Narrative Ecology – Blog of Ron Donaldson – fACILITATOR, TRAINER AND COACH

Fireman Sam is starting his introduction to the workshop by explaining just what an insight is and how important it can be to shifting a system to a more favourable position. As an example he is explaining that after many years, whenever there is a fire or emergency call-out in Pontypandy the most likely cause is Naughty Norman. That’s his insight.

This is part three of twelve posts before Christmas reflecting on the components, tools and principles that I am most interested in, have found most useful, and make up my narrative ecologist identity.

I first realised the importance of insights from a blog post by Shaun Callahan, founder of Anecdote in Australia.

This is my slide interpretation from that post. The original source is Gary Kleins great book, Seeing What others don’t in which he explains where insights come from and that:

An insight is an unexpected shift towards a new story

If we did not experience insights it is likely that we would just tread the same old path and our lives would never change but gain some learning, feedback, customer intelligence and you can act upon this. In a nutshell it is evidence based decision making.

Two other useful quotes are:

Intuition is the use of patterns they’ve already learned, whereas insight is the discovery of new patterns.

This is the point where I added the job title ‘Pattern Shifter’ to my on-line profiles as it was integral to what i try to do as a facilitator.

To improve performance, we need to do two things. The down arrow is what we have to reduce, errors. The up arrow is what we have to increase, insights. Performance improvement depends on doing both of these things.

This third quote has the most to unpack. After about ten years of running Future Backwards and getting the participants to map out their Heaven (most desirable future) and their Hell (most undesirable future) I chanced upon Appreciative Inquiry. Appreciative Inquiry prides itself on only looking at the positive, never delving into the negative for fear of leaving the group depressed, angry and forlorn. Well the most strange thing happened, I started leaving out Hell from the exercise and everyone reported a really enjoyable workshop. It seemed I had turbo charged the creativity and productiveness by way of all the positivity.

Since then I have realised the importance of completing the whole picture. all the things that could go wrong. There are lots of creativity references about conducting a pre-mortem, what might the system die of. Counteracting all the risks. Being aware of any harms and how might you block them, which is the TRIZ way. So in full consideration of the evidence, in line with all the insights I now have I think it is worthwhile doing Hell and I will be reinstating it forthwith.

I always put up a sheet to capture insights right from the start of a workshop and encourage their addition throughout.

I cannot share with you my favourite example of an insight as it is the highlight of my workshops but i can share my favourite insight story that I use as part of my online storytelling teaching.

After the lockdowns of Covid when we were all allowed to physically gather together for training I was asked to do a TRIZ training session down in Oxford.

On the first evening, during dinner, one of the young engineers said that “it has been ages since I have stayed away from home. So long in fact that I have forgotten what to pack and I have only brought the one pair of underpants”. No one batted an eyelid in fact some of them nodded as if this was perfectly acceptable for a week away. The eldest engineer said “this is an easy problem to solve”.

“When you get back to your room, stuff your underpants into the kettle, top up with water and wait for it to boil. Carefully remove the pants, roll them in the towel to dry and hang them on the radiator. Tomorrow you will have the cleanest, boil washed pants in the building”.

So have you spotted the insight. Not that you should pack more underwear. The unexpected shift to what you will do now you know this.

I have occasionally had my first cup of tea in a hotel and it tasted of underpants. Now I know why. You must always wash out the kettle thoroughly before making a drink, you never know what might have been in there.

There you go, next time you make a cup of tea, next time you visit a hotel, next time you see a young engineer, you will recall this story and act accordingly. It is the nature of an insight that is important to survival that it will be memorable, recalled at the appropriate time and shift you to a new story.

Like Chris Corrigan who inspired me to write these posts freehand and leave the bad grammar to show i am human. I will never use AI unless I tell you so. Well this picture was generated by AI. They are not my underpants. That view in the mirror is not possible.

Start a journal. Capture all the important things you do, see or think. Reflect upon these regularly to identify any insights. Share these insights widely.

The fifth post (of 12) should appear here on Tuesday and feature part of the TRIZ Tools and techniques.