"Can this blind man do Visual Explorer ... ?"

"I was of course pleased to meet Enos and glad to have him as part of our program. My mind, however, began working overtime on how I would incorporate him into the upcoming Visual Explorer exercise. What could I do to be sensitive to this blind gentleman’s needs? ... "


Steadman Harrison at the Center for Creative Leadership sends us this story from the Leadership Beyond Boundaries initiative:

"In December 2006 I traveled to Kenya as part of a research initiative called Leadership Beyond Boundaries. I looked at the map and guessed that it would take me about an hour and a half by car to drive from the capital city of Nairobi up to a smaller town called Nakuru where I was to host a Leadership Forum Workshop for our contacts at ERMIS Africa. In Nairobi I hired a driver who agreed to take me out to Nakuru and we started our journey.

"Kenya is a very large country. The short trip I had anticipated turned into a nearly 4 hour drive across the Rift Valley ridge of mountains more than 8,000 feet above sea level. The road was last paved in the 1960s and at times the driver chose to drive off road because the potholes were so bad. At one point I looked out and saw a heard of zebras and asked if we could pull over so I could take a picture. The driver simply veered the car off the road and drove straight out into the field into the middle of the heard so I could see them better. This was the start of my adventure.

"I’ll focus here on one story that happened that first day at the workshop in Nakuru. I decided to set up Visual Explorer early in the morning before the workshop began as a bit of a backdrop and to create some intrigue about the activities we would cover later in the day. The colorful 8.5 by 11 pictures lined 3 of the walls of the conference room. This was an open enrollment workshop and my friend, Bancy, had sent out all the invitations. I had no idea how many participants we would have nor did I know anything about their backgrounds. As participants came in that morning I would introduce myself and some of them asked a few questions about all the pictures spread out around the room.

"Enos Awili was about the tenth person to join us that morning. He came in being led at the hand by a friend. Shortly after being seated he invited me to come over and speak with him where he told me a little bit about his life.

Born in 1950, I became blind as a result of infections by Trachoma and Glaucoma combined. I then went through the normal academic education in a residential school for the blind twenty-seven miles from Nairobi city. I then worked for a bread-producing company until it closed down in January 1993. Since then, I have not been in any gainful employment but thank the Lord for providing me with sponsors who paid school fees for my three children. Despite my financial problems I still feel it’s my duty to teach people about the ethics of good leadership and how to stay free from HIV and AIDS scourge. So I am here today as a representative for Persons with Disabilities National Council of Kenya and look forward to this program.

"I was, of course, pleased to meet Enos and glad to have him as part of our program. My mind, however, began working overtime on how I would incorporate him into the upcoming Visual Explorer exercise. What could I do to be sensitive to this gentleman’s needs? After introducing Visual Explorer that morning I promptly assured Enos that he could be fully involved in the exercise.

"As the exercise began I asked him to briefly describe both his organizational challenge and the ideal future state of his organization (the two questions I had asked the group to consider as they picked out their two pictures). I then led him around the room briefly describing each picture. To my surprise this didn’t take long. When we came across the picture of ‘a donkey with its feet tied together’ he exclaimed that this was his picture he was looking for. And when I described ‘the bird with outstretched wings having just caught a fish’ he said that this was his future organization. The really rich part of the exercise was watching Enos’s sheer delight as each of the members of his small group described the two pictures in great detail.


"At the end of our debrief, he was in tears as he shared what a great gift it was to be a part of such a wonderful exercise that captured the challenges facing the disabled people of East Africa and the hope that he had moving forward to a day when so many people in need would have the resources they needed to soar like eagles.

Effective Group Coaching

Jennifer Britton has a new book called Effective Group Coaching: Tried and Tested Tools and Resources for Optimum Coaching Results. On her blog she cites Visual Explorer™ as the first of My Five Favorite Group Coaching Tools This Year. An excerpt:

Thursday, December 17, 2009
My Favorite Group Coaching Tools This Year

Every year at this time, I like to look back and take stock of some of my favorite tools and resources of the year, and share them here on the blog.

This year, five of my favorite tools and resources are:

• Visual Explorer from the Center For Creative Leadership. Those of you who joined me in Orlando know the power of this visual tool. I continue to bring it in to team and group coaching sessions, along with workshops and seminars as a conversation starter, and awareness builder. Visit CCL to learn more about the tool in its many different forms.
  
• Facilitative Coaching by Dale Schwarz and Anne Davidson. This book is chock full of exercises and resources for your coaching work. Although geared primarily for a 1-1 setting you could adapt many of these for a group context.
• MindMapping seems to make my list each and every year, but I do so love this tool for program design, brainstorming and getting clients unstuck. Check out the tag MindMapping for some ideas on how I use it. Once again, MindJet.com is the best computer based MindMapping tool around. Try out their 21 day free trial at http://www.mindjet.com.
  
  More at the Group Coaching blog>>

What do you see? Using Visual Explorer for admissions essays at the New York University Robert F. Wagner Graduate School of Public Service

click through to the New York Times article
more on Dean Schall's address
more at the NYU site
more at Leading Effectively CCL blog

reposted from the New York Times, EducationLife section, Sunday, November 1, 2009

Below is the online application page with the instructions for the essay (click image to enlarge).

More from Dean Ellen Schall:

Excerpt from Dean Ellen Schall's Convocation Remarks
Presented to 2009 graduates of the
NYU Robert F. Wagner Graduate School of Public Service
May 15, 2009

“In the Wall Street Journal last week, 10 college presidents were asked to answer a question from their own schools’ applications. They all found it harder than they imagined. We have always understood at Wagner that it mattered how we started to engage you, even as prospective students, that we were beginning a conversation, perhaps a relationship - one that could last for years.

"Two years ago, when many of you applied, we decided to add a particular twist to our application - in part to get your attention, in part to signal we were after a different level of engagement. We gave you the possibility of responding to a photo, a visual image, from a collection of images developed by colleagues at the Center for Creative Leadership. As you may remember, we use Visual Explorer, which is what CCL calls this approach, at orientation as well. The basic idea is that it’s easier to get the conversation started when you have an object in the middle. And we wanted to get a conversation started. more>> and more>>

Visual Explorer™ in Afghanistan

Here is a repost from the CCL Leading Effectively blog. Clemsen Turregano goes on to talk about members of the Afgan Army picking Visual Explorer images to define leadership "in their hearts and their heads."

clipped from lbbtest.net Leadership Essentials in Afghanistan Clemson Turregano traveled to Afghanistan to deliver a Leadership Essentials program to the Afghan Army. In a series of posts on the Leading Effectively blog he recounts the experience: “We would have to deliver in Dari. We would be working with a population that although very intelligent, and may not have a had a great deal of formal education. Every one we would be working with had served in war, with the Northern Alliance, the Mujahadeen, or even the Soviets. Some of these men had actually fought against each other, on opposite sides, at different times. more part 1>> and more part 2>> and more part 3>>

Jane Goodall Global Youth Summit: Video introduction to VE

from David Shurna on Vimeo
Visual Explorer™ was used to close Jane Goodall's Global Youth Summit, and the event was captured on video. The question posed was "What is one of the most important things that you learned about leadership at the Global Youth Summit?" The power of their week-long leadership experience shines through in their stories and images. Enjoy! Thanks to David Shurna at Global Explorers, and thanks especially to the participants.

The video is a good introduction to Visual Explorer™ in action (another intro to VE is posted here). The main difference from a typical VE session is that in this case, since time was limited, there were no small group dialogues. We recommend breaking into small groups of 3-5 to share the images and stories in great detail, using the dialogue technique called the Star Model.


Notice David's technique of combining the digital images of the selected images with the text written by each person, and making that into an animated power point show. You can view that show by itself, as a powerpoint show, by downloading it here. Below are two examples.

sharing a VE image at the Summit

-----Original Message-----
From: David Shurna [mailto:dave@globalexplorers.org]
To: Palus, Chuck; Horth, David
Subject: Visual Explorer and the Jane Goodall Global Youth Summit

Dear Chuck & David:

I wanted to let you know that I have returned from the Jane Goodall Global Youth Summit and your Visual Explorer activity was amazing! I used the activity at the conclusion of the week long summit as a way for students to share what they had learned about leadership throughout the week. I have attached the PowerPoint presentation that represents all of the images chosen by the students coupled with words about their action projects and their leadership lesson. The session was also filmed and I will be getting this out to you as well.

I was particularly struck by how well this work across cultures. We had youth ages 16-24 from more than 20 countries involved in the activity. Many were from developing countries and English was their second language. The images helped them open up and share powerful lessons and ideas in ways that we had not seen the rest of the week.

I was particularly struck by the variety of images selected and the creative ways in which students expressed their thoughts. One student from Kenya selected an image of a burning house and described the way in which this photo represented the destruction of his country that was taking place right now. Yet beyond the fire, he saw in the image something that represented his hope that he could inspired change when he returned.

Another student from Hong Kong selected the rugby image and discussed the ways in which he felt that he was often beat up, pushed around and discouraged by the lack of progress he was making on environmental issues in Hong Kong. Yet, he said the conference reminded him that we all get beat up at times and we need to have persistence and hope.

Not too many dry eyes in the room after these moments. Thanks so much for being willing to share this incredible resource with our organization. Please let me know how you would like me to post these lessons and information on your blog. Again, video will be forthcoming.

Sincerely,

David Shurna
Executive Director
Global Explorers

The Art of Public Service

Visual Explorer™ image #780

Excerpt from Dean Ellen Schall's Convocation Remarks
Presented to 2009 graduates of the
NYU Robert F. Wagner Graduate School of Public Service
May 15, 2009

See the related New York Times article: What do you see?
More at the NYU site

“In the Wall Street Journal last week, 10 college presidents were asked to answer a question from their own schools’ applications. They all found it harder than they imagined. We have always understood at Wagner that it mattered how we started to engage you, even as prospective students, that we were beginning a conversation, perhaps a relationship - one that could last for years.

Two years ago, when many of you applied, we decided to add a particular twist to our application - in part to get your attention, in part to signal we were after a different level of engagement. We gave you the possibility of responding to a photo, a visual image, from a collection of images developed by colleagues at the Center for Creative Leadership. As you may remember, we use Visual Explorer, which is what CCL calls this approach, at orientation as well. The basic idea is that it’s easier to get the conversation started when you have an object in the middle. And we wanted to get a conversation started.

It seemed fitting, as you graduate, for me to put myself to the test we asked you to take up as you, or some of you, entered. So I looked through the Visual Explorer photos and picked one. I will show it to you in a minute. On our application we ask you to tell us how the image you selected represents your connection to public service. Let me try to answer for myself.

The title of my essay is “The Art of Public Service.”

NYU Wagner named itself a school of Public Service 20 years ago, in 1989. For years we had to defend the choice, explain it, compare and contrast it to public administration or public policy, the more obvious choices. The faculty and the then dean, Howard Newman, stood firm though. In naming the school, they saw beyond the way the world was dividing itself into sectors and methods. They imagined that we would come to care more about results and change than in what sector the work was housed. They appreciated that careers were likely to cross boundaries, that people in their late 20s or early 30s were more likely to have 7 jobs than one, that claiming the name of public service for our school would set us apart… and indeed it has. Now 20 years later, we have a president of the U.S. who exemplifies the spirit of public service and who has made the call to public service a virtual national anthem.

I wrote a piece 15 years ago, a few years into being a faculty member at Wagner, called “Learning to love the swamp: rethinking education for public service.” The swamp is a metaphor for the important, complex, and messy problems that resist technical analysis. I argued that the world of public service has more swamp than high ground. Ending poverty, overcoming racism, ensuring equal health outcomes for all, creating public school systems that work, building cities that are sustainable - these are the kinds of challenges that await your talent and commitment. Important challenges, and ones that require the most sophisticated and skilled levels of professional public service. Another name for this professional excellence is …artistry - and that brings me to my image and to the topic of this essay. The Art of Public Service.

I believe more than ever in the need for artistry in the work of public service. We invited you to join us at Wagner to change the world. We offered you – or hope we did - a varied set of tools and frameworks from which you can draw. But tools and frames alone don’t do the trick. Public service is as much about art as science. When we bring artistry to public service, we bring passion, creativity and the gift of seeing new possibilities. Holding a sense of ourselves as artists as we go about the work of public service helps us to stay bold and aim high.

It’s important to remember at the same time that art is not easy and that there are no guarantees- either in art or in public service. I took a beginners’ pottery class this past fall.

I showed up every Monday night, from 6 - 9, much the way you showed up for a class. And it was VERY hard. I was the worst in the class, a fact clear to me and to every one else. Yet I stayed and kept on trying. I knew there was learning in the trying, in sticking with what didn’t come easily. I never actually cracked the code or became a potter. Yet at the end, I have these small little pieces of “pottery” in my house and the odd thing is I display them. They are on the entry hall table and they make me smile when I walk in. They remind me to take myself seriously, but not too seriously, to stretch even in the face of initial resistance, mine or others, to find pleasure in small wins.

Here then is the image I chose:

An image of a person - alas, not me - bringing a pot to life on a potter’s wheel.

This captures in a simple visual image what I wish for each of you as you go forth. That you embrace the boldness of seeing yourself as artists, as creators and changemakers, as people who bring passion and the fullness of your selves to the critically important challenges of public service. And that you have the discipline and energy and commitment to keep on going, even if you don’t get it right the first time around, that you learn from what works as well as what doesn’t and that you find joy in small things as well as big moves.

Thank you.

Leadership Beyond Boundaries

The Center for Creative Leadership is making a difference in grassroots leadership worldwide by means of our Leadership Beyond Boundaries initiative. Visual Explorer™ and Leadership Metaphor Explorer™ are just a few of the tools used in this initiative to have better dialogue about leadership and the future, in places like Kenya, India, Thailand, and the USA.

97 percent of the 89 employers surveyed believe that arts training is crucial to developing creativity

Here's a message from Lou St. Ville (Director of Education and Development at Crate&Barrel, & an alum of the Center for Creative Leadership's Leading Creatively Program) ...

From: St. Ville, Lou [mailto:@crateandbarrel.com]
Sent: Friday, April 18, 2008 1:20 PM
To: Palus, Chuck; Horth, David
Subject: Your book is needed...

Thought you would find this article from CLO magazine interesting. It made me think about how important your research (and book) is to the US workplace now. I'm speaking about this to a class at Columbia College here in Chicago next week. I will certainly speak to this need here at C&B. ... lsv

In The News

Published April 2008

Study Finds Curriculums Not Keeping Pace With Workforce Needs

Lindsay Edmonds Wickman

A recent survey found that school superintendents and employers agree that creativity is becoming increasingly important in U.S. workplaces, according to a report by The Conference Board and Americans for the Arts, in partnership with the American Association of School Administrators (AASA).

“Ready to Innovate: Are Educators and Executives Aligned on the Creative Readiness of the U.S. Workforce?” states that 99 percent of the 155 school superintendents surveyed and 97 percent of the 89 employers surveyed believe that arts training — and, to a lesser degree, communications studies — are crucial to developing creativity. But findings indicate that most high schools and employers provide such training and studies only on an elective or as-needed basis.

“As long as creativity is identified as a skill that can be developed and recognized as an integral input for innovation, and corporate leaders emphasize the need for innovation in order to meet their business objectives, the need for including creativity enhancing programs [in] the requisite training curriculum should be obvious,” said Jonathan Spector, chief executive officer of The Conference Board.

VE in Palestine

Hello Chuck and David,
We just got back from facilitating leadership development courses for the senior staff of three Palestinian ministries (Youth and Sports, Women’s Affairs, and Finance) where we used Visual Explorer to great effect. The stunning visual imagery made a tremendous impact on the participants’ ability to be deeply reflective and to think creatively about how best to manage the conflicts that are inevitable in any office (and exacerbated by the stressful circumstances under which they work). We never work anywhere in the world without Visual Explorer in our bag of supplies.
Keep those thought-provoking images coming!
Merianne Liteman
Liteman Rosse, Inc.
http://www.retreatsthatwork.com

ASTD Honors CCL & CHP Partnership

The American Society for Training and Development (ASTD) has awarded Catholic Healthcare Partners (CHP) and the Center for Creative Leadership (CCL) two Excellence in Practice Awards and a citation for our work on CHP's innovative Leadership Academy for executives and managers. The Leadership Academy received awards in both the Managing Change and Workplace Learning and Development categories, and a citation in the Organizational Learning category. See a summary of this work and it's outcomes at Story of Impact: Developing Next-Generation Leaders with an Action-Learning Approach.

CCL crafted fabric quilts as gifts to the graduating classes, using Visual Explorer images chosen by Leadership Academy participants to reflect their visions of leadership (special thanks to Susan Rice and quilt maker Mary Ellen Kranz). For more information contact Jon Abeles (CHP) and Patricia O'Connor (CCL). (See the 2003 class quilt at the top and bottom; click to enlarge.)

Organizational Leadership Development in Ethiopia Among NGOs

The Center for Creative Leadership has been working to make leadership development more accessible in our world through the Global Voice of Leadership (GVOL) initiative. The effort involves developing new models to reach out to new populations and regions. One of the approaches being explored is to enhance the capacity of NGOs to develop local community leaders.

The beta version of our Visual Explorer Post Cards was recently used in Ethiopia for organizational leadership development, as part of Leadership Beyond Boundaries . During the debrief of experiential exercises and appreciative inquiry tools, participants routinely draw the parallels to their everyday work and see the analogies and metaphors of these simulations come to life. Participants report that their understanding of their impact on others, their appreciation for the complex cultural context within which they work, and the importance of building clear direction, alignment, and commitment through their leadership influence increases throughout the course of their workshop experience. ... more>>

Visual Exploration news from bloggers: Facilitating transitions. Beyond the glass ceiling. Treasure Maps for personal visioning

Viv McWaters uses the technique of drawing a Visual Explorer image at random as a way of getting to fresh ideas. Of this image she says "It reminds me of the somewhat artificial world we facilitators operate in. ... How do we make the transition from the ‘event’ - a conference, a forum, a workshop, an on-line discussion - to the ordinary world that we usually inhabit? This photo encompasses that transition." more>>


The bloggers at Beyond the Glass Ceiling write about using lots of visuals at a career retreat. This "unleashes ideas and insights that aren't available to our verbal brains." more>>

Artist and consultant Christine Kane has a popular post in which she describes how to make a Vision Board. As she points out the Vision Board (aka treasure map, or creativity collage) is in some ways like Visual Explorer, but one you can make yourself out of magazine images. "It gives your ego a chance to step aside just a little, so you can more clearly create your vision." more>>

Center for Creative Leadership more>>

Rethinking Wicked Problems, Compendium at CCL, VizThink Conference,

A note this morning from our CCL colleague in Brussels, design specialist Bertrand Sereno:

A couple of pointers which may be of interest to you:

Rethinking Wicked Problems
Unpacking Paradigms, Bridging Universes

A conversation with Jeff Conklin & Min Basadur
http://www.nextd.org/02/10/1/index.html and http://www.nextd.org/02/10/3/index.html

VizThink Conference '08

http://www.vizthink.com/

For your info, Compendium is starting to be a huge hit here at CCL Europe: we are starting to use it to map just about everything (the Trojan horse being yours truly, of course ;)) from activities, modules, program outcomes and leadership competences, to role descriptions for our operational excellence project.

Best,

B.
Bertrand Sereno | CCL Europe | Design Specialist | T: +32 (0)2 773 51 16

See also:
Sensemaking Techniques in Support of Leadership Development, Selvin & Palus

VE 2.0 images on the iLead ipod

We are starting to use the iPod Touch as a platform for viewing and sharing Visual Explorer 2.0, along with other leadership learning materials. This gives a fair idea of what it looks like, but does not reveal the wonders of the Touch screen interface.

VE at Cheetah Camp, Mumbai, India

Using the portable poker-card size prototype

Philomena Rego from the Center for Creative Leadership worked with facilitators using Visual Explorer in support of grassroots leadership in India. Her reports can be found at Leadership Beyond Boundaries. Recently we have this report:

Jeevan Dhara is an NGO based in Cheetah Camp, Mumbai. This is Asia's second largest slum. Jeevan Dhara operates pre-school classes for children, adult literacy classes and study classes. It also works on HIV/AIDS issues and drug & alcohol rehabilitation.

Visual Explorer was used with the teachers of these programs. The framing question used was "How do you see your work/role in this community?"

The session was conducted in Hindi, as the teachers are mostly Muslim, and Hindi is the most understood language in Mumbai slums.

The teachers enjoyed the session which was aimed at improving their ability to work together and stay committed in spite of the difficulties. VE helped them to express themselves more freely since they were speaking about the picture they had picked. The pictures do not have any language barriers.

Laos Leadership Forum 2007

Not only one tree will make a fence, not only the leader can create societal change. — Lao proverb

A Leadership Forum was held on June 11, 2007 in Vientiane, Laos, aimed to raise awareness about the challenges of leadership in the public and private sectors, and to discuss approaches to further strengthen leadership skills in Lao PDR.

Read more about this forum (English - Lao) at www.worldbank.org/lao.

The agenda was structured around the following questions:

• What is Leadership in the Lao context?
  
• How can Leadership be learnt?
  
• What are the challenges of Leadership & Leadership development in Lao PDR?
• How can we strengthen Leadership Development in Lao PDR?

Visual Explorer was used to get people talking about the sometimes sensitive topic of leadership in a communist society. The framing question used for the Visual Explorer session was, “How would you describe leadership in your own organization to new employees?” In the words of one of the facilitators:

We just said “go pick a image that speaks to this question.” We role modeled the process once they returned to their seats, and then we turned them loose. The room was very quiet at the start. Then came voices, then attentive eyes, then leaned in shoulders, then animated conversation, and finally laughter. So, in terms of VE process outcomes, they got it; it worked. In terms of content outcomes, VE helped make the undiscussable (namely leadership) discussable. It helped the group to view leadership as something not just associated with senior politburo members, but as something relevant to all. Given the conference theme, "Leadership Concerns Us All," this demystifying process was a great outcome to achieve.

Contact Patricia O'Connor and Chris Ernst at the Center for Creative Leadership.

More information on Lao PDR at www.worldbank.org/lao

Read more at the World Bank >> English - Lao

More at Leadership Without Boundaries.

Visual Explorer for mediated dialogue, Academy of Management 2007

Art can provide “bridges that even enemies may want to cross” (Xerox PARC Artist in Residence Program).

Chuck Palus (Center for Creative Leadership) is presenting Visual Explorer as a tool for enabling mediated dialogue at The 2007 Annual Meeting of the Academy of Management, August 3-8 in Philadelphia.

What is mediated dialogue? How is it facilitated?

Tangible images mediate dialogue by focusing shared attention; by inviting diverse projections and constructions of meaning; and by lending themselves to metaphors and other intuitive, emotional, and rational connections. more >>

The arts, and the underlying aesthetic competencies, have evolved culturally as means of social meaning-making using a full range of perceptual / cognitive / emotional abilities (Ellen Dissanayake; Cynthia Cohen; Howard Gardner; John Dewey).

See also our article on this topic as featured by The Society for Organizational Learning in Reflections.

Join us: Monday August 6, 4:10-5:20 pm, Pennsylvania Convention Center, room 109B, for

Bridging Frames that Underlie the Context for Doing Well/Doing Good – Reflection, Theory and Practice. Organizers: Victoria Marsick & Terrence Earl Maltbia, Columbia University.

Actionable Knowledge—Elena P. Antonacopoulou, University of Liverpool

Leadership Development—W. Warner Burke, Teachers College, Columbia University

Collaborative Management Research—David Coghlan, Trinity College - Dublin, Ireland & A. B. (Rami) Shani, California Polytechnic State University

Action Learning Conversations—Victoria Marsick & Terrence E. Maltbia, Teachers College, Columbia University

Mediated Dialogue—Charles J. Palus, Center for Creative Leadership

Emancipatory Discourse—Joe Raelin, Northeastern University

---

Visual Explorer featured in new edition of The Change Handbook

CCL’s Visual Explorer featured
in new edition of The Change Handbook


February 2007 - Greensboro, N.C. – The Change Handbook, considered the definitive resource for best methods on organizational change, features a chapter on the Center for Creative Leadership’s Visual Explorer in its second edition.

“We designed Visual Explorer to help people in organizations make sense of complex challenges,” said CCL inventor Charles J. Palus, who developed the game-like, conversation-starting tool with colleague David Magellan Horth. “Its inclusion in The Change Handbook illustrates its broad applicability as part of the change paradigm. People are using it in the context of transforming leadership cultures.”

The Change Handbook, 2nd Edition, is a compendium of 61 proven change methods drawn from foremost practitioners. In their chapter, Palus and Horth provide a concise understanding of what Visual Explorer is and what it does, and they use vignettes to highlight the diverse ways companies have employed the tool.

One example cited is Crate & Barrel, which uses it to craft a shared vision for their web-based innovations. Said Palus, “This is a company that likes to be productive but also to have fun, and Visual Explorer helps them have their serious conversations in a more playful way.”

Palus and Horth write comprehensively about Visual Explorer and the research behind it in their book, The Leader’s Edge: Six Creative Competencies for Exploring Complex Challenges (Jossey-Bass, 2002). Their book and Visual Explorer itself are both available from CCL Press (hyperlink)

The Change Handbook: The Definitive Resource on Today's Best Methods for Engaging Whole Systems is available from Berrett-Koehler Publishers.


About the Center for Creative Leadership
Founded in 1970, the Center for Creative Leadership (CCL®) is a nonprofit institution that focuses exclusively on leadership education and research, offering top-ranked programs and other services to clients worldwide. Ranked in the top five in the Financial Times annual executive education survey, CCL is headquartered in Greensboro, N.C., with campuses in Asia, Europe and North America. Its work is supported by more than 500 faculty and staff.