Two times two is four

Here is another comment response the system threw out for being too long, and that I thought was worth bringing up to a blog post. This is thanks to Stephen Shimshock, who commented on the Of hypotheses and tools, models and frameworks post. Stephen mentioned how my diagrams (in the Better confluence diagrams post) that placed patterns like beaver dams, bees nests, dictators and discussion groups into locations could be confusing because they seem to claim that the placements are definitive. I hadn't meant to claim that, and in fact went back and added a note about it in the post itself.

I often come up against this issue when talking to people about sensemaking models and frameworks. They say, that's nice if you are talking about things like tastes and opinions, but there are large areas where everyone agrees on things, and what is the point of pretending to consider differences there?

I have two responses to this argument. The first is that there is little utility in making definitive placements of anything in a sensemaking space, since exploring similarities and differences in placement is the whole point of the thing. If something is so very well known that every possible person in every possible context is sure to agree, it is probably not connected to the reason you are doing the sensemaking anyway. If it's worth thinking together about, it is unlikely to be as common as you think. And if some things that never differ do slip in and everybody agrees on them, what is the harm in letting them stay? It reminds me of what we used to say when we found a little bug in our food: it won't eat much.

Second, be careful about what you think everyone knows, because it is not always what you think it is. Even the same person at different times in their life or in different contexts (where different identities come to the fore, for example) might place things in different spots. Even "things we can all agree on" sometimes hold hidden diversity.

Now here is my all-time favorite example of a perfectly known, universal, extreme-hierarchy item that isn't. Years ago I was reading Bertrand Russell's "A History of Western Philosophy" and came across this quote:

"... individuality -- what distinguishes one man from another -- is connected with the body and the irrational soul, while the rational soul or mind is divine and impersonal. One man likes oysters, and another likes pineapples; this distinguishes between them. But when they think about the multiplication table, provided they think correctly, there is no difference between them."

When I read this, I burst out laughing, jumped out of the bathtub and ran to read it to my husband. Why? Because I am blessed with the neurological quirk of synesthesia, and specifically the type called ordinal linguistic personification. That's a fancy term that means, to me, numbers and letters (and some other abstract symbols) are not shapes or mental constructs but living beings. Some are my friends and some ... are not my friends. Supposedly this is "cross-talk" between brain regions, the dealing-with-beings circuits mixing with the dealing-with-symbols circuits. As a result I am far from having no "individual" or "irrational" reaction to the multiplication table, a construct which Russell used many times to symbolize that which is unequivocally known (yes, right there in the bottom right hand corner).

To me, the very idea of multiplying and adding numbers is grotesque, like blending cats. I often confuse adding with multiplying, because it is all artificial and nonsensical. It is like a second language into which I must translate with difficulty, partly because doing arithmetic produces emotions that make it difficult to do quickly. Sometimes encountering the beauty of an arithmetic statement is akin to suddenly seeing a wonderful picture -- I simply have to stop and enjoy the view. Other arithmetic operations are dark alleys with frightening aspects, and coming upon them suddenly makes me shudder and back away. Imagine adding up your checkbook and suddenly finding you are holding a dead mouse.

In third grade the teacher often had us play a game where she would read out arithmetic operations one after another in rapid-fire speech, and we were to keep a running answer. For example, she would say "five plus three", then "times four", then "divided by two", then "plus nine", and so on. I always got stuck on the first operation. I sat there thinking "what is five plus three?" with five-beings and three-beings swimming around me. By the time I worked my way to five plus three being eight (that being a preposterous answer but correct, like a toad and a magpie making a moose), the rest of the class was way ahead. I usually sat drawing doodles or staring out the window until the game was over. Even today when I wrote the title of this post (2x2=4) I had a few moments of panic while I tried to guess whether it was true or not. I think it is. (The quirk has its up sides: apparently better-than-average reading and writing speed, visual memory and pattern recognition (2D only!), spelling accuracy, and maybe some degree of richness of experience (at least I can't imagine the poverty of such a depopulated universe), so turn your pitying eyes away, all ye who judge, but at any rate that is not the point of this post. The point is how the things we consider most universal may not always be. Not only that, but among synesthetes, each has their own universe of individual, irrational meaning: my five may be as nasty as your two, while your five may eat out of your hand.)

Do I "think correctly" about this? Obviously not, according to Bertrand Russell (who in his defense probably never heard of synesthesia). But considering that the incidence of synesthesia continues to go up and up (it was once estimated at 1 in 20,000 and is now up to 1 in 20), it's certainly something to think about. The most amazing part of the story is that the study of synesthesia lay dormant for several decades of the past century (it fell out of style with the advent of behaviorism) and millions of people were dismissed as strange, or more likely, like myself, learned to hide their way of seeing things. It makes me wonder how many other cognitive and perceptual diversities we overlook as we talk about what "we" know and how "we" think. I've heard that some people might have four or more types of cone cells for seeing colors, and that some people experience greater ranges of taste. Perhaps there are many more such differences. One reason we might not see them, even in plain view, is that being different is scary. I've graduated from telling only my closest friends about this quirk to being able to admit it to the world, but it took decades to accomplish the task, and I would never have made the leap if I could not link such an essay as this to authorized (hierarchical) defenses that make it clear I am not insane or delusional (or just credulous).

I also found this gem of a connection in Dostoyevsky's wonderful Notes from the Underground years after that. I'll shorten the passage as much as I can (but here are links to the longer version; part is in Chapter III and part in Chapter IV of Part I):

[When some are] confronted with the impossible they subside at once. The impossible means the stone wall! What stone wall? Why, of course, the laws of nature, the deductions of natural science, mathematics.... [Y]ou have just to accept it, there is no help for it, for twice two is a law of mathematics. Just try refuting it.... Merciful Heavens! but what do I care for the laws of nature and arithmetic, when, for some reason I dislike those laws and the fact that twice two makes four? ... Oh, absurdity of absurdities! How much better it is to understand it all, to recognise it all, all the impossibilities and the stone wall...

 ...man is a frivolous and incongruous creature, and perhaps, like a chess player, loves the process of the game, not the end of it. And who knows (there is no saying with certainty), perhaps the only goal on earth to which mankind is striving lies in this incessant process of attaining, in other words, in life itself, and not in the thing to be attained, which must always be expressed as a formula, as positive as twice two makes four, and such positiveness is not life, gentlemen, but is the beginning of death. Anyway, man has always been afraid of this mathematical certainty, and I am afraid of it now. Granted that man does nothing but seek that mathematical certainty, he traverses oceans, sacrifices his life in the quest, but to succeed, really to find it, dreads, I assure you. He feels that when he has found it there will be nothing for him to look for. When workmen have finished their work they do at least receive their pay, they go to the tavern, then they are taken to the police-station--and there is occupation for a week. But where can man go? Anyway, one can observe a certain awkwardness about him when he has attained such objects. He loves the process of attaining, but does not quite like to have attained, and that, of course, is very absurd. In fact, man is a comical creature; there seems to be a kind of jest in it all. But yet mathematical certainty is after all, something insufferable. Twice two makes four seems to me simply a piece of insolence. Twice two makes four is a pert coxcomb who stands with arms akimbo barring your path and spitting. I admit that twice two makes four is an excellent thing, but if we are to give everything its due, twice two makes five is sometimes a very charming thing too.

Twice two makes four, the "stone wall" of fact, is definition. It is What-Is. Understanding it all, recognizing it all, all the impossibilities and the stone wall, is sensemaking. It is What-Appears. It is the process of the game, not the end of it. If we care about nothing but pushing on towards certainty, what we find is not life but the beginning of death. And there will be nothing left to look for.

Having said all that, I'm the first to admit that certainty is as attractive as it is pert and insufferable. You see how easy it is to slip into assertion, as shown by my here-is-a-beaver-dam diagrams. You'd think I would know better, but we are all vulnerable to, as the anthropologist Diana Forsythe termed it, "'I am the world' thinking." While definition has its purposes, it is useless for sensemaking. I'd even go so far as to say that definition is the opposite of sensemaking. Every time a person says "this is how things are" the only reasonable response is to take sides. It is only when we remember to say "this is one view of how things are, and here is another, and ..." that we start getting somewhere.

I guess what I'm saying is, well, Stephen said it so well in his comment that I'll let him say it again here:

I see the entire framework as negotiated space. Even when you look at the "simple" or "pure hierarchy" area, what is known to one may not be known to another. Each of us have our own framework, and any group framework is a negotiation of meaning for that specific context. This is exciting because it offers (depending on how sense making is set up) the opportunity for many voices (from all levels of power) to get incorporated into a general understanding. And, if the process is done ongoing that understanding can change and grow with the community context.

Precisely. And that "general understanding" can be and should be as diverse as the community itself.

Of hypotheses and tools, models and frameworks

My thanks to everyone who has commented on the Confluence and Better confluence diagrams posts. One particular comment on the Confluence post (by Paula Thornton, twelveth in the list, starting with "Seriously") got me so motivated to write (thanks Paula!) that I ended up writing something too long for a comment; so I moved it to this post (possibly one of my shortest ever).

Paula asked about the "known" and "simple" labels on the Cynefin framework and what the framework had to say about situations where things that were "believed" to be known were in fact "apparitions" of truths, which people may believe in something in the face of evidence to the contrary, and indeed people may be paid to defend the appearance of truth. She also questioned the "validity" of the label "simple"  and "challenged" me to "find such a reality and offer it as evidence."

To start, the confluence model can't address the terms "known" and "simple" because it doesn't use those terms. Those belong to Cynefin only. The terms I prefer are Manuel de Landa's: hierarchy (ordered structure) and meshwork (unordered structure). So in general I leave it to those in charge of Cynefin to explain what they mean by "known" and "simple." However, I found Paula's points to be so interesting that I wanted to address them anyway.

What-Is and What-Appears

The term "model" implies that something "out there" is being represented or imitated "in here" in order to better understand it. In an ontological model, one that represents What-Is, anything "known" must be absolutely known, not just "'believed' to be known." With this sort of model, one must, as Paula suggests, "find such a reality and offer it as evidence."

But of the four models mentioned in the Confluence post, only Strum and Latour's social-link model is ontological in nature. This is because it is a scientific hypothesis, and hypotheses are all about What-Is. The medicine wheel, the confluence model and Cynefin are not hypotheses. They are tools. The purpose of a tool is not to explain but to augment understanding. For that reason these models mix ontology and epistemology, What-Is with What-Appears. What-Appears always comes with a colon attached: To whom? Where? In what context? After what? With whom? And so on.

With an ontological, What-Is hypothesis it would be ridiculous to compare what is known and what is believed to be known. If people differ in their beliefs about what is known, one is right and one is wrong, and offering evidence is the only way to decide which is right. But with a tool whose purpose is augmenting understanding about complex topics we can and should and must mix What-Is with What-Appears: not because it's how things are, but because it helps us achieve a goal. Hammers don't explain nails; they pound them in.

To illustrate this distinction, say I am an architect and I am building you a house. Let's say that in order to get a better idea of what sort of house you want, I provide you and your spouse and children with a set of blocks and ask each of you to build your dream house. We then discuss together how we can reconcile your ideals with the realities of the site and your budget. After this process is complete I build a blueprint of the house that will eventually be built. The blocks we use, and the toy houses you build, are tools we use to augment our common understanding of what you want in a house and how we can build it together. These blocks are like the Cynefin model, the medicine wheel and the confluence model. They combine What-Is (the realities of architecture and construction) with What-Appears (your ideas, fantasies and priorities, and possibly your differences of opinion on these). The blueprint I create, in contrast, is a plan, a hypothesis if you will, about what we can and will build. It is about What-Is alone. If a blueprint had lines on it that said things like "Tommy wants a big rocket ship here but Mom would like a breakfast nook" it would be difficult to build a house based on it. But these elements are critical to the sensemaking process.

This is why it is a legitimate and recommended, one might even say required, use of any sensemaking model to explore how things look from many perspectives; considering many aspects of a situation; from different ideologies; in different social classes; with different motivations; and from the perspectives of what is known and what is believed to be known, at the same time. This is not a weakness of such models; it is their strength. It is exactly what they are for. 

Native Americans talk about "walking the circle" of the medicine wheel, or considering many perspectives on the same issue. Indeed most sources I've seen say that the medicine wheel cannot be used without walking it. (I see this as similar to my statement that bounded Cynefin doesn't exist in the abstract but only in sufficiently detailed context.) Walking the wheel shares attributes with the sensemaking activities we use when we consider stories and use any of these frameworks (or others) as mapping devices.

So when Paula asks the question about what "is 'known' in a business and how is it 'known' and who qualifies its validity," the answer given by these models is not "this is known and this is not, and this qualifies its validity." The answer given is "yes, yes, let's explore that."

The confluence I am most excited about between these models is not a confluence in ontology. Agreeing on What-Is about everything is impossible and of limited utility, in my view. What excites me is finding new augmentations to our augmentations. These provide the greatest improvement to our collective ability to make sense of our world and improve it. It is a tragedy beyond words that such powerful tools as the medicine wheel came so close to being eradicated, and we all owe a debt of gratitude to those who have kept such ancient tools alive, and I hope we can correct our errors in time.

On terms

I have often wondered about whether those ISJ reviewers were right to say we should avoid the use of the term "model." It certainly does conjure up images of blueprints and other noun-ish representations of What-Is. And I've seen many interpretations of the Cynefin framework as a representation rather than a tool over the years, and they always make me unhappy; because when any of these tools are used simply as representations their power to augment understanding folds up into a tiny seed of untapped potential. Wikipedia says conceptual models "are used to help us know and understand the subject matter they represent." So that should work. But "model" on dictionary.com has no matching description; it seems limited to models as representations. So "framework" still seems the best compromise as a communicative device. What do you think? Is there a better way to connote the intent of such tools than either model or framework?

Better confluence diagrams

A comment on my last post (thanks commenter) was that the scan of my 2001 diagram for the confluence model was unreadable. (That's because my chicken scratches were barely readable to me and I was embarassed to show them in detail!)

So rather than put up a bigger scan, I copied it over to PowerPoint. This gave me the opportunity to merge in the contents of another version that was even messier but had a few more nuances on it. So here is what I had back then, but cleaned up:

The vertical line shows a point beyond which most human systems don't go, because people self-organize naturally. In my notes it says "but there is sometimes the ILLUSION that human systems can be found in this area, and we have to deal with that." (Whoever "we" is.) The blobby areas are supposed to be indistinct and boundary-less, and there aren't supposed to be gaps between blobs. (That was just me struggling with the hegemony of PowerPoint.)

After moving my sketches to a cleaner diagram I immediately could see how my thinking has moved on since 2001. I'm not even sure I agree with all of the word placements in that space. So I tried a "2010" version of the same thing. This also shows rotating/flipping it so that it matches the Cynefin framework. (If I went back to my original directions I'd go insane trying to remap them all the time.) The arrows mean that conditions of absolute purity only pertain to the extreme corners of the space. Thus perfectly pure hierarchy is barely represented (because it rarely exists in reality). In between these extremes, you can imagine all sorts of mixtures.

Here is another representation for the mixtures of hierarchy and meshwork which I used in a 2001 presentation. I think this one is easier to understand, but it's hard to draw on a chalkboard or the back of a napkin, and that makes it hard to use in practice.

The reason the hierarchy+meshwork diagram is so much larger than the others is that I was trying to show how multiple hierarchies can be connected in larger systems that involve both confluent elements.

After this I tried going back to my examples from the original 2001 diagram and placing them again. This is just a first try and I'm sure there are some mistakes mixed in. But why not give it a try? There wasn't enough space to place all the things I'd like to place one one space, so I separated non-human and human patterns. For non-human patterns:

Note that patterns outside of human invention rarely go all the way to extreme hierarchy, because nature is always messy and rarely isolated. Really serious order tends to reside only in human constructions (especially ones that never leave the controlled world of mental gymnastics). Also note that different patterns have different sizes on the diagram. That is my way of showing that some have more internal diversity than others. A beaver dam, for example, is much less variable than a migratory event.

These are some placements for human patterns:

Again there is an area rarely entered, but it is on the other side of hierarchy. If people are not connecting with other people, and making at least a little attempt to control their worlds, they seem to stop being people at all. [Edit: Later somebody pointed out that I seem to be making definitive placements here, which contradicts my statement that the model should be used for comparison and mutual understanding, not definition and restriction. Please consider these diagrams not as "explanations of reality" but as examples of how one person might place such items; and also consider that the best use of all such models is to juxtapose these placements with others (say by engineers, artists, politicians, children, etc etc etc). That is their real power.]

And finally I want to tie in White's identity interaction types. For those who don't know about this, I've become increasingly enamored of the explanatory power of this classification of interactions among human identities. For details see the paper but this is the summary:

1. Selection of categorical aspects of identity based on characteristic–based evaluation of safety operates across the chaotic/complex boundary.
2. Mobilization of relational aspects of identity based on membership–based evaluation of importance operates across the complex/knowableboundary.
3. Commitment of positional aspects of identity based on placement–based evaluation of utility operates across the knowable/known boundary.

And looking again at these on the confluence model, I feel that they look like this.

Notice that the circles get smaller as you move from selection (largest scope) to commitment (smallest scope). That makes sense.

And last but not least, here is the medicine wheel mixed in.

The arrows coming out from the circle denote the cardinal directions (those I have dealt with so far).  I originally drew the medicine wheel inside the "humans only conver these areas" part of the space. But the medicine wheel isn't only about human systems; it covers all of reality. So I think it should take up the whole space. (The only reason it doesn't is that the space isn't square.) It might be interesting to consider what the corners, outside the circle, might be, and whether the ancient teachings say anything about that. Much to learn.

Doing this redrawing presents me with many new questions. For example, should gases, liquids and solids be on these diagrams at all? Is a solid more self-organized than a gas? Is it more ordered? Or is that distinction orthogonal to the whole thing? And where does chaos (as in chaos theory, not as in confusion) fit on this diagram? I have never been able to make up my mind about where it fits in, if it does. On the one hand, you could argue that chaotic patterns will be strongest in the lower left (as in Cynefin). On the other hand, some argue that chaos theory can explain things way up into the upper right (along with complexity theory). On the other hand, you could make the case that chaos is orthogonal to this whole thing and underlies everything that goes on, perhaps on a different plane. Or, you could just say that unorder = chaos + complexity and let it go at that. I'm not sure what is most useful.

So there is much to think about. If you would like to think along with me, why not join in. I have no answers, only enthusiasm.

Confluence

Here is a series of recent discoveries regarding models and frameworks for narrative sensemaking. I'll tell it as a story. (Narrative sensemaking, for those unfamiliar with the term, is where people, usually a group of people, begin with stories, or elements of stories, and consider them in such a way that larger patterns emerge among them that provide insights about a topic of interest. It builds on the work of Weick and Dervin in the sensemaking field.)

To start with the dilemma, or if you prefer, the instigating incident: I've been working on the method sections for the rewrite of Working with Stories, and I've been snagged on an obstacle. I dodged this obstacle in previous editions of the book but now I'm taking a hard look at comprehensibility and find I can't avoid it any further. It's the section on building narrative sensemaking landscapes, and it's snagged on the Cynefin framework.

Two great tastes that taste great together

As some may know, I helped Dave Snowden refine his Cynefin framework from 2001 to ... some years later, I'm not sure when. In order to tell the larger story about sensemaking landscapes and Working with Stories, I'll have to tell you something about this collaboration. So bear with me, it will be useful later. My mandate when I first started to work with Dave was to help him and Sharon Darwent with conceptual and methodological development to support their work in developing new consultancy practices. Eager to start, I read everything Dave had written in the field. I understood the narrative stuff; it was similar to what I was writing at the time, having spent two years researching organizational narrative (with John C. Thomas) at IBM Research. But Dave's Cynefin model, as it stood then, left me entirely confused. This wasn't Dave's fault; we were just used to thinking in different ways. He would say things like "the vertical dimension is culture" which caused little stars and whirligigs of bewilderment to appear in front of my eyes. In my world dimensions go from something to something else, and I couldn't make head nor tails of a variation-free dimension. I was trained as a scientist, so of course I was most comfortable with axes of variation; and Dave was trained primarily as a philosopher and businessperson, so of course he was most comfortable with non-dimensional conceptual distinctions. [Update: Apparently Dave has a physics background of which I was not aware, or of which I was aware at one time but forgot about. Apologies to him for the unintentional misrepresentation.]

Trying to find my way out of this confusion, I decided to try and build my own decision support model. Perhaps backing off and thinking about the issues on my own could help me come back and understand another perspective. I asked Sharon (whose background was in hydrology) to help me, and we two scientists sat down and for several hours talked about complexity and systems and societies and decision making. We asked ourselves: if one was to help people make decisions in many situations, what axes of variation would it be reasonable to consider? We came up with two axes that we thought mattered more than anything else: "the degree of imposed order" and "the degree of self-organization." We drew up a two-dimensional space with those axis labels on it and began to place examples into different areas on it (the French revolution, guilds, dictatorships, bees, pulleys, and so on). The messy diagram I show here is one of the few versions I still have (I seem to have discarded most of those notes).

After playing with our new nameless model for a while, I felt confident that I could return to Dave's model and try to make sense of it. The next day (or so) I presented our model to Dave. Sharon and I were a bit nervous, since Dave didn't exactly ask us to create our own model. Dave looked at the model I had drawn in silence for half a minute. Then he jumped up out of his chair, rushed across the room, and exclaimed, "It's the same thing!" And it was. Sort of. Mostly. We had it turned around and upside down from his, but essentially we had arrived at the same mapping of concepts. I didn't believe it at first (and have little ability to manipulate objects in 3D in my head, so he had to show me the flipping around part several times) but then I saw it was very close in meaning. In Dave's known/simple domain, the degree of imposed order is high and the degree of self-organization is low. In the knowable/complicated domain, both imposition and self-organization are high. In the complex domain, self-organization is dominant; and in chaos neither are strong.


The seeing eye

So we merged the models and called them two "forms" or "versions" or "facets" of Cynefin. I found this a great relief, because every time Dave talked about his version of Cynefin, I simply translated to my version of it, and I could magically understand what he was saying. Soon I started drawing what I called my "seeing eye diagram" as a way to translate between the two models more easily. I have these eye-diagrams littered all over my notes from that time. The eye probably came from the Eye of Providence, which is as close to a central directorate as you can get (and is on US money). Later the eye got dropped from official uses of the diagram because some people found it too confusing. But I always draw it, myself; it's what distinguishes the director from the others. (I particularly like the areas where the central directorate gropes after the self-organized pawns but can't quite get a grasp on them.)

If you look closely at the 2003 IBM Systems Journal article Dave and I wrote together about the framework (sadly no longer available for free from the ISJ, but if you search for it you may find some unofficial versions), you can see signs of negotiated compromise between what are essentially two different models. The sections called "Keep the baby, lose the bathwater" and "Connection strengths of Cynefin domains" show my way of thinking about it (minus the eyes). And this quote comes from me:

We say "build the framework" because the Cynefin framework is created anew each time it is used, with distinctions meaningful to the current context. To some extent, it does not even exist in the way we describe it here, devoid of context, but is always used to enable sense-making in a particular setting.

That's not exactly true in practice, at least not the way the framework has been used by many, but I would like it to be true. By the way, the reason we started calling it a "framework" instead of a "model" was that the reviewers for the ISJ article threw a fit at our casual, non-scientific use of the term "model." (Such scientists.)


Drifting apart

Anyway, we called my version of the model many things: the dimensional form of Cynefin, Cynefin with axes, continuous Cynefin, Cynthia's seeing-eye thing, and so on. When I explained Cynefin to people, I found that those who didn't understand Dave's model understood mine, and vice versa. It seemed to come down to whether people had more comfort with concepts or with gradients. Over the years, Dave usually used and explained his version and I usually used and explained mine. And eventually I came to realize that even though we had made the two models live together in one article (in sort of a shotgun wedding) they never were exactly the same. For one, my original model had no boundaries (the boundaries in the seeing-eye diagram above were a compromise, and I didn't always draw them). For another, I never really wanted to have any one-word names for states; I preferred talking about the degree of something that covered a continuous range of variation. It's not better, it's just different. It's who I am. (A note to those who will say that I should be saying "Sharon's and Cynthia's seeing-eye thing" because Sharon and I built it together: it could have been that, but Sharon didn't seem to want to use it. At least she never called it "our" model, so it sort of became mine. Though she is certainly welcome to share it again anytime she likes, and she definitely gets credit for discovering it, if credit is due to either of us.)

I'm not sure why my version of the model has been talked about so little over the years. It might have a lot to do with me dropping off the seeing-and-being-seen scene following the birth of my son. Or, my version might just be less useful to the greatest number of people. I don't mind if it is less useful; it works for me. I don't need to storm the world with my ideas. Last year I put a (self-published? unpublished?) white paper on my web site essentially trying to explain my form of the model and help people use it, but it was awkward to call it a "form" of the Cynefin framework when so few people think of it that way. And I don't really think of it that way anymore either.

And now we come to the issue I've been pondering lately. What should I say in Working with Stories about building a sensemaking framework with stories? I never could write very well about Dave's Cynefin model, and nobody will think that my model is the Cynefin model. I don't want to confuse people, but I don't want to leave it out again. After a few months of pondering over this, I've finally come to a solution. I think the two models want to amicably part company. They aren't the same model, and they no longer need to be forced to live together, and my life and my task would be easier if they lived their own lives.


The confluence model of decision support

After coming to this realization, I needed a name for my model. "Cynthia's seeing-eye thing" just doesn't work if you are trying to write about something. As I thought about what sort of name might be best, I went on a walk to our nearby creek with my son. Watching the water swirling around large boulders (central directorates) and pooling in little eddies (self-organization), I realized that the most important element of my conceptual model is that directed structure and self-organization intermingle and interact. They are not found in separate domains, and they are almost never found alone, and they almost never fail to impact each other. In my model the locations in which only one of these forces can be found are infinitesimally small points in the corners of the space. The word "confluence" occurred to me as I watched the waters swirl and join. So I think a good term for the model is the "confluence" model. (There is already a confluence model of intelligence and birth order, and another one related to sexual agression. Still, a few supporting words will differentiate it.)


More confluence

Now I want to continue the story into another type of confluence, one having to do with thought and originality. I've seen so many people make good use of the distinction between complex and complicated that I began to wonder where the distinction came from. It seems that the earliest mentions of this distinction go back to a 1987 paper by the anthropologists Shirley Strum and Bruno Latour called "Redefining the social link: from baboons to humans." (This is in Social Science Information, volume 26, number 4. You can find it online, for a fee, here.) Strum and Latour introduce the terms in this way.

For the rest of our discussion we will consider that baboons live in COMPLEX societies and have complex sociality. When they construct and repair their social order, they do so only with limited resources, their bodies, their social skills and whatever social strategies they can construct. A baboon is, in our view, the ideal COMPETENT MEMBER portrayed by ethnomethodologists, a social actor having difficulty negotiating one factor at a time, constantly subject to the interference of others with similar problems. These limited resources make possible only limited social stability.

Greater stability is acquired only with additional resources; something besides what is encoded in bodies and attainable through social skills is needed. Material resources and symbols can be used to enforce or reinforce a particular view of "what society is" and permit social life to shift away from complexity to what we will call complication. Something is "complicated" when it is made of a succession of simple operations. Computers are the archetype of a complicated structure where tasks are achieved by the machine doing a series of simple steps. We suggest that the shift from complexity to complication is the crucial practical distinction between types of social life. ...

How does the shift from social complexity to social complication happen? Figure 1 illustrates how we imagine this progression. The first line indicates a baboon-like society in which socialness is complex, by our use of that term, and society is complex but not complicated because individuals are unable to organize others on a large scale.... The second line positions hypothetical hunter-gatherers [where] language, symbols and material objects can be used to simplify the task of ascertaining and negotiating the nature of the social order. ...

To summarize our theoretical model, once individuals are aggregated and choose not to avoid each other, there must be a secondary adaptation to a new competitive environment of conspecifics. Two strategies are possible: manipulate the genotypes to obtain different phenotypes (eusocial insects) or manipulate the phenotypes of similar genotypes through increasing social skills. Similar bodies adapting to social life have, themselves, two possibilities: build the society using only social skills (non-human primates) or utilize additional material resources and symbols, as necessary, to define the social bond (human societies). In the human step different types of societies are created depending on the extent of new resources that are used.

This explanation exactly connects to things I have written about how the dominant force in hierarchy is the arch, meaning the structure inherent in the nouns we create (words, symbols, objects), and how the dominant force in meshwork is the work, or the constant construction and repair of the social order (conversations, imaginings, projects). (I'm not sure when I first encountered Manuel de Landa's terms for structure and self-organization, but I increasingly use them in preference, as they are much more meaningful, to me at least.)

Now, have you looked closely at Strum and Latour's diagram of their theoretical model? If you haven't, look again. It is identical to my confluence model. Their "ability to organize others on a large scale" is my "degree of imposed order." Their "degree of social complexity" is my "degree of self-organization."

Finding this connection to Strum and Latour's model gives me two senses of happiness. First, I'm excited that it came from ethology, my original field, which gives me a sense of circular completion. (It also makes me wonder if I read Strum and Latour's work in graduate school, since it was published the year after I entered a Ph.D. program in the field. Stranger things have happened....) Second, I'm excited that instead of talking about "my" model while standing alone (or with Sharon, or with Sharon and Dave), I can instead talk about tapping into the great confluent stream of understanding that is humanity.

And that thought leads us on to ...


Ancient confluence, ancient sensemaking

Now for the final piece. There is another confluence, a more important one, an ancient one, that I discovered just a few months ago. How I managed to miss it all these years (and everybody else along with me, apparently) is a mystery.

Here's how I discovered it. I was having one of my career self-pity-parties and typing my name and the names of everything I've ever created into Google and thinking about how nobody cares about me. (You do it too, admit it! Or some clever spammers wouldn't create fake links that start with "A smart blogger put an intriguing blog post on [your blog name].") So I typed in "Three strands in a braid" which is the name of a paper I published in the online anything-about-the-internet journal First Monday. Surprisingly, I also found links to Three Strands in The Braid, Paula Underwood's book about bringing Native American wisdom to use in contemporary society. I have great respect for Paula Underwood, having been moved by her book The Walking People. I had not meant to tread upon Ms. Underwood's book name, and out of contrition began to look over her braid book. This got me started roaming over web sites on Native American wisdom, which was only a desultory way of avoiding work until I stopped, breathless and amazed, in front of the medicine wheel.

The medicine wheel refers to a body of ancient wisdom shared by many tribes throughout North America, as well as a series of sacred structures, some dated to 5000 years ago. Small differences in interpretation and application abound in the medicine wheel structure and meaning, but the essential form is fairly consistent. The medicine wheel is also remarkably similar to my confluence model, to Strum and Latour's social-link model, and to the Cynefin framework. Since this eye-opening discovery I've been reading several books and web sites about the medicine wheel, and it has become clear to me that the confluences on this topic are much, much larger than just a few great minds thinking alike. What I believe we have tapped into, each in our own way, is as large as what it means to be a human being.

Let me show you the connections. Most medicine wheels use the map directions North, East, South and West (usually going round in a circle) to introduce the concepts involved. Nearly every book or web site on the medicine wheel differs in its precise labels as to the attributes of each direction, so I need to choose one. Of the books I've read I like The Medicine Wheel: Earth Astrology by Sun Bear and Wabun best, so I'll use those directions. (Sorry to you folks down under; you'll have to reverse the North-South directions.)

The North is the direction of winter, night, old age, earth and the physical world. In the North a dominant central force -- age, cold, darkness, the laws of physics -- holds each constituent element in its grasp. Here everyone knows the answer, because there can be only one answer. This is the realm of categorizing, of predicting trends and of following strong unchanging traditions. From The Medicine Wheel: Earth Astrology:

The power of Waboose [the North] is a paradoxical power. It is new life cloaked in death, rapid growth cloaked in rest. It is the power of the ice-goddess with a warm heart beneath a frozen exterior. It is the power of new life beginning to throb through an apparently rotting seed... It is the power of the trees covered with ice crystals, dancing in the North wind. It is the power of the animals huddling together for warmth, hunting together for food.

This relates to what I said (in "Three strands in a braid") about the extreme state of the simple/known condition:

People naturally form constituent connections all the time, so in a sense, as they say, "hope rises." Dictators attempt to move the situation to the extreme bottom–right corner [simple, known, the dead of winter] where they have absolute control and no other connections exist. Loyalty tests and other mind games are meant to sever nascent connections among the subjugated masses, especially those given subordinate power. However, keeping up such an unnatural situation requires a huge influx of energy, so these situations eventually implode through their own fragility. 

In other words, extreme order is the paradoxical power of new life cloaked in death, rapid growth cloaked in rest.

The East is the direction of spring, sunrise, youth, air and the spiritual world. In the East old connections are broken and everything starts anew. Everyone is floating in the void, kings and paupers alike. Here no one knows the answer, because no question has yet been asked. This is the realm of mystery, of uncanny sensation, and of action. From The Medicine Wheel: Earth Astrology:

For humans, youth is the time when everything is fresh and new, when they can see the universe in a raindrop and spend hours looking at the beauty of a blade of grass. Watch an infant stare at a tree and you'll know some of the power of Wabun [the East]. Youth is ... the time of experiencing everything as a first. It is the time of swimming in the stream of pure energy unhampered by the limitations of age, or of fears. It is the time when vision is expanded, like that of the eagle, when people seee as if from a high place.... [People who are comfortable in this place] have the ability to reach to the realms beyond the earth, in a natural and intuitive way. The people associated with Wabun have wisdom, and the possibility of bringing illumination and enlightenment to themselves and those they touch.

From Kurtz and Snowden 2003:

The chaotic domain is in a very real sense uncanny, in that there is a potential for order but few can see it — or if they can, they rarely do unless they have the courage to act. In known space it pays to be canny, that is, to know how to work the system in all its intricacies (canny meaning not only shrewd but safe). But in chaotic space, a canny ability gets you nowhere (there is no system to be worked). You need a different type of ability, one that is uncannily mysterious, sometimes even to its owner. Canny people tend to succeed in their own lifetimes; uncanny people tend to be recognized and appreciated only centuries later, because during their time their actions appeared to be either insane or pointless....  [Chaos] brings new perspectives, which cause radical disruptions in stable patterns of thought and lead to new complex patterns.

(I suspect the uncanny are afforded more respect in Native American traditions than in the corridors of power in the Western world. This is only one of several differences in value and belief that come up when these frameworks are juxtaposed.)

The South is the direction of summer, mid-day, young adulthood, water and the emotional world. In the South meshwork connections form and strengthen like growing plants. Here everyone has their own answer because everyone has their own path. This is the realm of storytelling, of mutual aid, and of learning by trial and error through probing explorations. From The Medicine Wheel: Earth Astrology:

At midday the lessons of the spirit received during sleep are put into action as people make plans and their direction for the day grows and takes shape. This is the time of reaching outward and growing in the things of the world. It is the time of testing wisdom by bringing it into physical being and helping it to grow. Sometimes the original direction is correct, and sometimes it must change; to know, the idea must first become an external reality. 

From Kurtz and Snowden 2003:

The decision model in this [complex] space is to create probes to make the patterns or potential patterns more visible before we take any action. We can then sense those patterns and respond by stabilizing those patterns that we find desirable, by destabilizing those we do not want, and by seeding the space so that patterns we want are more likely to emerge.

The West is the direction of autumn, sunset, middle age, fire and the intellectual world. In the West connections begin to harden into customs and rules, and central and networked forces intermingle for good and ill. Here the experts know the answers, because they keep the knowledge and wisdom that has arisen and stabilized. This is the realm of teaching, of listening to elders and encountering the wisdom of distilled knowledge. From The Medicine Wheel: Earth Astrology:

In human life the middle years are those of power. You have experienced some of life. You have learned some of its lessons and made your initial mistakes. You have tried working on the many projects that seemed appealing in your youth and often have found the direction that you were meant to take. Once you find your direction, you receive the power that comes with knowing where you are going.... The middle years are the ones of responsibility. There are growing children to raise, there are aging parents to care for, there are younger brothers and sisters to teach and help to find their own paths.

From Kurtz and Snowden 2003:

While stable cause and effect relationships exist in this [knowable] domain, they may not be fully known, or they may be known only by a limited group of people. In general, relationships are separated over time and space in chains that are difficult to fully understand. Everything in this domain is capable of movement to the known domain. The only issue is whether we can afford the time and resources to move from the knowable to the known; in general, we cannot and instead rely on expert opinion, which in turn creates a key dependency on trust between expert advisor and decision maker.... Just-in-time (JIT) transfer is movement from the complex to the knowable, selectively. This movement is often called exploitation in the complexity literature, and it involves the selective choice of stable patterns in complex space for ordered representation.

If you are at all familiar with the domains of the Cynefin framework, you can quickly see the mappings here. You can also see that the dimension of central order shared by my confluence model and Strum and Latour's social-link model increases from the Southeast to the Northwest, and the dimension of self-organization increases from the Northeast to the Southwest.

As happy as I am to find this connection, it is not all that surprising. I had an inkling of it back when I wrote this (in Kurtz and Snowden 2003):

We do not pretend that all the basic ideas inherent in the Cynefin framework are new or unique. They can in fact be found floating around history for thousands of years.

I just hadn't known they were floating around in this amount of detail at the time. When I wrote that I was thinking mainly of the many folk tales and mythologies that distinguished between imposed and self-organized structure (I mentioned the Babylonian creation myth which is just one of many such references).


The power of tapping in

This association opens up whole new areas of thought for me. For example, most versions of the medicine wheel include a middle region analogous to the disorder region in Cynefin terms. There are two more directions -- up to the sky and down into the earth -- which are not found in either the Cynefin model or my confluence model, so I'll be exploring how those might usefully fit in. I'm intrigued as well by the circle around the outside of the wheel, which is meant to demonstrate the unity of all conditions in one intermingled world. In addition several books have been published that explain how the concepts of the medicine wheel can be used in sensemaking exercises not unlike those I've used myself. For example, one activity involves "walking the wheel" to think about how a situation might be seen from each of the four directions and how one might thereby gain a deeper perspective on it.

It's hard to describe my feelings of humility, privilege and wonder on realizing that I and others have stumbled onto a truth that is at least several thousand years old. I am only beginning to explore what has been written about the medicine wheel and will continue to do so. Of course, what I can discover as a person of Eastern European ancestry and conventional scientific training will be something quite different than what a Native American can learn from the elders in their tribe. From what I've heard there is much more not available in books. Still, I eventually hope to arrive at a place where I feel that my understanding has benefited from all possible exposure to the great confluent stream of thought and wisdom I have encountered, and where I can in turn give something back, if only respectful attention, to the stream itself.

Now please note that I do not wish to claim that the medicine wheel is the same as the Cynefin framework, or Strum and Latour's model, or that it is better or more correct than these, or any other such nonsense. The reason I am excited about this discovery is because it enlarges, not reduces, my ability to help people make sense of the world. This is an amazing degree of parallelism between systems that seem on the surface to have nothing in common. I'm beginning to think the whole construct is something that may have come up many times in human history, like the Golden Rule or the ziggurat or the oft-repeated concept of "it's bigger on the inside than the outside" (that's one of my fantasy-Ph.D. dissertations right there). What I'm most concerned about is not who can claim credit for anything but what we, all of us, can do with it.


What makes a model fit for sensemaking?

In practical terms, this solves my problem with writing a method description for sensemaking landscapes in Working with Stories. I will simply describe multiple ways of framing a landscape for group sensemaking, among which people might have different reasons (background? personality? goal?) to choose. You might want to choose the labels of the Cynefin framework, of my confluence model, of Strum and Latour's social link model, of the medicine wheel, or of other models I know nothing about. This also allows me to write about each of the frameworks I do know about without either subscribing fully to it or assuming that everyone else thinks in the same way I do.

I've seen it noted that the Cynefin framework covers similar ground to Herbert Simon's bounded rationality model and to Elliott Jacques' requisite organization model, though I have yet to read more about these models (but plan to do so). Manuel de Landa's concepts of hierarchy and meshwork (and their intermingling) are also similar, as are Dee Hock's writings on chaordic organizations. (If you know of any other overlaps, reader, please send me a note. I'm interested in giving people as many ways to find a good fit for their contexts and purposes as I can.)

The obvious next question is: where do we stop? What sorts of models are not useful for narrative sensemaking?

The utility of building a sensemaking framework lies in its ability to enable the emergence of new understandings from the overlaying of many seemingly disparate experiences and perspectives. It is a convergent technique, a way of moving from specific to general: but not by categorizing, which is done beforehand and is not an activity of discovery at all. Rather, it shares something with the idea of grounded theory, in which data create rather than prove or disprove theory. Because of the way sensemaking works, many models work as well as others, in the proper context; but for the same reason there are some characteristics a model has to have before it can be useful. I've come up with three so far.

1. Value-free dimensions. Sensemaking depends on the self-organized emergence, not the straightforward creation, of meaningful patterns in the things considered. If the placement of items into patterns is predetermined, no sensemaking can take place.

To illustrate this, consider two group activities you might conduct in a gymnasium full of people. Let's say you first ask everyone to stand in front of a large marked scale of heights. This is a predetermined placement, so doing the exercise brings no additional insight that could not be gathered from, say, measuring each person independently and collating the responses on a computer. Now consider what would happen if you asked each person to stand in a location that best fits their agreement with a series of statements posted around the room. The patterns that result from this exercise probably cannot be predicted even if you know the people in the room very well. If you ask each person to answer a set of survey questions, you will not get the same result. To begin with, an act of physical positioning (whether of yourself or of an object) invokes a different set of cognitive processes than preparing a linguistic response. But more importantly, the people in the room wouldn't be human if they didn't negotiate meaning by continually monitoring where they and the others are in the room (constantly subject to the interference of others with similar problems). Such an activity would not represent an objective or experimentally repeatable method of measurement. But measurement is not the goal; sensemaking is.

Many models built for understanding and communication have implied or explicit value axes. The classic case is of the graph where the approach you wish to evangelize is in the upper-right-hand corner (nearest to God). You can use value-based models for sensemaking, if you can obfuscate the value axes. You can switch the directionality so that our common up-is-good bias is subverted (the right-is-best bias may be culturally variant and probably has a lot to do with writing direction -- hey, wouldn't that be an interesting dissertation topic).

Another method of subversion is to change the terms used so that they confuse direct communication of value. If you want to use a model with an axis called "efficiency," think of either a value-free way to talk about it (perhaps "precision" or "agency") or think of some way to highlight both the positive and negative aspects of it at once (something like "getting things done efficiently, even if they are nasty things"). But if you have to work really hard to push a model into value-free use, don't deceive yourself; better to use another model than to destroy what could be valuable insights.

2. At least two dimensions. The essential activity in building a sensemaking framework is the mapping of elements, in this case narratives or elements of narrative, onto a space of resonant meaning. Building a topographical map entails gathering information about point descriptions: longitude, latitude, height and meaning. The addition of meaning is not always noticed, but if you look at a real topographical map, labels such as the names of mountain peaks and lakes and the locations of human-made structures are as important as contour lines. In the example I show here, roads, streams, buildings and administrative boundaries are marked. (The little dot near the bottom is my house, which has a lot of meaning around here.) Building a sensemaking landscape requires a similar process. So it follows that in order to build such a map you must define what your longitude and latitude mean; what height pertains to (if anything); and what features will be marked. All of the models I've described here define two dimensions of variation, either explicitly or implicitly (by marking out the rarified extremes of the space). From what I've seen, you need at least two dimensions in order for sensemaking to work well.

Models that feature triangles or pyramids (lots of this, some of this, little of this) are really only unidimensional, so they don't work. Why doesn't one dimension work? Well, first, if you are trying to squeeze the values out of an axis (and people are very good at squeezing values into axes), the effort is more obvious if there is only one axis. People have a harder time finding out the correct answer if there are two overlaid dimensions, especially if at least one of them is flipped from their expectation. I've seen people use one dimension of variation for sensemaking, but the insights gained seem to be thinner and weaker; there is less sense made.

What about three dimensions? Well, there are two problems with sensemaking in three dimensions. First, it requires more physical preparation. Preparing to place flat objects on a wall is much easier than preparing to place three-dimensional objects in 3D space. You could have people sculpt a clay surface together, and that might yield some fascinating insights, but it could also just get messy.

Also, I must enter here a plea from the non-3D-thinkers population: beware of thinking 2D representations of 3D objects are 3D objects. Some people have the ability to look at such representations (usually on computer screens) and think about them. Many of us don't. I remember in graduate school when the wave of 3D Tetris hit. I had been marginally adequate at regular Tetris (though I'm not a fast thinker in any number of dimensions). But when I was faced with a 3D Tetris challenge, I simply froze, turning the virtual object over and over but unable to come up with any plan for putting it anywhere. I watched in amazement as other people manipulated and dropped the Tetris things (what do they call them?) in microseconds. Clearly this is a genetic determination, and clearly some of us were not standing in the 2D-as-3D line when they gave this ability out. (I think I was over by the left-handed synesthesia booth.) It's much easier with physical manipulation, but people who have the 2D-as-3D ability sometimes forget that the rest of us can't follow them into that world. So to be safe and include every voice, I'd stick to two dimensions.

3. Meaningful space. The last requirement of any model that supports sensemaking is that it resonate meaningfully with the people who use it. This is the main reason that I think replacing the terms on the bubbles or axes or quadrants or circles of whatever model you want to use is perfectly permissible, as long as the translation is true. Because if the space doesn't mean anything to the sensemakers, the patterns won't mean anything either. Find a space that works in practice, not just in theory. You can only find this out by trying it in practice with any particular group. What I like to do is have a few manifestations of any sensemaking model on hand so that if one isn't resonating I can pull out another, relabel, and try again. Or you can use the salad-bar method and present two or more sets of labels at once and ask people to choose what works best for their group. (The spring, sunrise, birth, air, spirit labels do this in the medicine wheel.) Another method is to explain what you mean in general and ask the people themselves to come up with their own labels (while you check the translation for accuracy). This approach tends to require a more motivated group; some will respond to such a request with bland refusal. Be ready to do what works and adapt to the conditions you find.

There are other requirements for sensemaking regarding the items used (their focus and breadth), the physical setting, the people involved, and so on, but that is another topic for another time.

With regard to the conceptual frameworks and models you can use for beneficial narrative sensemaking, I'm happy to say that I've found much to explore. Hopefully this will be of as much use to you as it has been to me.

Participative Narrative Inquiry

Recently I've started moving "into the onion" on writing the third edition of Working with Stories (I'm calling edition two the addition of the case studies last year, otherwise I'd get too mixed up). And I'm now in the process of forcing myself to confront some of the book's shortcomings (having completed all possible stalling operations). I know of these shortcomings because of things people have told me about the book or parts of it, either directly or indirectly. No need to parade all of my senses of inadequacy regarding the book, but one issue I think merits asking for feedback: the name of the book and the name of the approach.

Ever since WWS came out people have been confused about what it is about. Some people think it's about telling stories and are surprised that there is almost nothing that could be used for persuasive story construction in it. (Though there is some; the results of some of the sensemaking sections can usefully feed story crafting, but I don't feature it.) Others think it's about qualitative research without the sensemaking element. Still others think it's related to narrative therapy, or community development, or other more limited issues. So recently I've been thinking about this confusion.

There is also the irritating issue of how I keep being forced to say "the approach I use and recommend" and "story projects" and "this type of work" and other clumsy-messy names. I don't like jargon and gratuitously fancy names for things, because they stand in the way of understanding and utility, which are my goals. For that reason I've worked hard to strip away weird names for ideas and concepts and methods, and I'm still working on that for the next edition (any particularly weird names you don't like?). But there is something to say for making a clear statement about what something is and isn't in the name you choose for it. That improves understanding and utility, so I should move towards it.

What do people in this field call it? Well, it's a little difficult to say what "this field" is exactly. There are a lot of styles and flavors and opinions and disputes. To start with, people have been studying narrative in organizations and communities for decades. Some of my favorite papers in the area are from the 80s, and some of those researchers are still active, though they tend to be more academic and less applied in their focus. I arrived in the field and started developing the concepts and methods I use today in 1999 at IBM Research with John C. Thomas. Our focus was primarily on applied research, or ways we could help IBM and its clients apply ideas about narrative in organizations for practical benefit. In 2001 I started working with Dave Snowden, Sharon Darwent, and Fiona Incledon, who basically had the same mandate, and the exchange of ideas went both ways. At some point Steve Bealing, Shawn Callahan, Warwick Holder, Rob Peagler, Steve Barth, and a few other people joined the group and contributed their own ideas (my memory is fuzzy on when various people came and went). At one point we had a great synergy going when we called ourselves the IBM Cynefin Centre. This was round about 2002-2003, when Dave and I collaborated on the IBM Systems Journal article on the Cynefin framework. A lot of the method development happened during those years, and I always think of that time as when "the group" existed and was doing its best work. Of course, unlike most of the others I was always a temp or contractor looking in from the outside at IBM, which may have been a plus in terms of working on my own later. In 2004 the group split up and most of us went our separate ways. I did contract work off and on for Dave and Steve at Cognitive Edge for the next few years, stopping sometime last year.

So most of the concepts and techniques in WWS came from those collaborations and influences, but not exactly. Inevitably, the group has drifted apart according to our backgrounds, perspectives and interests, and we have all added our own styles to what we do. In the past few years I've collaborated with some new people who were not in the original group, as I'm sure others have done as well. So "my" approach is not the same as the approach used by Cognitive Edge or by Anecdote, or really by any of the people who have learned about and made the ideas and techniques their own since. Some of the early "audience members" have become developers of their own ideas. In fact, I've been heartened by the number of people I've seen building their own concepts and frameworks and methods from a variety of sources, including new stuff I've never thought of before, which is what should be happening.

So then what do people call this approach? These are the names I've seen used to refer to it.

• Business narrative. That name fits when you work on both sides (telling and listening) and primarily work with businesses. But it doesn't fit what WWS is about. I have always intended the book for people in a much broader scope of small groups, including local communities and even families and friends. And it's not about all of narrative; it's just the listening and working-with part. As I've said before, there are thousands of books about how to write compelling stories, but few on how to listen and work with stories.
• Narrative inquiry. I've seen people use this term to describe the approach; its Wikipedia page shows clear links between the term and what I do. But from what I've seen, the academic field of narrative inquiry is far removed from the approach described in WWS. Academic narrative inquiry tends to feature only the collection of stories and their interpretation by outside experts. I don't advocate that approach simply because I don't think it has much utility for creating contextually-situated positive change.
• Organizational complexity using narrative. Some people feature the decision-making and complexity-science aspect of the approach more than the narrative aspect. I use and recommend both aspects, which work well together (after all, narrative is nothing if not complex), but if one is required and the other is nice-to-have in describing WWS, I'd pick narrative every time. Narrative has to be in the forefront, for me.
• Story listening, story gathering. I've used both of these terms myself, but somehow they still don't communicate enough of what I want to help people do in WWS. It's not just about listening to stories or collecting them. It's about doing something with them, and not in a separate context but with the people who told them.
• Organizational and community narrative. That's the subtitle of this blog; but again people often think it's about the telling side. And it doesn't capture all of what WWS is about.

In addition there is the field of Appreciative Inquiry, which has no relation historically to the group I was part of but shares some of the same narrative and exploratory aspects. I like some things about AI, and I get the point that focusing on the positive brings energy to bear on issues ... but I still can't help feeling like AI throws the baby out with the bathwater. I think narrative can definitely appreciate and build on strengths, but I think that's just a start: it can do much more.

Somehow every one of these terms is missing something. But "Working with Stories" is missing something too; it's missing clarity. If I absolutely need to give a name to "the approach I use and recommend" (which, as has been pointed out to me, isn't much of a brand presence) I would like to choose the name Participatory Narrative Inquiry.

The reason to include each of these words has to do with a particular emphasis of my flavor of the approach, as follows.

1. Participative - One of the biggest influences on my work in the past ten years has been the field of participatory action research. Keeping the storytellers in the loop has huge benefits that I've seen played out over and over. Participation is part of every project I do and describe. It can vary in degree, from simply asking people to interpret their own stories, to helping people move through group sensemaking activities where they build their own understandings of issues and problems. In my opinion, if you take the participative aspect out of the approach, it just blends in with all of the other we-decide-what-you-think surveying techniques, even if the narrative is still left in. This is where I part company with many academic researchers who never venture to question their authority to frame the experiences of others (though not all do! I'm not that biased ;).
2. Narrative - The narrative part of the approach I use is in no way optional. I've never been willing to go along with those who have said the approach can work for non-narrative material. In fact I've seen the approach fail (or at least perform poorly) when most of what was collected was not narrative in nature. When people tell stories, an entirely different set of social dynamics and cognitive processes takes place. When narrative is taken out of the equation, you may have sensemaking and you may have opinion gathering, but the magic of storytelling is lost. The closer you can get to natural story exchange the more powerful the magic is, but even a spoonful of narrative is worth more -- for the purposes I describe in WWS -- than bathtubs full of opinion. (And by the way, I'm using "magic" poetically, it's not a new-age crystal-spirits reference. What I mean is that narrative has aspects of utility for sensemaking that other conversational modes do not.)
3. Inquiry - In every project I describe, somebody finds out something about something. They might better understand a conflict, or their own feelings, or the nuances of a topic, or how things got to be the way they are, or how things could improve, or any number of things. But the approach is never just about connecting or teaching or persuading people with stories. Even when a story project makes something happen, something happens because somebody found a new way to look at something, which is what inquiry is about. Including the inquiry word also makes it clear that the approach is not about telling stories (at least not all by itself). Nor is it about listening simply for the sake of listening. There is always somewhere new to get to, something to achieve.

Amazingly in this age of everything having already been said by somebody, I can only find one link on Google with this phrase in it (here) and another on Yahoo (here). It looks like people are using these terms together to indicate that they have blended some complementary approaches -- mainly appreciative inquiry, participative action research, and narrative inquiry. There are also many references to "narrative inquiry" and "participatory inquiry" and "participatory narrative."

So, I've been pondering changing the name of WWS to

Participatory Narrative Inquiry: Working with Stories in your Community or Organization 

or

Working with Stories in your Community or Organization: Participatory Narrative Inquiry

The downsides of either of those names are: they are long, they are different and new and strange, and they might sound academic and out of reach for the audience I most want to reach. But either would also make it more clear what the book is about and for, and would reduce the number of people who think it's about something else.

Another option is not to change the name of the book, but to feature the PNI name in the introduction and other places, as the name of the approach. If PNI is mentioned in the blurb and so on, it should help people figure out whether the book is what they were looking for.

So, kind readers, do you think the term Participatory Narrative Inquiry effectively communicates the salient points of the approach described in Working with Stories? If not, why? Or if so, do you think it works better in the book's name or just in its description?