Erik Skogsberg and Dirk Van Onsem’s Transformative Session at the 2024 Facilitation Lab Summit
At this year’s Facilitation Lab Summit, Erik Skogsberg and Dirk Van Onsem delivered a thought-provoking workshop titled “Facilitating Change Through Systems Mapping.” The session was designed to help participants understand and leverage the power of systems thinking to drive change within their organizations.
The workshop began with Erik and Dirk highlighting the significance of seeking truth rather than being right, emphasizing a systems-based perspective. They explained that true understanding comes from recognizing the interrelationships among various elements within any context, challenge, or opportunity. This approach is crucial for effective facilitation and leadership.
The session was structured around five key elements essential for creating a compelling change story:
- Future Vision: Participants were encouraged to articulate a clear and compelling vision for the future. This vision serves as a foundation for others to buy into and support the change.
- Personal Connection: Erik and Dirk stressed the importance of understanding and communicating personal motivations for caring about the change. This personal connection helps build trust and emotional resonance with others.
- Current State: Through systems mapping, attendees explored the current state of play, identifying the relationships and patterns that define the present situation. This step is crucial for grounding the change story in reality.
- Stakeholder Engagement: Participants learned to map and understand the motivations and interests of key stakeholders. This step is essential for building a coalition of support for the change effort.
- High-Leverage Interventions: By combining systems and stakeholder mapping, participants identified high-leverage interventions that could drive meaningful change.
Participants engaged in mapping exercises to visualize system relationships and dynamics. Dirk shared a real-world example from the sporting goods industry, demonstrating the practical application of systems mapping. In group activities, participants integrated their maps and shared insights, emphasizing understanding over perfection.
Erik and Dirk’s workshop showcased the value of systems thinking in facilitation. Participants left with tools to navigate and influence complex systems effectively.
Watch the full video below:
Transcript
Erik:
So I’ll give you just a moment if you haven’t already soaked this in a little bit. This willingness to seek the truth rather than seek to be right. And a core part of seeking that truth in many ways is taking a systems-based perspective, really understanding the relationships amongst all the things, all the people at play in any one context or challenge or opportunity.
Dirk:
Yes. And so just for anyone who hadn’t noticed, we knew we were coming right after Jose, who is an MC and who was an amazing DJ. So Erik and I were brainstorming what do we do to go after such a performance, so the only thing we could figure out was let’s make sure we match up.
Erik:
You see this system here?
Dirk:
I know we were subliminal, but we just wanted to point that out. It’s all in the detail, all in the detail. So just as a brief sort of connect between facilitating change as a workshop and what we’re going to do today is this belief that facilitation is a very core leadership skill, which I’m sure all of you agree as you are facilitators, but also a very, very important way in our view to really drive change. Facilitation of change is actually a core leadership skill and we do believe that actually a big part of that is having a story that other people can buy into. So the workshop that we’ve designed is actually a workshop that helps tell your change story in a way that brings others along. And the five elements that are part of that are on the screen.
The first is what’s my future vision, very much connected to what we’ve heard just now, the future state. Can you articulate in a compelling way the vision that you would like people to buy into? So that’s a core element of that.
The second is who am I and why do I care. The soil exercise we’ve just done is a way of doing that, obviously. But there’s multiple ways to try to understand who am I and why do I specifically care about creating this future. Why is that important? Because when you can touch others in a chord that touches their heart, very often it’s because you share vulnerably why you care. So the notion of digging in personal mastery and understanding this is why I care about this is actually a way to connect to others.
The third element is where are we today, which is bringing the state of play or the current state as we’ve just again today referred to. And this is the area that we’ll dive into today with the systems mapping. Then why should you care? We heard a lot about stakeholder mapping, convincing stakeholders. So why should you care is part of your change story, is identifying those important stakeholders and understanding deeply why do they care and how can I connect to them.
So then lastly, if you have mapped both the system and the stakeholders, you can identify high leverage interventions and make suggestions of what should be done. And if you would narrate those five topics in one go, you actually have your change story by which you can in a more confident way convince others to drive the change with you. So that’s sort of a little sort of setting on how we came up with facilitating change as a concept. And then within that, again, where are we today, the systems mapping is what we will dive into.
And systems, we hear a lot of people say it’s a systemic problem, it’s a system. But sometimes the word system or systems thinking can be a bit confusing or intimidating. And again, most, I assume many of you are familiar with it, but just to ground us in one of the definitions, and there’s multiple ones, but Peter Senge is obviously the person that started the academy for systems change where both Erik and I went and met each other actually the first time. This is his definition. It’s a framework for seeing interrelationships rather than things. Seeing patterns rather than seeing static snapshots. And it’s actually very much looking at the space in between two things and the interrelation and the correlation between that.
And so the problem statement or the problem that we’re going to address today and tomorrow, we actually are going to have our first exercise today on trying to see the interrelationships, really trying to see the patterns rather than only the statements of what maybe is happening.
Erik:
So a couple further ways to provide some context and why behind seeing things systemically are so important. And as Dirk mentioned here, we’re oftentimes paying attention to the in-between, what’s happening in connections amongst different relational pieces. Because oftentimes when we’re working with complex problems, which a lot of us are, in fact most everything we talked about today is systemic, multi-layered here. And when we’re talking about systems, there’s oftentimes a delay, sometimes a pretty long delay between cause and effect.
So anytime you may have gone to, say, quickly try to solve a problem that’s actually systemic and find that actually your solution came back to you with something that’s actually making the problem even worse, that’s where understanding things systemically is really important because there’s this delay and a complex relationship between cause and effect.
Give you a couple of quick examples here that hopefully are recognizable or familiar enough. So a couple of basics here. And we’ll tell you this multiple times because we see it a lot when we first introduce systems mapping to folks, the point of today is not creating a perfect systems map. All right? So we can geek out on this stuff and it’s interesting to dig into. Take what is helpful for you. The most important thing is that we are starting to better understand the relationships amongst a bunch of different things.
So I’ll give you an example here of a really common loop that oftentimes comes up when we’re talking about systems. So feedback loops here can either be reinforcing or balancing. So an example of a reinforcing loop here would be like interest in your bank account. All right? So you have money in, interest is being accrued, and that continues to add money to that account.
A balancing loop here would be an example of a thermostat. So you have something set, a desired temperature, and ultimately there’s a gap between the desired and the current temperature. And that then responds to balance things back out, to bring things back into a balance to what you have ultimately set here. And this plays out in a lot of different systems, whether things are reinforcing and continuing to grow or ultimately trying to bring things back to some form of balance.
In systems work, we talk a lot about system archetypes, because there’s some pretty common ones that come up in complex systems, and one of those here being fixes that fail. So a good example here of where you ultimately try to implement a solution to fix a problem and that solution ultimately makes things worse. All right? So an example here of the problem, maybe there’s high interest on a credit card for example, and an initial fix being to balance that out. We’re going to take out an extra credit card to start paying on that. Uh-oh, we’ve got more interest coming. That creates more debt, more debt, more debt, and we ultimately don’t fix the problem. And again, these play out in a lot of different ways across the systems in the different challenges and opportunities in our lives.
Dirk’s going to take this a step further here with some examples from Nike.
Dirk:
Yes, exactly. So about three years ago in the job I’m in now, when I started that job, which was being responsible for sporting goods for EMEA. And the sporting goods industry, so basically Dick’s Sporting Goods is I assume a retailer that many of you know. So you could think of the equivalent of Dick’s Sporting Goods, but then in EMEA. And so I was handed over that team and that responsibility. It was the time that we were in this course, so I used that new job to try to understand how can system mapping help. And I want to talk you through that one example just to make it a bit more tangible and practical rather than maybe the theory about archetypes.
So what I found, and this is what we’re going to ask all of you to do as well later, you just start to write down things that you notice, not necessarily thinking about links between them, but what are the things that you notice. You know when you start a new job or a new assignment, you just ask questions. You interview people and you just start to, “Hey, that gets repeated. I’m going to note that down.”
And so basically I ended up having things like, okay, there’s low profitability. All those retailers have a tough time making money. That was one of the elements. For the sake of the time, we’ve put it straight away in a map today. So you will see how things are interlinked straight away. But another thing that I noticed actually was there was a lack of investment capacity. Someone else was telling me they just don’t invest in their stores, these retailers. They don’t invest. But obviously there’s a clear link between if you have no profitability, you have very little to reinvest in your business.
On top of that, they have very low digital capabilities. Again, linked to these lack of investment capacities. But the comment of low digital capabilities was a comment I got again from someone else. But if you map them, you can then see, well, if you have low digital capabilities today, consumers shop first on their smartphone. So if your websites aren’t great, and if you’re not really investing in digital capabilities, guess what? You don’t attract the consumer. If you don’t attract the consumer, you need to drive promotions to get people to your store to bring them in. Now you can imagine if you need to drive promotions, you have low profitability. So this is a typical reinforcing loop.
Now then as a company, we thought we were really, really smart, which happens very often if you’re inside of a company. So what do you do? Actually we say, “Wow, we need these retailers so we’re going to give them more discounts.” Because if we give them more discount, they’re going to be more profitable. It seems quite logical. They buy from you, you give them a higher discount so they can create more money. The thing that happened is actually as a result, many of the retailers that should have gone out of business because they were actually not doing a proper job in serving consumers, they actually stayed in business. What’s the result of that? Way too many competition. So what do they do? They need to promote to attract the consumer.
So this is how you see, even if you have actually think you’re doing something that makes sense. The moment I started to see, and this is only one very small section of the map that I created with my team, but just for sake of example, we realized we were doing this to ourselves. Or we had a very big role that we played in keeping this system turning in a way that wasn’t helping the overall consumer experience. So it’s by mapping and all of these points that are on here came from different interviews, and then we did the exercise of mapping it. How is this linked? Because now it seems very logical when I tell this story in this way, but it wasn’t when I started the role. So that’s just an example on how that works.
So obviously our role or what we want to do with you today is actually show how this process of mapping and again linking it to the facilitation summit, how as facilitators we can have ways to map complex systems with a large group actually and get to insights that we maybe didn’t have before doing this exercise. So obviously the core question, “How might we raise national awareness and adoption of the ACC Digital Fluency micro-credentials and certificates for military spouses?” That was the task or the prompt that we were given by the organization we’re working with. And so what we’re going to do today is map. What do we know of that system as a collective?
Any question before I hand over? We’re going to give a prompt in a second, but any questions on that intro first before we move to the next part? No? So I think we’re first going to give the prompt, right?
Erik:
Yep.
Dirk:
So the starting point is we’re going to replay the video. It was called out this morning. We are very sure all of you watched the video. We are a hundred percent sure. But just in case or just for your memory, we’re going to-
Erik:
Just a refresher.
Dirk:
A refresher.
Erik:
A refresher.
Dirk:
We’re going to replay the video that was sent out. That is also at the same time your solo time. So we were going to give you anyway solo time to reflect, so we’re going to play the video at the same time. If you’ve seen it, feel free to jot things down. What’s important is based on what you’re hearing or what you know about the situation or based on the workshops we’ve done already this morning that gave you additional insights, write down things that you notice that you think are part of the system of the issue. Important is to do one per sticky, so don’t list them on ones. We need one idea or one prompt or one thing you think is part of the system per sticky. At the moment, don’t try to find links in between. Just what you hear, note down what you think is important and relevant. And from there, we will go further.
Erik:
Yeah, cool.
One thing I’d say here is you’re diving in because for many of you, this is a new process. So I’ll just tell you, if you’re doing it right now, you’re doing it right. Don’t worry about creating a perfect map. Okay? The point here is that we’re starting to think more systemically. All right? And that gives us an opportunity to then have a conversation together. Back to Donella’s words, this allows us to build a collective truth together. Because then when that’s out in front of us, we can make better decisions together. So just start. All right? And I’ll keep coming back to that as a reminder.
So I’m going to pop up a video here in a moment, actually from some of the research that has been done with these military spouses about their needs and the challenges that are coming up in their lives and accessing some of these resources. And you can just note as you’re listening.
Speaker 4:
We were researching kind of how users currently find different resources on installations and what pain points that they may have been seeing. So we interviewed a lot of different people and surveyed several hundred more. And what we found was that people would just get stuff by word of mouth or via social media and it wasn’t always completely accurate information. We also talked to services and we use that to inform the features that we decided to put in our MVP launch for My Army Post.
So I think the biggest thing that we learned was that there’s not enough childcare providers on the installation to effectively provide childcare for every Army family. A military installation is ran by any of the military service, whether it’s Army, Air Force, Marines, Navy, and it’s where all of the buildings are that are the federal government property and that’s where all the services lie for families to access.
And that was where a lot of the issues come in because it is cheaper on the installation for military families because it’s a little bit subsidized. So if there’s not a space for them on the installation, they have to go off-installation, which is a little bit more costly. And that’s where there’s not a little bit of a gap, a large gap that makes it difficult for them to find careers as the family member.
Something that is hard is finding those careers that can transfer to different places wherever we get stationed. And then building the community is hard. It’s the longer you’re in, kind of the harder it gets I feel like. I think some of the things that we saw in our research and that I’ve seen is that we are pretty good at getting training for spouses or for service members that are getting out of the military, but most jobs now require experience. And where can they get experience if no one is willing to hire anybody without experience?
Actually, you facilitated a little exercise at our kind of fair. I thought that that was an awesome program and I thought that it could benefit a ton of people. And the main person that came to my mind was my mother who is in her sixties and has a job that uses digital tools like Excel and Outlook and I’m just her tech support and she just calls me to get that information. But if she was able to get some sort of micro-credential that could help her understand it, whether it was actually getting that micro-credential or just the knowledge, I think that that could be very helpful and I can see how that would be helpful to military families as they’re moving throughout the states.
Speaker 5:
I also enjoyed it. I thought it was really, really cool because I was like, “Well, maybe I could do some of these things.” Because some of those skill sets transfer to a wide variety of disciplines. You can use it for a lot of different things.
Speaker 4:
I think the biggest thing that we saw as a huge pain point was advertising. The Army doesn’t necessarily have a large advertising budget to be able to market these different things. And so if ACC could take advantage of a way to market these better, I think that that would reach a lot more people.
Speaker 5:
For example, I was telling Celeste, I was like, “Hey, did you know there is a virtual internship for the federal government?” I did it for my master’s program. And she’s like, “Really?” I was like, “Yeah, you really just have to be a student and you apply at the US gov jobs, but then you get experience with the low-threat internship at the federal government working for almost every agency known to man.” But if you can scaffold on that and actually then, well, I worked for the VA virtually and then I’m going to apply for this job to build your resume up and say, “Hey, but I learned these skill sets along the way because I knew I was weak in some of these areas. ” I wasn’t really good at spreadsheet management per se or Excel, but through my internship and a program through ACC with building my digital literacy, I had another skillset.
When I actually applied, I had somebody who would vouch for me as a reference who already works in the industry and I have the skill to back it up. And I’m using veteran preference because a lot of jobs have that for spousal preferential positioning. And to leverage all those things into one to apply for some of these jobs I think could be super useful. And I think people underestimate how valuable those small state or federal organizations actually have impact. There’s a lot of job offers that come there. They say, hey, we need a public health person.
The job fairs are so important. Even if you are not actively looking for an actual job, you’d be surprised what you can land on and what you can find that can kind of fit the things you want to do by just asking people and just talking to them. I just think the whole scaffolding thing is the most important thing. So even if after they do their micro-certification, if there’s a way for them to connect with companies even for maybe just a week trial or two weeks and to say, “Hey, just let me walk around and just intern and see what I can learn from just being here on ground.” It’s low threat to the company because you’re an intern and they don’t have to pay you. But it also gives people experiences and to build that bridge and of course targeting people who are actively looking for people.
Erik:
Nice to hear the voices of folks closer to this challenge and opportunity. And I’m going to add a few more details here from another person very close to this challenge who unfortunately we were going to be doing an interview but unfortunately unable to be with us today, but I wanted to share her answers here with you. So just asked what they noticed is going on right now in this problem and opportunity space in and amongst this challenge. And she said, “Unemployment has remained the top concern for military spouses, especially since military families relocate every one to three years. And there’s been a real shift in the working world post-COVID. Employers have moved a lot more toward remote work.” And so that presents both opportunities but also challenges if you didn’t already have some of those digital skillsets, right?
I asked, “Why do you think things are working or not working at this point?” And she said, “This is a great opportunity for military spouses, especially for those that are looking for remote work. This allows them to focus on becoming more proficient in the digital skills they need in order to succeed in remote work environments.”
And finally, “What elements of this prominent opportunity space do you hope we, all of us here, most focus on?” And she said, “Since unemployment is a top concern nationwide for military spouses, how can we get national military organizations to subscribe to the micro credential digital skills program here at the college.”
Speaker 6:
I was also at the military families center ribbon cutting. And there’s one thing I noticed that I thought might be helpful to share which was a military spouse that had been invited to speak about her experience and she said something that was quite, it made sense in retrospect, but never hearing it before. I was never exposed to it. But the fact that as she moved around with her husband on different deployments into different installations, there would commonly be a really vibrant and strong and tight-knit military community that would be very supportive. So then they were to move somewhere, they would instantly have a lot of resources around them and they could lean on that and learn to depend on it. But not all installations are created the same.
And something that really was surprising for her when they came to Austin because her husband is actually attending the software factory, which is the software bootcamp for the Army. So these are active duty Army, they’re learning how to be software developers and UX designers. And so he’s attending that. They come here, Austin’s very widespread. There’s not a centralized base here. So everyone, while there is a vibrant community, it’s very spread out and it’s hard to tap into those things. And that’s one of the things the Military Family Center is striving to provide is that hub, that central spot. But she also spoke of, she first experienced it here, but there are other installations around that are more distributed so that centralized nature doesn’t exist. So that really spoke to me when I heard it, so I wanted to share that just in case it’s stoked any thoughts for y’all.
Erik:
All right, thanks.
Dirk:
Yes. So we’ll give you one more minute solo just after absorbing all of that and then we’ll go to the next section of that. So just one more minute to maybe finalize some of your thoughts, some of the things you noticed.
So we would like to move to the next part, which is pairs. So at your table, we’ll make it easy to start with, just look at your neighbor and together share the stickies, the things that stood out for you. And you start to create, if you see connections between some of the things you do, you start to create a very small map in between the two of you on the table. So that’s why we also asked to try to clean the table. So if there’s still a lot on the table, just try to move that a little bit. We’re using the resources that we have and if you see connections, if you see connections, you can also use a sticky in between the two points to draw an arrow. So we’re going to be creative here. So if you see a connection between two things, use a sticky to make the connection. So you get 15 minutes together to create one map with the two of you.
Erik:
Okay, move yourself to a pausing point. And then please direct your attention back up here. If you’re right in the middle of a sentence or in the middle of a question that you’re still wrestling with, that’s a great sign. That’s the kind of conversation we are hoping that you’re having. And if you’re coming in to have figured this all out in the next 90 minutes, you’re going to be disappointed. But hopefully you have some new understandings and some better questions and we have a better sense of those truths out there that we can operate with.
So in a moment, we’re going to shift to creating a group of four. So pair will join a pair right next to you and you’re going to then be integrating both the maps that you’ve created. And it’s going to feel a little messy. That’s the work. All right? Now if, and hold on one moment before … I know as soon as I said four, it’s, “All right, let’s get going. Let’s get a jumpstart. We can get the answer key down. This is going to be great.”
So as you move into your fours, you’re obviously going to have to integrate pieces. There’s probably going to be some duplication. So it’s like, “Yep, we’ve got this piece here.” You can bring those together. This is similar. Do we want to bring those together or keep those separate? Also too, this is the point, and I see some great examples here. We even have people tearing stickies to create arrows. It’s fantastic. No, it’s fantastic. So if you haven’t already started to think about the nature of those relationships, start to draw those arrows, which ones are particularly connected? Which one do you see may be acting on another? Are there potential loops here? And again, it’s not about perfectly identifying them, it’s starting to surface the nature of those relationships.
I’m going to share one thing that I always find really helpful when especially first engaging in this process here. So have a great colleague of ours in this space who has spent years doing systems work and systems maps. And so oftentimes, and we’ve asked what’s the step and are we doing this right? And she always returns us to, Darcy Winslow is her name, co-founder of the Academy for Systems Change, and oftentimes returns us to this quote from Alice in Wonderland in terms of the instructions for this. So as you’re doing this, begin at the beginning, and go until you come to the end, and then stop. That’s how to do it. So give yourself that grace. All right?
Now move to your group of four. We’re going to take the next 10 minutes in your group of four to start integrating those maps and thinking about the nature of those relationships.
Okay. Our final or almost final turn here. And again, the point is not to have these things absolutely complete, but as I’m listening across groups, it’s fantastic to see the nature of the conversation or witness the nature of the conversation. Each of you posing questions of one another. Well, here’s how I see this. How do you see this relating to this piece over here? Or is this really like this or should it be over here? Again, co-constructing a truth and an initial map that then we can gather around and further merge together.
Lilly, did you have-
Lilly:
I have a question.
Erik:
Yeah.
Lilly:
So really quickly, our group, I felt like at times as we were trying to create our map, we were also thinking of solutions. And I was curious, should solutioning come into this first pass of mapping?
Erik:
We’re not solving. We’re trying to understand. Okay? So it’s not that those solutions may not bubble up, but set them to the side for now because we’re not even necessarily clear on what the nature of the map is and the potential problem and opportunity space. So again, as is a hallmark of design thinking and in a lot of the systems work, let’s make sure we’re solving the right problem before solving a problem. Because that can then … If we were talking earlier about again, those solutions or fixes that fail, you could end up doing something that then ultimately makes your problem worse. And we’ve seen that in a lot of complex systems-based challenges out there.
Jimmy also asked in the back there about should we be mapping just the things that aren’t working or the things that aren’t working and the things that are working. Both. And in fact, I was mentioning back there, systems are working in the way that they were oftentimes designed. They’re working. They just may not be working to do the things that we want them to do. And so that’s where having the full picture, like these things are working, they’re working the way that we want, but that leads to these things over here not working. So let’s get the full picture.
Our final turn. I’m going to throw down the gauntlet here. It’s 10 minutes. Now, you’re going to have a facilitator at your table. And here’s how we’re going to side that. So whomever at your table has a birthday closest to today is going to be the facilitator for this final turn. Now, before you go to figure that out, here’s what I suggest. All right? Quickly have each group of four share briefly the story that’s there, and then you can be starting to combine things. We have that, let’s get that in the center. And again, clear the table. I see so many drinks out here. I don’t know, you’re going to have things spilled. All right? So make sure you have space in the next 10 minutes. Facilitators, help your group come up with a collective table map. Go.
Okay, move yourself to that pausing point and I’ll ask you to direct your attention back up to the stage here. Have a chance to hear from groups. I know it’s at the end of the day, and it’s so great to see people standing up around table … You’re leaning in, right? No, this should go, no, I think this is actually the nature of this. And this is for some of you a challenge that hits close to home. I know we have some military spouses in the room, people from military families. But also some of you, this is a problem that’s not even that closely necessarily connected to you and you’re leaning in, you’re building a sense of truth and surfacing something that people can work around, that starting point.
Key thing that we didn’t mention earlier, this process helps to surface what in systems mapping is called mental models. It’s kind of an internal ways that we view and order the world that until we oftentimes can externalize them in a way like this with our colleagues, it’s a filter that we’re not aware of, our colleagues aren’t aware of. And so this gives us an opportunity to surface, “Well, here’s how I’m seeing this. Okay, I’m seeing it this way. Let’s bring that together so that we can collectively act.”
So I’d love to hear from a group or two, hopefully from everybody. And facilitators, you’re particularly on the spot here. Would love to hear, I know you just did so much work on this. What did you notice as you facilitated this process? So there’s a couple of different ways into this prompt. Either you could talk about the process itself, here’s what it was like to facilitate that integration of ideas, and here’s what I noticed. And or wow, this new breakthrough surface, we didn’t realize this one piece and here’s what we’re thinking could be really important for us to think about tomorrow as we start moving to solutioning. So a couple of different either process or content or breakthrough.
Speaker 9:
I’ll be happy to go first. This is an awesome table because it’s humbling to facilitate masterful facilitators because you all facilitate yourselves. And as somebody that’s trying to step back and allow the dance to happen, what was really interesting is just understanding for ourselves what really is the place to start. Where’s the beginning? And I think we have this really interesting dichotomy or juxtaposition from what really is the beginning of this system between awareness, advertising, lack of budget. Is that the place to start? Or is it really the underemployment as the place to start? So it was very fascinating to see the differences and a little bit of the dance, but also some arm wrestling of where is it really going to go. And I think even though we didn’t fully combine what we wanted to do, I think just stepping back, observing and helping to facilitate that, I think we got a better awareness of, ah, I hadn’t thought of that perspective or hadn’t thought of it this way. Or ooh, there’s some commonalities, how do we bring this back together?
Speaker 10:
With the data we had, I found that there’s just more questions or hypothesis to prove out. We started creating assumptions. It was like, “Is that real or is that just what we think?”
Erik:
Yeah, which is a great outcome of an exercise like this. And obviously, people spend multiple months on these and in these kinds of conversations. Ultimately get to, Dirk’s map as a starting point, if he were to share other iterations, I mean multiple months there, but then that’s a powerful way for a group to move forward. And it does. That’s a really powerful outcome there. Wow, we don’t know about that. We need to know more. Okay, let’s go out and talk with some more folks that, again, surfaces that gap in a way that until that was out there wouldn’t have been apparent.
Dirk:
Absolutely. It starts the inquiry. It gives direction on where to inquire further and not just, again, to those mental models think that now you’ve mapped the truth because it hasn’t. So if you identify additional questions, that’s amazing. And to the point of where does it start? One of the core things of a system map is it doesn’t really matter where it starts. It actually doesn’t matter. When it’s mapped and you see the correlation, wherever, it’s all interconnected anyway. So just as an extra add-on.
Speaker 11:
Something that really surprised me was I started to get really wedded to the model that I was working on. And then when we had to join most recently, the whole table, I was like, “No, don’t cave, Phil. That’s the right one.” And I was like, I thought I was kind of an evolved human being, but it kind of surprised me and it took me back to the quote that you had about it’s more important to find the truth than to be right. And I’m still struggling with that right now because it really blew me away that I experienced this. I am just curious if other people had that too.
Erik:
It is bringing us full circle. Thank you for sharing. It’s bringing us full circle to our work with Leah this morning in a lot of ways as to what truths, how tightly we hold onto them, what does that mean about the different systems within us. Right? Other teams, would love … Yeah, Leah.
Leah:
Well, just on that point, it was a growing of the system in the group. So it started out with two, and then going back to what Ann said, you had maybe your attachment of the pair, and then the four, and then to the whole table. And yeah, it’s an interesting exercise of looking at the system and then being a part of a system trying to solve or trying to notice the differences and the differences of perspectives and not holding on too tightly.
Erik:
Which whether we have or recognize it or not, we’re kind of doing that every day in our companies and our organizations. We just are doing it with oftentimes a pretty blunt tools and hurting a lot of people in the process. So this just surfaces it in a way that can be more constructive. Others?
Speaker 9:
I was going to add on that. When we were merging the four of us, we said, “Well, we still have a gap.” But it was when we brought the eight together, we were like, “Ah, you filled the gap.”
Erik:
Cool, cool. There was here from a-
Speaker 12:
Okay, so I had the challenge to facilitate our table. Good reframe.
Erik:
So we had the cool table. That was the challenging table. We got the-
Speaker 12:
So what I noticed is that we, in terms of the elements in the system, we were almost identical, the two different groups. So I thought, okay, that’s a good starting place. Then though the relationship that the two groups of four had identified were … Well, we didn’t have a lot of time to actually process how similar or dissimilar the relationships were, but they definitely weren’t as similar as the elements were. And then to Ann’s point about wanting to be right or wanting to find the truth, I think our group was a little quick to gloss over the differences and just say, “Oh, it’s pretty much the same.” Which I think wasn’t like a deep commitment to finding the truth of the system.
Erik:
Was that a little shade there? That sounded like a little shade.
Speaker 12:
I wrote that as a facilitator because that was what I was hearing them say. I’m not necessarily endorsing that though.
Speaker 13:
Or we said because they’re so similar, just pick one because they’re both right. So we’ll just pick which one we were going to present as our map.
Erik:
Which I think is another good reminder here of not losing sight of the verb for the noun. Because in that example, you choose one, you’re going to follow that verb through, and if you’re truly seeking at the end of the day, the truth you’ll bring back in those other pieces. So again, don’t confuse the verb for the noun there. Yeah?
Speaker 14:
Yeah, I will probably just echo some of the comments you’ve heard. I’ve heard some labels for tables, and I do have a label over here as well. We have a lot of enthusiasm, and the great thing about being with a lot of design thinkers is the willingness to share ideas. So I’m going to call us the fun table.
Erik:
Perfect.
Speaker 14:
You want to come over here for some fun in building some systems. And really I think what we had in really seeing the connections evolve, and I think I kind of heard that throughout. But it’s really seeing the different connections between the different pieces and hearing the different perspectives and seeing how connections that you may have missed or didn’t know were there suddenly come up. So the system ended up changing and combining in a way that we think overall improved and gave a good overview of what we were looking at.
Erik:
Cool. I’m looking at our time here, and we’re just a minute over, just a minute or two over. So a couple of things.
This isn’t the end, obviously, in 90 minutes to have completely figured it out. I always tell folks in my sessions this is a launch. If you come thinking that this is the end, you’re going to be disappointed. So let’s get real about what we’re able to do if we’re actually going to tackle things in the ways that we need to. Hopefully you’re starting to see some ways to build some truth into the complex systems that you are a part of each day, and that you can take a lot of what emerged in this space into further building to the truths and solutions into our work for tomorrow. So thank you for your willingness to dive in and to seek that truth with each other, to develop this very scarce but important resource. Thank you.
