The woman who drew this was trim, coiffed and perfectly dressed. Her blond flip hair-do and “had-to-have-been-a-cheerleader” demeanor did not make ANY sense when she present this map to the group. She said, “This is me. And I do everything I can to protect my people from all the problems and interference that come down
A meeting just like many of the meetings we are forced to attend. Particularly if you work in a government office or a large company. The speaker in the middle is duplicated somewhere else with the same archetypes. Which one are you? Most reactions to this drawing are “I’ve been all of them at one
Every so often, senior leadership decides that a new system will solve all our problems. They know there will be a “period of adjustment” but this drawing communicates the emotional costs in a way that is hard to ignore. The minute this metaphor map appeared a room full of fifty people started laughing in recognition.
Virtual teams can work but this particular member of a virtual team didn’t feel like she was part of a team at all. The meeting was the first time the eight people had met in the same room for a year. Each of them performed the same role at their individual business units, but no
It is frustrating to be the one collecting data. Quality and Safety managers don’t know what works if they can’t measure results. Personally I hate people measuring me, and I have a gut resentment against those who think I need measuring. The person who drew this map drew it for people like me. I look
Guess who drew this map? If you need a tip, the only people who can stop the whole world from exploding is management. Management has the scissors, the fuse is on their side and instead of cutting it they are spending time fighting. All the damage of course will be to the “field.” Headquarter and
According to Pew research, disdain between opposing political parties in America has doubled in the last 30 years, coincidentally the span of my own consulting business, Group Process Consulting. My efforts to document true stories about these escalating conflicts inadvertently produced a set of oral histories across the years: Territorial Games (1997), A Safe Place
“Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it everywhere, diagnosing it incorrectly and applying the wrong remedies.” Groucho Marx Troublemakers erode trust faster than we can build it back right now. Yet, many of these “troubles” are invented conflicts that distort predictably contrasting values. It helps to know what to look for. And once
I’ve been trying to infiltrate the halls of power for decades. My secret mission is to increase the diversity of thought by teaching those without a voice how to tell their stories and by teaching leaders how to find and retell stories that broaden everyone’s understanding.
We need a Magic School for Storytellers Thirty years before J. K. Rowling created Harry Potter, Ursula Le Guin’s Earthsea series imagined a magic school that taught apprentice sorcerers how to avoid abusing the power of magic. Le Guin points out early in the series that “even to light a candle is to cast a
Truth in Storytelling When I wrote the first edition of The Story Factor twenty years ago, I began with the idea that people don’t want more information. They want faith in you and your positive intentions. I never suspected that two decades later we’d be discussing an explosion of stories that intentionally undermine this faith. Without
