[Oe List ...] ORID—A “Life” Method

Wed Oct 25 17:49:31 PDT 2017

Hi Dear Colleagues,

I am jumping into this dialogue quite late in the game, but wanted to add my two cents. Having spent years modelling and training others to use our facilitation methods, I found the educator groups I worked with most wrestled with developing the “reflective level” questions.  Most groups they wanted to leap from data to interpretation to decision.

As I recall from our years of using ORID (before it was given such an ugly acronym), the reflective level was far more than  “How did that make you feel?” 

Do you remember  the Guernica conversation on Saturday night of your first RSI, and how many reflective level questions were presented? It was the series of those kinds of questions like “where would you hang it in your home” and “where have you seen this in your life” etc. that  allowed us finally to answer the question, “What would you say to this?”

Reflective practices are best understood by the religious, because they live them each day.  In my experience, the smartest and brightest organizational development stars, even Meg, don’t quite get it.

Grace, peace and love, Marilyn

From: OE [mailto:oe-bounces at lists.wedgeblade.net] On Behalf Of Zoe Barley via OE
Sent: Wednesday, October 25, 2017 10:41 AM
To: Zoe Barley; Order Ecumenical Community; Order Ecumenical Community; Order Ecumenical Community
Cc: Zoe Barley
Subject: Re: [Oe List ...] ORID—A “Life” Method

And - -

I did find my materials if anyone is interested. One includes the background of the Army's use and guidance on other's use from The Systems Thinker. The other is more detailed guidance from the Guidebook for Learning Reviews. Interestingly, within the  Why did it happen? they include "self reflection, non-defensiveness, a willingness to see how each one of us participated in achieving a result none of us desired, or a break through that transcended our hopes."  The process only makes sense after an action that had an intent or purpose. On an aside I'm constantly amazed at how many planned events are never recruited with the intent we used for RSIs and then the sponsors wonder why they didn't get enough people.   

Zoe 

-----Original Message----- 
From: Zoe Barley via OE 
Sent: Oct 25, 2017 8:28 AM 
To: Order Ecumenical Community , Order Ecumenical Community 
Cc: Zoe Barley 
Subject: Re: [Oe List ...] ORID—A “Life” Method 

The After Action Review is from the Army's Delta Force, eons ago.  Meg's co-author Myron Kellner-Rogers trained the staff where I worked in using it. I may still have the original Delta Force materials. It is effective after a planned event to ask those questions: What happened? etc. and the lessons learned are then applied to the next time. Most recently I'm using an AAR for a research team who is doing sensitive research with school districts on school employee sexual misconduct. As you can imagine it is difficult research to do - but the lessons for prevention are important. They had a difficult time recruiting districts to participate - even tho the study is about policies and practices around an incident not the incident itself. Out of 459 districts, they could only get five to agree to participate. The AAR around recruitment was intended to surface anything to be done differently to engage more districts in this research for future studies.

Zoe

-----Original Message----- 
From: Don Bushman via OE 
Sent: Oct 24, 2017 10:45 AM 
To: Order Ecumenical Community 
Cc: Don Bushman 
Subject: Re: [Oe List ...] ORID—A “Life” Method 

I would suggest John, that the news people who ask HOW don't get the reflective, but beginning interpretive, because in our culture the how  question begs for explanation, not reaction. 

On Tue, Oct 24, 2017 at 12:33 PM, John Epps via OE <oe at lists.wedgeblade.net> wrote:

Yes, the Reflective level is important since our emotional responses are clues to what's going on. But I'm not sure how unique we are to consider that level. Consider the news interviews: "How did that make you feel?" "How did you feel when...?". Asians consider their feelings to be nobody else's business, but we in the West seem to relish parading them for all to see! 

Anyway it is a crucial level to address in the ORID conversation format and takes us below the surface.

On Tue, Oct 24, 2017 at 10:14 AM, Randy Williams via OE <oe at lists.wedgeblade.net> wrote:

Jack and Seth,

You are correct, and Meg even says as much. Here’s what she says about the second question (slightly adapted.):  People offer their interpretations, which are explored for diversity and commonalities. This reveals a great deal of information beyond the incident. The culture becomes visible around hierarchy, communications and trust.

Here’s her commentary on the third question: Here is where the richness of diverse perceptions can be shaped into learning outcomes that build on the complexity of the situation rather than overly simplified analysis.

I really think what she has structured here is a format for dialogue, which the physicist David Bohm called conversations for the sake of learning. 

I do agree that perhaps our most unique contribution to this method was the reflective step. 

Randy

On Oct 24, 2017, at 10:24 AM, Jack Gilles via OE <oe at lists.wedgeblade.net> wrote:

Randy,

Her `R`question seems to be interpretive to me. I think it is hard for most people to see the necessity of the Reflective level. People don’t know how to process emotional responses or associative events. 

Jack

On Oct 24, 2017, at 10:00, Randy Williams via OE <oe at lists.wedgeblade.net> wrote:

Colleagues,

In her new book Who Do We Choose To Be: Facing Reality, Claiming Leadership, Restoring Sanity, Margaret Wheatley has her own articulation of ORID in four questions which she calls an After Action Review. They are:

O—What just happened?

R—Why do you think it happened?

I—What can we learn from this?

D—How will we apply these learnings?

We have always said that our methods are “life” methods,. Therefore, we didn’t create them, we discovered them. Each time I come across something like this from Wheatley it confirms that they are indeed “life” methods. 

I’ve seen other variations of ORID—for example from Peter Senge, in Catholic social theory, and even from my old professor of church history, Albert Outler. His articulation was, for me, the most memorable, in just three, not four,  short questions: What? So What? Now What?

As some of you who also sat with him will recall, Outler was not always so concise. 

Randy

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