“You’re in a dirty prison cell with one call. Who do you ring — and why?”
If you're on our Newsletter then you'll have seen me introduce the video shared with me from Nick. This question is one of the 'Artful Questions' posed in the video. Since then, I've been sharing and thinking about the whole thing more. I wonder who yours might be?
The answers come fast, rich and wide. A full mind map of people, values, instincts, and situations. But here’s what stood out:
A shortage of insight is never the problem. There's plenty of that about- we had it in spades. What's more tricky is a way to move that insight. To shift it from personal reflection to shared agency.
Originally the draft had done a bit of a compare between Mind Maps and BIG PICTURE. Mind Maps are brilliant — but they’re not movement They give us divergence, possibility, openness. I heard this quietly cutting through:
"Agency is the feeling you get when you know you’re not just heard, but that you can affect what happens next”
“We need to feel like we’ve got a say in what’s going on”
“It’s not just being involved, it’s knowing you’ve helped shape it”
“Otherwise we’re back to being told things and nodding”
So this is where a decent collaboration activity plays it's part. From initial engagement, through collaboaration, to outcomes. It doesn’t replace your insight — it grounds it. It turns ideas into patterns. It gives you and your team a shared field of play. This is where structure becomes alive.
Most organisations confuse performance with alignment.
But alignment without agency is compliance.
And insight without structure is theatre.
Agency isn’t permission — it’s design. And BIG PICTURE is a design tool for that. Like a living system, it '*creates the conditions' in which action can emerge — not just be imposed.
*favourite phrase!
This post is part of our emerging Connected Perspective series: → Seeing organisations more like ecosystems than machines.
If you’re exploring how to move from dialogue to decision - or insight to impact - we’d love to share how we use BIG PICTURE in live environments.
