Story Clarification
From MhWiki
Story Clarification is the first (SOURCE) process in Participatory Strategic Culture. By focusing on drawing experiences from Participants in an Enterprise, Story Clarification contextualizing those stories in light of realities from Information sources, and recasting these clarified stories to focus and energize Direction. Story clarification is a key element of the Strategy area on the Strategic Sequence.
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SSD Process
Story clarification follows the Source-Spin-Drive model according two three process motions:
- Gathering Experiences: draws narrative into the process and builds the strength of each story component.
- Clarifying with Context: tests and refines each story component within the real context by adding data, knowledge, and experimentation.
- Recasting Clarified Stories: deploys reality-refined stories for participant ownership and empowerment.
Gathering Experiences
| alpha (a1) advancing pull | beta (b1) deepening pull | constant(c1) integrating pull |
|
Potential What capacity do we or will we have? What benefit can we foresee? |
Challenge What is the obstacle or opporunity? How must we grow to meet the challenge? |
Background Who will be impacted by this story? (audience) What need(s) has the challenge created in this audience? |
The objective of Gathering Experiences is to draw into the strategic conversation the full strength of each of these three components of the Strategic story. At this point, it's unlikely that all components will be at equal strength. The emphasis is to represent through experiences as much of the current strength as possible for each one. Any inequality in strength will help set the working agenda in the SPIN: Clarifying with Context process.
Process Facilitation
- Facilitators first open a "listening space" by (1) creating a Channel to gather experiences, (2) identifying what Initial meta-narrative[1] is centering the conversation, and (3) initializing gathering by assisting participants in accessing experiences related to the Initial meta-narrative (i.e. by asking a kick-start question or by telling a starting story).
- As experiences are collected along the lines of inquiry listed for each component, the facilitators measure the Descriptive clarity of ALL three components of the larger strategic story: potential, challenge, and background.
- Gathering should continue through sequential rounds until the participants and facilitators have a high degree of confidence that ALL three components are described as well as they could be. When this point is reached, the process is ready to cross the diversity threshold (1., above right diagram) and begin Clarifying with Context.
Clarifying with Context
x
| alpha (a2) advancing pull | beta (b2) deepening pull | constant(c2) integrating pull |
|
Resources What capacity do we or will we have? What benefit can we foresee? |
Demands What is the obstacle or opporunity? How must we grow to meet the challenge? |
Motivations Who will be impacted by this story? (audience) What need(s) has the challenge created in this audience? |
Recasting Clarified Stories
x
| alpha (a3) advancing pull | beta (b3) deepening pull | constant(c3) integrating pull |
|
Aim What capacity do we or will we have? What benefit can we foresee? |
Method What is the obstacle or opporunity? How must we grow to meet the challenge? |
Target Who will be impacted by this story? (audience) What need(s) has the challenge created in this audience? |
Integration
References and Notes
- ↑ The initial meta-narrative is the back-story to why the participants are being asked for their experiences. This could be the presenting problem, the story of the immediate question, or the working strategic story. This is meta-narrative is different and should be kept separate from the strategic story that will emerge from the process. Often, one of the most useful products of this process for participants is the clarification that arises from differentiating the resulting strategic story from the initial meta-narrative.
