes allows things to emerge that otherwise might not have - even the drawer may not be cognizant of what is coming forth until it is there. She did share that this can be quite powerful and suggests setting up the situation with much thought and being prepared with how to respond if strong emotions are triggered.I think we had 47 people on the webinar from all over the world. Nancy, what is your take on the level of engagement by all participants…those drawing, those commenting and those observing? (That last group is hard to assess.) I know we had two groups of about 9 each drawing.2. TAKE RISKS: Nancy made a comfortable environment for us to explore in. She took risks with us and was willing to deal with surprises. That spoke volumes to me about how important it is in online meetings and participatory webinars to step away from the presentation and allow time and room for mucking about together with the participants.My experience in learning about online meetings and webinars has been mostly about exploring and risk taking. That’s one of the reasons I started this group. I learned by getting in the sandbox with others and trying things out. I’m glad that Nancy invited us into her sandbox today and I hope you’ll feel comfortable asking us to take risks with you. I feel confident that as a group we will continue to find ways to engage with participants that are creative and meaningful.The invitation to the sandbox is open!

Sometimes you just get lucky. I get lucky quite a bit with my wonderful clients. As a wrap up to some work last year, Simone Staiger of CIAT and I decided to do a little text based conversational reflection on the work we did. This is posted at Conversations with Nancy White around the implementation of CIAT’s internal communications strategy and reposted here for sharing!Conversations with Nancy White around the implementation of CIAT’s internal communications strategyJanuary 7, 2015 by Simone StaigerNancy, when I contacted you at the beginning of 2014, I was looking for support, through regular conversations (monthly one hour Skype calls), to discuss, and evaluate the implementation of CIAT’s internal communications strategy.What a treat! Wow, that you will a) take the time for reflective and action oriented conversations and, b) pay me for it is WONDERFUL. I love working with you, Simone. This reaffirms my belief that there is tremendous value in working with wonderful people and cultivating those relationships beyond the formality of contracted work. I know some would say this isn’t very smart, but I think friendship adds to a working relationships - as long as we can stay open and frank with each other. We do a good job of that!The strategy intends to increasingly create spaces for dialogue among staff, foster team work & learning in teams, and communicate consistently to create among all staff a better understanding of key developments in CIAT’s work and institutional environment. The document was the result of a series of analysis and exercises to identify the real underlying issues that need to be worked on and to lift internal communications up to a level that goes beyond improving instruments and media.This theme of "space" and "spaces" is showing up in many places in my work. Is this something real, or am I just paying attention differently. People seem more time-pressed, hurried and stressed. The focus on getting tasks done, hitting one’s list of deliverables and "efficiency" seems to becoming a "false god." So this idea of creating space for dialog is a good way to test if paying attention to hearing, listening, and understanding - particularly around shared goals and issues - can be of benefit. Intuitively I believe it is, but taking a more analytical stance is useful.CIAT’s communications and knowledge management team in collaboration with Human Resources Management had identified a whole series of products and activities that could bring us closer to our objectives. What we did not do is to identify a series of indicators - qualitative or quantitative - that could help us evaluate progress, and which we are deeply missing now.Simone, you asked me hard questions about monitoring and evaluation that help that stance. I appreciate being pushed in this direction. I am paying close attention to how these indicators can not only help us understand if we are meeting our intentions and goals, but if they can also help us identify what to "stop doing" to make space for the stuff that really matters. We talk about this, but how to we discern and validate these choices beyond a guess - or simply losing what we cannot make time for.For one example, it was extremely easy to come up and finalize, with your help, a set of indicators that will help us in 2016 to measure progress on the effects of our new intranet, to be launched End of January. How easy it is to go through an exercise like this, when you talk about a concrete product and its usage!Just nodding about the difference between talking about something generically, and talking about it in a specific, concrete context!In my initial talks with you I was interested in ways to increase knowledge sharing between different stakeholder groups within CIAT: Management Team - The program and theme leaders, which represent around 12 staff - The 80 or so who I call the influential people, some being real opinion leaders - All CIAT staff. It seemed to me that we needed to create effective bridges to connect those four "populations". How can we involve different stakeholder groups, and create incentivize for engagement? Well that is a very general and tough question, which in addition is not new but still so unresolved… In the conversations with you we explored many possibilities, and interventions at different levels - individual, groups or teams, all staff - and through different means: pilot projects, personalized team discussions, or institutional campaigns.Reflecting back on this, I have to revisit one of my "now that I’m over 50 years old curmudgeon" opinions. I am interested in early adopters. I am VERY interested in second wave adopters. And I will not waste time on resistors. Is this an effective strategy in organizations? If we think of the "80 or so" as early adopters or leading edge second wave adopters, I don’t think we can consider everyone else as resistors. But I suspect there are informal leaders whose resistance can affect the rest of the early adopters. AND, it is important to not confound resistors from people who see the world differently and have useful dissenting views that can help us learn and grow. What differentiates these two types of people? If we could figure this out, we might be able to more generatively interact with those innovative thinkers who we might otherwise miss and misinterpret simply as resistors. Your question, Simone, about how to move past those 80 people has resonated with me since you mentioned it.What I mostly took away from the conversations, as well as from previous explorations, is strongly related to something that Peter Senge insisted on in a leadership course I took with him in 2013: The need to go away from symptomatic solutions to fix an issue or solve a problem quickly, and to shift towards fundamental solutions that for sure take longer, and have a delay in having an impact, but produce longer-term lasting positive effects.What I build on to your reflection, Simone, is that people are always part of fundamental solutions, so maybe we need to consider how we are or might be understanding, relating to and interacting with people?Now: there are many, many tools and methods out there to facilitate deeper thinking in groups and organizations that help to identify the roots of a problem and design fundamental solutions. You pointed to a series of tools and emerging perspectives and possibly "Liberating Structures" is one of those emerging pools of possibilities to "include and unleash everyone".Learning more about and practicing Liberating Structures was a strong thread for me in 2014 and will continue this year. One fundamental lesson is that as a facilitator, I need to have a diverse range of approaches, I must understand why I choose any one at any one time, and that there is potency in how we sequence and combine ways of engaging and interacting. So LS is helping me become a more conscious facilitator. When I take this in context of the type of facilitation training and capacity development I see in organizations like the CGIAR and others, it reminds me that we must always be leveling up. Yes, we start at the mechanical stage, but if we don’t build towards better understanding of those mechanism, and towards being able to "read" a room full of people and adjust (plan and then be prepared to improvise), we are not moving the facilitation practice deeper and forward. So for 2015, I want to challenge my own ideas of how to support facilitation capacity development in myself and others, for just the kinds of challenges you face, Simone.One thing that helped us go into that direction is to work increasingly at the team level. It is probably a useful consideration to identify when you actually have to include everyone (meaning the whole organization), which leads too often at CIAT to intensive information diffusion that convince some and are rejected by others, and when it is appropriate to do so at a team or group level, trying to have inclusive dialogues. The socialization of the CIAT strategy with 20 teams and almost 300 staff was certainly a time consuming exercise, but probably the most meaningful, trust-building and symptomatic-looking one.This focus on teams resonates with me, and then leads to the next challenge: the fact that so many of these teams are distributed under the CRP structure of the CGIAR, and that many people have "multiple bosses." They have their geographically situated managers. They have their distributed managers, many times people outside of their own center. I wonder how the CGIAR is paying attention to this power issue, and what they are or might do with it. Things could fracture around "loyalty lines" of many sorts. Moving towards a truly networked way of working presents many challenges for established institutions.You and I also discussed the possibility to use the new corporate values which have been developed in a very inclusive process, as a means of achieving integration, dialogue and team cohesion. The Human Resources Management Team with whom we have regular conversations and undertake joined actions believes a lot in the "value approach" based on strong support of a united Management. My concern is the danger of getting into the lecturer mode and not to find the right tone to feel staff comfortable and available to discuss required attitude changes.This is something else I’ve been learning about from other Liberating Structures practitioners. The values themselves are not much, in reality. It is how they are lived within the work we do. So I suspect we can’t just preach them, as you noted, Simone. Instead we need to examine our work through the lenses of our values. There was a very interesting thread on KM4Dev in late 2014 asking about this (https://dgroups.org/groups/km4dev-l/discussions/4db7bb98). Two particular Liberating Structures might be useful: Integrated-Autonomy (http://www.liberatingstructures.com/29-integrated-autonomy/) and Generative Relationships STAR (http://www.liberatingstructures.com/26-generative-relationships-st/) .After one year of using the strategy as a guide when it comes to decide what we do and how, I take way the following: We are on the right track. We know what fundamental situations need to be improved or resolved, but we can only be successful if internal communications is aligned and - more importantly- involved with ongoing organizational changes, if we find the right solutions for the different situations / target groups and if we receive increased support that allows us to avoid symptomatic quick fixes.I might offer a slightly different perspective, Simone. It may not always be about alignment, per se, but clarity of what alignment means (shared goals) and what it means when we are not in alignment. What we do depends on this kind of clarity. Lack of alignment is not always about "you and I need to agree." It can also point us to something emergent that may offer us new insight. But if we aren’t aware of this misalignment, we never get to that generative conversation.Yes, Nancy. Thanks for this important different perspective. I agree now that I read my point again, that your take on it is so important for CIAT. We must be able to make the different views, motivations, and strategies of and within our research areas more explicit and use it increasingly as an opportunity to expand, grow and learn.

Graphic Facilitation Workshop ‘Rosviz’ 2015 | Michelle Laurie rants and raves reminds us that it is that time again… drum roll….Graphic Facilitation Workshop ‘Rosviz’ 2015Welcome to the 6th Annual Graphic Facilitation Workshop July 13-14, 2015Location: Beautiful Rossland, B.C., Canada  Imagine you are planning a project, facilitating a meeting or writing a report. Putting words on a page assumes people will understand them exactly.  Adding visuals invites conversation, discussion and exploration. Visuals spark the imagination, help communities plan their futures and help groups track progress. This two-day experiential workshop provides the skills and confidence needed to use a range of visuals in your work and engage beyond words.   Day 1: I CAN DRAW - Hands-On Writing on Walls The first day, we will start out by touching the paper, playing with the pens and loosening up our drawing muscles. We’ll silence those pesky inner censors and address the basics of "drawing on walls" including basic shapes, lettering and some initial iconography. You will learn a variety of ways to draw faces and people, an often intimidating but key element for visual engagement. We’ll cover basic techniques and tricks that enable any of us to draw as a way of capturing and communicating ideas with each other. At the end of the day, you will apply your skills by visually planning a real project or meeting you have.  Facilitation techniques including icebreakers, giving and receiving feedback and flip chart enhancements will be interspersed throughout the day.Day 2: Using Visuals For Group Processes & Facilitation Methods  The second day we will apply our graphic skills in practice.  We will explore how visuals can enhance group processes such as planning, meetings and evaluation. We will create mind maps, mandalas and a range of practical templates.  We’ll look at the use of visuals and participatory graphics (where the pen goes into everyone’s hands) with group facilitation methods such as World Cafe, Open Space, Appreciative Inquiry, and others. We will pay attention to preparation, the actual visual work, and follow up including digital capture of paper-based images. There will be time for lots of practice, feedback and facilitation support.Throughout the two days you will have a safe, supportive (and fun!) space to practice and build confidence for real work settings.  We also host a community of practitioners online who give constructive feedback and support long after the workshop is over."Thanks so much to both of you!  It was an exceptional workshop and we both got a lot out of it on many levels.  You packed it full and yet it felt so fun and energizing!" (Paula Beltgens, 2014 workshop participant)This workshop is for you if:-       You plan a lot of meetings and want to make them more engaging, participatory, and meaningful;-       You do planning, strategy and assessments;-       You help groups make sense of complex ideas;-       You want new ideas on how to make your reports, presentations and videos more visually appealing;-       You want to be more engaging with groups;-       You want to hone your current practice; or simply…-       You are looking for a giant boost of inspiration, creativity and fresh ideas!You might be a facilitator, community planner, team leader, trainer, teacher, project manager, marketing guru, organizational development consultant…everyone is welcome."I wanted to send a quick thank you for hosting such a wonderful workshop. I had a fabulous time and learned a lot, even though I already took the workshop 4 years ago I was thrilled to have the opportunity to take again. The content is rich, the hands on application powerful, the people genuine and the instructors first class. Being immersed in this creative process for two whole days is an amazing experience, I would recommend it to anyone interested in learning more about graphic facilitation and how it can help positively transform group process." (Fern Sabo, 2x participant, 2010 & 2014)You do NOT need previous experience or have to consider yourself an artist. At some level, we can all draw and use simple visuals to enhance our communications and engage diverse audiences.As one participant said:"Learn to draw with wild abandon! Take this course!" (2013 participant)Check out our reflections and photos from 2013 workshops here and here, and the Harvest from the 2012 workshop here and one participant’s Prezi showing the rosviz12 Harvest Journal!Here is more about what people are saying about our workshop:"Wonderful workshop - best learning experience ever!"-Leva Lee, BC Campus (2013 workshop participant)"Thanks Michelle and Nancy - the workshop was amazing - I am already craving more!"-Janice Watt, Interior Health Authority facilitator (2013 workshop participant)"I am still on cloud 9 after the Graphic Facilitation workshop. Thank you soooo much. I feel recharged after that! You two are such great facilitators.  You were willing to bend over backwards to ensure we were comfortable and enjoying ourselves/ learning to our full potential.  There wasn’t a moment that I was not completely engaged during the workshop. " -Maddy Koch,
 Community Planning Assistant (2012 workshop participant)"The graphic facilitation workshop that Michelle and Nancy provided for Alberta Agriculture staff in fall 2011 was fantastic!  They began by setting the stage through careful preparation with the intention of the participants knowing it would be a safe place to learn, stretch their abilities and try new things.  And it worked.  Participants found the workshop to be energizing, fun, and interesting, but most of all useful.  Everyone walked away with ways they planned to incorporate the concepts into their daily work to better engage co-workers, partners and clients.  From using it in everything from agendas, minutes, flipcharts and handouts; to ice breakers, meetings, and team building; to note-taking, brainstorming and other planning processes; the graphic facilitation techniques are here to stay.  A huge thank you to Michelle and Nancy for lighting the fire!"-Sharon Stollery
, Ag Industry Extension Branch, Alberta Agriculture and Rural Development (2011 workshop)Looking for more detailed information? Download the list of skills we will cover: Rosviz14_Tools_Takehome_List  And More Testimonials:"What the RosViz11 gave me was the permission to draw without having to be an "artist". Such joy! Thanks Michelle & Nancy."-Laurie Webster
, Consultant with Cognitive Edge (2011 workshop participant)"I have so many good things to say about the workshop I don’t know where to begin!"- Sylvia Currie, Curriculum Development and Academic Growth, BC Campus (2010 workshop participant)"I really thought the workshops was useful for me, and I’m not an artist. In a short period of time (2 days) I was able to learn simple and effective techniques to communicate basic ideas using symbols, easy figures, and colour. What I really liked about the workshops was that it was BIG. Big paper, whole body movements, large images. I’ve always drawn on small pieces of paper and this was a whole body experience!We also did some great listening exercises where in a short period of time, we had to illustrate big ideas (that were on an audio recording). It was a lot of fun and a new challenge.Overall, two thumbs up!"- Rachael Roussin, Consultant (2010 workshop participant)"Thanks for doing this again, Michelle (and Nancy!!). I highly recommend it!"- Beth Sanders, Populus Community Planning Inc. (2010 workshop participant)Preparation:    Come prepared to get your hands dirty.    Dress is comfortable clothes that can get dirty and you won’t be sad if they are stained.    Bring a pad of paper or journal to take notes - unlined is terrific.    Bring a digital camera to record the fruits of your labor.    We will supply the basic materials for the 2 days (and you get a starter kit to take home). Feel free to bring your own set of materials to play with as well. COSTS: $850 CAD + GST (5%) (incl. two days training, starter kit and plenty of healthy drinks and snacks).HOT DEAL! Bring a friend and you both get $50 off! (not combined with other offers)Please note meals, lodging and transportation are not included.  Accommodation information available upon request.About your hosts:"I am a learner, mom, gramma and chocoholic. I founded Full Circle Associates to help organizations connect through online and offline strategies.  My practices are diverse, including online interaction designer, facilitator and coach for distributed communities of practice, online learning, distributed teams and online communities, doodler and visual practitioner. I have a special interest in the NGO/NPO sector and the emerging practice of using communities and networks for work and learning. I blog at http://www.fullcirc.com/, teach, present and write on online facilitation and interaction, social architecture, social media and visual practices. I am co-author with Etienne Wenger and John Smith of Digital Habitats: stewarding technology for communities. Lately not only do I like to draw on walls (graphic facilitation), but I spend a lot of time cooing over my granddaughters!!! For more about my visual practice see http://www.fullcirc.com/about/visual-and-graphic-work/." Nancy White"I have a passion for helping organizations and partnerships communicate as well as improve the way they generate and share knowledge.  Lately my work focuses on helping groups create change based on their research. My work explores the interface of environment and development via strategic planning, assessments, facilitation and engagement.  I incorporate visuals wherever I can particularly with the use of participatory graphics, templates, animation and reporting.  I also use visuals in my personal life for planning weddings, newborns and travels!  I am an associate with the International Institute for Sustainable Development, a member of the International Association of Facilitators, the Canadian Evaluation Society and IUCN’s Commission on Education and Communication. I am also your main contact for workshop logistics." Michelle LaurieTo register you must email  michelle.k.laurie(@)gmail.com to confirm your participation, provide your contact details and submit payment.

I can’t quite recall who started pointing towards the "What If..." format, but when it showed up three times last week, I knew I should pay attention. I’ve been spending a lot of time with my clients working on meetings talking about alternatives to presentations and panel discussions (which are rarely discussions.) I’ve been using "Celebrity Interviews" (aka "Chat Shows") and "Fishbowls" (or variants such as the "Samoan Circle").According to co-founder Matt Murrie, What If lends itself to a learning frame, versus information delivery, with the onus for stimulating the learning on the questions the Questioneers (as alternative to presenters) ask. Then it flows to a conversation cafe-like or World Cafe format of small group discussions.In live and virtual events, Questioneers (the question askers) ask thought-provoking questions in eight minute talks, followed by lengthy breaks for interaction among the off-stage presenters (the audience).via About | What if…? 360.So as usual, it all comes down to the power of a) questions and b) conversation. I hope you are not surprised!I’m looking forward to trying this out. If you have used this approach, I’d love to hear your stories.

For a number of years, some of my good buddies have taken part in the #365 photo project.  Alan Levine and Stephen Downes have been most prominent on my radar. I never seriously considered doing it until January 2, 2015. I can’t quite put my finger on why. There are lots of logical reasons - I try and include the visual in my work on a regular basis. But that wasn’t the reason. I’m beginning to think it was because I wanted to pay attention to things differently. So I did not consider it more than that and just started. Just fricken do it.  Forget the logical.I did not think about themes. I did not think about "getting better at taking pictures." I did not think about narrative. Just take a picture or pictures, and pick one to post. Voila.About the same time I noticed that my friend and "inspiring being" Eugene Eric Kim posted Ten Days Into my 365 Photos Project. I had noticed his pictures and thought, "cool, Eugene is doing this too!" And of course, Eugene being someone who I perceive as taking his photographic craft as seriously as he takes his process arts work, I got a bit intimidated by his comments about taking better pictures. (Update: He posted about the project again today in a don’t-miss post.)I was using my phone and my very cracked and battered Nexus 7 tablet. Oh dear. Then I stopped myself. Remember, I said, I am not doing this as a photographic practice, but as one of paying attention. At the same time, I LOVED Eugene’s reflections and a little thread of light conversation started pinging and pattering between our posts of our pictures on Facebook.  I liked that. I enjoyed when other friends hit the "like" button, or even better, left comments. Last week I was working very hard and the only picture I could muster one night was taking a picture of my feet while I was collapsed on the couch. And the comment was on the energetic nature of my sock color. This little bit of attention  energized me (Thanks, Joy!). My friends were being part of my paying attention. The attention became a network, or a tiny little force-field.I like that. A lot!On January 29th, Eugene posted a picture and comments that again twinged me to observe my own practice by observing his. The conversation was so useful to me. Eugene gave me permission to share it and it is captured here. #365Photo Conversation With Eugene. Eugene some interesting things, so if you are interested, click in!Eugene wrote "My primary criteria is that the photo tell some story about my day."I responded, "That was really helpful for me to read, as I’m still very unclear about my own aims and criteria with the project. I think right now my baseline is low - get it done. I also have a tiny tablet and a cell phone as my camera, so I have to discover what makes a "good" picture on those devices. I do get intimidated by beautiful pictures by others (like you) and I have to shut off that voice. I have enjoyed a) trying to be observant of images/moments and b) giving a tiny bit of context when I post. But it is still very emergent."Later in the conversation Eugene wrote: "Nancy, even though we didn’t plan it, knowing that you’re doing this too has helped me _tremendously_. Several of your images have already inspired me.." and "I’ve also loved the emergent aspects of this project, which includes this exchange with you! I also love that you’re taking photos with your phone and tablet…" and "to embrace the spirit of the project and all of the unexpected things that are happening as a result."I was nodding affirmatively as I read. My own random experiment has already morphed and changed because of posting pictures on Facebook and engaging with people like Eugene. The social learning aspect is a wonderful and welcome surprise. That network.So here is my recap so far.Attention: Attention turns out to feel more like observation. As I take my daily walks, I am starting to "look with new eyes" at what passes around me. Big picture. Detail. Pattern. Getting out of my "to do list" mode and let my mind calm by using my eyes, instead of "thinking, thinking, thinking."  The unexpected is now paying attention differently to my friends’ #365photos. (And slightly annoyed that I have to go multiple places, but not so annoyed that I find a technological solution to this!)Identity: I had not at all thought about how my pictures would give a wee window into my worlds to those who see them on Facebook. I always underestimate how much time and attention people give to Facebook. That is both a wonderful and scary thought. Now that I have noticed this, I am resisting taking/curating my photos as an expression of identity. I want to stay with "attention" for now.Practice: When I was traveling and in a time zone 19 hours away, I got confused about which "day" I was posting for. Ah, the international time line. But travel provides fertile opportunities for pictures. I was worried that I would not be able to post. I can’t always post from my phone while overseas, so I did more with my tablet and wifi. Thanks to Eugene’s positive support, I have let go of worrying about pictures that are literally just snap shots.I’m liking this!   

This is so good, from the amazing kelvy bird. I struggle to explain what I do when I am graphically facilitating. It is not neutral, like graphic recording. There IS a sensemaking and contextualization that I do WITH people (not just FOR them.) If you are a visual practitioner, or work with them, read this whole post. 4 Levels of Scribing — kelvy bird.Here is kelvy’s beautiful image. Now go read her post. Now. Please.

Knowledge sharing can be enabled or blocked based on organizational policies and infrastructure. This is essential in sectors that are (or claim to be) for the public good, like non profits, donors and foundations, NGOs and educational institutions. I was happy to read that the Ford Foundation has added Creative Commons approach to all their work, joining the Open Society Foundations, the Packard Foundation, the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, the CGIAR and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.Ford Foundation Expands Creative Commons Licensing for All Grant-Funded Projects(New York) - The Ford Foundation announced today that it is adopting an open licensing policy for all grant-funded projects and research to promote greater transparency and accessibility of materials. Effective February 1, grantees and consultants will be required to make foundation-funded materials subject to a Creative Commons license allowing others, free of charge and without requesting permission, the ability to copy, redistribute, and adapt existing materials, provided they give appropriate credit to the original author.via Ford Foundation Expands Creative Commons Licensing for All Grant-Funded Projects / News from Ford / Newsroom / Ford Foundation.Walking the talk is harder than publishing the policy. Some people still worry that setting their knowledge free will hurt them. So we need to look at how certain professions are rewarded (or punished) when it comes to sharing intellectual property. For example, our way of educating and validating researchers and scientists ("publish or perish") still pushes people to withhold (particularly data sets) rather than "set free." I’d be very interested if any of you have research/data that links the benefits of sharing knowledge to professional advancement. I think we either have some myths to bust, or we have serious infrastructure changes needed.This is resonant with another article shared with me today, from the Stanford Review on the role of including gender perspective for research breakthroughs.  Being open allows access to thinking of others, to diverse perspectives which then inform our work, decisions and results.Doing research wrong costs lives and money. Ten drugs were recently withdrawn from the U.S. market because of life-threatening health effects - eight of these posed greater threats for women.Clearly, doing research right has the potential to save lives and money, and this is the goal of the Gendered Innovations in Science, Health & Medicine, Engineering, and Environmentproject directed by Stanford history Professor Londa Schiebinger.With an international team of more than 60 scientists, engineers and gender experts, Schiebinger has explored how gender analysis can open doors to discovery."Once you start looking, you find that taking gender into account can improve almost anything with a human endpoint - stem cell research, assistive technologies for the elderly, automobile design, transportation systems, osteoporosis research in men, and natural language processing," Schiebinger said.Open our databases. Open our practices. Open our minds. Open possibilities.

Too good not to share. Go read it. And look at her son’s amazing Kale photo. I’m not reproducing it here to tease you into clicking into her post. I’m evil that way. Learning doesn’t necessary take a lot of time. Mainly it takes a mindset of recognising learning opportunities everywhere and going for them. And a bit of practice - of observing, improvising and not making a duty out of play via Learning is everywhere — Mathemagenic.

In January I was working with the CGIAR Gender in Agricultural Research Network during their meeting. My wonderful client, Jacqui Ashby trusted me to use many of the Liberating Structures with the group. We used the Ecocycle Planning structure early on to help think about the network member’s work in a slightly different ways.This is the third time I’ve used the Ecocycle Planning "full on," in other words, I hung a meaningful part of an agenda on to it. I am getting more confident in how I launch the process and appreciate the value of practicing and observing others (like Keith McCandless) running the process and learning from them.Simone Staiger, of CIAT, wrote about the experience on her Knowledge Management blog during the meeting. The tweet was apparently provocative. A few days after Simone tweeted the blog link, she received the most retweets and links than any other post she has tweeted out. Is it the phrase "destructive process" that caught people’s eyes and imaginations?As it turns out, the conversations around the creative destruction phase of the ecocyle were very interesting to me, and it appears that they were of interest to the participants. Here are the combined notes Simone and I wrote up:Participants struggled a bit with "Creative destruction." At first, there was some reluctance to place things in the "creative destruction" area, thinking that this was a negative activity. After some discussion, many groups identified this as a rich area of potential and possibility, the space of innovation and renewal. One participant gave as an example the need to deploy our listening skills to some of their diverse co-workers in order to be able to change mindsets and create and work together.  It was also mentioned that it is important that we involve a larger group of "next users" and partners in the creative destruction and renewal phase. This increases the chances for them to support the birth and implementation of ideas and activities.Are we both excited and afraid of destruction? Is that the power of this area?Conversations about the Poverty Traps and Rigidity Traps are always useful. It’s like we put a name on something familiar, but often unspoken. Being able to frame and discuss these issues is critical.The other area that held some useful insights was the area of maturity. Not so surprisingly, what one categorizes as a "mature" practice can vary wildly between individuals depending on their experience, what activities they prioritize in their work and other contextual factors. What is often enlightening is the realization that there may not be a shared understanding of those mature practices and therefore a high potential for misalignment.From a facilitation standpoint, I was worried that the groupings we created for the maps would not work. We had to group people working on different projects together, and in the past, I’d seen better results when an intact team or group maps their project. But I was surprised how much cross project relevance and resonance emerged. I’m not sure we really mined that as much as we might have.  There was more to harvest and we left it on the table!  Going forward I need to think more deeply about this opportunity.Resonance and dissonance are always rich spaces.  

Did Crazy Horse draw this image? MS Am 2337, Houghton Library, Harvard UniversityAs they say, if I had a piece of dark chocolate for every time that someone has said to me "but I can’t draw" when I ask them to sketch their ideas, or capture some content visually, I’d be as big as an elephant. When I saw this article about Crazy Horse’s drawings of his battles, and the "language of images" I thought "here is a story I can tell back when people say they can’t draw." There is power in images, no matter how simple or refined.At first glance, the drawings may look childish. But as Picasso has pointed out, a drawing’s intelligence isn’t simply a matter of academic technique. Under McLaughlin’s masterful guidance, we come to recognize that, in fact, the drawings in this book exhibit extraordinary intelligence of observation. Every detail is telling, whether it’s a dragonfly painted on a shield or the way war paint was applied to the horses.As McLaughlin explains, these drawings are as rich and informative as any Euro-American literary text, although they speak in the language of images rather than letters, and shape reality within parameters set by a very different cultural framework. It’s a remarkable lesson in the importance of examining something very closely, of learning to look at images in new ways.via Crazy Horse: leader, warrior, martyr … artist?.The image from the ledgerbook appears in A Lakota War Book from the Little Bighorn: The Pictographic "Autobiography of Half Moon," by Castle McLaughlin (2013). Houghton Library Studies 4, Houghton Library of the Harvard Library and Peabody Museum Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA.

All it takes is a tweet about grating frozen butter to make better biscuits to get me to click into a web page. And when I arrive, I find this most wonderful quote that can certainly apply to far more than biscuits. (Emphasis mine)Sitting down to a plate of towering warm biscuits, with butter, sorghum and orange-blossom honey, we get philosophical on details, like placing biscuits so they’re touching."When you’re touching, you lift each other up and you rise higher,"Duvick agrees. But if they rise too high and slump over, they still taste good.via What’s the secret to really tall biscuits? | CharlotteObserver.com.

Good food for thought on a Monday morning. Network thinking lets us scientifically understand the world around us as one of connections that shape observed phenomena, rather than as one where the intrinsic properties of people, genes, or particles determine outcomes. Like previous scientific revolutions, the network revolution also has the promise of reshaping our basic commonsense expectations of the world around us, and may allow us to recognize that we are not a basically individualistic, asocial, and quarrelsome creature that comes in bounded linguistic, ethnic, racial, or religious types, but a social species linked to one another by far-reaching network ties.via How Networks Are Revolutionizing Scientific (and Maybe Human) Thought | Guest Blog, Scientific American Blog Network.

Over the past few years I have enjoyed being part of the MAFN Webinars. MAFN is the Mid Atlantic Facilitator’s Network. They offer both online and offline professional development gatherings. Last Friday, Amy Lenzo, Nancy Settle-Murphy and I were ostensibly the "presenters." I think I want to shed that title. May I be done with presenting, please? And by the end, I realized it was a conversation with 36… so they are all presenters too!We designed the 90 minutes to minimize the presentation and maximize the engagement. I appreciated both Amy, Nancy and the great MAFN team of Michael, Dan, Fran and Meaghan — all ready to try new things and stretch ourselves.We each had 5 minutes, then we were, as they say, off to the races. (You can see the five questions here in the PDF -> The Edge o fOnline Facilitation MAFN March2015 4 Blog.) In this case, it was a chat race. (At least it felt that way to some folks. I love it. Maybe I was a chat racehorse in my past life?) We then finished this first section with the following question:There were 36 participants (maybe a few less with a couple of duplicate log ins, etc.) and there was this amazing chat stream of ideas. So fertile and interesting. I wanted to share the key points.How can we network our intelligence to solve the huge problems facing the world/us?For on-line engagement to be as powerful and impacting as any face-to-face activity.Better connect with people all over the world.. . that it might be superior in some respects to face-to-face engagementPeople feel like they are in the same room even though they are notMaking deeper (non-trivial) connections with people at a distanceFor participants to feel energized and that they have had an experienceTo "level-set" the stakeholders’ understanding of the problem or challenge that all are facing.When the offline culture is not very participatory - using online/virtual to create exchange and relationships and change the culture a little bit.I think work has to meet human social needs.  Online engagement is quite powerful because it can bring  people together socially around quite microspecific topics and concernsPeople feel a sense of community, leave with  decisions and catalyze actionTo introduce & discuss the change process in a positive energising atmosphere when some people are resistant to changeParticipants learn, understand, and feel connected to one anotherSuperior to face-to-face in some ways because many people can "talk at once".  Appeals to some participants who might be hesitant to speak in a standard classroomDownplay power distancesPeople actually "hearing" the words others were saying; a participant once exclaimed: We were using the same words but we did NOT mean the same thingPeople who are not technically minded can participate easily and are engagedHuman connection across geography with powerful problem-solvingDoing strategic planning for a global association on-line (different time zones, cultures, etc., in addition to all the normal human differences)Online engagement feels like in-person engagementEnvironments that are truly connected - where each of us feel deeply connected to ourselves - our own thoughts and bodies and full selves; to each other; to the natural environment and to the larger world we’re part of. Intimacy and Scale.That it truly engage and lead to the desired outcomesThe technology is secondary - the community and results are foremostCreate a level playing field so all can contribute to the best of their abilitySpeed and access to expertiseEvery voice contributesMaking on-line meeting not just a one-off  — so make it a practice that folks will get comfortable with over time (it won’t happen the first time, magically)The fact that the presenters can’t "keep u" means this is more participation than would be possible in personThe challenge with online is that the human connection is mediated and distorted by technology. My aspiration is that the technology would feel invisible, or better yet, would be a catalyst for connection.Highest aspiration:  hold onto the social aspect of learningMy highest aspiration is connection. Task completion is secondary.Shared meaning … Having folks all proclaim: "I see, hear, & feel and understand."These 30+ people aren’t thinking small and I was encouraged and delighted. And from there, the conversation proceeded, mostly in chat and the rest of us with mic access sprinting to keep up became a cauldron of ideas and insights. The group segued from aspirations to questions and how to’s. Within the ideas there were also the meta comments about being challenged being in a text only environment, the pace, the sense of both richness and chaos. It is interesting to read back through the chat and try and pick out some key threads, and to discern where people are "coming" from with their insights. Some are clearly self-defined as trainers, others as facilitators. Some carry the context of the type of organization they work for, and others as consultants range across contexts.Here are a few examples:What we notice and aspire too is obviously informed by WHAT we do. There were trainers in the group. People embedded in and in the context of organizations and their constraints. Consultants who ranged across contexts. This informs the type of "how-to" people sought or suggested.Everyone is interested in technology, but often in very different ways. Some want to know about the latest technologies. Others are interested in the impact of technology on our interactions. This quote really drew me in after someone talked about the way technology can distort our experiences: " The presence of technology DOES change and effect the HUMAN experience and connection." This segued into a conversation about how technology can/might not level the playing field. We are just beginning to really dig into these issues, and move beyond thinking of technology as a tool. I confess I’m getting tired of "what is the best tool for X" conversations and am ready for deeper explorations into the impacts of our technological environments, regardless of what tool is/isn’t available/acceptable/affordable! (Not to diminish those issues.) This is a great topper to this idea that one of my 36 co-presenters shared: "The way the hammer shapes the hand" — Jackson Browne, Casino Nation.We all struggle. Priceless: "My 20th century mind has been struggling to make meaning and order from the chaos of this group chat." My observation? It is not related so much to age, but I don’t have data to support my hypothesis (says this 56 year old.) The issue for me from the stress of volume is what is lost, as one person wrote, without reflection. (Slow down, Nancy, slow down!) Clearly I’m not the only one with this issue: "I have not been building in enough reflection time in my webinars.  I think it’s because I can’t tell when people have lost interest or when they are thinking.  Could be an insecurity issue for me.  Need to work on that!"There was a lot more and I’m attaching a file with my semi-Sorted Chat Notes.But here is the capper:CAN WE DO THIS AGAIN NEXT WEEK PLEASE AND TALK ABOUT THE NEW QUESTIONS?I love my 36 co-presenters! Co-creators! Co-labborators! Thank you, one and all. You help me…

I love, love, love this blog post so I’m just posting a link with my deep wish that you go read it. Understanding where you are, not where you think you are: some tips and a process - Chris Corrigan.I’m working on two project right now where there is such a strong desire to determine "the right, easy way" of doing things where there is no "right, easy" way. We need all the wisdom, tools and processes to keep from falling into the traps!

I had not realized I was using an older version of Dave Snowden’s Cynefin image. It is so useful, I am plopping the June 1, 2014 version here in my blog, both so you, dear readers, might see the latest, and I can always go back and find it. (Edit: I was sensitized to this updated image via a very nice post on Cynefin in software development http://lizkeogh.com/cynefin-for-developers/  And Dave noted the post headline was not so useful, so I edited that as well. Thanks, Dave!) "Cynefin as of 1st June 2014" by Snowded - Own work. Licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons.via Cynefin as of 1st June 2014 - Cynefin - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

What feels like a long time ago and far far away, Rachel Cardone of Red Thread Advisors, Aldo de Moore of Community Sense and I decided to wrestle with some questions that were cropping up across our diverse work. We kept having clients say "we want to collaborate with our distributed teams," and "what software should we buy." Time and again, we saw so many of these initiatives fizzle out. It was our sense that we needed to look at the problem differently, with an appreciation for complexity and the diverse contexts across large international development organizations.  That really interesting things were happening on the edges, but they didn’t seem to penetrate deeply into the organizations.Thanks to some support from IFAD (thanks, Helen!), we had some seed money to begin thinking together, along with friends/volunteers from five development organizations (listed below). What resulted is the following paper from the KM4Dev Journal.Learning 3.0: collaborating for impact in large development organizationsNancy White, Rachel Cardone, Aldo de MoorAbstractThis discussion paper builds on the body of research and practice about technology stewardship originally explored in Digital Habitats, and on the findings from an initial probe into the experiences of five development agencies using collaboration platform technologies. The probe was conducted from September 2013 through February 2014. We propose a framework for looking at productive practices in selecting, configuring and supporting use of collaboration technologies in international development organizations by focusing on the opportunities that exist in the boundaries between different parts of a development organization and different kinds of interactions that lead to learning and development impact. We suggest that there is a very useful opportunity to expand this initial probe using collaboration pattern language and a complexity lens to develop a useful repertoire of technology stewarding practices for collaboration in international development with the goal of supporting greater impact of development work.via KM4Dev Journal.This snippet gives a bit of the context for the action learning agenda:We worked with key staff from the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD), Oxfam International, German Federal Enterprise for International Cooperation (GIZ), the World Bank Institute, the UN Development Programme (UNDP - special thanks to the ever enthusiastic Johannes Schunter!), and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation (BMGF). Our objective was to determine if common patterns or dynamics exist across international development organizations that could suggest models, approaches or methods organizations could use to increase value for money when making investment decisions in support of collaboration. We drew on the collective experience of our action research partners, and our own experiences working to establish, advise and manage collaboration technology platforms. Through a series of discussions, we developed an analysis of the contextual factors relevant to the international development sector.You can find the full text PDF here. I’d love to hear your thoughts and feedback!

Give. Just sayin…Next of course, my attention went to the question of "Where to donate?"   I received several emails from charities that I already support that do work in the area.   I donated to Save the Children.   On Facebook, I noticed a list of vetted charitiesshared by another trusted colleague who works in the nonprofit sector, Peggy Duvette.  I shared the article on my wall.   This sparked a few other recommendations from friends about where to donate.  Knowing that Robert Rosenthal had been working and living in Nepal, I was curious to see if he had any recommendations.  He posted a link to this Global Giving Fund, a giving network of charities in Nepal, vetted for impact.  In the thread was a comment from Nancy Schwartzsuggesting that we all share this wide and far.   So, I shared it on my wall tagging friends, many of whom re-shared the post, and made a donation.via Please Donate to Help Nepal’s Earthquake Victims Now | Beth’s Blog.