(Re)Framing Challenges

Dara Benno, Charlene Sequeira

This is the first installment in a three-part plug-and-play model we are calling a Planetary Probe, designed to adapt to your specific organizational context. Here, Dara and Charlene offer three activities for facilitating workshops that explore the nuances of identity, role, and critical challenges. It begins with a preliminary survey to gauge the background and focus of participants, before moving on to dissect the complexities of individual and collective identities in relation to both interconnectedness and influence. Some exercises have been tested while others require further development. This offering is a work-in-progress—we imagine these activities being picked up by others, adapted, and tested in a cycle of continuous engagement and improvement. Please email us at complexity@risd.edu with any feedback or to share outcomes. Read Part Two of the probe model here, and Part Three here.

Pre-Activity: Information Gathering

Activity 1: Spheres of Influence

Optional — Activity 1.5: Release and Healing

Activity 3 Option A: Current State Mapping

Activity 3 Option B: Challenge Mapping

Understanding the kind of work participants are doing and the kinds of challenges they might be facing is necessary to engage in a meaningful and impactful workshop. Based on facilitator’s familiarity with participants, they should create a preliminary information-gathering survey to collect helpful background data. This will not only contribute to a more holistic understanding of context for the facilitator but can also do the same for the participants based on the presented questions. Facilitators may choose to include some themes or specific points of consideration that participants should bring to the workshop.

Prelim Survey: The facilitator should create a survey for participants to complete in advance of the workshop, answering general questions that will help determine a focus for the exercises presented to them and give the facilitator more insight into their work and role. A sample survey can be viewed here.

Activity 1: Spheres of Influence

Identity and Role

How we identify as individuals is based on a contradiction between independent states of being and of belonging—developing a sense of self based on both lived experience and social groupings. We create communities, organizations, and institutions in which we assume roles to support a purpose and uplift who we perceive ourselves to be, influencing one another’s identities along the way. Understanding that we have more agency over the identities we take on can be powerful, empowering individuals and groups to create new norms and practices around a shared, collective vision.

Participants break down the components of their identities based on a two-part exercise, taking a closer look at the roles they assume, their interconnectedness with others, and their ability to both influence and be influenced. They should reflect on how the relationships between identity, role, and social grouping can steer decision-making, create new understanding, and contribute to societal transformation.

Materials:

• Writing utensils and paper

Part A — Unpacking Identity

Social psychologists use the Twenty Statements Test¹ to understand the different elements that makeup one’s identity. These elements are typically categorized into levels of how someone views themselves (individual personality and emotions), how they form relationships, and how they feel a sense of belonging.

On a piece of paper, each participant should complete the sentence, “I am ________________” twenty times, isolating different components of their identity each time.

Discussion and Analysis:

1. How many of the answers were based on appearance? Similarly—Career? Ethnicity? Role? Talent?
2. Look at the levels of identity—self, relational, collective, etc.² Is any one identity more prevalent than the others?
3. Identify any social groups—work-related, friends, community, etc. Is there one that stands out as dominant?

Part B — Identifying Roles

The roles we assume act as key parts of our identities. Consideration should be made for who we are in relation to the social groups and networks we choose to be a part of. Not only are we influenced by those around us but we influence others as well.

Task: The participants should now have one or more social groups they have identified that contribute to their identity. On a piece of paper, each participant should write down the different roles they assume in these groups and map out the organizational structure of the group—as they understand it to be and relating back to their own role. Maps can be hierarchical, matrices, divisional, team-based, network-based, etc.

Discussion and Analysis:

1. How do the social groups and roles participants assume overlap within their own and each others lives?
2. Do participants identify with the roles they assume, or do these roles feel forced? What would they like to change?

Optional — activity 1.5: Release and Healing

Figure 1. Healing Pathways.

Activity 3 option A: Current-State Mapping

Zooming In and Out

In order to begin addressing specific challenges, we first need to consider the different actors, pathways and mechanisms affecting a particular outcome. Mapping the full experience around a focused scenario is a holistic and concise approach to confronting problem areas. Through dips and peaks in the journey, gaps and problem areas are revealed along with opportunities and successes. Not only does this process help pinpoint areas for improvement but also helps to create a shared vision, align on goals and communicate to both internal and external stakeholders.

Participants are introduced to the concept of journey mapping.^{Figure 4}They choose a specific challenge, experience, or perspective (relational or organizational) and create a journey map of both the process and emotional journey through the identified scenario.^{Figure 5}This exercise allows for flexibility to map various experiences from different perspectives—establishing a connection to other people’s journeys and building empathy through imaginative role play.

Figure 2: Deconstruction of a Customer Journey Map.

Figure 3. Sample Journey Map with the current-state mapped in orange.

Part A — Journey Mapping

Participants receive a blank mapping template^{Figure 6}and plot the journey of the identified scenario including:

1. Phases of experience/interaction (if applicable)
2. Process/specific interactions during span of scenario
3. Emotions moving through the experience

Download high-resolution template here. 

Figure 4. Journey Mapping template.

Part B — Identifying Key Factors

Participants should refer back to the Terminology Cheat Sheet previously provided and identify the following:

1. Agents: Unbound, Model-bound³
2. Agent Pathways: Planned, Unplanned, Missing, Unwanted
3. Affordances

Activity 3 option B: Challenge Framing and Mapping

This framing and mapping exercise was developed for the Sisters of St. Ann, Luzern across provinces who work closely with underprivileged communities and families in India. When inviting collaborators into a systems mapping exercise, it is helpful to be aware of their bias or affinity towards being ‘problem-focused’. Some individuals or groups of people may be comfortable with ‘mapping’ an entire experience or journey (as guided in Activity 3A) without a strong pre-existing perception of the situation. Others may be so deeply intertwined with the ‘problem’ that they find it harder to notice and reframe other connected aspects/elements of the system.

In this activity, participants are asked to form groups of 5-6 based on affinity to or passion for an organizational mission.

Materials:

• Printed framework and expansion questions for each person.
• A large roll of paper for each team
• Color pencils and crayons
• Sticky notes

Every team member is given the below framework to help make visible their specific challenge scenario within their team's chosen topic/mission.

Part A — Challenge Framing

Thinking about a challenge faced by the community in their chosen mission, participants are asked to unpack the challenge using the following framework.

Part B — Visual Mapping

The team then chooses one of their team members’ scenarios and builds out the details in a large visual map.

1. Who are the other people in this person's life connected to this challenge? Who are the supporting characters?
2. What are their conflicts—internal and with other characters?
3. What is happening in this scene? What are the challenges in this scene? How do you characters in this scene interact when these challenges are happening?
4. What is working for the characters? Not everything is a challenge, some things are good and helpful—what are those?
5. What are the characters driven by? What is their motivation and aspirations?

Part C — Performing A Skit

After mapping out the interconnected layers of their specific challenge, each team prepares a 5-minute skit based on it. Why a skit? Because the production of a skit or play forces participants to think about context—the backdrop, the time it is happening, the actors, the props, the feelings, the relationships, etc.—all in such detail that your challenge has a name and a soul.

Teams then enact the play while others take notes on their major takeaways. We provide them with two questions to think about after watching each play.

1. What do you think could be done to respond to this particular challenge right now?
2. What do you think could be done to respond to this challenge on a national scale?

Figure 1. Healing pathways visualized based on Céline Semaan’s framework for release and healing.

Figure 2. Deconstruction of a Customer Journey Map. Kaplan, K. (2016). Customer Journey Maps: When and How to Create Them. Nielsen Norman Group. https://www.nngroup.com/articles/customer-journey-mapping.Figure 3. Adapted sample journey map. Bagarella, G. (2019). Mapping user journeys for a better workforce system in Massachusetts. Medium. https://medium.com/massgovdigital/mapping-user-journeys-for-a-better-workforce-system-in-massachusetts-6080b1d07006.Figure 4. Benno, D. (2023). Journey mapping template. Center for Complexity.