Book tip: Co Create! The standard work of visualization
This visualization book shows how to skilfully combine multifaceted content. In his work, Mathias Weitbrecht explains in a vivid way what makes a group of people into a team and powerful creators of change.
Visualization opens up spaces for higher solutions. Images are now finding their way into companies, projects and people's hearts. If we use the potential of visualization together: Are you in?
How can visualization be used to skillfully connect simple to complex content? Which methods can it go hand in hand with? What should clients, performers and facilitators know about each other in order to successfully master projects and events? What makes a team of visualizers, facilitators, trainers, moderators and change consultants a co-creation team?
Visualization is a key method
Visualization has become a key method for events, process design and presentations. Without it, solving complex issues, integrating different perspectives, languages and cultures, as well as
factual, intuitive and emotional aspects, would be virtually impossible.
How can it be used to skillfully combine simple to multifaceted content?
What methods does it go hand in hand with?
What should clients, executors and facilitators know about each other in order to successfully master projects and events?
What makes the team of visualizers, facilitators, trainers, moderators and change consultants a team of co-creators?
Together you become powerful change agents. You utilize the potential of individuals and collective intelligence. You manage complexity. You create spaces for
solutions that are higher than the order from which the problem originated - by means of visualization! Let's Co-Create!((H2))
Excerpt from the book "Co-Create!"
Today's world seems to be hard to beat in terms of complexity. If you take just one of the major developments in the world, the number of factors influencing them generally exceeds our imagination. Whether challenges in companies, technical systems, economic contexts, political decision-making models, cultural diversity, social networks and media, social trends or changes in worldview - it is increasingly difficult to keep track of even just a section of one of these areas.
Just think of climate change. It is a confusing topic on which a scientific consensus is far from being reached, and it is often presented in a one-sided and distorted way by politicians and the media - with incalculable long-term effects. What would this topic actually look like if all perspectives - scientific, (power) political, economic, social, ecological - were included? It seems all the more astonishing how often attempts are nevertheless made to explain or even shape such complex organizational, social or societal changes in the world with quite simple, often linear models. These approaches and perspectives are far from sufficient today. Company management, consultants and politicians are facing major challenges.
Images as a melting pot for co-creation
The key to new solutions is visualization and genuine co-creation. Images open up spaces, unite perspectives, ways of thinking and seeing as well as dimensions. They are the connecting element between methods, facts and processes. Between people and systems, between leaders and followers, between strategists and executors. Between creatives and analysts. Between departments and disciplines. Between visions and daily actions. They create the
connection between the old and the new. And not only visibly, but also tangibly.
The moment those involved have a common picture of a situation that unites all their perspectives and approaches - despite different ways of speaking, acting and thinking - they can contribute their own ideas and potential. And to the extent that images open up thinking, creativity and the heart, completely new perspectives, ideas and approaches can emerge from them. This is precisely the great current challenge and
task for facilitators, consultants, organizational developers, visualization experts and all types of leadership: not only to allow power to prevail, but also to create open spaces,
in which the existing potential can take effect. With the aim of creating new solutions for the purpose of the endeavor, far removed from previous thinking.
"The crisis of our time is not one of finance or the economy, but of consciousness - in other words, our thinking and our view of the world. We therefore need a different perspective on the situation; we need to grasp and clarify the complex interrelationships as far as possible. And this means using the (largely invisible) collective intelligence to create new, real solutions." According to the international transformation and systems researcher at MIT, Otto Scharmer. It is precisely this leap, this transformation to the next level, that we need to create and open up the space for a truly profound, connectable and sustainable solution, for co-creation ...
The shapers of change
Whether you are a top manager in a company, process facilitator, consultant for organizational development, potential coach for teams, event manager for an agency, visualizer at internal company conferences or visual facilitator in the team of a global TED conference: They are all co-creators of the new that is being created. They have an influence on how the potential can unfold and be used to achieve a higher goal.
What is important for us as designers of change:
As a manager, division manager or personnel developer, team development is part of your everyday life. You want to use the collective intelligence in the company for your vision process and thus secure the future in the fast-moving market. Or manage creative work and project work more dynamically and purposefully. How can we meet the markets of tomorrow, increasing demands and complexity with contemporary creative and decision-making processes?
As a consultant, organizational developer or facilitator, you know the complexity and workings of change well enough. Consultants are often faced with the dilemma of creating enough security and courage so that those involved in vision processes, line tasks or at events actually move out of their previous comfort zone and existing ideas and established worlds - and the path is open for (necessary) major steps towards change. How do I make it over the edge of "improvement for the worse" towards truer transformation? How can we ensure that all the investment of time, money and commitment by the client, the team and the participants also offers the best possible benefit?
As an in-house organizational developer, you have already experienced a number of large group events and gained experience with planning, process and results. How can you ensure that there is really strong and sustainable impetus for change? What do you need to consider when selecting a team and deciding on methods and process design?
As an event organizer, you are responsible for designing and managing an exciting, successful event. Working with moderators and visual recorders is part of your daily business. But what if a leap in consciousness or even an unexpected solution on a higher level regularly emerged during your event?
Visual facilitators, graphic recorders and the like are in vogue and the market is booming. They are used at a wide variety of events to artfully and comprehensively cast the results and interim results of highly complex content and events into images. However, they are still too rarely included in the process design of events at an early stage; instead, they are often booked once the concept has already been finalized. That's a shame - their potential could be utilized far more.
Why linearity no longer works
We tend to think in simple cause and effect pairs. A cause "A" leads to an effect "B". We call this understanding of the interrelationships of reality, how things seem to work and are causally connected, a "linear" model. A leads to B. Cause X leads to effect Y. So if we see events in the world in a linear way, this is a view in which an event has a simple causal relationship with an effect - and we can already guess that such black-and-white and either-or models no longer do justice to the world today.
A dynamic approach, on the other hand, allows for more nuance and precision, especially when looking at phenomena in society and organization. This view (i.e. more than "A leads to B") takes complexity and interconnectedness into account and therefore comes closer to reality, coupled with an understanding of the world of "both/and". The fact that A leads to B is not disputed here, but the possibility or fact is seen that A and B are constantly in
transformation. There are also additional influencing factors C, D, E, F and so on, all of which are also constantly changing. This more complex, "dynamic" understanding of reality comes closer to the real connections in the world than the linear model.
Comments on the book Co-Create!
"An outstanding and eye-opening book. A must-read when it comes to mastering complexity, connecting people and leading them into the future."
Rob McNamara, Harvard University lecturer, author, Integral Facilitator
"Life stories are what connect people. They bring meaning and passion to conversations, meetings and the foundation of our future in politics, society, business and social affairs: as long as they are visible, understandable and transportable. Mathias Weitbrecht opens a new window in the field of Visual Recording, Facilitating and Working."
Mary Alice Arthur, Story Activist & Strategic Conversation Host, SOAR
"A groundbreaking book that shows how we can bring about sustainable change through greater awareness."
Diane Bleck, Founder and Managing Director of the Doodle Institute
