Part 3 in reviewing the set of workshops from last week is the one-dayer with the sister organisation of here and here. Now the focus was on repairing the Archetype Creation which had so spectacularly failed on the Monday.
To open, I showed a couple of animations from the Dilbert site as I knew the organisation were familiar. Then I got them to discuss who their favourite characters were and why. After suggesting to them that the Dilbert comics were not actually written about their organisation and that people around the world can identify with them, the breadcrumbs had been dropped.
Importantly, I also changed the 'story-telling' prompt from 'Tell a story about a day at work' to 'Share your experience in dealing with your primary customer' (understanding that the earlier narrative capture had indicated that this would be fertile ground). In the second stage of emergence, I suggested that the character in front of them worked in their organisation and that they would have to adopt the role of their 'Best Friend', 'Worst Enemy' and 'Innocent Bystander'. I have some thoughts on this but wonder how that sits with other practitioners
Now due to the introduction of an example, I set myself a target for success which was to achieve no Dilbert characters in the Archetypes. I did not set one for the swapping of customers for members of the organisation, do you have any suggestions? In my opinion, this event was a success and once I get the characters finalised I will upload them.
To close on the Archetype creation, I will note that I backed out of the Values and Themes elements for this workshop. Basically, I was uncomfortable with their use and was seeking to achieve a modicum of success through adjustment of the approach. I will have to invest some more headspace into how to prepare the Values and Themes.
2 comments:
Hang on, does this imply that you showed them the type of output (archetypes) before they engaged in the creation? Normally archetype (or values and themes for that matter) would be a peripheral activity (until the very end) of a workshop on a subject related to the organisation. The archetypes pop out of the process towards the end with no need to even use the word "story" with the participants.
The arhetypes were created at the beginning of the workshops, but the workshops were preceded by a rudimentary set of narrative capture events focussed on Role, Identity, Frustrations and Improvements. The "showing of type of output" was an attempt to rectify some of the shortcomings two days earlier, like a mindsetting as such.
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