Neurath Meets Guilford

GK VanPatter
4 hours ago
2 min read

Power Over becomes Power With

Happy to share this from Humantific Journal, since it relates directly to Design for Complexity in action. In celebration of appreciating Otto Neurath at 90 I was happy to give a short talk; "Neurath Meets Guilford" at the May 27th, Symbol 26 Conference organized in Vienna. We have not presented at a IIID conference for several years so was good to be reconnected and make a contribution in the direction of two people who's work we greatly respect and admire.

The talk will hopefully soon be posted on the conference site but since there is so much interest in these two historical figures we will post a few screens here.

What Neurath and Guilford were each concerned about and what each of their most significant contributions were is recognized as important turning points and depicted as "Turns"...as in Neurath Turn and Guilford Turn. For each there was a before and after picture. These were hard fought "bulletins" of evolutionary nature that clearly not everyone got.

These are two imporant figures in the history of information design and applied creativity but they never met in person. Where they meet is in practice.

Often taken for granted and even misread, their contributions come into strategic full bloom in the context of Arena 3 organizational changemaking and Arena 4, societal changemaking work, where they knew that interrupting deeply engrained tradional assumptions regarding value, in a deliberate effort to regroup in the direction of broader inclusion was important. That was not a walk in the park at that time, but key to getting to the UNSTUCK challenges that existed then, and in some circles still exist.

The simplist analogy would be that BEFORE these turns arrived, half the team was, without acknowledgment, routinely being cognitively left behind.

That was not widely understood until the notion of maximizing brainpower, team dynamics, psychological safety, information processing preferences, cognitive inclusion, think-balance and culture building appearred on the radar screens of organizational leaders, innovation enabling leaders. Today these are basic models in the changemaking toolbox for those working on enabling in human-centered ways.

Sharing a few screens from the presentation, starting with WHY is the subejct relavent today: