Application: Facing complex challenges & action learning

Complex challenges sprawl in many directions, across many territories. Its hard to see them clearly, and yet it requires many perspectives to see it at all. Too often, technical fixes are applied, ineffectively, before the problem is seen and understood in its totality as well as its detail. Visual Explorer in this context is a tool for paying careful attention to the task or challenge, from many perspectives, including intuitive and emotional apprehension. VE is thus especially useful at the front end of an action learning process, as the challenge is first discovered and explored, and a vision for solution is first established.

Benefits:

• Paying careful attention to details and to big pictures
• Surfaces individual and shared assumptions
• Images bridge differing context and cultures
• Create new metaphors and shared images
• Playful exploration as a way to get unstuck
• Calling forth artistry
• Shared understanding about the issue that can help in establishing a vision, making decisions, creating action steps, and picturing impacts.

• Surface, engage, and transcend emotional undercurrents

Background: Various kinds of “tiger teams” or action learning teams are formed to grapple with big, sprawling, complex issues or challenges. The leader, and the coach, of such teams is in a position to shift the way a group pays attention to the challenge, and VE can be an effective tool for enabling such shifts.

Facilitation: The coach or leader may suggest a process for engaging the challenge such that maximum input and divergence of views is sought up front. Instructions for a typical VE session apply, with additional emphasis being put on capturing and re-using key insights from the VE session in crafting a long-term solution to the challenge. For example, a session might frame three questions: What does this challenge look and feel like to us now?, and What will a sustainable solution to this challenge look like in the future? And, What will getting from now to the future look like?

Example: Verizon formed high-potential director-level managers into action learning teams. Each team focused for eight weeks on a complex challenge of their own selection. At the start of this process team members used Visual Explorer to explore their own complex challenge and relate it to those of their peers. In this way the shared aspects of their individual challenges would emerge to become the focus of the action learning teams.

Managers were asked to browse the VE images (all laid face up in the hallway) and select two: one which “stands for, literally, or metaphorically, or emotionally, or intuitively, the way your challenge is now,” and one which stands for “what the path forward with your challenge might be like.”

Participants then gathered in groups of 4-5 to have a dialogue about their challenges, using the images as mediating objects. A volunteer went first and started by describing her first image in detail: What is the image? What are the details? What is mysterious or surprising? And so on. Then that person described the challenge (and not until then), and how it connects with the image. This same volunteer did the same for her second image. Then each person in the group responded to the images the volunteer had just described, first describing what they see in the image—especially if what they see is any different from what the volunteer has just described. Then the respondent made his own connections to the challenge the volunteer has described, using language roughly in the form, “If that were my image, I would connect it to your challenge like this … What I notice in that image, and the associations I have are … .” Overt problem solving, advice, and criticism were not allowed. Finally, the originator of the image “took back” the image by sharing any new insights she thus gained. The process proceeded by each person thus volunteering to place his or her images and challenges likewise in the middle of the dialogue.

The results of this exercise were positive. Comments afterward included:

• “Before we started I was doubtful about the pictures, but then we were able to talk about our challenges in depth.”
• “We came up with some metaphors we otherwise would not have. It seemed easy to tell stories to go with the images.”
• “People in our group tended to see very different things in the same image—and that was okay.”
• “It was fun. We laughed. The connections we made led to a lot of puns and jokes.”

For example, one participant’s initial challenge is pictured in the image of a houseraising at the top of this post.

This shows the building of a traditional brick structure – not flexible; people working at individual tasks; no collaboration. It has a static feel, with little or no movement. This represents our current environment – traditional products presented in “product centric” way, a standardized approach.

The way forward she represented with these sky divers:

“Taking flight” into the air, with freedom, and a strong sense of movement. Physical touching represents a collaborative approach. There is a feeling of excitement and apprehensive – and tension. This represents a non-standard approach to our largest customers – a requirement for flexibility, but based on strong training, skills, and expertise. We need to build these skills in the organization.