One page that shows where an organization is now, where it wants to be, and what you will do together to get there. Worked example: the finance department of LSDS.
Dr. Patch Aure, COBFSMO special class. Derived from Margaret Archer's morphogenetic approach.
Morphogenesis is how a form comes to be, or changes. Biologists use the word for how an embryo takes its shape. In 1967 the sociologist Walter Buckley used it for organizations and societies, and paired it with a second word: morphostasis, the form staying as it is.
Margaret Archer built her morphogenetic approach on that pair. So the long word asks a short question. Is the form of this organization changing or staying the same, and why?
The T in T1 to T4 is only time. T1 is before. T2 to T3 is during. T4 is after.
An organization keeps its present form because of how it is set up, what its members believe, and who its people are. The canvas gives each one a row.
Rules, roles, resources, tools. What is set up.
LSDS has two accounts and no written procedure for money.
What members believe is okay and not okay.
Friends give each other slack on deadlines.
The people. What they can do, what they want, who has a say.
One officer runs finance alone.
Scroll. The canvas fills as you go. The example uses what Kyle, your collaborator in LSDS, said in his interview. It is left unfinished on purpose.
Three columns, three rows, nine cells. The columns are three questions about time. The rows are the three things that hold LSDS in its present form.
Above the grid sits the outcome you want. Below it runs a band for checking your own thinking.
The middle column comes last. A route needs a start and a destination before anyone can draw it.
For now: a viable financial and budgeting system for LSDS, transparent and easy to monitor.
That wording is tentative. Scoping it with LSDS is your first job. Bring three questions to Kyle and to the LSDS member in your group:
The second question is about productivity. The third is about dignity and well-being. A good outcome answers both.
Helps or blocks. Write + if the entry helps the outcome and - if it blocks it.
Where it came from.
Kyle is a collaborator and one of you is an LSDS member. Both are sources. Write down who said what.
Rules, roles, resources, tools. From Kyle's interview:
Yours: what does your LSDS member know about the setup that Kyle did not mention?
Culture is the row teams skip. A plan with nothing in this row leaves the beliefs as they are.
Who does the work, what they can do, who has a say.
Yours: you are in this row too. One of you is a member. What can you do from the inside, and what is hard to see from there?
The rows are separate on paper so you can see how they hold each other. Ask one question: which entry in one row keeps an entry in another row in place?
For LSDS: with no single record (Structure), nobody can see who has paid, so paying late embarrasses no one (Culture). And where paying late is fine, nobody asks for the record. Guess
Find one such pair of your own. It usually points to where a single fix will fail.
Read the three T4 cells together. They are what "a viable financial and budgeting system" means for LSDS. A spreadsheet fills one cell.
Test. Cover one cell with your hand. Is what remains still a working system?
A theory to try. The technology acceptance model (Davis, 1989) and UTAUT (Venkatesh et al., 2003) study why people take up a new system or leave it unused. One way to sort UTAUT into the rows: facilitating conditions in Structure, social influence in Culture, and whether a person expects the system to be useful and easy in Agency. Read
These theories explain whether people will use the record. They say less about why friends pay late. Look for a second theory for that.
Yours: these three lines are examples and they are tentative. Write your own.
This column is your plan, and a plan here is made of interactions: who does what with whom. Your team with Kyle. Officers with members. Members with each other. Only people act.
For every move, write four things. One example:
Yours: this move leaves Culture untouched. What move would reach it?
Archer calls the habit of questioning your own inner conversation meta-reflexivity. You will practice it with Lonergan's general empirical method: four habits, one for each kind of mental work.
Being authentic means keeping all four, most of all when they show you were wrong. Your left-hand column on the Kyle interview was this band at work. Run it on every column.
Come back and write what each row became. If the form changed, that is morphogenesis. If it stayed, that is morphostasis.
Expect a mixed answer: a new ledger in Structure, the same beliefs in Culture. Write it as it is. What you find becomes the T1 of your next cycle.
This is what the canvas can look like after one interview: two to four lines in each cell, nothing more. It is one possible draft. Yours should differ, because your LSDS member knows things this draft does not.
One pair across rows. No single record (Structure) and late payment tolerated (Culture) keep each other in place. Guess
Fill out your own canvas for LSDS. Keep it to one page: a snapshot of your whole action research. Behind the page, write a short narrative for each cell.
The canvas is a working draft. Date each version and expect to change it after every conversation with LSDS.
What rules, roles, resources, and tools exist now? Which help, which block?
What will we set up or change? Who does it, with whom?
What setup would be in place? What should stay?
What do members believe is okay? Which beliefs help, which block?
Whose beliefs need to shift? Who talks with whom about it?
What would members treat as normal? What should stay?
Who does the work? Who can do what? Who has a say?
Who needs to learn, join, or be given a say?
Who would be able to do what? Who would be using it?