Order & Chaos (Live Session)

← Back ℹ️ Skip to key parts of the session by clicking on the chapter dots along the timeline. Order & Chaos is a card in the Storyteller Tactics card deck. Deck author, Steve Rawling, talks a group of Pip Decks community members through using the card, and how to apply it to various situations, highlighting a hero in each scenario. The Miro board on this call isn’t playing nicely, but you’ll get a good idea of how to set up your workspace if you plan to use this tactic with a group. Two halves of the brain: two very different jobs Steve kicks off by introducing the idea of left/right brain specialism. The left side deals with the task at hand - it controls and/or focusses on something. Order! The right side is on the lookout for threats. Chaos! And yes, the session starts with a meerkat analogy. So this card introduces the concept of order, chaos and a hero - that’s you! The known world - often the starting point for your story - is the client, the product and/or the current way of doing things. The unknown world around you - competitors, pandemics etc - is the chaos. In your story, you have to do one of two things: survive chaos and impose order, or inject a dash of chaos to revive a project constrained by too much order. So you’re restoring balance; whether that’s by introducing order or chaos depends on your situation. Using Miro to order your thinking Onto the Miro board (we’ve edited the screenshot slightly to show the headers - you can see the real thing in the ‘Miro board’ chapter of the video). The pink squares are post-it notes, and the subtitles underneath Order and Chaos both say ‘positives’. The known world is always both positive and negative. You’re changing a website - the old version is okay, sure! But it’s not great. The unknown world (the new website), despite first appearances, holds both positive and negative potential. It could crash and burn! But it could also send your sales skyrocketing. How does this relate to the story? Well, there’s always a moment where chaos disrupts order. If not, it’s not a story. It’s just business as usual. So, chaos disrupts the order; then there’s your response. This is where you make the decision to either impose order or exploit chaos. Examples from participants in the tutorial: model of consciousness, marketing 3d artists and an educational programme for schools. Example 1: a model of consciousness The first participant, Tom, gave an example of working on a model of consciousness. The aim is to set the story straight - and it’s a model for everyone to understand. Steve then applies this structure to his story: Current situation: our existing understanding of the world Positive: our current understanding of the world. Look how successful we are! We have organised it well enough to achieve some impressive feats. Negative: our current understanding of the world also incorporates elements of unsustainability, unfairness and unjustness. The future (the unknown world) Positive: somewhere out there, a new way of understanding things exists that could transform our lives for the better! Negative: … it might do the opposite. Or just be really hard to achieve. The current situation then gets hit by chaos. So does the hero try to fight off the unknown world and restore the existing order, or do they look for the opportunity among the chaos? Watch the Example 1 chapter of the video to find out more. Example 2: marketing strategies for 3D artists For the second example, Steve worked with Anees to work on a story that makes a hero out of either the clients, or Anees himself, for implementing marketing strategies for 3D artists. Known world: Positive: they’re doing some marketing already - posting on LinkedIn etc Negative: there’s no real strategy, they could do better. New platforms are emerging all the time! So there’s a moment where their world gets shaken up - it could be a competitor, the loss of a major client etc. Your response, as the hero, is to help them establish order, if they feel out of control, using simple messaging. Or, if they feel like they are constrained and wasting potential, you can be the chaos that helps to invigorate them. Do they want to protect themselves from threat? Or do they want to step outside of their comfort zone? Steve thinks this approach could work either way for this scenario, depending on the client. Example 3: educational programme for schools Larae is a project manager at an educational organisation, trying to get school systems on board with a project that funds schemes for teaching computer science. The trials need a lot of involvement (lots of sign off from different parties). It’s a hard sell! Schools are under COVID pressure. How do you get the different parties on board? Steve works through how that story could go: “The pandemic is a great example of chaos. We had a system in place to deliver computer science. It worked but could have been better. The pandemic then disrupted everything - but it did help us learn new skills, and technology certainly had its day. Computer science is the hero in this story!” There was order, then chaos, and technology is going to help us create a new sense of order (and eliminate chaos). Now, tailor it to each individual party that needs to get on board. Where does this order vs chaos struggle play out in their world? Teachers: it plays out in the classroom, with students and with parents. Principals: it plays out with their budget and their staff. District officials: it plays out within the systems and processes they have to enact. Show how it impacts one unit in each instance. One student, one staff member, one school. This is an important step. Use “Just imagine..." And then you focus on one person. Real, or an example. “Just imagine you’re a student at the school” to create a personal connection. This ‘little’ picture sits within the framework of the ‘big’ picture you created in the first part of the exercise. Q&A What’s the biggest challenge with implementing this story? What’s the biggest drawback, and how do you address it? Not specific to this card: the biggest issue is that business clients aren’t used to storytelling full stop, so they find it hard to think in terms of stories and framing and big pictures. They also aren’t as ready to dive into the personal stories. Specific to this card? Well translating the concept into a message that customers or clients connect to. The deck is very interconnected. This card/workshop/Miro board actually helps bring order to that chaos! Is there a Miro board for every one? Steve doesn’t work in a particularly linear way! He spreads his ideas across a huge sheet of paper. The interconnectedness actually explains why the cards are cards rather than a book. The author sets the linear progression of a book - and the theory is that each card holds one basic idea, rather than a chapter full of ideas, so you can build your own story using the rough elements that work for you. See ‘Colour structure of cards’ chapter of the video to find out more about this. Example 4: Charles is working on an email to showcase the benefit of an LMS system. He introduces a chaos situation where someone is flying, and on arrival at the luggage area they have lost an item. They’re stuck waiting for luggage - where is it? That’s the lead in to the business being stuck in the old human-led training system. Transitioning to an e-learning platform is the solution (personalised and customised, more efficient and fewer ‘single point of failures’). Steve explains that in this case, the story uses an analogy (not a scenario) - this software is the equivalent of delivering (training or luggage) in many different ways depending on what you need. It solves the issues, much like the traveller having tools that work on different devices would solve the lost luggage issue. Steve builds out this example in lots of detail in the video (see Example 4) if you want to see the process of finding a story. Bonus: skip to the Zombies chapter to find out why Steve will watch the first 20 mins of any zombie movie ever made. The final section of the call (chapter: Q&A) is ten mins about the approach to running sessions to introduce the cards. Lots of fantastic ideas put forward by the group! We love that people are so involved and engaged in learning about the cards and sharing suggestions with us, and feedback with each other.