Coining the right term

I used the Tedtalk of Joris Luyendijk 'Share your learning curve' (also here on my blog) for my work with a team in higher education. They are learning about 'facilitation of value chains', networking, reading and interviewing. We had already discussed that it would be interesting for their team to start a blog (to share their learning curve- though we didn't call it like that). In the Tedtalk Joris explains that he will start to explore the financial sector starting from zero knowledge. He would like to take other interested readers along in his search via the banking blog of the Guardian. Share your learning curve is a brilliant term for this. The Tedtalk supported what we had already discussed, and gave the blog a clear focus by coining the term 'share your learning curve'. I noticed it also inspired the testing blog.

What really surprises me in a way that I actually started 'sharing my learning curve' since 2005 on this blog (it was originally called communities of practice for development). I remember we had to capture blogging in three words during a teleconference and I chose 'very public learning'. So it surprises me that you can draw attention with something which is not new, by coining a right term. Probably having a good reputation is crucial too...

The same happened with our webinar with Jane Hart. She coined it the 'flipped webinar' flipping the presentation to a blog beforehand and working with the questions of the participants. It was a great webinar by the way, and it worked very well. However, I have a background in development cooperation and since 1990 I've been busy working on participation and participatory methods. So in a way it is not very new to  me. Again coining the right term which is an attractive one and maybe easy to remember works to draw attention.

I think I'm going to try and do some coining myself in 2012 though it seems like an art in itself. I think a good term can help clients in an advisory trajectory to see something very clearly. And if my own coining is not easy, I can still borrow terms from others that have inspired me like 'the networked non-profit' by Beth Kanter, 'filter failure' from Clay Shirky and 'ambient awareness'.

the power of metaphors

Image by fataetoile/ Cinzia Rizzo via Flickr

I'm always amazed by the power of metaphors. Sometimes I try to 'cook' one myself and then it doesn't work so formulating or rather designing a good metaphor is not easy. In Ghana, people were generally strong in using metaphors, but unfortunately I didn't write them down. But if you like proverbs too, you can follow the twitter stream of African Proverbs.

Some strong metaphors I've come across: We all know the metaphor about marriage as a sailing trip. You step into the marriage boat and you will face rough weather, storm and the boat will rock. A little overused, but probably popular because it appeals to couples.

A very strong one that I still remember, even though I've come across it some years ago, is about the integration process by immigrants in the Netherlands. There is a lot of political debate about integration and integration problems and usually the immigrants are blamed for not speaking the language, not adapting etc. Then a person said: "it is like the highway; you can try to merge with the traffic on the highway, but you need to be given the space to pull your car over". This is such a good metaphor because it show that it is a two-way process.

And two weeks ago Irene Guijt gave a presentation about accountability at Partos Plaza. What I now recall from her presentation is the metaphor of the goose and the golden eggs. Talking about accountability she explained that you need to be aware of not only counting the golden eggs (the results) while killing the goose at the same time. Because you will not have any golden eggs in future. I think that's a strong metaphor to warn about for looking short-sightedly at (short-term) results without caring for the organisations and other actors that produce the results.

Do you have any metaphors that stick with you? What makes them so strong?

Defining the domain of a community.

Nancy White has a good blogpost about domain definition. I belief domain defintion is one of many powerful interventions that a coordinator/facilitator or advisor in a community of practice can make. Domain definition or re-definition can help a group to articulate the domain they are interested in and strengthen their focus and become attractive for newcomers. But what is a domain? Is it the same as topic or theme? Nancy provides the definition of Etienne Wenger:

A community of practice is not merely a club of friends or a network of
connections between people. It has an identity defined by a shared domain of
interest. Membership therefore implies a commitment to the domain, and therefore a shared competence that distinguishes members from other people. (You could
belong to the same network as someone and never know it.) The domain is not
necessarily something recognized as “expertise” outside the community. A youth
gang may have developed all sorts of ways of dealing with their domain:
surviving on the street and maintaining some kind of identity they can live
with. They value their collective competence and learn from each other, even
though few people outside the group may value or even recognize their
expertise.

From the definition you can see that a community of practice is a special type of network, one with a focus on its domain. By interacting, the members are forging common ideas and practices around their domain, and may achieve -slowly- innovation. Slowly, because there is a stage whereby the members need time to exchange and establish the common ground and bridge differences. You have to know what exists before you can innovate. What I can add from my experience is that there are no hard rule for domain definition. Yet, it is best if the domain is not so vast, that you start drowning and get too wide a group of interested people. On the other hand, it should not be so narrow that it becomes like a problem. You may have a 'name' and a 'description' for instance the e-collaboration community focusses on 'how to guide the introduction of e-tools into development organisations in a way that it improves collaboration (north-north and south-south) in development cooperation.' Probably 'teleconferences' would have been too narrow a focus and 'using ICTs' too wide a focus - in this particular case.

Tools versus attitude

The change management blog wrote about tools versus attitude. I kept it as new in my bloglines because it relates to something I have been thinking about: the attachment within the development sector to develop toolkits. I have to admit that most of the time, I keep blogposts as new, but never look at them again. So let's try and change that...

The toolkits fondness, I believe, probably derives from the desire to have something tangible, and to have a 'product'. Toolkits are not bad in themselves, but as Holger Nauheimer from the change management toolbook points out, the attitude of the advisor is so much more important. It's like the screwdriver without the carpenter. So a balance between focus on toolkits and attitudes is needed.

Once I read a remark by Etienne Wenger stating that a good toolbook (he probably said reification) fits the practice like a glove. So a good toolbook that suits the practice of a group of practitioners can really be helpful. On the other hand, a toolbook without the practitioners who work with it the way it was intended can become meaningless. An example is the Participatory Rapid Appraisal methodology, that became meaningless when used by people who did not apply to the basic principles behind the methodology.

Rothko's room

We visited Rothko's room at the Tate Modern Museum in London. The museum has lots of kids activities and since my children don't speak English, they gave them the most 'pictural' assignment. They had to use stickers depicting emotions and put them on a picture of their head. They put up lightning, bricks and other depressed images. They drew snakes and spiders. They were also asked what their feet, eyes were doing and their feet felt like 'running away'. Personally I didn't really know what to think of Rothko's paintings, but when I read the explanations, I was struck by the way they had felt like Rothko's intentioned effect.

In the late 1950s, Rothko was commissioned to paint a series of murals
for the fashionable Four Seasons restaurant in the Seagram Building on Park Avenue, New York. He set to work, having constructed a scaffold in his studio to match the exact dimensions of the restaurant. However, the murals were darker in mood than his previous work. The bright and intense colours of his earlier paintings shifted to maroon, dark red and black. Rothko was influenced by Michelangelo’s Laurentian Library in Florence, with its blind windows and deliberately oppressive atmosphere. Rothko commented that Michelangelo ‘achieved just the kind of feeling I’m after - he makes the viewers feel that they are trapped in a room where all the doors and windows are bricked
up, so that all they can do is butt their heads forever against the
wall.’

An illustration of the power of images and colour, working even unconsciously (on children). Also nice to see how different questions (stickers versus the verbal question: what do your feet want to do?) can bring out the same emotions but add some intensity/relief. I think that's what photos/videos/audio can do to online text interaction too.

Corneille's painting again

I read in the Volkskrant that Corneille is painting again. I'm curious how painters work and learn and become masters. Corneille says he detests inspiration and just starts working, in the same way a child would paint. Starting with a stroke of paint and adding new ones. When he was 20 years, he formed a three-manship with Appel and Constant, as he explains, this followed from forming the group of the 'experimentelen' of painters and poets. The three-manship lasted only 3 years, as they prefered to continue as individuals. When they met, they did not talk about each others work, but they did talk about paint and women. Nevertheless, they did monitor the developments in each others work.

I think what intrigues me is that in the end, the basis of their development process is very individualistic. They do observe each others works, but don't discuss it. I wonder what this means for communities of practice, whether individual development trajectories are not the core of communities of practice. So we should maybe be more modest about the community part, and recognise that the basis for practice is very individualistic.

Pipi Langkous and story-telling

Some time ago, my daughter had to dress like Pipi Langkous for her teacher's birthday. Since she didn't like it (she has red hair and is sometimes already called Pipi) she refused to do so. She was the only child not dressed like Pipi but didn't care at all.

On Friday, I was flabbergasted when there was a discussion at the schoolforum about the information sheets that my daughter's school sends home to the parents. One person illustrated his argument against the sheet saying that one girl was not dressed like Pipi because her parents had lost the information sheet.

Though I'm not 100% sure, I think he was talking about my daughter. I'm always surprised how easily information gets twisted or used for somebody's own benefit and purpose. Another story: I had a problem with my foot in Kenya in 1989, I left Gem Rae for the Netherlands with the problem on my foot persisting. When I came back in 1990, the farmers were surprised to see me walking. The story had gone round that I lost my foot!

This brings me to my surprise about the strong advocates of story-telling. Stories are promoted as a way of capturing tacit knowledge. I agree with the fact that stories are powerful ways to convey ideas. On the other hand, stories in themselves are not good, holy or what ever. They can work to replicate or consolidate certain power relations. The content of the stories matters a lot.

So when can you use stories as an advisor for communities of practice? I get the impression people think that you are a good trainer or advisor when you use storytelling, its sounds cool and participatory. I think it is not as easy as that. It may be useful to be able to detect when stories get distorted and misused by the core group of a community of practice for instance. And you have to know when storytelling is not the right intervention. Who (mis-)uses stories and why is a good question though!

If you still want to use storytelling, here's a good storytelling guide developed by SDC.

The advisory role as puzzle solving

Yesterday I saw the film Babel from director Alejando Gonzalez Iñárritu. There are various storylines (in Marocco, Japan, Mexico) and at some point you discover the link between the various storylines. The link between Marocco and Mexico gets confirmed when you see a picture of the children in their father's wallet. From the review of the film: "this movie is constructed as a puzzle, with different pieces transpiring during different times and in different places over a five-day span".

The feeling you get when you see the picture of the children, and suddenly, in retrospective, you understand some of the conversations that took place or some of the things that happened, is the same I have as an advisor when I get a certain clue. Suddenly a lot of things click. It is at that point in time that I feel certain and start to act (give feedback or whatever). As a facilitator or convenor for communities of practice (or other internal advisor role) I don't have that experience, though the puzzles remain. I guess that as an external advisor you have more distance and as a result, are able to see things more clearly. (this links to a previous post talking about the difference role of an internal and external advisor to a community of practice)

First aid

De Galan and Voigt have a nice summary of a meeting with Chris Argyris online. He explains that we live in a model I world: "Er is een Nederlander geweest... hoe heet die dierentuin ook al weer bij Den Haag? O, ja, natuurlijk, Wassenaar. Is die er niet meer? Nou, ja. In ieder geval die Nederlander, ik ben z'n naam vergeten, die deed onderzoek bij apen, gedragsonderzoek. En wat blijkt, rechttoe rechtaan Model I. Bij de mannetjes zat nog wel eens wat Model II, maar bij de dames, ho maar. Het is dus evolutionair bepaald." En dan serieuzer "Wij zijn veroordeeld tot Model I, dat is hoe ons verstand werkt. Wij zijn in staat om zeer snel tot een keuze te komen in een brij van gegevens. " And in response to the question why he continues to work on model II: "Ik zie mijn werk als een poging om bij te dragen aan het creëren van situaties waar mensen de vrijheid kunnen ervaren om een keuze te hebben. "

(short translation; research with apes shows that behaviour is predominantely model 1. I see my work as an attempt to contribute to creating situations where people can experience the freedom to have a choice).

I borrowed the book: "Eerste hulp bij ongewenste resultaten" written by Loes Wouterson and Pim Bouwman. I borrowed it after reading Chris Argyris (forgot the title something with action learning), a great and inspiring book, about model I and model II thinking, yet I found it hard to make it practical.

This book really helps to do so. The subtitle is introduction to reflection in action, models and concepts of Chris Argyris made 'workable' for everyone. Besides introducing a very lengthy practical case, which illustrates the theory, it explains how to use the ladder of inference. For instance the case method to gain insights in what you do in conversations that don't work for you and how this influences the results you get. It helps to have an external person helping you.

Step 1: Describe the context
Step 2: Write down what was said in the right column
Step 3: What did you think and feel, but you didn't say so?
Step 4: What were the results of the conversation?
Step 5: What were your actions (in terms of asking questions, reasoning, defending etc)?
Step 6: Note down the reasons (your frame of mind)
Step 7: What insights and ideas of new actions did you gain?

Within communities of practice, there is hopefully more model II thinking and less model I thinking. That seems to be somehow an automatic process amongst practitioners who recognise each other's questions.. Or am I being too optimistic?

Community of practice variety from a complexity perspective

There's an interesting article by Shawn Callahan (of anecdote) and Patricia Milne on variety from a complexity perspective. It dates a few years ago and was published here:

Callahan, S. D. and P. Milne (2004). ActKM: Variety in a Community of Practice from a Complexity Perspective. Human Perspectives in the Internet Society: Culture, Psychology and Gender. K. Morgan, J. Sanchez, C. A. Brebbia and A. Voiskounsky, WIT Press.

Finally an article talking about interventions for communities of practice from an advisory perspective! They call the advisor who tries to influence the functioning of a CoP a 'designer'.

"A set of mechanisms is explored to understand how a designer might influence variety in a community of practice. Four mechanisms are addressed:

1. The process of copying strategies and types
2. Copying with error
3. Recombination of ideas
4. Role of the physical environment"
   

When they talk about variety, they refer to what I would call diversity, the opposite of homogeneous CoPs (homogeneous in terms of topics, people, knowledge areas the members bring along, etc). Variety is important for the liveliveness of a CoP. Variety is important too, to drive creativity and innovation. Too much variety though may be hard to deal with, as it can lead to conflicts. Consequently, there are times when diversity should be encouraged and other times when it should not. (all this my interpretation). The article helps to explore when and how to encourage diversity. Like, when to encourage new people to join? When to stimulate people from a certain different background to become actively part of the core group. The articles gives some ideas on how to stimulate diversity; eg. in the physical environment by stimulating various ways of communication. Some members may be attracted to online discussions, whereas others prefer face-to-face. Ensuring variety in ways of communication in a CoP helps to stimulate variety in ideas.

From the article: "Community designers should remain mindful of variety, and, if appropriate, should use the mechanisms described above to influence it. (...) Interventions can be applied by an external force or by an internal force within the community. "

I think an external advisor/designer can see much clearer than an internal person when variety within a community of practice is flawed and hampering innovation within that community. That could be a very important role external advisors can play in a community of practice development process.

Peer assists in communities of practice

Bellanet and the university of Ottawa have created a flash animation on peer assists. It's a great, thorough explanation. I think you can use the animation easily with a beamer to explain peer assists to a group learning about them. The animation is more lively and visual than a powerpoint presentation. If peer assist is roughly the same as Dutch 'intervision' you could probably add a part on the wide range of different methods of doing a peer assist. (they explain only one way of doing it).

Lucie Lamoureux of km4dev pointed to the Bamboo project blogposter who elaborated on different uses of peer assists in networks:

• Having a "mini" Peer Assist as a regular part of network meetings. Potential Peer Assistees would submit their problems ahead of time and a portion of the meeting would be spent on brainstorming around one or two problems. This would have the added benefit of encouraging attendance at meetings because people both love to have their problems solved, as well as being able to offer help to others.

• A Rotating Peer Assist would be a great idea for a half-day or full-day network conference. Organizers could identify a theme for the Peer Assist problems and/or consider having Community of Practice Peer Assists that relate to various job functions, such as having a "Case Manager Peer Assist Day" where case managers could present on their problems and get feedback from fellow participants. This seems to me a far better use of time that would be infinitely more engaging than the conference activities we usually see.

• A technology-enhanced Peer Assist is another option. A wiki would be the perfect complement to the Peer Assist session. Rather than recording ideas on flip chart paper, they could be recorded directly into a specially created wiki. This would then be available for participants to add to later allowing them to provide links to other resources, sample documents, etc.

In the e-collaboration gatherings, we are reserving almost a third of the meetings for a kind of peer assist. It helps to stay very close to the actual practice of participants. Last two times, we asked people to submit their questions ahead of time. Next time, we will probably ask people to forward their questions during the meeting. This will allow for joint prioritisation, and will ensure questions are really 'fresh'. Last time, a few people had moved on in their problem definition in between the time they submitted the questions and the actual gathering.

While introducing peer assists in communities of practice, it may needs some time, to create the space for it, and get people to use the space proactively. So, my personally advice would be that it helps to prepare the sessions more in advance during the first few meetings, and gradually make it a more spontaneous process. Of course, that depends again on the group, whether people are already used to peer assists, etc. The size and frequency of changing members probably influences the level of trust and hence depth of inquiry.