#ICEBERG MENU HOW TO#

They wanted to put their energy into something that felt exciting and began talking about a new area in their building how they could set it up as a hot-desking space. We could however talk about their structures such as their processes of communication and collaboration.Ī shift happened after a systems game when I used the iceberg model to help them make sense of their experiences and open up a conversation about the experiments they could run in their organisation. It pointed to some organisational beliefs about creativity and the hierarchies that existed but neither of these were safe topics for discussion at the time. Some of the hidden dynamics were around the power structures underpinning the ideas process: whose ideas were taken seriously and the process by which ideas came to life. Our work is creative, about emotion and passion, but people were detached I was flummoxed as to why people weren’t contributing,” said the meeting owner. “People weren’t talking and the meetings weren’t functional. One of the ‘hot’ presenting issues was the pickle they were in with their creative meetings. This example comes from a transformation project I ran for an arts organisation. The conversation often starts with structures and flows into beliefs, and a richer picture emerges.Ĭase study A: finding the place to intervene in an arts organisation “Where do we have permission, agency and appetite to experiment?”

It often triggers new insight about what they’re experiencing and new ideas for how to intervene. A light goes on for people when they see the list of structures, the ‘levers’ they can pull. Its great strength seems to be that it puts the client in the driving seat in a conversation about the interventions to try in their organisation. It’s simple and easy to understand and seems to be at a ‘Mummy Bear’, medium level of abstraction – not so specific that it’s scary and not so vague that it loses all meaning. It uses the metaphor of an iceberg to illustrate that our experiences are deeply influenced by dynamics we cannot easily see: the structures that form the framework within which we operate, and the beliefs we hold about how things work.

This model is a very simple representation of a complex system. I have adapted it as I’ve used it with people. The original for this one came from The Systems Thinking Playbook by Linda Booth Sweeney and Dennis Meadows (thanks and respect – it’s a brilliant book). There are many versions of the iceberg model. The iceberg model and why people seem to love it You might find it wonderful and marvel at how it helps people shift to a more systemic way of looking at things. You might balk at its simplicity and the things it omits. You might not love this model if you’re a purist about complexity science or a stickler for precision. It happens every time I share it people love it. I offered a simple iceberg model and my client seized on it, waved it around and started using phrases like “going deeper in the iceberg”.

#ICEBERG MENU HOW TO#

Iceberg menu