The Nature of Generative Images
I think Dialogic OD addresses problems and produces change through generative images. I define generative images as ideas, phrases, objects, pictures, manifestos, stories, or new words with two properties:
Generative images allow us to see new alternatives for decisions and actions. They have the “...capacity to challenge the guiding assumptions of the culture, to raise fundamental questions regarding contemporary social life, to foster reconsideration of that which is ‘taken for granted’ and thereby furnish new alternatives for social actions” (Gergen, 1978, p.1346).
Generative images are compelling images—they generate change because people like the new options in front of them and want to use them.
Generative images are usually fuzzy, ambiguous, and sometimes combine what seem like opposites. Attempts to precisely define them miss the whole point. They are generative because they evoke so many different meanings. Perhaps the most powerful generative image of the past 30 years is “sustainable development.” Recall that before that image emerged, ecologists and business people were at war and had noth- ing to say to each other. In 1986 the VP of future planning of a major forest products company in British Columbia was overhead opining in a ski line that “this environmental stuff will just blow over.” When the image of sustainable development surfaced in the Brundtland Report in 1987, it transformed relationships throughout the world community so profoundly that Green Peace Canada was suddenly being invited to advise business and government. It found itself with unprecedented influence, yet some members were afraid of being coopted. It almost dissolved from the internal conflicts over what direction to take in a transformed world.
Think of all the new choices, deci- sions, and actions that came (and continue to be stimulated) by the words sustainable development. That is generativity. Between 1975 and 1985 “Quality of Work Life” transformed unionized workplaces in America. At British Airways “exceptional arrival experiences” was the generative image used to work on the problem of lost passenger luggage (Whitney & Trosten-Bloom, 2003). In one semi-autonomous work team of business analysts, “trust costs less” allowed them to get unstuck and function autonomously (Bushe, 1998). The most powerful generative images change the core narratives in the community—the stories we tell ourselves about who we are, what we care about, and what is possible.
In OD efforts, generative images are usually new words, phrases, or longer texts, but pictures and objects can be generative too. Consider the generative power of the first images of the earth taken from outer space. Is there any doubt that seeing that blue and white jewel with its tiny, fragile ecosystem, embedded in a cold, black void, catalyzed the outpouring of ecological research, writing, and activism that soon followed?
The change sequence, shown [below], assumes that the decisions and actions we take are based on what we think. Over time as we witness our own and other’s decisions and actions, we develop shared attitudes and assumptions. These become taken for granted and form the culture, which in turn shapes what we think. A generative image disrupts this pattern both by altering what we think, and by motivating new decisions and actions.
