Mind mapping, a graphic technique,is a powerful way to visually represent the way things are.

The way things are includes both the external environment and how things are going in the organization or community. So for me, this means we need two types of activities. 1. Scan the external environment e.g. mind mapping 2. What's our view of how things are going at our organization/community. What are we doing well? What do we feel good about? What isn't happening or is bothering us?

This reminds me of a principle I work from that I call "Reality is a Key Driver" -- it speaks to the need to understand what is happening inside the system as well as what is happening outside of it. Through this shared picture of reality, more informed decisions can be made by all. As I know many others have used, bringing customers into the room in a larger meeting as a panel or even having them join table groups for part or all of a meeting helps a lot in terms of bringing reality into the room.

I also can see how this portion of a meeting speaks to another principle that guides my work: Creating Community. This principle is about ensuring that people can focus on the larger whole and the part they play in that larger whole. When both of these are true, you get solid collaboration. No one is worried about their "part" not being tended to nor are there concerns that by over-focusing on the parts, the "whole" will be compromised.

Though not often necessarily thought of in this way, I also believe that presentations and good Q and A sessions help serve this purpose. There are situations in which some know more than others (could be senior leaders who have drafted a strategy, subject matter experts, etc.) and having short, clear presentations followed by well facilitated Open Forum Q and A sessions also build a shared picture of the current situation. Complementing this view from a few is the view from the many -- done through Ron Lippitt's original Glad, Sad and Mad brainstorm (All the things we .....about in the past year)

We just finished some work with a large governmental organization where the biggest part that contributed to their learning was receiving and hearing interview data from many employees. This gave a real picture of the current reality.

In other workshops a fishbowl is very powerful. Working with a group discussing access to addiction services one of the most powerful to discover how things were was to hear in a fishbowl the clients and their families talking about their stories of how they got access to the system. I have also fishbowls for customers to give infomations to participants about their customer experiences.