FAQ

Frequently Asked Questions about the
Fundamentals of Dialogue Mapping Workshop
Q1. What, specifically, will I get from the Fundamentals of Dialogue Mapping Workshop? A. The Fundamentals of Dialogue Mapping Workshop will provide you with a precise analytical method for making complex decisions. Even people who are great thinkers are often challenged when they are in a group that is faced with a complex decision. The Dialogue Mapping method provides a concrete way to improve your capacity to build clarity and consensus in a group decision process. Q2. I don't facilitate meetings ... why should I do the Workshop? A. Dialogue Mapping really is a new way of thinking and seeing the world. Even people who rarely work with groups report enormous benefits from what they learned in the Fundamentals of Dialogue Mapping Workshop. If you make decisions with other people-as a team member, a consultant, an executive, or a member of a family, then you do facilitate meetings, even if you don't stand up at the front of a room with a marker. If you find yourself saying "I think we may be off the main issue" or "Could you say that again-I didn't understand", then you are facilitating that interaction. Even if you are alone, thinking about a personal issue, Dialogue Mapping is a simple tool for blowing the fog away, so the core structure of the problem or decision is exposed. Q3. I'm a professional facilitator, so I already know quite a bit about facilitation. Why should I do the Workshop? A. Most facilitators have been trained in a variety of tools and techniques for managing the process of a meeting, an approach rooted in a paradigm of control. Dialogue Mapping offers the possibility of facilitation as pure listening, with no control. Instead, Dialogue Mapping facilitators allow the intelligence and learning of the group to emerge organically. Instead of agendas and control, the group's energy is reflected and channeled in a self-correcting way by each person's ability to see, in the structure of the Dialogue Map, how their own comments contribute to the coherence and order of the group's thinking. Dialogue Mapping is a new paradigm of facilitation and meeting process. In the workshop, facilitators learn the power of focusing their intent on emergent order, not on control. Q4. I've heard of IBIS ... is that the same as Dialogue Mapping? A. Not quite -- Issue Based Information System (IBIS) is the basic `grammar' of design and problem solving. IBIS makes the decision process clear, and captures the rationale of the decision when it is made. Dialogue Mapping is a method for using IBIS in group situations. Dialogue Mapping deals with questions like how to deal with obstreperous people and how to structure issues about meaning, decision criteria, and who the stakeholders are. QuestMap™ and Compendium are software tools for using IBIS and Dialogue Mapping, either as an individual or with a group. In short: IBIS is the grammar, Dialogue Mapping is the method, and QuestMap is the tool. Compendium is provided as part of the workshop, though most of the workshop focuses on using low-tech media, such as white boards & flip charts, for applying the Dialogue Mapping method. Q5. How does Dialogue Mapping work to make decisions? A. Dialogue Mapping is for people who have to think through and solve wicked problems. It has been used in the commercial and public sectors, by facilitators, lawyers, executives, project leaders, and just ordinary people dealing with the everyday complex problems of life. It has been used to work on "Where to send our kid to school?", as well as "What should the national health care system be?" The emphasis of the approach is on creating shared understanding among a diverse (and potentially adversarial) set of stakeholders. Our experience is that, especially with complex (or "wicked") problems, once there is a strong shared understanding about the problem, a high quality and consensual solution or decision is often surprisingly close at hand. This page has moved Back to Facilitation and Training