Community Action Research
Summary Report from u-lab 2x Experience
We have gathered all your inputs about your 2x experience through the report below.
I. u-lab 2x Overview
u-lab 2x is a four-month journey designed for teams to foster deep innovation. Teams are guided to use Theory U tools and methods to advance prototype initiatives that range from making healthcare more accessible to innovating across silos in education, from engaging communities through regional landscape restoration to making workplaces more generative, from building support systems for changemakers to designing artistic platforms of intercultural exchange between refugees and non-refugees- just to name a few. Regular “live session” gatherings hosted on Zoom help to foster a generative peer-learning community to further support teams and their initiatives.
II. u-lab 2x 2024
231
Participating Teams
70
Countries
1040
Individual Participants
25
Languages
170
New Teams
+4000
People Impacted
Countries
Acupuncture Points
III. How to know an experience?
In u-lab 2x, and all Theory U initiatives we embrace different ways of knowing and making sense of experience. Here we share three avenues for gaining insight into understanding the 2x journey:
- Visual Scribing
- Story-Sharing Videos
- Community Action Research Findings
The data shared in each avenue is drawn from the three Live Sessions hosted that served as “touch points' on the journey.
Our intention in compiling the information below is to support our own sense making as a community while simultaneously surfacing an understanding of the conditions, processes, and structures that support awareness-based systems change and innovation so they can be replicated wherever helpful to support local change, globally.
We invite you to join us in this inquiry and share your observations, reflections and questions in the discussion thread at the bottom of the page.
i. Visual Scribing
Visual scribing is one of the key social arts developed and practiced in connection to Theory U. Live Sessions were accompanied by scribe Olaf Baldini, who sensed into our collective moment and experience and then represented it visually. At the end of each session, we engaged in a resonance exercise, taking in the visual in silence before being invited to share in the Zoom chat responses to three sentence stems, “I see, I sense, I feel called to”.
Gazing at the visuals across the three sessions is one avenue to seeing, sensing and making sense of the u-lab 2x journey.
You can click the link below each image to read the resonance statements.
Visual Scribing from Live Session I - February 8, 2024
Visual from Live Session II - March 7, 2024
Visual from Live Session III - April 4, 2024
Collective Resonance - Live Session III
What do you experience as you view these three images? Share in the chat at the bottom of this page.
ii. Community Video
Story is a powerful means of communicating and making sense of experience. In preparation for each live session, Stefan Day created a video representing the contributions of community members to either “Video Asks” (automated input process) or Story Sharing Sessions (hosted Zoom calls) reflecting themes and experiences at key moments in the process.
These videos, viewed across the timespan of the program, offers an avenue into u-lab 2x that provides insight into both the content and the felt-sense of the journey.
Video from Live Session I - February 8, 2024
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Video from Live Session II - March 7, 2024
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Video from Live Session III - April 4, 2024
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What do you notice as you view these videos marking different points in the u-lab 2x journey? Share in the chat at the bottom of this page.
iv. Survey Findings
During each live session, we engaged in a short survey using Mentimeter, generating immediate data that was then shared with the community for (brief) sense-making.
The same questions were asked each time, allowing for a comparison across time and, ideally, insights into the way people progress through the journey, the enabling conditions, challenges and impact. This quantitative and qualitative data offers a final avenue into the u-lab 2x journey.
Progress Through the Journey
The first two questions related to teams’ place in the u-lab 2x journey, were based on either the progress of the teams’ prototype or the aspects of the program they had completed.
Live Session I - February 8, 2024
Live Session II - March 7, 2024
Live Session III - April 4, 2024
Live Session I - February 8, 2024
Live Session II - March 7, 2024
Live Session III - April 4, 2024
What we see in these images is overall movement through the process as a cohort with a great deal of individuation, with some teams entering into the experience having already engaged in the practices and others slowing the process down.
What do you observe? Please share in the chat at the bottom of this page.
Levels of Listening
The next set of questions asks what percentage of a team’s time is spent at each of the four levels of listening described in Theory U. The question was asked in relation to the core team and in relation to the extended team and stakeholders.
Core Team
Live Session I - February 8, 2024
Live Session II - March 7, 2024
Live Session III - April 4, 2024
Extended Team
Live Session I - February 8, 2024
Live Session II - March 7, 2024
Live Session III - April 4, 2024
While we see some shifts toward greater use of empathic and generative listening in the Core Teams, we were more struck by the degree of shift with the Extended Team and Stakeholders.
Does this reflect your team’s experience? Share in the chat at the bottom of the page.
Enabling Conditions, Challenges & Shifts
In each survey, we asked the open questions: What has shifted or clarified for you/your team? What were the enabling conditions? What is the biggest challenge for you to be able to take the next steps? Responses tended to converge, for example, overcoming challenges to create enabling conditions. Together, responses to the open questions have allowed us to surface some initial findings about what it takes for a team to nurture and evolve a prototype over time.
Key Enabling Conditions
Four enabling conditions that surfaced as significant to supporting the evolution of prototypes: clarity of intention, team cohesion, helpful structures, and new insights. We list them here in the order of frequency with which they were mentioned and illustrated with data from the open questions.
Clarity of intention: Until teams have established a shared intention, it is difficult to move forward. Often this takes time.
- "We have cultivated the soil, and clarified each of our intentions. I think there is now a strong enough foundation."
- "Our shared intention has clarified through continued deep listening practice."
- "We started with so many ideas and thoughts but as we kept at it we have finally arrived at exactly what we want to do."
- "To know each other more. We are beginning to gather together around core themes. It's taking time but we're aiming to make sure that it aligns with the things we are trying to do."
Team cohesion: Trust and cohesion amongst the team were seen as fundamental to innovation and the evolution of prototypes.
- “The enabling conditions were respect and support."
- "Our core team has achieved cohesion and capacity to co-create unique sub-groups with our central core/intention”
- “The safe surrounding was THE enabling condition."
- "Building relationships, trust, and connection among team members and stakeholders is seen as foundational to progress."
Structures, processes and agreements: As prototypes progress, teams increasingly establish ways of operating to support the process and their team coherence.
- "The enabling condition was a weekly co-presenting practice."
- "The need for a time of stillness. There is so much that has happened and we need a space to digest it before jumping into action."
- "Clear communication channels and definitions of 'done' for a phase"
Insight and understanding: Gaining specific insights around the prototype, issue or system through the u-lab 2x practices was often a leverage point for moving initiatives forward.
- "There is something emerging and I have found it in what has happened after the early 'stakeholder interviews': People are sensing this need for change in the systems and are willing to work on that."
- "Bringing our concept to a booth at a conference and seeing reactions, better understanding our audience and their needs."
- "There are many more options to collaborate. 3d mapping has enlarged the field
The Role of the Whole
Generating data as a community in real-time and then collectively making sense of our own data surfaces another enabling condition: collective experience. When asked what felt relevant or important about the data, responses in the chat reflected the role that collective experience—and awareness of collective experience—played in supporting the u-lab 2x process. Three themes surfaced:
Reassurance
- “Daunted by the progress of others, yet reassured we are not alone being at the start!”
- “We are sitting in the same boat, which is very encouraging”
- “We are not alone.”
Inspiration
- “Got an idea what to do next”
- “Sense of seeding something’ new’ at whatever scale is heartening”
- “Exciting and inspiring projects”
Seeing the whole and one’s place in it
- “A feeling of chaotic alignment”
- “A sense of common journeying... we're sharing very similar responses... some relief there…”
- “It’s great to see the whole! I see that we are in a similar place to others. I thought we were behind!”
So the fifth enabling condition is connection to, and resonance with, a larger whole beyond the prototype team.
If you would like to review the full set of responses to the open questions you can find them at these links:
Please share your observations, reflections and questions that emerged for you in the discussion thread below.
Share your observations, reflections and questions.
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