Seeing is Believing – Or is it?

Neil Carey

Manchester Metropolitan University

• “Just by seeing is believing/ I don't need to question why …”

• “Oh seeing, seeing, seeing is believing”

• “… I look above me/”

• I see him everywhere

Seeing is believingThe pervasiveness of sight/vision metaphor

for strategic practice:• Vision (statement)

• Environmental scanning

• Looking ahead; Forecast; Foresight

• Scenario

• World view

• Blue sky-ing?

• Transparency

• Perspective

• Supervisor/supervision

Aims of the session• To open up a space in which we critically

examine what we know through reference to sight/vision.

…Both at the literal and metaphoric level.

What we’ll do:

• An exercise in ‘seeing/knowing’

• Extrapolate for implications for our strategic practice given the basis for our work is in environmental ‘scanning’.

Exercise• Take a position in the room

• Try to make your position different from anyone else’s

• Work independently

• Read the sheet carefully and follow the instructions

• Write up your responses individually on the sheet provided

• 6 minutes to complete

Exercise - Feedback

Exercise - Feedback

Exercise - Feedback

Exercise - Feedback

Exercise - Feedback

Exercise - FeedbackSimilarities in response to exercise

• Everybody attending to the task

• Focused on what they were asked to look at

• Describe the objects on the table

• How much attention to the context and setting of the ‘installation’?

• How much resistance to the exercise itself?

Exercise - FeedbackDifferences in response to exercise

• Differences in the physical perspective of each student

• differences in the language used to describe items:– different preceding knowledge– different preceding experiences– different linguistic repertoires– different sub/cultural references

Exercise - FeedbackDifferences in response to exercise

• Different ‘contextualizing’ view offered to each student

• Different individual perspective and motivation to the exercise (politics of practice?)– Engagement in different ways– More/less willing to articulate than others?– More/less willing to ‘substitute’ not knowing

with alternative descriptions

Your Organization?• Centralized functions?• Decentralized power and control?• Professional bodies• Partnership working (other functions/departments;

other organizations)?• Diverse stakeholders

– Residents, citizens, consumers, voters– Councillors, Professions, Services

• Competing and powerfully independent stakeholder groups/voices

Reflection points• A very literal exercise

• Here looking at ‘simple’ inanimate objects

• Call to extrapolate from ‘physical’ seeing/knowing to seeing/knowing involved in being strategic

• Reminder of how strategic practice invokes ‘seeing’/scanning/visioning as a central metaphor

Implications for practice• In what ways can we be sure that our own

view is an accurate(?) view?

• How similar/different is our view with that of other stakeholders?

• Whose gets to present/voice their view

• Whose view(s) are represented (included/excluded)

• Who has power to present their view?

• Is it likely that ‘one’ view will include all?

Implications for practice• So how or in what ways might we

convince a differently ‘seeing’ set of publics to see the world in the way in which we wish them to see? (Propaganda?)

• Or

• How can we attempt to represent the different views of these publics/partnersin the work that we do? (consultation/participation?)

Implications for practice• ……..

And for next few days?• Not just accepting the received ‘academic’

or ‘practitioner’ wisdom

• Taking what you learn into the complexities of the worlds in which we work

• Resisting the desire for ‘quick-fix’

• This network as a (re)source for similarity and difference in views.

• Critical distance?

And for next few days?• Oh ……

• Enjoy a space for thinking …

… away from the routines.

• And have FUN in MANCHESTER.