"New Ways of Visioning - Social Dreaming"

1 Feb 2001

Questors Theatre, Ealing

We began with the usual level of uncertainty over how many and who would turn up. And in the first 20 minutes or so the group formed - the usual unexpected and delightful mix of die-hards, occasionals and new faces.

Nine of us turned up: Colston Sanger, Ed Rowland, Fiona Coffey, John Wilkes, Kevin Russell (referred to us by Julian), Steve Moss, Terri McNerney, Tessa Bradon, Tony Page.

Quite suddenly we were off! Ed gave us a Sanskrit word which meant practice before theory, and we moved from our circle to a random cluster of chairs at the end of the room called the Social Dream Matrix. Here we were invited to take turns to tell any dreams that we had in the last few days which spoke in some way to the group and to our work together. (Ed emphasised this was not about getting on the couch - we did have a couch though! - or interpreting our dreams in an individual psychoanalytical sense.).

Pretty soon we were hearing quite vivid dreams expressed in the present tense, about meeting in Hampton Wick Cricket Club, a wonderful valley in Wales, a drunken man in a teepee, an office with weird rules about not being allowed to work overtime unless you wanted to become a partner, climbing a hill, skidding down a grass bank, lips meeting on the surface of the water, falling off the stage and down the steps, a new life boat which caused people to drown, then white horses, on a tennis court, covered in glass.

Some had been writing down their dreams in the last few days. Some found it easier, others less easy to join in. We began talking about dreaming, types of dreams, getting stuck in repeating time loops, synchronicity, remembering, in the sense of re-membering, that is putting the pieces back together…and we were skidding round from one interesting subject to another…I don't remember it all…we were on the challenge of uncovering shared purpose in a group, and assumptions about whether we are all really one, or all really separate….

And as for theory Ed helped us to understand that over time dream material changes in response to waking events, and conversely dream material can add depth, richness and power to the development of teams or organisations, and their unique domains of connective thinking. Social Dreaming can tap into a valuable form of information about this thinking and a way of working that we have often ignored in teams and organisations, but which provides an important way to release creativity, perhaps as part of a visioning or strategy development process...and suddenly it was lunch.

Thanks to Helen Page for the sandwiches, fruit and drinks! During lunch I remember a debate started by Kevin over the extraordinary importance of the pound as a symbol of identity over here (he's from New York) whether there is such a thing as Englishness.

After lunch leaving behind the Dream Matrix space we moved back into the circle. Ed gave us a Gordon Lawrence quote about psychotic leaders and "no dream" organisations, and we were off again. Sort of assuming on the one level that none of us want to work for "no dream" organisations, where we cut ourselves off from our dream and our passion, as psychotic, sociopathic leaders might appear to want us to. We were into all sorts of themes. So many of them I don't remember today. At one point Steve was asking us about why men join the army and go and kill others, and we were on authority, anxiety, obedience, Milgram's experiments. Kevin was finding wide ranging connections between the surface of the water in his dream, the northern and southern states after the civil war in the US, and what he and his sister should say to their father. In passing from Kevin we heard that if optimists say the glass is half full and pessimists say it is half empty, accountants say the glass is too large!

We were on the "stickiness" of global brands, and Civil Servants' writing excellence and Mrs Thatcher's no such thing as society came into it somewhere. Fiona and Ed were on sustainable development and Fiona seemed concerned that she would be remembered only for saying "Look, some organisations deserve to die!"

Good enough vision...

One of the really interesting parts for me was when we were exploring why we needed vision, and realised the generational difference between leaders and the rest of the organisation. Was it a coincidence that Victorian disciplinarian parenting was followed by two world wars in Europe? What sort of wounds did each generation of parents create in their offspring? What did leaders born in the austere but hopeful fifties find they wanted to get from and give to their organisations as leaders at the age of 45-55? If for example the average leader is 45-55 years of age and the average age of the rest were somewhat lower, then would the leader's vision speak to the rest? Perhaps the challenge would be to find a "good enough" vision that, like Winnicott's "good enough" parenting creates enough containment of anxiety, and enough freedom and enabling some sort of discovery, tapping into our deeper passion, energy and resources. Perhaps in our organisational visioning work we can avoid the mistake of Dr Spock which tempted parents to rely on the book, eroding their trust in themselves. So is our work to do with finding in each organisation what is a "good enough" vision? And could right brain practices, in particular social dreaming help us in some way. The intuition says yes - but don't expect a rational proof!

Once upon a time...

And so to the closing round, or Act 3. After a short break we decided to round up the session by inviting the group to weave a story, using the technique we had learned with Malcolm Tulloch in October.

We began with "Once upon a time in a dream-aware organisation..." And over the next 15 mins with Fiona going to work, the story took off into wild and wonderful places, involving some sinister champion of shareholder value, and Ann Robinson's missing link, bringing in the symbols of horses and glass, somehow within a workplace, culminating in a debate about whether in an organisation driving for Shareholder Value a daily Social Dreaming practice is relevant. We seemed to resolve this with a both/and, interdependency, and a catch-phrase with a song "Dream and Deliver"!

Then to close Steve read a wonderful inspiring poem called The Invitation which I'm hoping he'll copy round to everyone.

So ended another wonderful emergent discovery session and I went away looking forward to our next session later this month with Roddy and Terri on Masks!



Tony Page 2nd Feb 2001