The split-screen journal

by Philip Boxer BSc MBA PhD

The split-screen journal provides a way for a consultant to work with a ‘plus-one’ relationship to an intervention in which they are playing a part.[1]    It provides a means of questioning what is symptomatic in their behavior as it relates to their client organisation.

Working with a consultant intervening on a client organisation, it takes the following form:

The consultant provides a weekly ‘split screen’ journal reporting on one side what is going on in the client system, including what he is doing, and on the other side, his reflections on his experience, including his feelings about what is going on.

This format relates to the quadripod describing the consultant’s relation to their intervention:


Developing a ‘plus-one’ relationship over time to their work through using a split-screen journal, a view begins to emerge of the consultant’s organising assumptions and their impact not only on the intervention’s wigo, but also on what is being ignored or left out – the lack of the intervention that is symptomatic of its organisation.[2]

The ‘plus-one’ relationship is thus of the consultant’s reading itself, forming the basis for a reflexive process, in which an understanding of the intervention’s particular relation to lack enables new possibilities to emerge for triple loop learning – learning about how the consultant decides what is right.

Footnote
[1] It plays a crucial role in supporting a reflexive process.
[2] This lack is most likely to be apparent in the relationship of the organisation to its client-customers, making apparent what is Really going on (wiRgo) in the sense of what interests are Really being taken care of…

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