5 Rich Pictures

Changing a culture, ways of working, addressing problems and challenges, and dealing with complexity, within organisations – requires a holistic, broad perspective. It is very easy to take a local view of what is going on in problem situations during ongoing cycles of organisational change, and to seek to positively influence what is going on. The situation is usually more than just one issue. There is usually an interrelationship between multiple ideas, events, perspectives, systems, and so on.

A very simple yet rich way of understanding the bigger picture is to draw one. ‘Rich pictures’ are useful when lots of different people are involved, all of whom have different ideas of what the problem is and how to improve the situation. They encourage a systemic and cultural view of the problem situation that takes account of interaction effects between different elements of the system – including people! Healthy connections lead to healthy systems and in human systems the connection points are mostly the conversations that people have with each other.

Take a moment to look over the image below. What do you see? What might this suggest to you? What is the ‘story’ behind this and what are the participants perhaps thinking?

Now that you have taken some time to reflect on the image, please watch the video below for some more insights.

I encourage you to use this technique as you explore your Workplace Project and its genesis. What is it that you are exploring? What are the drivers of the situation or context? What are the intriguing or irritating or inexplicable factors, people, ideas – the ‘stuff’ – that you can get out of your heads and onto the storyboard, whether it is tangible or virtual?

What are the conversations that the process stimulates? What are some outcomes and insights?

Here are a few tips about the process. As an aside, as someone who has used this for years, and also facilitated many of such sessions, outstanding artistic abilities are not necessary. Once you get started, it isn’t really about the ‘drawing’. Plus you don’t have to ‘like’ this approach  either. The process itself leads to outcomes and better thinking.

• • Only use words when ideas fail you.
  • You don’t need a particular style or structure on the picture – ‘allow’ rather
    than force.
  • Place elements of the problem situation anywhere on the paper
  • Include people and emotions as well as the ‘hard’ elements of buildings, structures, numbers etc.
  • It’s not a piece of art – it’s a depiction of your view of reality.
  • Others might draw ‘reality’ a little differently from you!