The Iceberg Model suggests that beneath the visible level of everyday activities, events and crises, there are underlying structures, paradigms of thought and sources responsible for creating them. If ignored, they will keep your organization locked into re-enacting the same old patterns time and again.

What is Visible

In most organizations, challenges are centered on things that are visible and tangible – vision, strategy, priorities, metrics and financial performance. Paying attention to these things can lead to some improvement in productivity and execution, but surface issues are just that – a place to start.

What is Murky

Processes, structures and governance are the “soft tissue” that hold an organization together. Without clear roles, accountabilities and decision rights, execution is often cumbersome and challenging. Tapping into these “murky waters” helps organizations to discover what is needed to evolve and fully unlock the energy of the system.

What is Hidden

Culture and mindsets – conscious or otherwise – are at the root of everything. Producing fundamentally different results and creating lasting change will require an organization to work beneath the surface to understand their current reality at the deepest level.

Generative Dialogue is an expansion of Bohmian Dialogue, discovered by quantum physicist, Dr. David Bohm. Bohm believed Dialogue to be a process of ‘thinking together’ in the course of which a valuable form of relationship of trust can emerge. Bohm’s model of Dialogue is centered on shared meaning and mutual understanding and his belief that Dialogue can help us to understand the “often incoherent ways in which we think, helping us to address the root causes of a range of contemporary problems”.

“We cannot solve our problems with the same level of thinking that created them.”

─ Albert Einstein

Like the Iceberg Model, Generative Dialogue can help your organization discover what is hidden beneath the surface, moving beyond habitual frames of thought to create innovative solutions that have lasting effects.

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