At 05:26 AM 4/11/2008, you wrote:

Jeff,

Thank you.  Your video description [ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pxS5wUljfjE] is very helpful to me in making a distinction between a powerful anthropological approach for supporting group dialogue versus more structured, designed interventions.

Can you comment on the pathway that a mapper needs to follow to develop a level of skill to assure value to the dialogue group? 

Hi Tom -- great questions!

I've been teaching dialogue mapping for almost 20 years and I've just recently come to the realization that I haven't been doing it very well, simply based on the number of people who get excited, come to a workshop, and then fail to integrate it into their work.  In the past my mantra for mastery has been "Practice, practice, practice", but that lets me as the teacher of DM off the hook too easily.

Many people get very excited when they encounter the concept of dialogue mapping.  The need for better structure in meetings and on-line discussion groups is obvious, so the promise of DM is very enticing.  And IBIS, the core grammar, is just questions, answers, pros & cons ... how much simpler can you get??  So people get very excited and enthusiastic about using dialogue mapping in the groups they work with.  But there is a "zone of disillusionment" that most people encounter once they get in and actually try to map out a real problem, even alone.  You discover all kinds of challenges to getting what's in your head into a map, and the maps you make aren't as great as you thought they would be, and you get disillusioned.  And a lot of people have stopped there, I think.

My new mission for training is to design tutorials, examples, exercises, simulations, etc.that anticipate the snags and pitfalls in the learning process and help more people get through the steepest part of the learning curve, so that they begin to experience more grace and power with the process.  The 2-day workshop will always be an essential piece of the learning process, because there's a certain amount of the dance that's not conceptual but more like a craft skill that you really only get by working with somebody who's good at it.  But I switching now to use video and other media to help people master issue mapping (using IBIS to build effective maps of complex issues) before they try to do it on the fly with groups working on tough issues, and interactive webinars to support workshop graduates in the on-going learning and mastery process.

Do mappers work in teams? 

It's a practical and economic question, really.  It's usually better to have 2 people, one doing the up front work with the group and the other doing the mapping.  It's a lot less demanding than trying to play both roles yourself (unless you're mapping with a facilitator who doesn't get the principles of shared display, in which case the separated roles is a nightmare!).  But as a professional dialogue mapper I find it is harder to sell two people than one, so I'm used to doing it on my own.

I can imaging that as dialogue gets into an accelerated pace, the job of tracking the comments, the root questions (implicit and explicit), the pros and the cons ... can get very challenging.

It can be, but it's not meant to be a superhuman feat of concentration and endurance!  Part of what's going on is that as the mapper you need to actively assert the value of map, by incrementally jumping into the conversation to validate what you've captured.  And as you do this the group learns about the process, learns that it's not the same old everyone-talk-at-once-so-we-call-get-to-say-what-we-want process, and that there's really benefit to slow down for listening, understanding, and creating a clear & robust map.  Then the group is on your side and they help you.  That said, the mapper must also be completely fluent in IBIS, the principle question types and the skill of distinguishing out the hidden questions (especially left hand moves!), dealing with debate, etc. as well as being fluid and masterful with Compendium or whatever tool you're using to create the shared display.

Also, can you comment on the evolution of a dialogue map as a dialogue pacing instrument to allow groups to be reflective even as they are being generative?

There's a natural spectrum, from "taking notes" at one end to "facilitating a robust sense making dialogue" at the other, that every dialogue mapper is working in.  A lot depends on your contract with the client, the objectives of the session, and the sophistication of the group.  One of the primary benefits of a shared dialogue map is that by it's mere presence it pulls the group members in the direction of being reflective about what they're saying, where they are and where they're going, and what is still missing to get traction on a problem.  If a session devolves to note taking on steroids (i.e. big bright screen with detailed issue map that no one is paying any attention to), then you don't get much of that reflective/generative magic.  In the end it's largely a matter of the dialogue mapper having the skill and confidence to authorize themselves in creating a new pattern with a group.

Thanks for the great questions!
Jeff

Tom Flanagan, Ph.D., MBA
Director, SouthCoast Community Collaborative Design Studio

SoCo Community Collaborative Design Studio is a project of the Community Foundation of Southeastern Massachusetts.  Our mission is to build community capacity through demonstration and application of advanced collaborative design technologies.

VOICE: 508-264-0066
EMAIL: TRFlanagan@...
WEBSITE:  http://socodesign.wetpaint.com/

"All democracy is local."



**************
Planning your summer road trip? Check out AOL Travel Guides.
( http://travel.aol.com/travel-guide/united-states?ncid=aoltrv00030000000016 )

Dr. Jeff Conklin
CogNexus Institute ... Collaborative Display, Collective Intelligence
http://cognexus.org   Phone: +1-707-256-3425  Fax: +1-707-256-3903
1037 Juarez St., Napa, CA  94559    USA