Conference report, part four: Cross method mapping

This is the fourth in a series of blog posts about two conferences I attended this fall (NCDD and NYSDRA).

1. I started by describing the Red-Blue Dictionary and the exercise I designed for it (which I call "Ground Truthing with Stories").
2. Then I described a new conferences-and-meetings variant of the "Twice told stories" exercise, called "Bubble up stories," I designed for a NCDD plenary session.
3. Then I described a "Sticker stories" landscape exercise I designed for a session on story work.

Now I'll talk about Cross method mapping with the Group Works cards.

As some will remember, I first started thinking about a way to connect the hundreds of methods and approaches that surround the practice of dialogue just after the 2014 NCDD conference opened my eyes to what I had been missing. I wrote about a "translation dictionary" I would like to create, to connect the approaches listed in various places in a more vital and substantial "matrix of meaning" than can be found when methods are simply compiled into lists (as valuable as that can be).

I held this idea in my mind for a year or so. I talked with probably 20 people about it, and I got a few people to try some experiments reaching out from one approach to another. Last spring I wrote about the evolution of my thinking on the idea, describing one such attempt to reach out. In that blog post I mentioned the Group Works deck in my list of method lists.

Some of the people in the Group Works team saw my post and responded to it. In particular, they corrected my misstatement that the Group Works deck is a list of methods. It's not a list of methods; it's a list of patterns that lie under all of our methods for bringing people together. This initial contact prompted a weeks-long discussion (on their mailing list) in which I discovered that the reasons behind the creation of the Group Works deck were very similar to the reasons I had been thinking about a translation dictionary. During the discussion I realized that the "matrix of meaning" I was looking for had already been created. So I started thinking of ways to use the Group Works deck to help people reach out across the spaces between methods.

An enlightening conversation

Because it was such a productive discussion, I'd like to show some of it to you. This is a selection of the comments (from myself and others) that led to me connecting so strongly to the Group Works deck as a matrix of meaning. I've set apart the things other people said as quotes; everything is edited for length; the whole conversation is colored in blue (so you can tell when it stops); and I've bolded the words that seem most significant as I look back on it now.

I have considered the idea of creating a "matrix of meaning" in which various methods could "be suspended." Such a matrix could provide bridges between methods by its very existence, as air provides the means for sound to travel. Here's an idea: what if the Group Works patterns were the matrix?

What might be useful would be creating a 'decision tree' for methods. What critical questions do skilled group process leaders and facilitators actually ask themselves when deciding which method to use? My guess would be that the decision criteria each facilitator uses are often irrational and sub-optimal, but that it would be difficult to change their method choices even if the 'decision tree' prompted them to do so. We all get familiar with certain methods that seem to have worked better for us, so we are inclined to use them instead of possibly better methods most of the time.

The tyranny of methods is one of the reasons I got involved with this project in the first place. Methods are just solutions looking for problems. Without understanding the pattern language of group process, or decent theory about how humans confront problems, think and act in complexity and collaborate, practitioners can become over reliant on methods to give them the answers they need to the question of “how should we work together.”

What I've been thinking is, if people had a way to take "baby steps" away from their familiar methods, steps that made sense to them along lines of connection that felt important, people might begin to explore more opportunities.

Anything that weans people away from methods is a fine idea! (And I say this as a method keeper, responsible for future editions of the Open Space Technology user’s guide!)

I see it as a particular responsibility of method keepers to balance promotion of our methods with attention to integration and cooperation. I don't want my method to "win" in a competition; I want to help people enlarge the range of tools they have at hand.

This theme of getting past the methods is exciting for me - when we were working on it [the Group Works deck, I assume] I referred several times to one of the goals as "facilitative Jeet Kune Do" (Bruce Lee's attempt to forge a martial art that went past the surface forms and was more fluid, spontaneous, and flexible).

What if skillfulness is not really about capacity with methods, but the underlying capacity to manipulate the overlying patterns? If so, what would a framework that could use methods as a means for patterns capacity building look like? If the facilitator is a chemist, my idea is probably seeing beyond the compounds in order to reach the periodic table. It doesn't override the utility of compounds, but it definitely changes the way we think about the compounds.

I really like this metaphor of the periodic table. What I have been looking for is a way to move from one compound to another through the mediating matrix of the periodic table. I can see that you (as a group) have already thought about this a lot, which is why this discussion is so interesting.

Each new pattern awareness or method brings up small Pandora's boxes which may be relatively manageable if the participating facilitator-student can intuitively, as well as rationally, appraise their own process, listen to their feelings at each step, and notice their emerging needs as they hit the white waters of the "martial" art of facilitating somehow differently. For example, that last sentence was way too long. If the process-concept came in smaller bites, it might swallow and digest better. One need may be frequent pauses to reflect and re-evaluate, even possibly with ... a buddy.

That feeling of being "stuck" in the methods we know (which we have all felt) implies inertia, or gravity, or a reluctance to travel. As I see it, there are two ways to help people overcome inertia and travel more widely. One is to help people become better travelers, and the other is to build better roads.

How to avoid the trap of walking the all-too-familiar roads instead of the ones we may not even be taking into account, to fulfill the purpose of discovering the world? My very humble guess is that the way most facilitators go about this existential dilemma is 1) Trial and error: "I did method X with that group and it was a disaster, what could have worked?" and/or 2) Association: "Oh, "your" method Y looks like "my" method X. Could you tell me more about it?"

I concur that a shift in assessment perspective can create the "safer ground" that significant learning requires. Shifting the lens through which we look can transform how we see "stuckness," how we feel about it and how we respond. By shifting our assessment lens from negative to neutral, from critiquing static behavior to viewing it developmentally--which means in context and over time--we can liberate the experimentation on which growth relies.

And to take it a step further, shifting from neutral to positive emotions "broadens and builds" (Fredrickson, 1998) our capacity to learn, innovate, and connect with other learners that is not a momentary experience, but persists and enables our individual and collective capacity going forward. Like this conversation. We're building some safety. We allow a bit of vulnerability, open up our hearts through empathy, and the collective field capacity increases.

I like the phrase "liberating experimentation." That's what I'm talking about - bringing a greater opportunity for low-intensity, everyday, just-fooling-around play to how we think about helping people do things together.

As a beginner, it's often very effective to mirror the behavior of more fluent practitioners. This is how we learn a native language, how to dance, carpentry, or facilitation. It's a learning mode that works. For beginners. Once we know the basics, it's time to improvise, being fully in formed by our previous knowledge.

It could be really interesting to do a workshop on facilitative methods using Group Works [to] showcase some of the best maps that have been put together so far for a bevvy of methods. It would be interesting to see the feedback from folks who were familiar with a given method as well as that from those who weren't.

It seems to me that each method is not only an initial scaffolding for beginners -- it is also a way for more advanced practitioners to connect with that method's particular underlying "signature pattern" or spirit. So for example, advanced practitioners of OST often talk about the spirit of Open Space, that goes beyond (and does not depend upon) the form...

And then the conversation wandered off onto other things, but I already had enough to work with. After this conversation I was sure that what needed to happen before the resource I envisioned could be created was the creation of a process that helped people take their first baby steps out of their comfortable method spaces. To do that I needed to help people create new connections in a spirit of empathy, safety, and play. What I needed was a game.

Growing a game

So I started playing games with the Group Works cards.

The first thing I noticed was that the Group Works people already have a game-like process in which people choose cards to represent and discuss any approach or method. They call it "Method mapping" and have been using it for years. During our discussion on the Group Works mailing list, somebody posted, as examples, some lists of Group Works cards people had chosen during four different Method mapping workshops. I copied those lists of cards into a spreadsheet, then chose some cards to represent a method I know well (PNI). Then I started juxtaposing the lists, putting them next to each other.

The first thing I wanted to do was count how many cards each pair of methods had in common. I thought that doing this might give me a sort of similarity score. It did. But as soon as I saw the similarity scores, I realized that they were boring and stupid. What I really wanted to know wasn't whether methods were similar, or how similar they were. I wanted to know why.

So I started to jot down some notes on why each card was chosen to represent each method. I went through the lists of cards and asked myself: "Why this card?" For cards chosen to represent the other method in each pair, I asked myself: "Why not this card?" Then I compared the lists of reasons.

This was far more satisfying. All sorts of intriguing questions opened up about where each method came from and where it wanted to go. I started to see more deeply into the values behind the methods, into their backgrounds, aspirations, and assumptions. Surprising things started to happen. Two methods that appeared to be similar at first glance might come from different values and beliefs, and two methods that seemed different might be working toward the same goals. A card held in common might highlight a difference between methods, and a card chosen for only one method might bring up a similarity.

A few examples will illustrate what I mean. Here are a few of the cards somebody chose to represent Appreciative Inquiry, with my guesses at the reasons they chose them:

• Appreciation: AI came out of (thus emphasizes) situations where "what is going on" has already been "talked to death," and nobody is thinking past well-known problems.
• Commitment: AI encourages people to move forward into a more positive future by appreciating the things that are already working but have been ignored by too much focus on problems.
• Common ground: AI focuses on helping people find common ground by discovering their shared hopes, dreams, and assets.

And here are my reasons for not choosing those same cards to represent participatory narrative inquiry:

• Appreciation: PNI came out of (thus emphasizes) situations where people have not yet had the freedom to choose and the right to be heard; thus to find out "what is going on" people must first be heard on their own terms.
• Commitment: This can happen in PNI, but PNI is designed to work well in low-participation and low-commitment situations as well, partly because those who know "what is going on" have not yet been heard.
• Common ground: This is a good emergent outcome of PNI, but it is not a requirement, because sometimes people are not yet ready for it. PNI focuses on meeting people where they are, because where they are is often not known at the outset.

That's just a few of the cards I considered as I compared the two methods, but I think it gives you a quick idea of their different goals and contexts. I've been aware of Appreciative Inquiry (as an approach to story work) for a long time. I've thought about its origins, context, and purpose many times before. But this exercise helped me to gain more insight into how PNI and AI can complement each other.

After some time playing with the various card sets by myself, I felt that it was time to bring in other minds. So I described what I had been doing on the Group Works mailing list, and I asked people if they would be willing to help me improve the process. Two people responded, and we went through method comparisons over Skype. Another colleague and I compared two methods using a physical card set. Going through the process with other people improved it tremendously, of course. I discovered some areas where we needed to talk through things I hadn't had to tell myself; other people had some great ideas I hadn't thought of; and some of the nerdy detail I couldn't help burdening the process with began to slough off. (It looked a little too much like Dungeons and Dragons at the start.)

Then it was suddenly June, and the call went out to submit proposals for the NCDD conference. At first it seemed like it wasn't going to happen, but then one day I got an email from Sue Woehrlin, one of the prime movers of the Group Works team, saying she'd like to give it a try. Hooray! We put together a proposal, and it was accepted. During the time between the proposal and the conference we managed to run through the process twice more. More of the nerdy barnacles got scraped off, and we were ready to bring the game to more people.

The instructions for carrying out the process/exercise/game expanded from a few paragraphs into a 14-page workbook (with spaces to record what went on) that could be written on for face-to-face use or annotated for online use. Sue brought copies of the workbook and the Group Works deck to the session for people to use.

Our blurb for the conference was as follows.

Bridging the Methodology Divide: Cross-Mapping with the Group Works Deck

You may have used the Group Works Deck to help you facilitate. You may have used it to understand D&D methods by mapping their essential elements. Now you can use the Deck to explore synergies between D&D methods. Join us as we explore cross-mapping, a process for bridging divides among methods. Together we will discover surprising similarities and differences across D&D approaches. You’ll have a hands-on experience comparing a method you know well with a method someone else knows well. You’ll gain a new tool to work with other practitioners developing custom facilitation solutions.

We had ten participants, and we ran two concurrent games. One group considered Open Space Technology and Reflective Structured Dialogue; the other worked with Structured Dialogic Design and Non-Violent Communication. We had to shorten the exercise time (from 90 to 60 minutes) to allow time for an introduction and debriefing/feedback, but people were able to do a good part of the exercise and see what it was like.

In our feedback session at the end of our time, someone said they had "increased curiosity" about the other method, "even though I was already full up" with methods. Somebody else said "this is a way to step outside your method and explore the spaces between." That was exactly what we were after.

Based on feedback during that session, I went back to the workbook and improved it yet again. At this point I think the process is as streamlined as it can be. I also changed the name from "cross mapping" to "cross method mapping" (per Sue's suggestion), because without the word "method" it's harder to understand at a glance what the game is about.

Now it's your turn

I invite you to download the workbook and play your own cross-method mapping game. No: I don't invite you. I challenge you to do this. If you advocate or support any approach or method that helps people talk or work or think together, find someone who can bring another method into the game, and reach out together into the spaces between.

You will need 90 minutes; at least two people who know two methods; the workbook, printed or online; and two copies of the Group Works deck, printed or online. Here's a brief overview of what you will do.

1. You'll split into two groups. Each group will choose 8-12 Group Works cards that represent the method they are considering. For each card they choose, they will write down their answer to the question "Why this card?" 
2. The groups will come back together into one group. Someone from each group will give a brief "bird's eye view" description of the method they are working with.
3. You'll sort the cards chosen by the two groups into three categories: in common; only in the first method; only in the second method.
4. Together you'll consider each card held in common between the two methods. You'll talk about what it means to each method and what it means that both groups chose it. You'll summarize what you've learned in writing, taking turns putting things into words.
5. Together you'll consider each card not held in common. Whichever group didn't pick that card will answer the question "Why not this card?" You'll discuss similarities and differences, and you'll work together to write down a summary of what you've learned.
6. You'll wrap up the exercise with one or more of four activities: reflect on what just happened; write a high-level comparison of the two methods; draw a decision tree that shows which method should be used when; or brainstorm a project that uses both methods together.

I hope you will choose to take up this challenge. If you do, please send me a note and tell me how it went and what you found out.

I would like to thank the people responsible for the Group Works deck for all the energy, cooperation, and creativity they have put into the deck over the years. Cross method mapping is only one of many activities people have created using the Group Works deck (you can find the full list on their web site). The fact that such useful activities can grow up in such short time frames attests to the value of the resource they have created.

I would also like to thank several people from the Group Works mailing list for taking the time to play the game and provide useful feedback. The ten people who attended our session at the NCDD conference also played an essential part in helping us validate and improve the game.

What I've learned so far

I've now participated in or watched people participate in the cross-method mapping game several times. Here's what I've learned so far.

Let's get curious. The number one outcome of playing this game, so far, that I've seen in myself and in everyone I have seen play it, is an increase in curiosity. People come out of the exercise interested in learning more about another approach. That isn't a guarantee that people will follow up and put actual time into learning about another approach; but it definitely makes it more likely that people will find the time to do so. Imagine if everyone involved in group facilitation played a game like this once a month, or once a quarter. Would it have an impact on the way we collectively use the methods at our disposal? I think it would.

Exploring our values. The second strongest outcome I've seen has been the exploration of values that lie behind methods, whether they are ones we know well or ones we have just heard about. It's easy to nit-pick about methods that seem to intrude on our turf when we know a method well. We've all done it. It's harder to keep up that stance when you have just explored the laudable values that lie behind other methods. Can hope be a bad thing? How about being heard, or being respected, or finding solutions together? The whole thing reminds me of this amazing video from Louis C.K.'s Horace and Pete show that everyone on this planet should be strongly encouraged to watch. Yes, there is a place for criticism. There is a place for evaluation. There is a place for debates over effectiveness. But we also need a place to engage in dialogue and bridge-building about the ways in which we help people engage in dialogue and bridge-building.

Let's have a party (game). This exercise is not just a game. It's a social game. Its rules create a sense of fairness, because everyone has to do - and gets to do - the same things. There is a symmetry to the game that sets people (and methods) up as equals. If my method has ten thousand adherents and is supported by several well-endowed institutions, and your method has a blog post and a five-person working group, we still use the same cards, get the same amount of time, and articulate our reasons in the same plain language. Games partially suspend "the rules of the real" to create a paradox: the safe exploration of the unknown. Every approach to group facilitation asks people to take this step into the unknown. It's only fitting that we who ask them ask ourselves to take the same step.

A model of method use

As part of my thinking about why we need bridge-building among bridge-builders, and what will meet our needs, I've been developing a sort of model that describes the journeys people take as they go through their careers helping people come together. This is based on my own experience and my conversations over the years with hundreds of people going through their own journeys. It seems to me that the typical journey goes something like this.

Everyone starts (in the lower left) with the initial convergence that attracts us to (or throws us into) the idea of helping people talk and think together. We are drawn to (or tasked with using) an obvious, dominant solution (because: there it is). We read books and manuals. We follow recipes. We make something work.

Some people stay at this first stage for a long time because it's all they need. Others discover a hunger (or a need) for more, leading them to a first stage of divergence. They explore a few or several options with enthusiasm. They read several books and take a few seminars, searching for the method or approach that will fit their needs and aspirations best.

But after a while, most people run out of energy and time to explore, and they settle on one or a few methods that fit their needs well enough. At this point people often become weakly tribal, in that they will defend those methods in a debate, but they haven't thought about them enough to put forth a detailed argument. They might feel a little guilty that they haven't explored more, but they're tired and busy, and things are working well enough.

As people keep doing group facilitation, they inevitably begin to accumulate useful experience. They develop unique insights that are valuable to others. Maybe they write about those insights. Maybe they give talks at conferences. Their confidence and curiosity grow together. They begin to wonder what else is out there. So they enter into a new stage of divergence, pushing out further, learning about methods that are not so obvious or dominant. They begin to see how different approaches might complement each other. They try a few experiments with method mixing.

It is after this second stage of divergence that journeys seem to bifurcate. Some people progress to a third divergence in which they develop a true beginner's mind that is open to all ideas. People in this state keep discovering greater and greater enthusiasm to explore. Eventually they reach the point where they no longer speak of particular methods at all, but use their portfolio of understandings to create new and unique solutions for every problem. When I think of this state, I always think of that moment in 2001 (the internet says: no, 2010) where the guy says, "My God, it's full of stars."

But the second divergence does not always lead to mastery. Sometimes people, having again become overwhelmed with complexity or difficulty, fall back into a new convergence which is more deeply tribal than the one that came before it. People in this state expend their energy on defending and strengthening their existing choices. Their previous short-lived burst of curiosity has done nothing but convince them that they've been there, done that, and got the t-shirt to show it. They look upon those who are still searching as deluded or confused, and they put their heads down and get back to work, using the tools they know to be effective.

At this point I see myself in the second stage of divergence. I've only been doing this work for seventeen years, which seems like an instant compared to the careers of some people I know. I'm still curious about what else is out there, but I can't say I've developed the confidence or the breadth of knowledge to move beyond methods entirely. I seem to hear about another new method or approach every few months, and while I can't keep up, I continue to want to try. Being a method keeper drags you down in the space, simply because your time is taken up by maintenance of the thing you bear responsibility for. That's why I think method keepers have a particular responsibility to boost their curiosity despite (or maybe because of) their need to focus inward. The City of Old Emperors is full of method keepers, and sometimes I hear it calling me.

Anyway, I've drawn arrows on my diagram where I think the cross-method mapping game, and other games like it, can help people move up to better and more curious places. If you recognize yourself or your group as being in any of the convergent portions of my model, exercises like this one should be of particular value to you.

One more thing about this model before I stop talking about it. As I was working on it, I realized that it reminds me of another model I've had in my mind for a long time (and indeed, maybe this one came from that one): a model of how people learn programming languages. Quite a few times I've needed to evaluate or interview people for programming tasks, and I've discovered that one question works best to find out where people are on their journey through the world of programming. The question is, "What is your favorite programming language?" The way people answer this question tells me more than any resume can say.

• If they say, "Well, I've only ever worked in" whatever language is in vogue lately, I know that they are in the initial stage of convergence, because they're using an obvious solution and haven't explored anything else. Of course, sometimes people are forced to use one solution or another; but people who have "caught the bug" of programming are rarely satisfied with that.
• If they talk about their experiences with three or four languages, I can see that they are in their first divergence, curious to find the one best language out there.
• If they know a few languages but exhibit weak tribalism about one of them (which you can always detect because their arguments for it don't hold up well to attack), I know that they have transitioned into their second convergence.
• If they talk about how they're still using mostly the languages they know well, but are intrigued by some of the new ideas coming down the pike, they're working their way into their second divergence.
• Those in their third convergence are the diehards who post long diatribes about the lost treasures of Lisp or the inimitable beauty of C++. Or they bristle at the joke "You can write FORTRAN in any language."
• Finally, the true masters of programming can write you out in five minutes a point-by-point decision tree populated with thirty languages you never heard of. And they write compilers on top of compilers for fun.

People in all of these stages can do great programming work, and people in all stages of my group-facilitation model can do great work with people. But I ask people the favorite-language question because, if the person is in a convergent stage, they are probably going to need help if I need them to play with new ideas (and since most of my software work is in prototyping, I need people who can do that). I say this without prejudice, because in the field of programming I myself am in my second convergence and regularly need to push myself out of my comfort zone to program well. I was once fascinated by new languages, decades ago, but I've slowly settled down into preferring Python and grumbling about everything else (because Python is obviously superior, though I ... can't say exactly why). When I hire myself to do programming, I force myself to play some "try a new language today" games, tutorials and things, to push myself up into the higher-curiosity space. Otherwise any kind of rapid prototyping I might do will be pretty much doomed to failure.

So I wonder if the same question might be useful to evaluate yourself as a group facilitator. What is your favorite method of group facilitation? Why?

What comes next

So, am I satisfied with this little social game? Does it scratch my itch? A little, but not enough. I'm excited by the emergence of the game, and I'm enthused about getting it out to people who can benefit from it. But it's not the whole solution to the problem. It can't be.

The most obvious reason this game isn't good enough yet is that it isn't done yet. They say in the game development world that a game isn't finished until it has been played 100 times. By that measure this game has a lot of maturing left to do.

But more importantly, even though the game can be played quickly and with a few people, and even though it's a fun, relaxing experience, it still represents a barrier to those who are reluctant to reach out beyond their comfortable places. That's a limitation that prevents the game from being the whole solution to the problem.

I've spent a lot of time in my work with stories thinking about micro-participation, that is, how to get people to put two minutes or five minutes into a project they don't see the point of (at least at first). That's because the bottleneck in story work is never technology or expertise or time or money. It's the time and attention of the people who tell the stories. You can set up the most amazing project in the world, but if people won't talk to you, or they talk to you but don't pay attention and don't really tell you anything, you've got nothing.

So I've thought a lot about barriers. A barrier can be a problem, because it turns people back from something that would benefit them and others. But a barrier can also be a solution, because it gives people a reward for the effort it took to breach the barrier. After you've passed the barrier, it no longer says to you, "You can't come in here." It says, "You are in! You succeeded! You are one of us!" So a barrier should be as low as possible, and no lower.

I don't think the cross-method mapping game, or any other people-in-a-room-for-an-hour activity, is low enough to get people to learn more about other methods. More precisely, I don't think it's low enough alone.

What else is needed? I keep coming back to my original idea of a resource, a place to play around with cross-method mapping a little at a time, on one's own, without talking to anyone. I keep seeing in my mind's eye something like a Google Earth for method space. I don't know about you, but I've flown around visiting all the places I've ever lived, or thought about living, or wished I could live. It's a blast. It's a kind of safe virtual travel into the past and into alternative universes where you never took that job or moved away from that house, or where you took that plunge you were afraid to take. I'd like to make something like that for group facilitation methods: a way to pan and zoom around in the world of group work, free of commitment, just surfing, a few minutes at a time, for fun.

Oh, sure, people do surf in the lists of methods that are available. I don't mean to put down the substantial efforts people have put into their method lists. But there is something about a list that doesn't lead to meandering. It's like the difference between a garden path and a street in a cookie-cutter housing development: one surprises the traveler with serendipitous views, and the other catalogues life into pretty little boxes. We need boxes, but we need paths as well, and it's the paths I want and can't find.

Some of the stuff I talked about in my earlier posts about this idea would still be needed to make such a map-like resource come into existence, whether people were playing the cross-method mapping game or not.

• Just like you can look at different time-stamped images in Google Earth, people need to see the history of each method and the context in which it was developed. 
• Just like you need a map legend that puts everything in one scale, people need translation dictionaries that help them move easily between jargon spaces.
• Just like a satellite image gives you details, people need fleshed-out case studies that connect abstract descriptions of methods to real things that have happened to real people.

(Okay, maybe you can't actually do all of those things in Google Earth. I'm remembering a mish-mash of all the times I've used Google Earth, or Google Maps, or Mapquest, or maybe some other things I forgot the names of, over the past 20 years. What ever.)

What would make the game we have developed turn into the resource I think we need? Lots of people playing the game lots of times, plus lots of people taking the things they get out of playing the game and uploading them to a place that has places to put all of the things. What I've seen so far is that playing this game gets people ready to contribute to a resource like the one I envision. I can imagine people coming out of playing such a game, logging on to a web site, and adding what they learned about the methods they played the game with. I can imagine such a site growing over time until it reaches a critical mass for low-barrier method-space messing-about. I can imagine such a site complementing method lists in such a way that people walk around without even realizing that they've crossed from one mode of experiencing the world of facilitation to another.

I can see two impediments to making this happen in practice. One: the effort would need a sponsor. Somebody would have to host and maintain and police such a site. I can't do that, because I habitually come up with ten times more plans than I actually have the time or resources to carry out. In fact, this blog post is probably as far as I can take this idea this year, on my own. So ... there's that.

The other impediment is the harder one: participation. The effort would need champions, cheerleaders, people with outgoing personalities who are good at getting people to do things. I am not such a person.

However, let us for the moment sweep those impediments aside and simply glory in the vision of a Google Earth for group work. I think we would like it. What say you?

Coming up next: more conferences and meetings, plus what I'm doing after I finish writing these blog posts.

A Connection Language: Dialogue, Methods, Collaboration

A few of you might remember that when I posted my observations from the NCDD conference in October 2014, I mentioned the idea of a "connection language" to interpolate between different dialogue methods.

I've been playing with that idea ever since. I've told about a dozen people about it and gathered feedback. Based on that, I've been working up an elevator pitch to work towards an eventual real project. (Okay, an elevator in a really tall building.) I've been passing this pitch document around in email, but the other day I thought: the blog is hungry, so why not feed it this thing? So here it is. See what you think.

The need

These are some things I’ve noticed over the past several years, as a person who has been developing and promoting a dialogue-based method (participatory narrative inquiry).

People who are interested in dialogue can turn to a large number of useful methods, in the dozens (or hundreds, depending on how you divide them up).

Several excellent lists and frameworks have been built to help people make sense of all these methods. These include the NCDD’s Engagement Streams Framework, participedia.net, The Change Handbook, Liberating Structures, the Group Works Deck, Tom Atlee's Multi-Process Public Participation Programs, and others. People use these lists and value them.

The number of dialogue methods keeps growing.

I have noticed from conversations with people that:

• People seem to “shop” for dialogue methods, choose a small number, pay attention to them, and ignore all others.
• People sometimes act tribally about the methods they have chosen, promoting them as best, acting as if people who also use those methods are on their “team.”
• When I tell people about the method I work on/with (participatory narrative inquiry, or PNI), I find that there is a U-shaped reaction based on how much experience people have in dialogic practice.
• People who are unaware of dialogue want to hear about PNI (and PNI only).
• People who have some (but not that much) experience with dialogue don’t want to hear about yet another method, say they’ve already heard of Appreciative Inquiry (or some other story-based method), and get too busy to talk to me.
• People with lots of experience want to know how PNI relates to other methods. They want to learn about it so they can consider incorporating some of its ideas into their practice.
• When people ask me about PNI, they are often surprised when I point them to literature in overlapping fields like participatory theatre and narrative therapy. They find it unique and novel.

My guess is that all of these things relate to Dunbar’s number, that is, the number of relationships people can keep track of. We can be aware of 100-150 methods (our village), but we can be familiar with only about 10-15 (our family). These behaviors – the ignoring, the tribalism, the U-shaped curve of attention, the surprise – all have to do with cognitive limits.

The sociologist Harrison White posits three “species” of interaction among people: selection (choosing among options), mobilization (gaining influence), and commitment (getting things done). When I look at how people use dialogue methods, I see a lot of selection (shopping) and mobilization (tribalism) going on, but very little commitment (making things happen).

I think the world of dialogue needs more commitment interaction.

My concern is that we may be reaching a point where the very instruments we use to bridge differences have developed differences that need to be bridged.

Many dialogue methods are more complementary and synergistic than people (especially newcomers to dialogue) realize.

The most experienced practitioners of dialogue don’t shop for methods, and they don’t promote methods. They grow their own solutions, unique to each need, based on what they learn from all over. Harrison White would say that they work entirely at the commitment level.

In my experience, dialogue is more effective when people know why they are using what they are using, learn from many sources, and can craft unique solutions for unique needs. I would like to see more people doing this.

It should be possible to help more people get to the point of understanding how to grow their own solutions.

I’m surprised how hard it is to find out how different methods are related. The people who developed the methods usually know about relationships among methods, but there is little for the practitioner to find on the subject.

Maybe better information on how dialogue methods are and can be related would help people move beyond the current state of affairs. Maybe it would help people make more informed choices, do less “campaigning” for their favorite methods, listen to people who use different methods more carefully, and create better solutions for their needs.

Based on all of this, I’ve been pondering this question: how can we, as developers of dialogue methods, help people use the synergies they need to make our methods work for them?

I think it’s time to take the next step beyond lists to a networked model that helps people find “yes and” synergies among relevant methods. 

Here’s how I think we could do that. (I don’t know who “we” are at this point. It could be anybody.)

The idea

Christopher Alexander is rightly revered for his idea of a pattern language, a structured way to talk about patterns in – anything.

"... the elements of this language are entities called patterns. Each pattern describes a problem which occurs over and over again in our environment, and then describes the core of the solution to that problem, in such a way that you can use this solution a million times over, without ever doing it the same way twice."

You could say that dialogue methods are like patterns, because they present solutions for common problems. In fact, the Group Works Deck treats them exactly as such. [Edit: This isn't exactly correct. Tree Bressen, one of the originators of the Group Works Deck, says that it represents "underlying patterns and similarities" that make up dialogue methods (not the methods themselves).]

I think we could take the idea of a pattern language and apply it to relationships between methods. I’ve been calling this idea a connection language.

By creating a web of pairwise connection patterns, we could build a learning network people could “walk around on” to better understand how dialogue methods are related and to find the best combinations of solutions for their needs. Because a connection language would create explicit relationships between methods, people would be able to move beyond shopping and tribalism. They would be able to move into a more effective, committed use of the available methods for their unique needs.

The basic idea of the connection language is simple. In Alexander’s terms, a connection language ought to ask, “What problems can these methods address, and what solutions can they provide, together?” The answer to that question is a connection pattern. Through a dialogic process, two or more people who represent paired methods work together to describe how the two methods are similar, different, and complementary, and how the methods can be (and have been) used together. A collection of these connection patterns creates a connection language.

Alexander and his co-authors called their book A Pattern Language: Towns, Buildings, Construction. As I see it, dialogue is the town we are building together; our methods are the buildings; and collaboration is how we are building them (and how we are connecting them). (I had "approaches" in the place of "methods," but methods seem more like buildings. "Approach" is too nebulous a word. But it could be the right word anyway.)

The process

The process of connection pattern creation, to be carried out by two people or groups who volunteer to represent each method, might have a structure something like this.

1. Reflect. The two people/groups send each other a few brief but essential documents to review. Each person reads and highlights words, phrases, and sentences that stand out as resonating (yes we do that too), contrasting (that’s different), or just interesting (you do that?).
2. Share. The two people/groups have a physical or online meeting to talk about the words and phrases they highlighted in each other's documents. They use these markings as a means to explore how the two methods are similar, different, complementary, and synergistic.
3. Build. As the people emerge from their discussion, they create a first draft of a connection pattern (see below for its structure).
4. Refine. As they improve the pattern, the people open it up to others, to add more detail and to test its utility.

The pattern

A connection pattern might have a structure something like this.

• Introduction. The pattern starts with a brief introduction to each method that explains its purpose (why it exists), its origin and context of development (where it came from), its core concepts (the ideas it relies on), its practical uses (what it's good for), and its limitations (what it's not meant to do). Note that this part of the pattern only has to be written once for each method. However, the parallel structure keeps methods from veering off into their own ways of describing themselves, and it helps people compare methods on equal terms.
• Table. Next there is a table that links the two methods together. This is the crux of the pattern. The columns have the titles "Similar" and "Contrasting". The rows cover goals, history, concepts, and techniques. In the cells are brief summaries of ways in which the two methods are similar and different/complementary in each area. (See the example table below.)
• Dictionary. The major terms unique to each method are defined in language that makes sense to people who know only about the other method.
• Diagram. An optional diagram shows how the two methods are related visually. The exact form of this diagram emerges out of the discussion between the two people/groups representing the methods.
• Case studies. These are real or imagined stories about the two methods being used together. Ideas are suggested and experiments are described where the methods are used in various ways (e.g., sequentially, with ideas from one influencing the other, with phases interleaved together, etc).

The language

I envision the connection language being built on a web site, with a semantic wiki (a wiki with forms) providing structure. I would also like to see opportunities for practitioners to have conversations and ask questions about using dialogue methods together.

The obvious difficulty in building such a site is that if there are 100 methods there would be 5000 pairs of methods. My feeling is that the people who choose to represent a method (its developers, people who use it a lot, people who champion it) would take on the responsibility of choosing some number of connections they think are the most useful. Some combinations would “cry out” to be examined more than others, and I expect that eventually a critical mass would emerge.

Along with lists of links on each page, I envision a visual navigation system that looks something like visuwords.com, where clicking on the lines between methods leads to viewing the relevant connection patterns. We might even be able to annotate the visual diagram with summaries like “whole system in the room” (similarity) or “big versus small groups” (difference) or “gather stories first, then brainstorm lists” (complementarities).

My original idea for making the connection language happen was to gather a task force of people who think this is a good idea, and get each of them to contribute a small amount of time and money to get the site going. (It would cost a little to host the site.) However, I’ve been thinking lately that the idea might be better supported by some collective entity that is already helping people with dialogue. The project would reach more people that way, and it might gather more contributors than I can gather on my own.

If anybody has ideas about how such a project could come to pass, please let me know. I don’t have any need to “own” the idea, and even though I’d like to get some credit, I’m happy to share the idea and project with anybody who thinks it’s worth pursuing.

An example

To test some of the ideas I describe above, I worked with Stephen Sillett of Aiding Dramatic Change in Development to create a first-draft table for a connection pattern between Participatory Narrative Inquiry and Socio-Drama Topography. SDT is a large-group facilitation process that draws on participatory theatre, sensemaking, and narrative to create "deep, open, and strategically relevant conversations." SDT is "designed to reduce barriers to participation faced by marginalized communities, including those relating to varying levels of literacy."

I include this table (with permission) as an illustration of the kind of resource that might come out of the connection language process.

	Similar	Contrasting
Goals	Interaction among levels. Both methods create interactions between micro, meso, and macro levels. Bottom-up. Both methods attempt to drop down below the meso layer and include participants at the micro level. Pre-decision. Both methods focus on exploration, listening, and sharing in advance of decision making, not on decision making itself.	Reality vs imagination. SDT, on a spectrum from representations of reality to aesthetic resonance (imagination), lies more in aesthetic/performative and less in reality. PNI starts in reality and moves partly into imagination (but not that far). Scope. SDT focuses on building strategic capacity. SDT is a large group process that makes sense in relation to a defined theme/context in which it is strategically deployed. The journey within the workshop has been designed upfront to get the most out of the 3 days (people are being asked to make a big commitment of time). In contrast, PNI is not focused on capacity; it is focused on helping people make better decisions (large or small). Though PNI projects can be large and can build capacity, PNI more typically “scales down” to fit into the available opportunities for story work, which range in time and mode of interaction. Depth. If completely extractive work (e.g., survey-based research) is on one end of a spectrum (call it 1) and fully immersive experiences are at the other end (call it 10), SDT has its center at about 7, and PNI has its center at about 5. PNI attempts to create a bridge between shallow and deep exploration by ranging across the spectrum within one project (from shallow, wide story collection to deep, local sensemaking). SDT bridges a similar gap by gradually drawing (the same) people closer to a deeper experience.
History	Participation. Both SDT and PNI have sought since their beginnings to enable participants to be the drivers of sensemaking and meaning making.	Context of development. PNI arose in corporations centered on decision making. This is one reason it works with minimal participation, grudging permission to include everyone, and short time frames.  SDT arose in opening up youth to participate in forum theatre in communities. This is one reason it builds on creativity and passion in its participants. Parent fields. SDT is arts-based; PNI is research-based.
Concepts	Ground truth. Both methods focus on depth of insight, ground truth, and personal experiences. Play. Both methods use the power of play, “the partial suspension of the rules of the real,” to help people create positive change. Adaptation. Both SDT and PNI are processes whose design is adapted to particular themes and contexts.	Performance. SDT has a strong performative component. PNI can include performative elements, and has some weaker manifestations of performance (e.g., during sensemaking), but performance is not the core of PNI. Geography. Having a common geographical area is central to SDT. It is not important to PNI. Dialogue. Both processes are dialogical; but SDT is intentionally dialogical (using aspects of Bohm dialogue), while PNI relies on the innately dialogical social structures of story sharing. Cycles. In SDT, much attention is paid to cycles during which the project is tested and matures. In PNI there is less attention to longer-term cycles. PNI projects do sometimes feed in to later projects, but there is less of a long-term expectation of continuity. Participation. PNI runs on "micro-participation," emphasizing breadth over depth (at least at first, during story collection). SDT runs on "macro-participation," emphasizing depth over breadth. PNI “makes do” with whatever participation/permission it can gather; SDT gathers the participation/permission it needs. Locality. SDT is "hyperlocal." PNI can be hyperlocal, but it can also be broad and shallow.
Techniques	Landscapes. Both SDT and PNI include the group creation of a physical map or landscape.  (But see the “Landscapes” difference.)	Numbers of people. SDT works in large groups of 20 or more, attempting to get “the whole system in the room.” PNI works with varied levels of participation and group sizes; typically many people tell stories (possibly hundreds), but fewer work with stories in groups (anywhere from several to 50). In PNI the stories represent the people who are not present (sometimes because they are not willing or able to be present, sometimes because others don’t want them to be present). Non-verbal communication. SDT has strong elements of non-verbal communication. PNI does include a little non-verbal communication during sensemaking (the creation of physical artifacts), but this is not a core of the practice. Landscapes. In SDT, creating a landscape is at the core of the method. In PNI, creating a landscape is one of several possible sensemaking exercises. In SDT the landscape is gegraphical and conceptual combined. In PNI the landscape is not usually geographical. Space. SDT, because it makes use of physical space in its processes, places great emphasis on the physical space in which engagement occurs. PNI needs space for its activities, but has lesser requirements for the quality of the space (because it is not used in the same way). Training. SDT, because it is a large-group process that typically takes on large, long-term projects, has greater training needs than PNI. To address these needs, SDT seeks to train up local staff for greater sustainability. PNI tends to start with small projects and grow in ambition over time as practitioners become more skilled. On large, ambitious PNI projects, helpers may be trained, but this is not common.

Conclusion

The connection language idea is still in its infancy. I’m eager to connect with people who want to make it happen. I’m open to many ideas about how it should develop and where it should end up. I think it’s an idea the world needs. What do you think?

The snail rushes in

Imagine you're at a party. You went there because somebody said you just had to be there. But when you got there, you found out that everyone was talking in a strange way. Say they were all clapping when they talked, or affecting an obscure accent, or hopping on one foot. Confused, you tucked yourself into a corner, nursed your drink, and watched the room.

After some time, you began to make sense of what was going on. You kept sneaking off to the bathroom to practice the strange talk. Finally you felt that you might be ready to try talking. But as you looked around at the lively room, you felt unable to start. Should you jump into a conversation and announce yourself? Should you attempt to pretend that you'd been speaking all along, maybe across the room, and had just drifted over to a new group? Or should you give up and leave?

I've been tucking myself away in a corner of the Twitter party for a few years now, trying to make sense of what's going on. I look at Twitter every week or so, but I always come out of it like the snail who rode on the back of the turtle ("Whee!"). 

Just now I looked at Twitter, and I saw:

a poem

a cat

a fascinating quote I would need an hour to absorb

something about toilet paper

a call to action

a prediction

a picture of a doll 

And then I had to stop. I don't know how you people do this.

I am not a fragmentary thinker. When I read a book, I read every single word in the book, and I read the words in the order they appear. Twitter feels to me like a giant book I can never read from beginning to end. I find that almost physically painful. But I also can't help feeling intrigued, attracted to the light.

New people follow me on Twitter all the time, even though I never say anything. I suppose they think I might say something. I feel like I've done something wrong by being at the party but not in the party. Also, to be perfectly frank, I would like to tweet once in a while, for example when I want to ask people to help me with something (like my new card game). And I wouldn't mind putting up tweets that say "new blog post" instead of hoping somebody else does. But I don't feel right crashing the party only when it suits me. I feel I ought to contribute.

This led me to think: How could I contribute to Twitter, so that I give to it as much as I (might like to) take? I don't have much to offer the fast-paced crowd. I don't get out much, and I usually have the same thing for breakfast, and I average one thought a week.

Then I thought: What if I did post one thought a week? I do sometimes have thoughts, ideas, questions, explorations, that never grow into full essays. Writing an essay takes a lot of time, so probably only about ten percent of the essays I'd like to write get written. I could write the rest of these proto-essays to Twitter. But it should not be a thought per week; that's presumptuous. It should be a question. A question people might like to ponder. That could be my contribution.

So I thought: Okay. I'll start writing one question a week (or thereabouts) on Twitter. I'll join the party.

But then I thought: How can I tell Twitter that I'm going to post one question a week to Twitter? How can I possibly explain what I want to do in 140 characters? And then I thought, if I can't even explain why I want to post on Twitter using the rules of Twitter, do I deserve to be part of Twitter? And the whole idea got stuck there for a long time.

Finally I decided that I will have to forgive myself and start tweeting by not tweeting. So, as of this week, I intend to start posting one question per week (or thereabouts) on Twitter. To save you the trouble of going to check Twitter to find out what my first question was, I'll post it here too.

Q1. Online bandwidth is a trickle. Can we adapt to compensate? Are we trapped or have we learned helplessness? Is the cage door open?

That's a super condensed version of a blog post I have thought about writing, where I explore the ways in which people have used customs and traditions to widen the trickle of bandwidth in media from stone engravings to telegrams to penny-post letters. I don't know if anyone has already written about this issue. Finding that out would be the first part of researching the essay. I usually read for several hours before I even begin to translate thoughts into words.

I have to say, it feels mentally bruising to release a fledgling question into the world with no protection from its parent. But that is the nature of the Twitter world, as I understand it. Who knows, maybe my questions will be improved by early exposure to the world. Maybe I've been too coddling, a helicopter thinker.

You will have noticed that I gave my tweet a number. It's the only way I can bear the fragmentation. I will have to write my tweets in a coherent series, or I'll go insane. I can't read the book of Twitter from beginning to end, but I can read my contributions to it from beginning to end. Maybe I'll even keep the list of tweets here on the blog somewhere. Yes, that's the ticket. If I can write my tweets as part of a growing page, I will be able to enter into the Twitter party in perfect serenity.

I'm excited, if a bit nervous, to give myself this new challenge. I hope to see you at the party. I might stumble around a bit and get the accent wrong, but I'll give it a try.

[Edit: A week later I realized that I didn't tell you how to find me on Twitter. I'm cfkurtz there.]

Dialogue, deliberation and stories

Now that the (first) book is finally done, I've been starting to pick up my head and look around me at what the rest of the world has been up to. One of my book-finishing cheerleaders (thank goodness for these people) brought my attention to the US-based National Coalition for Dialogue and Deliberation, and to their upcoming conference in Washington, D.C.

Here's what the NCDD says about itself:

The National Coalition for Dialogue & Deliberation (NCDD) is a network of nearly 2,000 innovators who bring people together across divides to discuss, decide, and take action together effectively on today’s toughest issues.  NCDD serves as a gathering place, a resource center, a news source, and a facilitative leader for this vital community of practice.

Sounds exciting, right? So I joined the network and signed up to attend the conference in October.

I think I should explain what the NCDD means by "Dialogue and Deliberation," or "D&D." This is from their web site:

Dialogue and deliberation are innovative processes that help people come together across differences to tackle our most challenging problems.  In a time of extreme political partisanship and increased conflict between religious and ethnic groups, teaching, spreading, and supporting the skills of dialogue and deliberation are vital.

D&D is a lot like sensemaking, but with a stronger focus on bringing people together. You can see why I think this is such a good fit to the work I've been doing with stories. Bringing groups together is not the only use of participatory narrative inquiry, but it is one I am particularly interested in.

One of the first steps when you join a network like this is to introduce yourself on the forum. So I started to write an introductory post. However, this was a difficult task. How could I sum up fourteen years of research within a socially acceptable span of words? First, that's a lot to summarize, and second ... I'm ... me.

While wrestling with this problem, I realized that you, my blog readers, held the answer, as you so often do. Not only could I move most of my introduction to the blog, but you might find it interesting as well. In this way I can introduce myself to the NCDD, introduce the NCDD to you, and feed the blog. What could be better?

A listening tour

I could have written pages summarizing the ideas and experiences behind participatory narrative inquiry, but that seemed an inappropriate introduction to a group with as much combined experience as the NCDD. In this context it seemed more important to listen than to explain. So I began by reading through some of the abundant information on the NCDD web site. I particularly wanted to know what people would be talking about at the upcoming conference.

The most interesting thing I found was a conference planning document from March of this year listing 95 ideas submitted by NCDD members for discussion during the October conference. This seemed a good place to look for connections. I read through the 95 ideas, looking for areas of good fit between issues PNI focuses on and issues NCDD members want to talk about. I whittled down the possible connections to three sets of three:

1. three operational issues (things NCDD members want to do in their practices) 
2. three three meta-level issues (things NCDD members want to do together)  
3. three growth-of-PNI issues (things I would like to get for PNI from the NCDD)

 Then I wrote a bit about how PNI connects to each of the issues.

1. Operational issues 

These are issues NCDD members expressed an interest in talking about with respect to their work in dialogue and deliberation.

a. How can D&D practitioners invite everyone to participate, across ranges of motivation and interest, and across ranges of power and ability? 

First let's tackle the power issue as a barrier to participation. Typically in participatory narrative inquiry (PNI) projects, everyone in the community is invited to tell stories, and the storytelling is almost always anonymous. As a result, everyone has an equal voice in what is collected. When the stories are all mixed together, power distinctions become hard to see (and are often deliberately hidden). In fact, quite a few of the PNI projects I've worked on have been called "Voice of the ____" (citizen or customer or patient or somebody).

But what if telling people that their voices will be heard doesn't work? What if people don't trust the people who are collecting information? This is where it makes a difference to be collecting stories rather than opinions. To quote myself (in WWS):

A story is a socially accepted package in which people have learned from a young age to wrap up their feelings, beliefs, and opinions. ... People know that they can metaphorically place a story on a table and invite others to view and internalize it without exposing themselves to the same degree as they would if they stated those feelings, beliefs, and opinions directly.

Being invited to share one's experiences, rather than being grilled about one's opinions, communicates respect, inclusion, and safety. In fact, I have found it to be a common experience in PNI projects to find people -- even those who consider themselves uninvolved or oppressed -- expressing gratitude for the chance to be heard during the project. "I can't believe anybody wants to know what has happened to me" is a common response. Additional measures, like proof of anonymity and the ability to remove or change one's contributions on reflection, can also help people feel safe enough to speak out.

Another barrier to participation is motivation. People can't be bothered to participate, say project planners. One of the strengths of PNI is that it doesn't try to find participation where it can't be found. (I call this "the power of giving up.") PNI works well in situations where trust is low, apathy is high, and consensus is impossible. PNI can scale up in terms of participation energy, but it can also scale down to work in situations where energy to participate is minimal.

PNI projects involve three phases during which the amount of energy required to participate varies.

1. During story collection, participants need only tell a story and answer some interpretive questions about it (like, "Who do you think needs to hear this story?"). 
2. During sensemaking, people work with the collected stories in a more energetic way (usually with group exercises).
3. Finally, the stories (those originally collected and those that came from sensemaking) are returned to the community. In this stage, minimal participation is again supported through (usually anonymous) comments and continued story exchange. 

This low-high-low participation structure helps people find their preferred level of participation in the project. Even when few people are willing or able to participate in the higher-intensity sensemaking sessions, similar sensemaking activities can be spread out over weeks or months. For example, people might be asked to answer a few questions about stories told by others (like, "If this story were told in the council board room, what would happen?" or, "What would happen in our community if everybody acted the way this person did?"). Such a project design can cope with a uniformly low participation threshold, but can still include narrative sensemaking that leads to useful insights.

b. How can D&D build bridges among groups? What if those groups cannot come together due to conflict and distrust? How can the beginnings of trust be established?

Asking people about things that have happened to them (with strong anonymity in place), and then making those stories available to people in all groups, can help to begin the process of mutual understanding. I've worked on many PNI projects in this area, including in the areas of mergers and acquisitions, relations between management and staff, exploring public reactions to large community development projects, and helping law enforcement officials understand the mindsets behind criminal actions.

If you don't mind, I'll quote myself again on this point:

Unique among our forms of communication, stories do not force unity but preserve conflict and contrast at all scales. This is why many folk tales have other stories nested within them, sometimes several levels deep. The Arab story-of-stories One Thousand and One Nights is the most famous example of narrative nesting. Likewise, a story project can contain other story projects. It is because a community’s story project can contain -- without controlling -- the projects of its sub-communities and families that the community may discover valuable insights about its conflicts and agreements.

What does this mean in practice? When you can collect stories from people and show them to other people, views can change. But to make this sort of exchange work, it is critical to allow stories to flow unimpeded. Stories cannot be censored (for example by collecting only "success stories") or improved (for example by prettying them up with technology) or ranked (for example by having people "vote" on the best stories) or categorized (for example by having experts choose which stories others will see). It is the rawness and immediacy of the experience -- my story to you, your story to me -- that matters. This is why one of the goals of PNI is to "get stories to where they need to go."

However, sometimes where stories need to go eventually is not where they need to go right away. Nesting of stories and story projects means that sometimes stories should be collected and kept close to home, then only slowly, carefully, and gradually -- under the control of the people involved -- spread to other groups. When we exchange stories in everyday conversation, we participate in complex rituals of negotiation over things like where a story came from, who can tell it, who can hear it, and so on. The same negotiations must take place when stories are shared in the aggregate. Simply rushing in and grabbing stories, then scattering them around in new places, is likely to backfire (if not at first, in the long term, through the erosion of trust). Giving groups of people the power to negotiate how their stories will be shared with others can help to build trust in the process.

c. How can D&D efforts scale up to the state and national levels?

Parallel story work run in different regions can create "sister" projects where people can learn from each other without being forced to share too much too soon. I've been part of several projects in which we used parallel story collection and sensemaking to help people in different groups (industrial plants, schools, government agencies) learn from each other by comparing experiences -- again, in a controlled, negotiated way.

I don't think it works to scale story methods up to huge uniform scales without some degree of parallelism and nesting. What can be shared at global levels becomes too bland and safe to be useful at the local level. What tends to happen when story projects are too large and widespread is that the people who told the stories in the first place lose out on the depth of exploration they should be achieving. Having both depth and breadth is possible, but it requires multiple levels of negotiation.  I have seen success when projects are replicated across areas and knowledge is shared through negotiated, facilitated pipelines between projects.

2. Meta-level issues

These are issues NCDD members wanted to talk about, but that have to do with dialogue and deliberation among practitioners, not among those they help.

a. How can D&D practitioners bridge gaps among approaches? How can we identify and work with common principles despite our different sets of jargon and our overlapping but distinct worldviews?

This is actually a fairly typical PNI project: to find out where people are coming from in their experiences of a topic, to discover similarities and differences, and to find opportunities for connection and dangers of miscommunication. A "My D&D" experience base -- what D&D means to me, as illustrated by some of my experiences with it -- could be a useful addition to the D&D discussion space. Similar PNI projects have been in the areas of bringing scientists and policy makers together, looking at how teachers and students view the same events, and looking at how patients and doctors see disease.

This aspect of possibility is the one I am the most excited about for the future development of PNI. My colleagues and I developed the ideas and methods of PNI in a particular set of contexts. Other people have developed similar ideas and methods in other contexts. I believe that there is a potential for PNI and several other related bodies of work to grow as a result of sharing ideas more completely. (See point 3a for more on this topic.)

b. What means can be found to demonstrate the value of D&D as an approach?

As I have helped people collect and work with stories over the years, I have noticed three types of story that usually become important in projects.

• Pivot stories sit at the intersections of interweaving threads in the tapestry of the topic under consideration, getting to the heart of what is going on in the community.
• Voice stories cry out to be heard. They bring little-known perspectives to the people who most need to hear them.
• Discovery stories create "aha" moments in which people understand something better about themselves and about the topic they are exploring.

I would say that one way to demonstrate the value of D&D is to find each of these types of story.

• Pivot stories can help people peer into the heart of what is valuable about D&D and see how it all works together.
• Voice stories can help people "see through the eyes" of D&D practitioners to experience what D&D can be like first-hand.
• Discovery stories can explain what exactly it is about D&D that makes sense.

These stories are never constructed or fictional; they are real stories told by real people. The PNI process involves collecting stories, then making sense of them to discover the pivot, voice, and discovery stories that can communicate to those outside the process what needs to be said.

c. How can newcomers and outsiders to D&D be helped to understand its principles and methods?

My answer to the question above (about pivot stories, voice stories, and discovery stories) also pertains to this question, because the same sorts of stories also help people to come to grips with complicated topics. I have worked on projects in which collected stories were interwoven into learning resources, giving learners the opportunity to place the information they were receiving into the context of meaningful (and real) experiences.

However, for this sort of learning resource to work well, you can't just collect "success stories." You need to be ready to hear about the good, the bad, and the ugly in D&D practice, and you need to be ready to collect stories of mistakes and failures as well as what people are proud of. That's why anonymity is so important in a project like this. It's also important to do more than just interview experts. I've found that the best way to draw out learning stories is to create a space where experts and novices can interact, put some rules in place, then watch and listen.

3. Growth-of-PNI issues

These are issues that I myself want to talk about with NCDD members, as part of my goal to continually improve my own work on participatory narrative inquiry.

a. How can any approach to dialogue and deliberation (such as PNI) connect to similar approaches in such a way that it continues to improve, but does not risk losing its unique values and benefits?

When you develop an approach to doing anything, you spend a lot of time focusing on internal tasks. This has to be true, because otherwise you would not be able to develop the approach at all. Much of the development of PNI has been "heads down" in particular projects, solving particular problems for particular organizations and communities. When people are internally focused like this, they develop a language for speaking about what they are doing, and some of that language is going to be unique.

But an approach that never looks around itself to see what other people are doing is not going to last very long, because it will never be able to compare and learn from similar approaches. During the development of PNI, I've read a lot about similar fields -- participatory action research, narrative inquiry, oral history, mixed-methods research, participatory theatre, narrative therapy, decision support, and so on. I've also read about other approaches to narrative work in dialogue and deliberation -- Circle methods, Appreciative Inquiry, The Art of Hosting, and so on. To be honest, I've had a hard time keeping up with all the similar-but-not-identical methods and approaches. Each has its own special jargon: words that are deep with meaning to those inside the approach but that only have simple meanings to those on the outside. Those simple meanings sometimes cause us to look away, thinking we know what something is about, but in fact only understanding a caricature of reality. I must admit to a certain amount of jargon fatigue in looking outside my own experience.

One idea I've had along these lines is to get together a group that can build a translation dictionary for jargon terms, like babelfish or universal translators we could wear in our ears when we meet. I would particularly like to build concept bridges -- explanations of how foundational ideas in different approaches are nearer to each other than people think, once you understand their meanings in both places. (For example, the concept of generativity in Appreciative Inquiry is similar to my elements of contact, churning, convergence, and change in narrative sensemaking.) If anyone is interested, I would be happy to work on such a project. 

b. How can we change the US culture to be more welcoming to dialogue and deliberation? 

I've been trying to get people to give PNI methods a chance around the world for more than a decade. This has always been a "harder sell" in the US than elsewhere. People seem to understand the purpose and opportunity of PNI right away in Asia, Australia, Europe, Africa, South America, and Canada. But in my own country, people are more likely to listen politely for a time, then get very busy with something else. I would like to change this.

The only explanation I can come up for this pattern is that the prevailing culture in this country is not comfortable with hearing all voices. But this is not a pattern in the popular culture; it's a pattern of insecurity in authority. The resistance I find to doing PNI work is almost never from the people who will be telling the stories. It's from the people who need to sign off to allow the projects to take place. I've seen regular people get very excited about the possibility of a participatory narrative project, only to have the project shot down by people "higher up" who suddenly become defensive about what "those people" might have to say. I have developed some ways to communicate the value of PNI to those in authority (summarized in this blog post), but still, when the potential project is in the US, I prepare extra explanations.

Since the NCDD is a US organization, I would like to learn from its members how I can approach US communities and organizations, and convey the value of PNI, more effectively. I like doing projects all over, but I would like to see more use of PNI in my own back yard.

c. How can dialogue and deliberation work better in the world of social media and internet sociality?

I spent several months a few years ago exploring the topic of story exchange on the internet, when I built and tested Rakontu, a web application for story sharing. That project took a long nap while I finished the book, and I don't know exactly when it will wake up. But I  would be very interested in talking with NCDD members about how ideas like those in Rakontu could revive and find new life in the next generation of internet sociality. (If you haven't seen Rakontu yet, you can look at my quick elevator pitch for it here.)

I hope this little exercise in listening and connecting has been helpful to my blog readers and to members of the NCDD. After the conference I'll be sure to update you on what I learned.