The Balcony Channel: Leadership by Changing a Group's Channel of Awareness

by Elmer S Soriano

Developing leaders requires not just the buildup of their toolkit or competencies, but  also shifting their Level of Consciousness (O'Brian, 2016; Scharmer 20__). The next challenge is explaining these concepts to an audience that did not have college education. 

I attempted to translate the concepts by likening them to channels on cable TV, pointing out the different units of analyses provided by the different channels.

Channel 1: The Selfie Channel - The percieving the world thru one's own self-centered worldview.
Channel 2: The Discovery/Science Channel - Interpreting the world primarily through science.
Channel 3: The Oprah/Empathy Channel - Interpreting the world through the Other person's worldview
Channel 4: The Balcony/Reality TV Director's Channel - Interpreting the world by observing emergence.


http://www.ottoscharmer.com/sites/default/files/2000_Presencing.pdf
https://dash.harvard.edu/bitstream/handle/1/27112706/OBRIEN-DISSERTATION-2016.pdf?sequence=1

Dramaturgy: Improv, Emergence and Leadership as Experience Design

by Elmer S Soriano

All the world's a stage, 

And all the men and women merely players; 

They have their exits and their entrances, 

And one man in his time plays many parts. 

                        -William Shakespeare

Dramaturgy is the study of dramatic composition and the representation of the main elements of drama (Wikipedia)... and this concept has been used by Goffman, Ganz and Pine in the context of leadership.

Basically, the idea is that humans can see themselves as part of an unfolding real-world drama, and a leader can influence this unfolding story by providing alternative interpretations. Robert Kennedy did this masterfully in his April 1968 speech where he proposed an alternative perspective on the MLK assassination. Adichie talks about the Danger of a Single Story and why leaders need to intervene by providing multiple interpretations of the world's emerging stories. Campbell alludes to leadership as the process of inviting others to participate in their own Heroes Journey.   

Teaching Cases/Videos:

Actions are Illegal, Never People: Jose Antonio Vargas 

Our Return on Investment: Sabsy Ongkiko

Jo Mateo Public Narrative

Sources and Image Credits:

http://www.lovelydenver.com/components/com_biz/models/images/upload/2145683706_Improv-Comedy-Club-denver.jpg 

https://www.amazon.com/Experience-Economy-Updated-Joseph-Pine/dp/1422161978

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dramaturgy

Generative Governance: Typology of Governance Frames based on Theory U

by Elmer S. Soriano

How does one develop tools to guide Mayors through the different "structures of attention" all the way to generative governance, going beyond project management? The image above is an example of a Mayor's dashboard that was adopted in 600 municipalities. Using this one-page Mayor's Dashboard as reference, regular coaching/advising sessions were delivered to the Mayor, tracking the evolution of the ecosystem by color-coding the cells red, yellow, and green.

This dashboard serves as a decision-support tool that synthesized three types of knowledge; a) political; b) local; c) scientific/modeller's knowledge into a one-page interface. (Clark et al, 2010 click here)

First, let's dissect a Mayor's executive/governance interventions based on Scharmer's Structures of Attention. The video cases emphasize a particular Structure of Attention, but may reflect multiple structures of attention.  

Table 1: Mayor's Intervention based on Mindset and Structure of Attention (adapted from Scharmer)

Structure of Attention	Mindset of Mayor	Role of Mayor	Case
Governance 1 Downloading habits of thought	downloading projects based on what I think you need	determining priority projects and allocating funds based on Mayor's personal worldview	White elephant projects
Governance 2 Factual, object-focused	evidence-based downloading of projects with limited dialogue or consultation; Technical Assistance (TA)	analyzing data and then aligning priority projects and allocating funds	Bulacan Social Research (click here)
Governance 3 Empathic Listening	reflecting upon how rules can be changed to make the ecosystem work better for you	dialogues with stakeholders to gain deeper understanding of complex interdependencies and counterproductive rules	Kauswagan (click here for video)
Governance 4 Generative Listening	creating spaces and cultivating conversations so that many stakeholders co-own and co-create solutions	creates spaces for dialogue and co-creation; creates social labs, leadership labs, and/or governance labs	Naga People Empowerment (click here for video)

Table 2: Structures of Attention by Scharmer

Sources:

https://www.presencing.com/sites/default/files/page-files/Theory_U_Exec_Summary.pdf

http://heapol.oxfordjournals.org/content/early/2011/08/05/heapol.czr054.full.pdf+html

http://neldax.yolasite.com/resources/01-%20Introduction%20to%20MLGP.pdf

https://research.hks.harvard.edu/publications/getFile.aspx?Id=600