Coordinators Evaluations - Pushing&Doing and Envisioning roles

Summary of meeting held on 21-9-07
Present: Hannah Jones, John Backwell, Batel Dinur

Main points discussed:

1. What are the explicit roles of 'Pushing&Doing' and 'Envisioning' in relation to one another?
2. What tools did/would help us to elicit these roles?
3. Timing: When might it be most appropriate in a continuous, collaborative process to use the above roles?
4. What does the process of Pushing&Doing/Envisioning mean in a collaborative process?
5. Is the 'chunking' of the synergy levels useful (i.e. data, information, etc.)?

Some conclusions and ideas:

• Part of the Pushers&Doers role is to identify available resources (tangible or intangible) from the other teams. In this sense, they function as 'surveyors'.
• The Envisioners' role is to identify purposes. They do this by stepping back and orientating (zooming in and out)
• We talked about the differences between 'New knowers' and 'Envisioners' in relation to "trend forecasting" or looking forward. 'New Knowers' are sensing while Envisioners are analysing.
• Envisioners' role is also about creating boundaries or "controlling" the situation, in a sense.
• Interaction between all roles is necessary in order to keep them all relevant in relation to one another.
• Pusher&Doers have a different role as creatives than they would have in a different context.
• Pushers&Doers are not very reflective (they just follow objectives) while Envisioners are much more reflective.
• Pushers&Doers are decision makers
• We felt that when situated in a wider, collective context the roles slightly change their meaning and must "adapt" to complement one another.
• Suggestive progress from one role to another:

E(mapping/Zooming-out)--PD(modelling/Zooming-in)L(mapping/Zooming-out)NK(modelling/Zooming-in)EnvPD-L---NK

• The different roles enabled us to observe synergies from different perspectives
• The chunking of synergies into different levels (data, info...) alllowed us to understand what each may entail
• It seems that people were most comfortable with synergies at the Information level: these are more recognizable and easier to deal with than synergies at the other levels.
• Data and Information levels are more scientific while Knowledge and Wisdom levels are more philosophical/artistic?

Possible future enquiries

• Maybe we can build further from synergies at the Information level since they are the easiest to capture and describe, and can then relate from them to other levels.
• Maybe synergies don't really occur AT certain levels (data, info...) but only IN-BETWEEN the levels?