tools Archives

Image of notes on a wall prior to silent sorting and creating an affinity diagram

#041 – Silent Sorting – Affinity Diagrams

31/01/202316/11/2021 by Mike Clargo

Gain new insights into situations by allowing patterns to emerge – Use affinity diagrams to drive greater participation and ownership

Please help us to get the word out in just two clicks – click here – then click the like button

Why take this challenge?

Build more cohesive understanding of the way forward…

… and greater commitment to pursue it

Inspire higher levels of participation and engagement in meetings

Graphic image reflecting different pathways to take the adventure

For those who are already aware of the power of the affinity diagram, this will be a very easy week (unless you want to take the opportunity of this adventure to introduce it to others).

For those who have never used an affinity diagram before, we hope this adventure will help you discover a new way of identifying different subgroups and patterns within collections of information.

These collections can be the results of a brainstorm, or jobs to be done, or things to achieve, or anything. However, to use the affinity technique, each item needs to be on a separate card or sticky-note (or virtual equivalent) that can be moved around independently.

This movement of ideas and information makes the Affinity diagram an ideal tool for ensuring participation in meetings, and for building consensus and commitment toward its outcomes (a topic we address in our article ‘Meeting is a Verb’)

There are a few simple rules for the affinity diagram, the key one of which is absolute silence. These rules make it (relatively) easy for people to see and take on board the perspectives of other people. And through this to be part of evolving a shared perspective. Albeit, one perspective of many that could be taken.

+ Green track - taking it in your stride

Try it for yourself

Affinity is at its most powerful with groups of people, where its dynamics help people to develop and take ownership of new shared perspectives.

However, as a tool, I find it useful for helping me to organise disparate thoughts into a meaningful structure for communication to others – such as items in a presentation, collating meeting notes, or reorganising an existing list.

The green track this week is about trying a new tool to do this.

Copy and paste your items into a spreadsheet such that they form a column of separate cells. Then open the conceptboard affinity template. Copy the cells from the spreadsheet (up to 100 of them on the free version of Conceptboard) and paste them into the template, where they should appear as separate sticky notes.

Then simply move them around the board, one by one. Group those that have a particular affinity together, and separate those that don’t. Keep going until you have fitted what you can into a pattern. But feel free to break up and reform groups as your sense of the different affinities evolves.

+ Blue track - a bit of a workout (click to open)

Try it with a few others

The blue track this week is about trying an Affinity Diagram out with a few other people to see how it works for groups of people. This could be around a brainstorm of ideas, or a group of activities, or entities that need grouping.

Ensure you have familiarised yourself with the guidance for Affinity Diagrams and invite a few people to join you. This might be around a set of sticky notes spread out over a whiteboard, or you might use the materials you set up for the green track.

Explain to those you have gathered the rules of the affinity diagram, and emphasise the importance of sticking to them. Then simply let them get on with it and see what emerges. Be strict on silence. If things play yo-yo, let them work out for themselves that they may have different interpretations of what is written.

Undertake a debrief at the end.

+ Red track - stepping up to bat (click to open)

You may find the following resources helpful in tackling your challenge or in gaining further benefits from the skills and insights you develop

To catch up on past adventures you may have missed, feel free to browse our Adventures Library

Let us know how you get on.
Share your experience, your insights and your observation using the comments section at the bottom of the Linkedin post.

Please help us to extend and develop our community by sharing what you are doing. Click on the links below where you are most active, and then like or share the article to your network. Thank you for helping.

And share your progress and insights with the Twitter LbA community using #leadingbyadventure

Useful links:

Introduction to Leading by Adventure  |  What we mean by spirituality?  |  Why Adventure
Adventures to date   |  I did it, but it didn’t work very well   |  How do I know if it is working
Bringing this thinking into your meetings   |  Adventure & Mental Health
Leading by Adventure community   |  Explore Strategic Support options

Surrealistic scene of ripples on water - minding the ripples - metaphor for using the Solution Effect Diagram to map put implications

#024 – Minding the Ripples

31/01/202315/06/2021 by Mike Clargo

Anticipate the full implications of your decisions ahead of time – Use the solution-effect diagram to accentuate the positive

Please help us to get the word out in just two clicks – click here – then click the like button

Why take this challenge?

Prototype the impact of your decisions on your team and organisation

Preserve the cultural and behavioural values that are important to you

Better understand causality and how to achieve the effects you really want

Graphic image reflecting different pathways to take the adventure

Whether a decision is good or bad is largely determined by its implications and consequences. It is sadly an all to common experience for a change intended to improve something in one area to create issues elsewhere. When it does, the common refrain is ‘didn’t they realise …?’. And the answer is usually ‘Frankly, no’

The ripples emanating out from any decision can spread far and wide. And it can be difficult to see them all beforehand, unless you are systematic about it. The Solution Effect diagram (also known as the reverse fishbone) is just such a systematic tool.

Used effectively, it enables you to see everything that might be impacted. Both the good (usually intentional) and the bad (usually accidental). This means that you can better see how to mitigate the negative impacts. And to prepare people to take full advantage of the positive ones.

Furthermore, the tool can be used to prototype a decision. This is sometimes the fastest (most agile) means of designing a good decision. Start with a bad decision – one that is raw and not been thought out – but is in the intended direction. Then apply the solution effect tool to understand what would be likely to result in practice. And use this information to rework the prototype bad decision into something good.

+ Green track - taking it in your stride

Solution Effect prototyping

This is an opportunity to try out the Solution Effect diagram personally as a prototyping tool.

In the box on the left, we put the intended change. And for the purposes of this illustration, I want to propose that we take an immediate decision to “Make our work ecologically net positive”. Don’t try and improve that decision yet. Just map out the implications and consequences of making it – good and bad. Download the template (right) by clicking on it.

The legs we are going to propose for our prototyping experiment are: Relationships; Performance/Impact; Learning/Wellbeing; Anything Else

Then use these legs to list out all the implications you can think of making that decision in the way that we propose. Both good and bad (You can subsequently recolour these to differentiate between them). Then think about the extent to which you could accentuate the positive implications, and mitigate the negatives. For example, the confusion over “what does it mean” could be addressed in part by workshops.

Simply making a bald decision to “Make our work ecologically net positive”, may still be a bad choice. But having gone through the exercise, I imagine it has opened up your thinking to some new possibilities within it.

+ Blue track - a bit of a workout (click to open)

Solution Effect for real

The blue track is about trying out the Solution Effect diagram on a real decision you are intending to make or to put into practice. You can use the legs proposed for the green track, or you can define a different set that are more relevant to the decision you are taking.

Then explore the potential positive and negative implications of your decision.

Assuming you are still going ahead with your decision, you have several options for ensuring its consequences are net positive. These include:

Adjust the decision itself, and how it is worded
Consider how it will be communicated and explained
Determine when, where, and under what circumstances it applies
Provide preparation or support around the decision
Think through how the right behaviours will be valued

+ Red track - stepping up to bat (click to open)

Team based approach

The red track is about extending the use of the Solution Effect diagram to your team.

You can use the Solution Effect Virtual Flipchart for this. Or engage your team more directly with the Solution Effect Whiteboard. (Find links to both of these in the pack section).

Then simply take a decision or a change that the team is currently working out. And use the Solution Effect diagram to explore its potential implications together.

You may find the following resources helpful in tackling your challenge or in gaining further benefits from the skills and insights you develop

To catch up on past adventures you may have missed, feel free to browse our Adventures Library

Let us know how you get on.
Share your experience, your insights and your observation using the comments section at the bottom of the Linkedin post.

And share your progress and insights with the Twitter LbA community using #leadingbyadventure

Useful links:

About Culturistics: Empowering full strategy engagement through: adventurous visions; deployment frameworks; culture management; facilitative leadership; inspirational meetings; insight landscaping; & powerful partnerships

Ladder in water - metaphor for spotting adventures

#023 – Spotting Adventures

08/06/2021 by Mike Clargo

Open your mind to the wider potential of your environment – Use de Bono’s PMI tool to better identify new possibilities

Please help us to get the word out in just two clicks – click here – then click the like button

Why take this challenge?

Look beyond your initial reactions to more creative understanding

Hone your ability to better see both sides and new possibilities in things

Find unexpected treasure that you might otherwise walk straight past

Graphic image reflecting different pathways to take the adventure

I grew up at a time when thinking was a lot more linear than it is now. Creativity was something you either had or you didn’t. So the ideas of Edward de Bono were a revelation to me. His insight into the natural tendencies of the mind, and his techniques for managing them were a joy.

There is a lot more individual creativity about now, but sadly only a very small proportion of it finds its way into business thinking – particularly via teamwork. We know about creativity, but we are often too busy to think about using it as a natural part of our work.

So de Bono’s tools are as important now as they were forty years ago. At least in terms of putting something in place to help us to make creativity more common-place.

One very quick and easy tool to use is PMI. PMI stands for Plus, Minus, Interesting. It reflects the whole tool in three words. The tool is simply a matter of taking a few moments to consider new ideas or options in a balanced way.

This may sound trivial, but if you think back a bit – how often do we do it? How many of the new things that came to us have we deliberately evaluated beyond our initial response? In how many meetings have all those assembled deliberately analysed both sides together, rather than simply taken sides?

By taking a more systematic approach to considering the things we encounter, we can spot new perspectives, new possibilities, new adventures, that we might otherwise miss.

So this week’s adventure is to practice and apply PMI, and to see what it does for you.

+ Green track - taking it in your stride

Balancing your mind

Simply take a recent idea or option that you dismissed. Or a new choice that you are already aware you need to make.

Use the PMI timer on the right (You can right-click it to copy and paste, or open it from this page).

Deliberately and determinedly use the time available in each session to focus only on the relevant perspective:

Plus: Pros and positive possibilities of taking this route. Its potential upsides – not just directly but indirectly, both short and longer term.
Minus: Cons and negative risks associated with this route. Its potential downsides for people, practice, plant, planet, over whatever timescales.
Interesting: Things that don’t fit in either camp. The questions that remain. The what-ifs, and the if-onlys.

And that is it. Reflect for a moment to see what impact the exercise has had on your perspective. To what extent might there be subtle differences in how you think and feel about the choice? See whether you believe it is something that was worth 5 minutes of your time.

+ Blue track - a bit of a workout (click to open)

Fairer debates

How well balanced is the exploration around the decisions we take in meetings?

There is a view that the balance is present in the debate, with alternate sides reflected in the arguments presented. But is that really true? Are both sides equally well equipped to think creatively about the plusses and minuses, and to express it cogently?

Do people deeply understand both perspectives? Or do we tend to find they only focus on the perspective they are arguing? And are those arguments fairly balanced in terms of airtime, vigour, persuasive force? Or is it biased toward the most dominant characters?

PMI does a great thing for teams. It helps them to ensure that the same skills and brain power are applied to both perspectives. The exercise opens people up to greater listening and insight, enabling their minds to better adventure into the possibilities. It is more efficient and objective. And it is more likely that the final decision carries everyone with it.

For your blue track, use PMI in your next team meeting for one of the decisions to be made. Simply share the timer. Or use the virtual flipchart (click on it to download the PowerPoint file).
At the end of it, develop your own perspective on how it went.

It is unlikely to be perfect first time through, but hopefully you can see how it might be improved for the future.

+ Red track - stepping up to bat (click to open)

Design Strategy

PMI can be surprisingly useful in a design task – a situation, where your team needs to propose a solution. We would suggest the following approach.

Split into breakout groups and ask each to propose their own idea or arrangement for the way forward.
Have each breakout present their proposal, and after each one have the whole group (including the proposing team) do a disciplined PMI exercise on that proposal
After the final PMI, ask the group to select one proposal (not necessarily the best). One that would be easiest to adapt by incorporating the good ideas from the other proposals.
Work through the ‘Minuses’ for that proposal. find things in the other proposals that can address each of these. Adapt the proposal to incorporate these.
Do a final PMI on the adapted proposal to test it out.

You may find the following resources helpful in tackling your challenge or in gaining further benefits from the skills and insights you develop

De Bono’s explanation of creative thinking as a web page and as a PDF
PMI explanation
Virtual Timers, including PMI Timer
Virtual Flipcharts including PMI Virtual Flipchart

To catch up on past adventures you may have missed, feel free to browse our Adventures Library

Let us know how you get on.
Share your experience, your insights and your observation using the comments section at the bottom of the Linkedin post.

And share your progress and insights with the Twitter LbA community using #leadingbyadventure

Useful links:

Picture of Whale Bones at Whitby - as symbol for fishbone diagram cause and effect

#018 – Diagnostic Bones – Fishbone Diagrams

04/05/202104/05/2021 by Mike Clargo

Look deeper than what at first appears; help your team solve issues at their root Picture of Whale Bones at Whitby - as symbol for fishbone diagram cause and effect - Source: Tim Hill via Pixabay

Please help us to get the word out in just two clicks – click here – then click the like button

Why take this challenge?

Solve problems once and for all

Resolve long term and recurring issues

Build your team’s understanding of causality

Graphic image reflecting different pathways to take the adventure

Developed in 1982 by Kaoru Ishikawa, the Fishbone Diagram (so-called because of its shape) is one of the most useful mechanisms for a team of people to systematically solve the problems they are facing. It helps people move beyond pet theories, simplistic explanations and blame. It uses structured creativity to broaden their view and develop a richer picture of causality – one that is more likely to contain the real issue(s) and new insights.

Like all management methods from Japan at that time, it is both simple and collaborative: Bringing people together to share deeper insight and understanding. And yet, in that simplicity lies a surprising power to reach past division, to educate, and to bond people in finding a way forward.

And despite its power and its popularity, it is now increasingly common to find people who have never used them, at least not within the last decade.
So the adventure this week, for you and your team, is to get out those bones, and remind yourself of how useful they can be.

+ Green track - taking it in your stride

See a deeper perspective through a fishbone diagram

The Green Track this week is simply to remind yourself (or to learn for the first time) how fishbones work. And to try it out on something simple.

You can quickly read up on the Ishikawa diagram using the links in the Pack section. And there is a nice graphic video you will find here (but please don’t pay too much attention to the Cs and Xs).

Then, download the template from the Virtual Flipcharts (or simply draw out your own) and write your choice of the following at the head of the fish:

We are losing too much time in poor meetings
We don’t get a lot of good creative ideas
I am finding myself too rushed at times

Or any other issue you might like to try it out upon. Then simply give it a go. But please include some wacky thoughts to provide space for insight and creativity to crystallise. And when you have finished. Just highlight a few of the ideas to: test out; ponder upon; validate; or simply do something about.

+ Blue track - a bit of a workout (click to open)

+ Red track - stepping up to bat (click to open)

You may find the following resources helpful in tackling your challenge or in gaining further benefits from the skills and insights you develop

To catch up on past adventures you may have missed, feel free to browse our Adventures Library

Let us know how you get on.
Share your experience, your insights and your observation using the comments section at the bottom of the Linkedin post.

And share your progress and insights with the Twitter LbA community using #leadingbyadventure

Useful links:

Picture metaphor for taking a strategic context (via SWOT)

#016 – Developing a strategic context

20/04/2021 by Mike Clargo

Use strategic perspective to tune into new opportunities in your fast-evolving reality – Fast, frequent SWOT analysis can help your team develop timely insights

Please help us to get the word out in just two clicks – click here – then click the like button

Why take this challenge?

Inspire and strengthen skills that help people rise above change

Develop agile strategic perspectives in your team

Keep on top of timely opportunities in a fun energetic way

Graphic image reflecting different pathways to take the adventure

There is a tendency (fuelled in part by the literature) to think of SWOT analysis as the conserve of Business Strategy.

And yet the technique and its ability to balance perspectives both optimistic and pessimistic, current and future, has a lot to offer almost any situation that might benefit from a creative solution (and what situation doesn’t these days).

The tool is great for understanding the strategic context of virtually anything – you, your team, your idea, your day, an event, a meeting, a course of action, locations, products, services, relationships, …

And in this fast evolving world in which we find ourselves, it is a technique that benefits from regular application. It can help us adapt and flex to changing context, shifting scope, and new boundaries.

Which is pretty good for a technique that takes less than 10 minutes, flags up new possibilities, and can save you hours of redundant effort.

So our adventure this week is about seeing this perspective on an aspect of your own situation, and seeing what it reveals to you anew.

+ Green track - taking it in your stride

SWOT yourself as a friend

So the green track adventure this week is to apply SWOT to something you may never have considered before – your role in a specific relationship. It can be a friend, a colleague, a family member, but pick someone specific – this will help you avoid drifting to generalities.

Download the 8 minute SWOT template, (you can find the link in the Pack section). Open it, and then open a second window and switch it to reading view. This will focus you on two minutes per section. Then work through the template:

Strengths – what about you particularly adds value to the relationship and help makes it strong?
Weaknesses – what about you and your behaviour means the relationship is not as strong as it could be?
Opportunities – what possibilities and ideas do you have for adding new value to the relationship?
Threats – what risks undermining the relationship and how it is working currently?

That is it. Our hope is that it may have exposed you to a new insight. And the insight is all you need, once we have that we can usually work out the rest for ourselves.

+ Blue track - a bit of a workout (click to open)

SWOT something your team is working on

The real value in using SWOT participatively with your team is that it generates and shares hidden insights, and builds collective ownership for them. Furthermore, doing it at pace helps to raise team energy and inspire insightful (even creative) leaps. And the fact that it only takes 8 minutes means that it can be used as a healthy, engaging introduction to virtually any topic.

So the blue track is to try this out. It can be on virtually any topic:

Aspects of the team’s relationships (intra- and inter-team), its creativity, culture, capabilities, learning
Aspects of its work – a current project, routine tasks, ad-hoc projects, reporting, reviewing
Or its readiness to tackle new things, in new ways

Or simply, whatever issue is foremost in your (its) mind at the moment. SWOT can help put it in context.

As with the green track, download the the 8 minute SWOT template, (You can find the link in the Pack section). Open it, and then open a second window and switch it to reading view. You can then either screen share the reading view window, or better still integrate it into your webcam.

+ Red track - stepping up to bat (click to open)

Building a pattern of SWOT

As the rate of change builds, people and teams will do one of two things.

They will either become submerged under it, feeling increasingly overwhelmed, driven to a series of short-term responses, too busy to look ahead or see new possibilities. They risk not only the joy of work, but their health and their potential also.

Or they will rise above it, disciplining themselves to maintain a balance between the operational and the strategic, able to see the overall direction and add value within that. They will see the adventure, and come to develop new skills and insights.

SWOT provides a means of introducing a regular cadence of lifting the team out of the detail and looking around and ahead from a more systemic meta-perspective. It can help your team develop their balance, and build skills of meta-thinking, life-long learning and growth mindset.

So the red-track this week is to set up a schedule of 8 minute SWOTs for your team, looking at different aspects of their work and situation, and providing them with a perspective from which they can better choose the right path.

You may find the following resources helpful in tackling your challenge or in gaining further benefits from the skills and insights you develop

To catch up on past adventures you may have missed, feel free to browse our Adventures Library

Let us know how you get on.
Share your experience, your insights and your observation using the comments section at the bottom of the Linkedin post.

And share your progress and insights with the Twitter LbA community using #leadingbyadventure