REINVENTING COMMUNICATION — A Guide to Using Visual Language for Planning, Problem-Solving and Reengineering
This seminal book on using metaphors for collaborative strategy setting was published in 1994. On assignment from the World Trade Organization to help Sri Lanka grow exports, Larry Raymond found that words alone were useless in aligning people to a common objective. The business leaders, educators and government officials he brought together did nothing other than declare and defend their views, over and over, louder each time with phrases such as: “If you had simply listened to me last year, we wouldn’t have a problem.”
If you ever had the task of leading change, you know the challenge! You also know that conventional solutions don’t get you all the way to a focused, motivated team. Fortunately, two hours down that road in Sri Lanka came the breakthrough idea that developed into the suite of visual, metaphoric “languages” that have since focused hundreds of workshops on building and implementing a challenging vision of the future.
Visual, Metaphor Languages are a new tool to show connections, relationships, values, obstacles, risks and strategies. They encourage building on each others’ ideas and draw out intuition and spatial thinking capabilities to display the big picture and its logic and the often hidden emotions that cause problems or can drive teams to great heights.
This 192 page Ebook, originally published by ASQC Quality Press, describes the principles that will lead you though tough communication issues to agreement on just what is wrong, how things will work when the problems are solved and objectives are met, and how to get there. Your path starts with gaining group cohesion by thinking in metaphors that make meaning clear and eliminate unnecessary arguments. Then, you go on to generating creative group solutions and the excitement of building the future together!
The metaphors described here will change your own thinking approach too! They will make it easier to size up situations, know the difference between a “crocodile” and a “duck”, and get things done in record time!