This is part of an effort to
- mine refine co-creative patterns
- build pattern languages and generative sequences as defined by Christopher Alexander.
See the ReadMe for more information
All work is licenced under CC-BY-SA unless stated otherwise.
Work in Progress just like unpolished diamonds, patterns need to be mined and refine to reach their full potential.
As you begin to collect, sort, and organize information it can quickly become overwhelming. How do you keep track of it all? The importance of artifacts as an aid to thinking can easily be illustrated if you imagine yourself playing a game of chess while blindfolded. It's possible to hold the positions of all the pieces in your mind's eye for a time - and most chess masters can do it for an entire game - but it's much easier to have the pieces diplayed on a board in front of you. The shape and color of each piece, and its pposition relative to the board and to other pieces, contains a rich set of information that can help you make better decisions about the game.
Knowledge is not tangible / visible, manipulating knowledge collectively is not easy In archeology, an artifact is anything made or shaped by a human hand - especially when it has archaeological or historical interest. In knowledge work, an artifact is any tangible, portable object that hold information. An artifact can be anything from a piece of paper to a sticky note or index card. Artifact make it easier to keep track of information by making it a part of the environment. The pieces in any game, such as card, counters, and dice are artifacts. when you do something as simple as moving salt and peppershakers on a tabletop to tall a story, you are transforming them into knowledge artifacts for the sake of your tale.
Artifacts are carrier of meaning; just like chess pieces on a board, they make knowledge or information explicit, tangible, portable and persistent. When you write an idea on a sticky note you are creating an information artifact. When you have created many such artifacts, they can become more or less useful depending on how you distribute them in your environment. The more information you can stiore in material objects or the environment, the more your player's mind are free to engage with the situation at hand.
Source: Gamestorming
Imagine trying to play chess without a board. A game like chess relies not only on the meaning of the pieces but also on the ever-changing relationships they have to each other in space. the grid of the chessboard creates a meaningful space as cleanly and as surely as the grid on any map. Both the grid and the pieces are integral and essential to the game. Just like every other game, chess creates a world that players can explore together. the chessboard (meaningful space) creates the boundaries of the world, and the pieces (artifacts) populate the world. The rules of the game govern what is and isn't possible in the world. chess players agree to enter the world in order to explore the possible permutations and combinations and try to achieve their goals, which, in the case of chess, are achieved at the expense of the other player. However in gamestorming, more often the players share a common goal. For the knowledge explorer, meaningful space can be created anywhere: on a whiteboard, flip chart, or piece of paper; on a tabletop or in a room. It's a way of framing any space to make relationships within it more meaningful. the grid, like the grid of a chessboard, is one of the most common and useful ways to organize space. You can see grids all around you; we use grids for everything from planning cities to managing numbers in our spreadsheets. Affinity mapping is a common method that uses meaningful space to sort a large set of nodes into a few common themes. It is a way to rapidly get a group of people aligned about what they are working on together. First generate a set of nodes using the Post-Up
Source: Gamestorming
Most meeting are confuse waste of time where no one is aligne on content and process
Therefore,
Making Both Process and Content Explicit
Sources:
- http://howtosavetheworld.ca/2015/06/21/the-meeting-map-making-both-process-and-content-explicit/
- http://emergingleaderlabs.org/gameshifting_overview
entropy is the natural tendency to disorder, but it is balanced by an opposing tendency toward self-organization or what we call life. This kind of self-organization happens whenever energy flows are sufficient to generate storages.A catchment is nature's method of wealth accumulation and energy storage.A catchment is a system for accumulating a critical mass of a needed resource, like water or soil minerals, in order to trigger self-organizing system, i.e., life forms, that then spread over the landscape. Some natural examples of catchment include the sun, plant carbohydrates, bodies of water, geothemral energy, and plate tectonics. How does catchment work? Since the “driving force behind all natural systems” is energy, catchment focuses on ways to capture naturally occurring flows of energy in such a way as to maximize the yield over time and space. Catchment works because a positive feedback loop is created for energy, even in improbably small or forbidding places.
Related: Energy cycling Produce no waste, Outputs become inputs
##Pioneers/weeds
Find and understand the pioneers/weeds
weeds grows in your garden, individuals don't behave the way you expect them to in your organization, and in both case the more you try to remove them, the more they keep coming back. As time goes you need to put in more and more energy to keep thing in balance.
In nature in a disturbed environnement, pioneer plants are the first to colonize a soil and improve it for future sucession cycles and other plants to come. Fine knoweldge of the species will tell you if a soil lacks certains mineral, has excess water, compaction,
Therefore having "weeds" is not a problem but merely an indication that there is a problem and this pioneers are actually working hard to fix it. Within organizations the same pattern occurs, pioneers have often seen problems others don't see and usually try to improve it, sometime at their expense. However, most often organizations tend to, at best, ignore these pioneers, and at worst try to remove them, thinking THEY are the problem without understanding they are both an indicator and a solution to problem. Therefore in any system, try to find and understand the pioneers as they will tell you a lot about what needs fixing and, if you let them, will start fixing it for you. Source: @lilious, inspired by permaculture
“You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete.”
― R. Buckminster Fuller
Systems contains far too many links and are far too complex to be changed.
In nature systems change by step by step evolution of a seed situation. Ecosystem evolves by SUCCESSION where PIONEERS SPECIES prepare the soil for more productive plants and animals.
In butterfly metamophosis, specialized cells called imaginal cells divide and start to grow within the existing caterpillar, and gradually feeding of the old system.
We can copy the way natural systems works.
Therefore,
if you want to change a system, plant or find seeds of the new system and nurture them until they are strong enough to feed of the old system themselves.
In organization such as institutions or large companies for example, start a new team/startup, or find if they are'nt already one, with the new culture you want to bring and help this team do what it already does. Slowly this can be open up to other part of the system to scale and slowly replace the former system.
each time one speaks right after someone else, leaving no space for breathing and creativity, the lower self takes control. This breath has many virtues. It helps participants to let go of their selfish urge to keep a grasp on the conversation. They can surrender to what emerges from the center. Participants offer time to themselves to observe their inner processes. What has just been said becomes deeply listened to and ‘breathed in.' Participants move from react (responding, taking the floor) to creation (inviting creativity through emergence). Interestingly, Source: JF Noubel http://noubel.fr/a-pelles-dair/
By center, we mean the physical center of a group in circle, or the experienced center in a global collective. Listen to the will that tries to manifest from the heart of the group. Give voice to it. This special mode of listening and voicing connects us to others and builds a sense of unity. Source: JF Noubel
Speak to the center rather than to a particular person. Participants agree not to engage in one-to-one conversations in the midst of the collective process. Although speaking and listening to the center may feel a little artificial at first, it allows the emergence of the whole and helps shift the whole dynamic of the group into a transpersonal context. Source: JF Noubel
Because time feels scarce, participants want to use this resource wisely and moderately. Notice that in groups where people interrupt one another or respond without leaving space, humans grab time the same way predators grab their prey in the wild―the strongest, the most agile, the fastest, the craftiest get the better share. Having the floor offered brings us in a give economy, just like when we seat around a table with kindly served and shared dishes. It creates an entirely new, benevolent group dynamic. JF Noubel
share personal experience invites boldness, vulnerability, trust and compassionate relationships. When a person speaks theoretically he/she separates himself/herself from the original experience, and places a barrier between him/her and the others. Here we check whether what we want to say imposes a generality on others, or if it might hide some personal story. Stories have the virtue of myths―they carry emotions, multilevel life experiences, cosmologies and vibrations―a much richer universe for a group to share. JF Noubel
Any participant can ask for silence at any moment. Conversation gets immediately suspended and everyone enters into silence for one minute. It offers the space to explore the current context at a deeper level, name our experience, explore our emotions, needs, sense of emergence in the group, etc. After this silent breathing space, the person who asked for the silence can decide –or not– to explain why he/she invited it. Conversation can then resume, likely filled with a new dimension. JF Noubel
E-Prime (short for English-Prime is a prescriptive version of the English language that excludes all forms of the verb to be. E-Prime does not allow the conjugations of to be—be, am, is, are, was, were, been, being— the archaic forms of to be (e.g. art, wast, wert), or the contracts of to be—'s, 'm, 're (e.g. I'm, he's, she's, they're). Some scholars advocate using E-Prime as a device to clarify thinking and strengthen writing. For example, the sentence "the film was good" could not be expressed under the rules of E-Prime, and the speaker might instead say "I liked the film" or "the film made me laugh". The E-Prime versions communicate the speaker's experience rather than judgment, making it harder for the writer or reader to confuse opinion with fact. JF Noubel https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E-Prime
Use words that open the conversation and the possibilities don't use "yes, but", use "How Might We", "yes and", 'and if' these words open up possibilities instead of closing the debate related: powerful questions
Shape powerful questions
People tend to rise to the assumptions made in the questions so it is good to both notice the assumptions being made in the question. A question can open or close the participants and the conversation. Active inquiry -- asking good questions and really listening well, or convening people to explore together powerful questions that have heart and meaning to them all -- can have a transformative effect. The transformative impact comes not from leaders knowing what to tell people, but from listeners or convenors knowing what to ask and creating an open-ended, vibrant space to explore in. In considering how we construct questions, there is a continuum that flows from less powerful to more powerful. The less powerful questions are ones that can be answered with a yes or no. Moving along the continuum, more powerful questions begin with when or who. The next level are questions that begin with how or what and even more powerful questions sometimes begin with why. I say sometimes, because sometimes the why questions also entrench people in their point of view if asked in such a way they invoke defensiveness. Ask why questions in ways they evoke curiosity and then you're onto something. There is a timeliness we generate when we put the word “now” in our question. “What you noticing now?” “What has your attention now?” Kathy Jourdain http://shapeshiftstrategies.wordpress.com/2011/11/15/shaping-powerful-questions/ http://www.co-intelligence.org/P-Questions.html Related: Use words that open the conversation and the possibilities
Carefully craft Check-in and Check-out processes to open and close your meetings
Check in and check out moment are extremely important in meetings and gatherings. Checkins are times where the individuals bond and align and set the stage for future interaction, Chekout times are moments where the group close the interaction and individuals go back to their routine. If these processes are neglected the interaction won't be harmonious
Related: Shape powerful questions, Create a delightful inviting space
great decision-making acceleration criterion, this is similar to the beta mode used by developpers and close to the "build a proof of concept/prototype" pattern via @sebpaquet
discussion of what can be done or what should be done can go on forever and be very improductive.
Therefore,
Build a proof of concept/prototype to demonstrate possibilities and to show people what can happen. It doesn' need to be perfect of fancy, you just need something to show it's possible. Having a prototype helps communicate about the project, test the hypothesis, idea, concept, formalize ideas around the project and create a shared understanding. Focussing on building something real changes the relationship to the project. Adding a time constraint in the prototype design forces people to focus on the core of the project. http://makestorming.com/prototype-lets-do-it/
musicians tune their instrument before playing to make sure they are all on the same vibe. in the same spirit a group might tune in to be able to play in harmony. see "shared understanding"
related: check-in, check-out
in a group, social status can influence group interact, people without degrees can be impressed by people with big titles, amateurs by professionals. when having a creative meeting with people from various background, it can be interesting NOT to introduce anyone. In that way, everyone is equal, every idea speaks for itself whether coming from a ceo, cleaning person @lilious
Not working out loud means we work in private at the pace we want, but we may miss out on important information. Other people cannot become engaged in what we're working on and may feel like we're doing things to them rather than with them. Working in isolation, giving others no visibility could also lead to duplicated effort because people don't know what's being worked on. Working out loud is the art of narrating, and doing, our work in public. It's about doing what we do in a visible way to our colleagues. Other people may have knowledge, experience and perspectives that could improve the quality of our decisions. We don't know what we don't know. Working out loud means people that we may not even know exist can see what we're working on and offer input to help us make better decisions based on information from people closer to the act. Another reason to work or think outloud is the so called "audience effect", a shift in our performance when we know people are watching. It isn't always positive, Yet studies have found that the effort of communicating to someone else forces you to pay more attention and learn more. @lilious https://about.yammer.com/yammer-blog/working-loud-mythbusting-tips/ http://johnstepper.com/2012/05/26/working-out-loud-your-personal-content-strategy/ http://www.wired.com/opinion/2013/09/how-successful-networks-nurture-good-ideas/all/ http://www.wired.com/2013/09/how-successful-networks-nurture-good-ideas-2/all
To be caught in the ennui of depression or the agitation of anxiety is to be barred from flow. Flow is the mental state of operation in which a person performing an activity is fully immersed in a feeling of energized focus, full involvement, and enjoyment in the process of the activity. In essence, flow is characterized by complete absorption in what one does. Proposed by Mihály Csíkszentmihályi, this positive psychology concept has been widely referenced across a variety of fields. According to Csikszentmihalyi, flow is completely focused motivation. It is a single-minded immersion and represents perhaps the ultimate experience in harnessing the emotions in the service of performing and learning. In flow, the emotions are not just contained and channeled, but positive, energized, and aligned with the task at hand. @lilious https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flow_%28psychology%29#Conditions_for_flow Make it difficult but not too much * When a challenge is to high this can lead to anxiety, when skills are high but challenge is low, this can lead to boredom Balance challenges with participants skills to create a state of flow. When challenges is high but gives a possibility for participants to use their skills at a high levels a state of flow can be reached. Good games use this pattern. @lilious Make it Playful, Make it difficult but not too much Transparency & Mirror to change behavior maybe 2 patterns here: transparency is a powerful force for change. Mirror effect (for example a map showing a global perspective can change the perception and also lead to change. Transparency can be used to change the behavior of an organization or a group that doesn't behave according to stated values, with other people view (society) acting as a mirror. http://www.shareable.net/blog/can-participatory-mapping-save-the-commons
Naming something is like shining a light to make something stand out and be visible to everyone.
When you name somethin you give it a reality. Name embodies intent or a way to look at things.A name sends a message by itself and naming shows your intent and its clarity (or lack of). Pay extreme attention when you name something and make sure it align with your intent. (exemple "marathon" or "sprint" don't send the same message than "party")
Similar: Group Works NAMING
Use hashtags and other symbols to enhance words online
in online media users needs to add extra meaning/playction to certain words (tags, mentions) without extra work of using html or something else. Using #hashtags or @mention is a low tech way to "enhance" words playctions and distinguish them from normal words. This technique also allow both users and algorithms to understand and distinguish this extra meaning. twitter http://mashable.com/2014/01/14/social-web-language/
Create a safe container for group interactions.
Professionals of collaborative practices often stress the importance of a clean beginnings. Whenever you take on any hard, collaborative project, you have to expect that it will get messy in the middle. If you take the time to set up conditions for success at the beginning of the project, you will greatly increase your chances of surviving — even thriving in — that mess. Folks in this business often refer to this as “creating a safe container.” Creating a safe container consists of three subpatterns: Literally creating a delightful, inviting space (physical, virtual, or both) in which the group can interact http://fasterthan20.com/2014/01/the-art-of-the-start/
Similar: Group Works OPENING AND WELCOME
The physical spaces in which we work have a huge impact on our ability to work effectively. Dark, tight spaces affect the mood of the group. The seating arrangement can physically reinforce certain power dynamics. If it's hard to get to the whiteboard, people won't use it. These issues don't just apply to physical space. If your group has a weekly two-hour phone call with poor audio quality and no shared display, people will dread (or simply tune out) those calls. If you have chosen to interact using an online tool that nobody knows how to use, then no one will use it. Spatial issues may seem trivial, but I think they are just as important as facilitation. Literally creating a delightful, inviting space (physical, virtual, or both) in which the group can interact.
Therefore,
Create a delightful, inviting space. If you want to contribute to great collaborative experiences, investing in great space and great food are two of the easiest and most impactful ways to do that. Creating an inviting, delightful space is not just about physical or even virtual space. Language, for example, is a big part of this. Eugene Eric Kim http://fasterthan20.com/2014/01/the-art-of-the-start/ http://eekim.com/blog/2013/03/three-simple-hacks-for-making-delightful-virtual-spaces/ pool of light, seats, language Developing shared understanding among the group, Making explicit working agreements.
Similar: Group Works AESTHETICS OF SPACE
Develop shared understanding among the group
The group norming process is about developing shared understanding,which leads to greater trust and stronger relationships. The default way to build shared understanding is to work together. There are great merits to this, but they are easily neutralized or worse if you don't take the time to have explicit conversations about norms as well. The simplest first step is to carve out time to have those conversations as a group. Others tricks: is to tap into people's personal experiences and values, design these experiences to be in-the-flow as much as possible. Eugene Eric Kim http://fasterthan20.com/2014/01/the-art-of-the-start/
** Make explicit working agreements **
making explicit agreements on how you'd like to work together to be one of the most valuable things a group can do, whether it's a small team or a large network. Establishing working agreements has two other important effects, especially with larger groups. First, it makes everyone accountable for holding him- or herself and each other to these agreements. Often, in large meetings, people depend on a facilitator to keep the conversation constructive and civil. That indeed is one of the facilitator's responsibilities, but it's a muscle that everyone in the group should be exercising. In healthy groups, everybody will help each other abide by these agreements.Second, they set agreed-upon conditions for kicking people out of a group. A lot of people fear open processes, because they're worried that others will hijack the conversation, and they mistakenly assume that you can't kick people out of an open conversation. If you create clear working agreements up-front, and if you make sure people are aware of those agreements, then when people unapologetically cross the line, you have the right to expel them. Eugene Eric Kim http://fasterthan20.com/2014/01/the-art-of-the-start/
"The Magical Number Seven, Plus or Minus Two: Some Limits on Our Capacity for Processing Information" is one of the most highly cited papers in psychology. It is often interpreted to argue that the number of objects an average human can hold in working memory is 7 ± 2. This is frequently referred to as Miller's Law. Empircally it seems the same number range works well for small group meetings. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Magical_Number_Seven,_Plus_or_Minus_Two
Similar: Dunbar numbers, two-pizza teams
Dunbar's number is a suggested cognitive limit to the number of people with whom one can maintain stable social relationships. By using the average human brain size and extrapolating from the results of primates, he proposed that humans can only comfortably maintain 150 stable relationships. Proponents assert that numbers larger than this generally require more restrictive rules, laws, and enforced norms to maintain a stable, cohesive group. It has been proposed to lie between 100 and 230, with a commonly used value of 150 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunbar%27s_number
Similar: The Magical Number Seven, Plus or Minus Two
Tell a powerful story
In the field of co-intelligence, stories are more than dramas people tell or read. Story, as a pattern, is a powerful way of organizing and sharing individual experience and exploring and co-creating shared realites. It forms one of the underlying structures of reality, comprehensible and responsive to those who possess what we call narrative intelligence. Our psyches and cultures are filled with narrative fields of influence, or story fields, which shape the awareness and behavior of the individuals and collectives associated with them. Tom Atlee http://www.co-intelligence.org/I-powerofstory.html
Similar: Group Works STORY
Patterns languages only work when the pattern are used in the correct order/sequence. To identify the mainframe patterns that form the whole, start by asking why you are doing what you are doing. Clarifying intent and why you are doing thing is a prequisite for any patterning.
Walking seems to be a great way to let ideas settle down on their own and many brilliant thinker or artists use walk or movements (train, ...) to let ideas mature and increase creativity
When dealing with a complex situation start by writing what's known When dealing with complex systems and situations, the amount of information can be overwhelming and thoughts will either rotate endlessly or alternatively the blank page blockage might occur. Whether to get parasitic thoughts out of your mind or to unlock a blockage, start putting down on paper the current situation, what is know and what you want to achieve. When dealing with emotional issue, write a letter to yourself or someone else, you don't have to actually send the letter, but you can keep it or burn it. The letter itself is not important, it is the process of getting your thoughts out or expressing yourself that is important. Similarly you can keep a book and record your thoughts there. When dealing with a complex topic writing down what is known helps your mind settle down and get in the state where it can see more clearly what is important. When trying to write an article about a complex topic, writing what's known helps you pass the blank page syndrome and jump into writing mode, and slowly you'll get into what you want to write about. inspired by @sotmani
Changing yourself doesn't work, no matter how hard you try. You might make plans and force yourself, but this kind of change will not last. Human are sensitive being and emotional sponges. We respond to the environment around us, whether physical or psychological. Research has shown we tend to become like people who surround us, so one of the easiest way to change is surround yourself with the kind of people you yourself would like to become. Similarly the physical environment influence us: noise, light, speed, distance, energy make it easy or more difficult to be ourselves an can create or resolve tensions so pay attention to how your environnement, habits, and people around you make you feel whole or fragmented and change your environment as you become aware of what make you feel more alive. inspired by @sotmani #Eat your own dog food
When you build a service or a product, can you use this service or product yourself.
The most common sense of the phrase is also known as the droste effect, describing the visual experience of standing between two mirrors, seeing an infinite reproduction of one's image, but the phrase has several other meanings in the realm of the creative arts and literary theory. In Western art history, "mise en abyme" is a formal technique in which an image contains a smaller copy of itself, in a sequence appearing to recur infinitely; "recursive" is another term for this. When designing a system, try and create recursive loops for example by "eating your own dog food". An exemple of this would be to co-create an event designed to create co-creative events @lilious https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mise_en_abyme
##Two-pizza teams
As group size grows, you simply can't have as meaningful of a conversation with every person, which is why people start clumping off into smaller clusters to chat. The cost of coordinating, communicating, and relating with each other snowballs to such a degree that it lowers individual and team productivity. "The larger a group, the more process problems members encounter in carrying out their collective work …. Worse, the vulnerability of a group to such difficulties increases sharply as size increases." To tackle complex or large projects it seems important to scale up team by adding more members. Yet, as team numbers grows, the number of links between people grows exponentially, team members need to communicate to work effectivelly together, yet as the number of potential connections grows, the amount of comunication needed grows as well. However it is not the quantity of communication that matters but the quality, and in large groups it becomes impossible to have both quality and quantity of communication small teams make it easier to communicate more effectively rather than more, to stay decentralized and moving fast, and encourage high autonomy and innovation. Jeff Bezos http://www.businessinsider.com/science-behind-jeff-bezos-pizza-rule-2014-9 Similar: Small work groups, The Magical Number Seven, Plus or Minus Two
#Double-linking between teams source: sociocracy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sociocracy#Organizing_in_circles_.28principle_2.29
#Semi-autonomous circles Each circle has the responsibility to execute, measure, and control its own processes in achieving its goals. It governs a specific domain of responsibility within the policies of the larger organization. Circles are also responsible for their own development and for each member's development. Often called "integral education," the circle and its members are expected to determine what they need to know to remain competitive in their field and to reach the goals of their circle. sociocracy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sociocracy#Organizing_in_circles_.28principle_2.29
##Support the women
In most societies, men tend to dominate the debate, hold the power and rule everything while women as they don't fight for power as men do are often left behind and not considered. Their salaries are often lower, while tend work as much if not more than men. In politics and governance, old men tend to conquer and retain power. In poor countries men tend to spend money on themselves, buying alcohool, drugs, sex, gamble most of the time at the expense of their family.
However studies have shown women manage money more fairly and distribute it in the family/community, looking equally after old people, children, and husband. Other studies have shown the collective intelligence and performance of a group is directly correlated with the percentage of women within the group. The reason proposed by authors is women generally have more empathy and smoothen social relationships, improving the functioning of the group. although women can have some of men's defaults and men can have some women's qualities, since men tend to dominate the groups, as a general rule strive to support women in whatever they do. You don't need ton't tell them what to do or influence what how they do it. They generally know what they do or how to do it. Just support what they already do, even if it is only by a quiet support. ##Story structure
**Situation, complication, and resolution story structure **
One of the reasons presentations are dull is because there are no identifiable story patterns. Whether for writing a movie or a business presentation, the most simplistic way to describe the structure of a story is situation, complication, and resolution. From mythic adventures to recollections shared around the dinner table, all stories follow this pattern. (RELATABLE AND LIKABLE HERO, ENCOUNTERS ROADBLOCKS, EMERGES TRANSFORMED) Great stories introduce you to a hero to whom you can relate. The hero is usually a likeable sort who has an acute desire or goal that is threatened in some way. As the story unfolds and trials are met with triumph, you cheer for the hero until the story is resolved and the hero is transformed. As author Robert McKee explains, “Something must be at stake that convinces the audience that a great deal will be lost if the hero doesn't obtain his goal.” If nothing is at risk, then it's not interesting.
when feeling sorry for yourself, do something kind for someone else.