The Three Types of Narratives to Build Amazing Workshop Experiences
Build irresistible workshops and meetings by thinking through what type of narrative threads will engage your team
In this series of videos and articles, I’m working through some essential ideas on how you, as a facilitator and leader, need to think through the challenge of bringing people together. When the stakes are high, when the salaries in the room stack up, it’s worth making sure that the time a group spends in a room is spent well. I think groupthink is a crime and that helping people really *think together* is a rare and special opportunity. If you’re a facilitator, it’s your job to make sure no one’s time is wasted…and what’s more, people get to extraordinary results! No pressure, right? Read the other essays in this series here.
I’m doing this series for three reasons:
- I really want people to work together, better. Bad collaboration brings bad things into the world. That’s got to stop. We have too many things already. There’s only room for good things.
- It’s more fun to release content in an agile way and get feedback as I go, rather than build it all in a waterfall style and only get feedback at the end.
- It’s good to practice what you preach! Design Thinking, Agile practice, are *not* just for technology problems…they’re for any problem. I’ve told countless teams this very thing, so, put up or shut up, Daniel.
The Power of an Irresistible Invitation
In Conversation theory, a conversation starts with an invitation and begins with a response…the beginnings of a conversation thread. If you don’t believe me, just ask Google. They have a nice PDF on how conversations work which I dug into in my podcast last year:
Powerful, inviting questions, invoke powerful conversations.
Frameworks like the Google Sprint or the Business Model Canvas have gotten so powerful because they paint a clear story in people’s mind. Asking someone to come to “a meeting about rethinking our business model” might strike them as threatening, exciting or boring.
There’s something different about asking people to a meeting to “Build out our business canvas”. There’s something about the clear, logical narrative structure of the business model canvas that just…well, seems true. And so visual! And it’s easy to borrow that power…you can download the canvas and use it anytime.
I think the same way about the Google Sprint: It’s a clear, logical structure that has a totemic power: Clients are asking for it *by name* because it carries the promise of clarity, progress and validation. Who doesn’t want validation?! I do! Like, a lot.
It’s hard to resist a generous question — Krista Tippett
Of course, you can just borrow thunder from Jake Knapp and Alex Osterwalder anytime you want…they’ve both written awesome books to help you do it like they do it:
But my question is…how can you do what they did…but for your own challenges? Can you make something as powerful as a sprint? As evocative as a Business Model Canvas…for your own needs, anytime, anywhere? Obviously I think the answer is yes!
The Three Types of Narrative Threads
There’s just one secret ingredient to meetings and workshops that people will be dying to go to. Meetings that will demand focus. Workshops that people will give their all at.
That secret ingredient is narrative.
Brains respond to stories like nothing else. As the article below details, Narratives win hearts and minds. (if you don’t get the gif above, I’m older than you. )
We can only hold seven bits of linguistic information in our minds at once. Paragraphs flow in one ear and out the other. Your huge, complex agenda? Gone in 60 seconds. An image, a story, helps us hold huge amount of information at once. If your meeting has a powerful narrative structure, it will hold people’s attention.
Narrative structures like the Google Sprint and the Business Model Canvas are *open* or incomplete…they require you and your efforts to bring them to life. That gap at the end of a story is what creates an invitation to real creativity.
There’s a structure that gives clarity but not so much structure that there’s no room for us. How can we do that for any challenge?
Linear, Cyclical, Structural/Logical
I currently see three types of narrative threads: Linear, Cyclical and Structural/Logical. I’ll break them down in a minute.
There are also implicit frameworks and explicit narrative frameworks. I’m not sure that any of the frameworks I’ll be showing are exclusively one or the other, but there are patterns in how I use them. Some frameworks, like the Google Sprint, are only powerful when used explicitly. Why? It’d be pretty hard to get a core team to lock themselves in a room for a week without telling them why, right? The business model canvas is more of a chameleon. I think you could run a whole meeting based on the business model canvas without anyone knowing you were using it…as a facilitator or leader, it would fuel your questions, structure *your* thinking and guide *your* way as you lead others. The people you’re leading don’t need to know why you’re doing what you do…like how you can enjoy a meal without going into the kitchen.
Think Alone, Think Together
As a leader, it’s up to you to dedicate time and effort into thinking through the best way to guide your group through a challenge. What type of narrative, what structure of invitation, will get them focused and motivated?
Linear Narratives drive us Forward
The Google Sprint was built on top of the DSchool/IDEO model of Design Thinking which was built around the same time as the UK Design Council’s Double Diamond Model of Design Thinking…all of which was built on top of the shape of creativity and decades of system thinking and creative problem solving theory and practice. I stole the Open/Explore/Close model of creativity from Dave Gray who I’m sure poached it from someplace else!
If you’re a Design Thinking nerd, you can nerd out on this juicy article here:
The fundamental power of the design thinking narrative is that it gets us to a Close. We will Deliver on the Discovery. We won’t wander: Our time will be well spent and we’ll cover all the bases. We’ll land the plane. Innovation will happen!
OPEN/EXPLORE/CLOSE
The Open/Explore/Close model of creativity has had some durable narrative power over the years for me and for the people and organizations I’ve had the pleasure to work with. Last December I ran into a senior creative director at a major design agency I taught a workshop at back in 2014. This workshop was only a half day. We ran into each other at a coffee shop and he reflected that he *still* uses open/explore/close to map out projects, meetings and workshops. I was tickled, but not surprised…a mental image is worth a thousand words.
One model I mention in the video is the Drexler Sibbet team process model . This linear model has some clear overlaps with design thinking but with some valuable details and one big difference…I think this model is a guide to a facilitator rather than a map for work, the way design thinking can be.
But it’s linear, it has a narrative structure, and thinking through this model can really help you guide the thinking of others in a powerful way.
Cyclical Narratives
Time isn’t linear, after all. And Linear narratives fail in some ways, or hint at cyclicality in some sense. Step 7. of the Drexler model is Renew, where the cycle may start again. After testing in Design Thinking, we iterate. But the Cyclicality is inferred, not essential. The directionality is the source of it’s narrative power!
For the last two years I’ve been teaching a lot with the LUMA system of design thinking. One of the things I love about the LUMA system is that it’s design thinking without a direction: You start where you are and go where you need to next.
Cyclical, Non-linear Design Thinking
Design Thinking (DT) invites us to start with people (empathize) and drives us to get to a prototype (make/test) as quickly and lightly as possible. Luma breaks down the modes and tools of DT into Looking, Understanding and Making, but doesn’t demand any direction in those modes. The Google Sprint actually starts with Understanding the problem (mapping) and drives towards making/prototyping before testing (looking with people) on the last day. LUMA’s non-linear narrative of DT can capture both the double diamond model and the google sprint model without breaking, which is cool.
The Four Seasons of Work
On my podcast, I had the pleasure of talking with Kate Quarfordt, who’s the founding director of arts integration of the City School of the Arts. Her four seasons model of work is amazing because it draws narrative power from nature itself. (cue sound effects💥)
The work doesn't start anywhere, it’s just a cycle she draws focus and inspiration from anytime she needs it.
Winter is about reflecting and replenishing. Spring is about imagination and inspiration. Summer is about practice and persistence. Autumn is about expressing and enjoying the harvest. A great meeting surely starts with imagination and ends with celebration…but reflection is what provides energy for the next effort — how do you include it?
The week, the semester and the year at the school are modeled after this cycle. But when mapping to a meeting or a lesson plan, starting with Reflection/Winter isn’t required, just because it’s at the “top” of the diagram…it’s more a series of “modes” or “energies” that a facilitator needs to be aware of and manage. She chooses to map the week and year to these modes and I think the kids are the better for it.
The Hero’s Journey
You can find a better drawing and a deeper explanation of the use of the Hero’s Journey in mapping collaborative work in Dave Gray’s excellent article here:
I’ve been a huge fan of Joseph Campbell and the Hero’s Journey ever since the Power of Myth series on PBS when I was a kid. That is one of the reasons (that and the friendship of Michael Margolis) why there was a storytelling phase in the design thinking system I developed for The Design Gym back in 2012.
This idea of the *the abyss* is pretty much identical to the “groan zone” of Sam Kaner in essence…although Kaner puts it in the “explore” phase of a linear open-explore-close model.
This map is, I think, more more implicit — it’s not for the audience you’re designing an experience for, but for a facilitator to know what’s coming and to feel out what’s next, just like the Sibbet Model.
Structural/Logical Narratives
Structural or Logical narrative threads come from a framework having some sort of coherence and significant explanatory power.
The Business Model Canvas is one framework that people “ask for by name.” Building an agenda or invitation to a session around the BMC can give your plan heft.
Similarly, a Service Blueprint is a “name brand” structural/logical narrative framework that can give a gathering a clear focus, a shared view of the world and alignment. I literally *just* interviewed Jim Kalbach (author of Mapping Experiences) for my podcast and I love his term for these sorts of things. He calls them Alignment Diagrams. The purpose of the diagram is to get aligned on a shared perspective of what’s wrong and what to do next.
I sometimes call the work that goes into making a service blueprint or customer journey map an experience inventory and wrote a bit about it here:
People literally call Jim up out of the blue and say “we need an experience diagram! Help us!” While there’s more work to be done after that call, it opens pocketbooks and clears calendars. That’s what I’d call a powerful invitation.
The other non-linear narrative structure I rely on is my own Pyramid of Conversation Design…although I think I’ve seen plenty of pyramids that use a bunch of words that start with “P”…and they all seem to resemble each other! Last October I ran a 2-facilitation master class and one of the students sketched the pyramid of belief, from the NLP tradition. She uses it to facilitate a workshop for her clients to think through challenges. Her sketch is below alongside my own sketch from the video of my conversation design pyramid.
If a Person can Achieve a Goal with a Feature then Business Outcome…But
One other framework which I didn’t address in the video, but which I think fits nicely here, is the UX Hypothesis Framework I’ve been working on for some time. I take pieces of Jeff Gothelf’s and Josh Seiden’s Lean UX work and merged it with my own DT toolbox approach with a dash of LUMA. How clearly can we define each part of the hypothesis? Using what tools?
Thinking of it like a coffee shop punch card, the more tools you’ve used the more well-defined your hypothesis is!
The format of a hypothesis has a linguistically directional narrative, but doesn’t have to be built in that order.
Linear becomes Cyclical
In the final analysis, the linear models are just an approximation. No one from the DSchool would say it’s a linear process…it’s iterative, recursive…nested. The linearity can be curled back on itself.
The Interaction Design foundation put together a nice image and explainer of this perspective:
This all has to do with a desire from the business side of things for repeatability…and repeat customers! My favorite linear narrative structure is pretty cyclical, too. And I use it constantly for workshop design both implicitly and explicitly. I’ve written a *lot* more about the 5 Es, linked below. The 5Es of Experience Design have that same feeling of *truthiness* that the seasons model or design thinking does: creative gravity, that you can work with or against, to your peril!
This series is a work in progress as I post weekly on this topic and build out my perspectives for the book!
If you have a favorite narrative structure for your gatherings, let me know in the comments!
And if you read this far, you’re a peach! And you might want to sign up for my newsletter updates to catch the next article or podcast.
