Roots...

It doesn't look like this image will make it into the Martin Buber film that Hugh is making for the Mexico conference.

But I kinda like it...

It is a picture that I borrowed from Rachel Piper (who does some gorgeous woodland shots). OK, to be honest, I have somewhat abused her work after being inspired by a card in the British Library. The card showed an old negative image of a tree and it had been left the wrong way up on the shelf...

The image took me back to a moment in a very particular dialogue.

A few of years ago, I was walking with my son, who was about 8 years old at the time, through some woodland on the edge of the Conway Valley in Wales.  Our conversation went like this:

Me: Hey - do you think if you touch a tree it can actually feel you doing that?

Him: Yep.

Me: You seem pretty sure about that... Trees do that kinda thing?

Him: Of course they can feel you.... They can feel you before you touch them.

Me: Huh? How does that work...?

Him: You're standing on their roots...

And with that, the world turned upside-down.

Virtually there...

A while ago I was sitting with my meus co-director Ty Francis at Manchester airport waiting for a flight to Switzerland.  We were both tapping away on our phones - occasionally taking a moment to fall into a real conversation but the quickly drifting back into our virtual worlds.

For two organisation consultants who specialise in presence and relational practice the irony was not lost on us.

So we tweeted about it.  Then we took photos and tweeted them too...

Now I see that Social Media Anxiety Disorder (SMAD) might be the next illness we create.

And so I've become fascinated with images of people wandering around in their virtual worlds, oblivious to all around them, sometimes with faces lit up by the glow of the tiny screens. It's all rather magical and rather beautiful, I think.

Or maybe I'm a little bit SMAD....

Yeah, anyway, you can follow me on Twitter...!

Update (29 Apr): See this NYTimes article on the disconnecting nature of our virtual conversations.

All of This and Nothing

I've been working with my Ashridge colleague Hugh P on a dialogue project which will celebrate a new translation of Martin Buber's 'I and Thou.'

Buber's work is often seen as one of the founding texts of conversational practice and dialogue; he believes in the fundamental wholeness of nature and our complete participation in it.  Hugh has been working with a short piece of Buber's work, "I consider a tree...'" and we have been asking top academics from the fields of physics, mathematics, botany, ecology and art, "So, how do you see a tree?"  In turn, I have been working photographically with the various responses to produce images for a film which Hugh will present at a conference in Mexico next month.

This image came from our conversation with the brilliant Andrew Steane, Professor of Physics at Exeter College, Oxford.  Andrew guided us into through the matter and forces that make up a tree before takinging us into the shadowy world of quantum physics where the idea of matter itself becomes erm... problematic...  We know that we have information pointing to the existence of matter but actually putting a finger on it....

So, here is my quantum tree.  We can see information that leads us to think of the tree but... it kind of isn't really there....

Martin Buber - I consider a tree

I can look on it as a picture: stiff column in a shock of light, or splash of green shot with the delicate blue and silver of the background.

I can perceive it as movement: flowing veins on clinging, pressing pith, suck of the roots, breathing of the leaves, ceaseless commerce with earth and air - and the obscure growth itself.

I can classify it in a species and study it as a type in its structure and mode of life.

I can subdue its actual presence and form so sternly that I recognize it only as an expression of law...

I can dissipate it and perpetuate it in number...

In all this the tree remains my object, occupies space and time, and has its nature and constitution.

It can, however, also come about, if I have both will and grace, that in considering the tree I become bound up in relation to it. The tree is no longer It. I have been seized by the power of exclusiveness.

The Creative Moment

So much of our 'creativity' work in organisations assumes that we should work together in some kind of perpetual collective brainstorm.

My Photo-Dialogue work with the London designers showed that collective work was only a part of their process.  Indeed, their creative group work seemed to take place in just twos and threes. None of the big corporate jamboree stuff that is usually so popular.

I know that 'big, diverse, sociable and provocative' has a place in promoting innovation and change in our businesses and social institutions.

Yet our inquiry into design processes showed that, where moments of creative breakthrough are concerned, the potential for providing space so that people can be 'Alone and in the Zone' is often under-estimated. 

The Red Fingernail of Detail

Here is another image from the series made as we used reportage photoraphy to inquire into the organisational conditions required for amazing creativity and innovation in a top London design studio.

We worked through a loose Appreciative Inquiry approach and sifted pictures of what might have been 'moments of breakthrough'.  Choosing photographs that resonated with team's actual experience of great design processes, we found that critical themes emerged. And so, this particular design team, alongside 'Alone and in the Zone', seen here on P-D, repeatedly selected to this image as a representation of what became named as 'The Red Fingernail of Detail'.

As we continued to inquire appreciatively with the designers we surfaced exactly how important attention to detail was in defining their sense of value and creativity.  Nothing slapdash or rough-cut for this team; they paid exquisite attention to their work, sometimes in spite of other organisational and business demands.

And so the managerial challenge, if design brilliance and innovation is a fundamental requirement (and not many people would argue against that these days), rather than typically trying to get more from less or being overly directive and 'efficient', becomes 'how do we support the conditions that encourage the unique capability of this team?'

As Appreciative Inquiry guru David Cooperrider says, our positive images of the future lead our positive actions - and so "the artful creation of positive imagery on a collective basis may be the most prolific thing any inquiry can do."

Creative Shift

Clay sculpting tools

This image is one of a series that I made at Ashridge when the  ADOC students worked with the amazing sculptor Kathy Iffla.  

 Kathy Iffla

Kathy had arranged for normally beautiful Monk's Barn facilitatation room to be covered with blue plastic and for each student to have a desk and a block of clay. 

The creative opportunity was to work with some of the creative issues that the particpants' doctoral work was generating in a medium that stepped back from the broadly written/spoken academic tradition.  The shift to working with clay; 3D, felt, experiential and sensual also shifted perspective and opened up new insights.  Each sculpture became it's own mini-change project as the work, under Kathy's instruction, was carried out in complete silence.

Then came a critical moment.

After a period of working on the clay, Kathy asked the particpants to move places and to work on somebody else's project.  And so here was the creative 'crunch'; what to do? Is it OK to assume ownership? How much is it OK to introduce new ideas? Surely this is someone else's 'baby'?  How attached can we afford to become this work? Who am I to mess around with someone else's stuff?

All, of course, excellent questions for anyone working with creativity and innovation in organisational change and a series of conversatons during the workshop began to develop further insight into the clay sculptures and their meaning for change practitioners.

Here are some of the incredible, sliently co-created pieces of work: