Dedicated to Building Shared Understanding of Wicked Problems

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Dialogue Mapping is a new technique for meetings that enhances collaboration and increases efficiency.
The book is aimed at practitioners.
Dialogue Mapping (DM) is a craft skill ... easy to learn the basics, but great depth to mastery of the art.
The three parts:
  I.  Theoretical Foundation
  II.  Basics of DM
  III.  Advanced Topics


The Three Parts of Dialogue Mapping (the book)

Part I: Foundation

Chapter 1, `Wicked Problems and Social Complexity', tells the story of three forces that fragment projects just as surely as rain creates mud: wicked problems, social complexity, and technical complexity. This chapter seeks to illuminate the chronic low-level organizational pain that these forces create. Also available for immediate download as a paper.
Chapter 2, `Building Shared Understanding', demonstrates that a shared display driven by a skilled operator is a powerful anti-fragmentation force, creating shared understanding about the problem domain and shared commitment to possible solutions.
Chapter 3, `The Dialogue Mapping Experience', tells the story of a fictional dialogue mapping session. It's not quite the same as being in a session, but you can get the gist of how it works. Also available for immediate download as a paper.

Part II: Basics

Chapter 4, `IBIS: A Tool for all Reasons', presents a tutorial on the issue-based information system (IBIS) notation of questions and ideas, pros and cons. Also available for immediate download as a paper.
Chapter 5, `The Dialogue Mapping Listening Cycle', describes the listen-guess-capture-validate listening cycle that a dialogue mapper uses to create an effective shared display with a group, and contains a section entitled `Transcriptive and Interpretive Capture', which explains when to capture precisely what is being said and when to be interpretive.

Part III - Advanced topics

Chapter 6, `Question Types', shows the recurring pattern of questions common to all creative meetings, and the seven types of question that tie dialogue maps together into a coherent Big Picture.
There are three common pitfalls of group collaboration, three troublesome modes of discourse, and Chapter 7, `Three Moves of Discourse', shows how a skilled dialogue mapper deals with them.
`Limits of Dialog Mapping', Chapter 8, talks about when to stop mapping.
Chapter 9, `Decisions, Decisions', explores decisions and the process for making decisions using dialogue mapping.

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                           
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