1. EQUIP Residential – Weetwood Hall – Leeds Dec 2010
Rich Pictures
Steve Outram

2. Rich Pictures
Rich pictures were particularly developed as part of Peter Checkland’s Soft Systems Methodology for gathering information about a complex situation

3. Rich Picture task
Rich pictures can be some or all of: informative, insightful, funny, happy, sad, political and perhaps scary. They can help your team to identify and express creatively its view of the project during the early stages of thinking and planning, representing the full extent of the complex set of challenges and uncertainties: thoughts, hopes and fears; people, processes, organisations and structures; questions, assumptions, beliefs and values. ‘Connections’ need particular thought: their nature, or absence, may later prove to be significant. Nevertheless, to be effective and comprehensible to others, a rich picture must not be too detailed or contain too much text.

6. Task – to create a rich picture that…
Shows how your project started
Describes successes in your journey so far
Shows what things helped you to be successful
Shows things that hindered progress so far
Shows the solutions you found to those hindrances
Shows the important relationships in your journey
Shows where you want to be in five years time

7. Any questions?

9. Liquid Café
What is it…..? A cross between World Café and Open Space Technology See

10. How does it work?
Having chosen a topic of enquiry the participants are asked whether they would like to lead a conversation. Hopefully, 4-5 people will volunteer to start a conversation; each conversation staying on a particular table

11. Law of two feet
Following Owen’s Open Space Technology imperative, if you are neither learning from a conversation nor contributing to it – move to another table. This leads to some people becoming butterflies and bees…..

12. Write down your key points/ comments/ doodles on the table cloth…..

13. The theme for the conversations is…
The theme for the conversations is…. Remember you had to identify a ‘sticky bit’ of your project in the rich picture – would you like to explore your sticky bit further with colleagues who might also have a similar sticky bit? Keith finds a sticky bit………

14. Conversations
Table 1 Table 2 Table 3 Table 4 Table 5 Table 6