Imagery should be part of strategic discussion to enhance communication and create a shared vision of the future. While looking at generic pictures can be useful in stimulating new ideas, it is important for people to create their own images. Visual art/imagery can be used to enhance Strategic Planning, Design, Appreciative Inquiry (AI) Theory U, and Future Search processes. No artistic talent or experience is required for these processes.
What is art for?
We tend to think of visual art as a form of decoration, yet it serves many functions. Art teaches us to see. Images communicate more powerfully than words and have a language of their own. They are inherently rich in metaphor and symbolism. Visualizing information helps us see patterns, make connections, think metaphorically, decipher complexity, discern emerging futures and create shared visions. The images we create illustrate how differently we see things, and help us appreciate that many points of view contribute to the whole.
Art is an invitation to have a conversation.
Art is a potent catalyst for a deeper inquiry into business issues, providing the means for 'artful reflection' in organizational development. Art helps define who we are and what we stand for. Its function is to express meaning - in our relationship with ourselves, with each other, the world we live in, and with God. The arts lead us to wisdom and truth.
Through art we can make it safe ask the deeper questions that lead to the emotional truth about a situation. Art creates a bonding experience that facilitates collaboration and accelerates the ability get to the heart of a problem. Images externalize the unconscious and make tacit knowledge visible.
Collaborative art-making processes help nurture relationships between dissimilar groups, fostering an appreciation for diverse and pluralistic points of view.
Art making helps us slow down, quiet the mind and put us in touch with our inner wisdom. MacLuhan said artists are the radar of the future. How? The art making process takes people out of the realm of analytical thinking and into the realm of silence, reverie, and heightened awareness. Art is a means of awakening the human spirit.
Artful Reflection and Leadership Presence
Otto Scharmer's Theory U: Leading from the Future as It Emerges
Theory U provides a language and structure for arts-based learning and reflection , as a co-creative process for leadership, collaboration and innovation.
Scharmer defines Presencing as a seven step process which involves two kinds of learning: Learning from the past (downloading) and learning from the future (crystallizing). (Blind spot 2003, Presencing 2004)
1. Downloading (mental models reflecting past experience, projecting habits of thought)
2. Seeing: precise observation from outside
3. Sensing: perception from within the field/whole
4. Presencing: perception from the source/highest future possibility (allowing, letting go)
5. Crystallizing vision and intent (letting in, aha moment of insight, emerging reality)
6. Prototyping (translating insight to concrete form)
7. Embodying the new in practices, routines, and infrastructures.
Visual dialogue combines visual thinking processes — which involve painting, clay, drawing or diagramming— with Appreciative Inquiry.
Participants make thoughts visible, create a crucible for meaningful conversation, bring insights and new ideas into sharper focus, and make tacit knowledge concrete. These processes help organizations create desired futures, and engage people in bringing about positive change.
Appreciative Inquiry
Visual dialogue combines visual thinking processes — which involve painting, clay, drawing or diagramming— with Appreciative Inquiry (AI). AI begins with a grounded observation of the "best of what is," then through vision and logic the group collaboratively articulates "what might be," ensuring the consent of those in the system to "what should be" and collectively experimenting with "what can be.”
Appreciative Inquiry (AI) is the cooperative search for the best in people, their organizations, and the world around them. It involves systematic discovery of what gives a system "life" when it is most effective and capable in economic, ecological, and human terms. AI involves the art and practice of asking questions that strengthen a system's capacity to heighten positive potential. It mobilizes inquiry through crafting an "unconditional positive question" often involving hundreds and sometimes thousands of people.
In AI, intervention gives way to imagination and innovation; instead of negativity, criticism, and spiraling diagnosis there is discovery, dream, and design. AI assumes that every living system has untapped, rich, and inspiring accounts of the positive. Link this "positive change core" directly to any change agenda, and changes never thought possible are suddenly and democratically mobilized.
Excerpted from Appreciative Inquiry, part of the Collaborating for Change series. (Cooperrider and Whitney) Edited by Peggy Holman and Tom Devane Published by Berrett-Koehler Communications
Applications
Strategic Planning
Training
Meeting facilitation
Branding
Leadership and Team Development
Outcomes
Develop visual, metaphoric and symbolic thinking skills
Engage hearts and minds of employees
Transform boring meetings into inspired creativity
Drive innovation
Think strategically
