Within a major hybrid qualitative project, synchronicities may occur within subjects’ households that appear to have no meaning at first, but pique the interest of the team, seem definitive, and lead to speculation.. even if off-topic.  We don’t know what to do with these seemingly irrelevant but frequently noted observations.  But they fascinate some of us on the team as much as the on-topic observations.

In a recent ethnography, we see an abundance of leather couches; a leather couch exists in many homes in this psychographic, archetypal needstate population.  A leather couch, when probed, seems a sign of high quality, comfort, stylishness, modernity, yet has nothing much in common with the rest of the findings.  This is a relaxing, amusing, not entirely obvious observation until it’s seen a couple of times by an astute team member.  Some of us comment to each other after a while, during the next research debriefs — “and, this household has a leather couch, too.”

In this same ethnography, every household is religious in some way, more than in most ethnographic studies. In midwest and southeast locations, each household shows a different religious tradition:  Muslim, fundamentalist Christian, reform Jewish, very Irish Catholic, Hispanic catholicism — with significant numbers of religious icons on the walls, scriptural Christian, Jewish, or Islamic sayings, evidence of prayer or observance, and kids’ connection to religious schools, or rite-of-passage rituals and teachings.  Such synchronicities are repeated enough to make us notice, yet seem to have no direct connection to the subject, at least for now.   We can interpret, analyze, speculate, of course, during analysis and here.

Although I cannot divulge the research study, these synchronicitous situations represent the fun of being aware of synchronicity as a subject in this blog.   Meaningful coincidences may have only private connection (to me as cultural anthropologist or a key member of the research team in terms of how to strategically think about this project) — or a larger implication to the marketing and research issue under investigation.

I am thinking about the fundamentals of the creative process.  The first part is radical brainstorming, ideation, and the stretch of divergence — in which many ideas are created to solve a central opportunity. During this free-form divergence phase, the facilitator and team will tap into many different creative exercises to expand, liberate, and augment the mind of the team from old thinking, unprofitable constructions, and strongly held but not viable preliminary ideas.

At some point in the creative process, we stop diverging and go to convergence.   The model of Creative Problem Solving has the intersections of divergence and convergence move like an electrocardiogram up and down, up and down, throughout the entire process.  Sometimes, for lack of time, however, we simply divide the time in half.  The first half is pure divergence, the D phase.   The second half is pure convergence, the C phase.  Convergence means that, given the huge pile of ideas we’ve just created, we now brainstorm criteria for choosing a few of these ideas for further exploration, and then begin to actively select the most potentially doable and intriguing ideas to expand, evaluate, and finetune in the C phase.

During this later C phase and after we’ve explored the potential of new ideas, we might come to the sub-phase called Great Doubt.  We take a few of the ideas that are promising and subject them to deep questioning.  This is intentional.  We question every element of the idea with strictness laced with kindness.   This is never a first step –which is the usual mistake of untrained teams — but one of the last.  Great Doubt is applied in order to be sure that the enactment of a particular idea has not forgotten something major and important.

I took this idea from Gengo Merzel who is a Zen master and Jungian philosopher with a website and process called Big Mind.   The reference to his blog, Big Mind, is http://bigmind.org/blog/the-value-of-questioning-everything

I’m planning on trying Great Doubt as one of the final convergence exercises that I train on for an upcoming creativity training workshop for qualitative researchers in Dallas called Facilitating Consciously:  A Mini-Training Workshop on Creative Techniques.    As the reader reviews the article below, one can change the word “enlightenment” to “creativity.”   One can alternate the word Buddha for “process.”    It is true that in qualitative market research and creative process, we hope to attain many things — insight, understanding, a good idea, a solution, breakthrough, unique selling proposition, direction, and the core of a successful strategic plan.  But, during the creative session itself, it can be beneficial to allow a period of Great Doubt to finalize the ideas and action plans before getting carried away on the heels of overexcitement, anticipation, and positive expectations, as valuable as enthusiasm and spirit for the work can be.

Always, in creativity, we must consciously alternate expansion of possibilities and free-form ideation with intentionally imposed limits, contractions, and doubt  in order to shape the final solution into a truly workable breakthrough.  Rather than blind faith — as valuable as this can be at the outset of a creative session — Great Doubt at the end may make the difference in how we view the category, brand, and our world.

The Value of Questioning Everything

Genpo Roshi, January 21, 2013

Sometimes in the middle of an intense qualitative study involving in situ immersion ethnography — particularly one whose goals and objectives have not been solved yet or that reflect findings and data that don’t fit together, and everyone on the team is still scratching their heads — the observer may witness an event, finding, impression, situation, icon, or visual sighting that at first appears to be nothing.  It’s idiosyncratic or insignificant yet it has a certain attraction; it’s arresting.  It’s interesting, odd, and the astute researchers glances at it intensely, but may not know what to do with it.  She may forget about it or mull it over without result.   But later, under new circumstances in the same study — in an entirely different household or region —  this same observation, event, or situation–or one very similar to the first oddity — repeats.  It repeats under unexpected situations, perhaps in another part of the country.  It may be subtle or accompanied by our reactions of shock, surprise, even delight.   Because we have been so intensely involved in the observationals, hour after hour, the presence of a meaningful coincidence causes us to pause and comment on it in debriefs.   I/we discover, upon reflection, that the existence of this synchronistically repeated situation portends a greater depth of resonance and relevance for the overall findings than expected.  It shows that something specific needs to be paid attention to.   It suggests an ending to how the research will go.   The synchronistic research event — even if not understood until later, if at all — begins to emphasize something important to the study or unravel a research puzzle.

Suddenly, this synchronistic occurrence provides a new, dramatic moment of indepth insight to the overall research momentum.  The researcher may be taken on a new road of inquiry, a thread of questioning, or a new line of thinking may be opened up.   Synchronicity becomes a kind of discovery mechanism facilitated by coincidence, by larger forces interfering and exerting power  in what once was an orderly, expected, research unfoldment.

Synchronicity may lead to breakthrough or it may simply coalesce the team when some realize that a finding might be truer or more important because of the unexpected repetition of findings.  Synchronicity does not happen in every research study, but when it does, the sighting of the coincidence can be unmistakable, at least to the lead ethnographer who is carefully analyzing and noting observations of impact.  A synchronistic event in research may also connect to something personal for the researcher or client team; it may suggest what will happen to team members as a result of doing the research or it may simply emphasize the presence of the unexplainable, mysterious, or unknown…one of those components of qualitative research that continues to attract cultural anthropologists and depth psychologists into the field.

When training a team to go into in situ environments in a way that makes both team and subjects comfortable immediately and throughout the length of the ethnography — and encourages authentic behavior of the subjects under observation — a few guidelines are helpful to conduct authentic ethnography.  Authentic ethnography is a less reactive, more spontaneous, purer observational process espoused by academic anthropologists.   We gain enormous depth of real-world experiences observed directly in consumer households.  Here they are as principles:

1.Pre-screening quads or triads: Conduct a preliminary, highly creative set of 4-8+ small focus groups or triads in several locations, first.  We choose our ethnographic candidates from these groups and gain valuable preliminary insight into motivations, behaviors, and attitudes

2.Rule of 2: Conduct the longer ethnographic observationals in households based upon the scope of 2 per key segment per two regions to read results accurately

3.Direct immersion: Observe at least 8 but better is 12-18+ reality observationals, each of which is 3+ hours long, for at least 36 to 60 hours of observation per study.  If less ethnography is done, findings may be too idiosyncratic or hard to read for definitive insights

4. Only times of natural behavior: Observe households and subjects only during times when behaviors important to the inquiry are likely to exist and occur spontaneously, with little prompting

5. Limit typical indepth interviewing:  Unlike abbreviated forms of garden-variety “talking ethnographies,” authentic ethnographic observationals emphasize minimal staging, prompting, or asking direct questions.  Of the three hours, we try for 2 hours of more spontaneous behavior; we leave an hour at the end of each observational for a formal interview, if necessary, although often all our objectives have been accomplished naturally.  Natural behavior is the most viable form of finding in ethnography

6.Committed client team: Clients are trained in Authentic Ethnography even if team members have already gone on previous ethnographies.  Each client participates in at least two observationals with lead ethnographer, assists with two data-gathering roles

7.Team reinforcement in field:   Prior to each ethnography, the team is refreshed in special observation processes such as  “active invisibility,” “soft gaze,” “gentle presence,” and usage of only open-ended questions

8.Continual ideation:  The lead ehnographer debriefs frequently with client team after each authentic observational, to make sense of intricate findings.  At the conclusion of fieldwork, a creative ideation debrief of 3-4 hours is held back at client headquarters to bring all teams together and share, coalesce, and build on observational findings

9. Digital photography and videography is a key part of process: Households are photographed or videographed extensively by the lead anthropologist, then edited for analysis and presentation. Visuals are as important as language

10.  Synchronicity and serendipity: Although most research analysis uses more traditional clustering of data against key themes, the element of synchronicity and meaningful coindence of observed events, icons, and behavior within households should be included as a-has and insight evolve.

I am speculating — on the last day in the office before I’m heading to the upper Amazon basin in Ecuador for vacation and light anthropological research — whether it is possible to experience meaningful coincidences/synchronicity, the identification and evolution of new insights in qualitative research and group/individual creativity, or deep innovative solutions without a period of relaxation inserted somewhere in the creative process.   In the original Osborne creative model that was later redeveloped into new systems like Synectics and Creative Problem Solving, there are creative methodologies based upon four steps:

1. Preparation. A problem or need has been identified and there is intense activity trying to solve it.  New methodologies for creativity are applied.  The team or individual works hard to figure it out.
2. Vacation.  This is the moment when either through an intentional creative exercise that allows one to escape from the problem for a few moments (for instance, the essential paradox is one such Synectics exercise) or to actually go away for a period of time in which the problem is not thought about but the mind is focusing on something else delightful or adventurous.  This allows the brain that has been stimulated in the first preparation stage to recoalesce and reconfigure, unconsciously trying to solve the problem.
3. A-ha.  This stage is when the brain/unconscious has reconfigured the options and comes up with one or more elegant solutions.  Some may work; others may lead to something; others may have a part that is useful.
4. Verification.  This stage is the more analytical one.  The possible solutions are chosen and worked on to optimize.  A final one or two directions is then quantitatively tested or used to begin the new initiative addressing the original problem.

Although the model has many variations and exercises — depending upon whether we are working on a team creativity/vision session  or whether an artist, musician, or designer is working independently on a particular situation — the second stage of vacation appears necessary in order to let the brain power and unconscious archetypal material use all the stimulation and reform the new ideas.

It may be that synchronicity appears most frequently when the subject is in a relaxed state of mind.  However, this hypothesis would bear more investigation.

Nonetheless, while in the jungle and if the paper of the journal does not get too soggy or if the iPad can be plugged in, I will be taking notes of new ideas during this period of environmental change.

Last night I am at a party with creative people, artists, gallery owners, designers, bankers, and academics in a loft in downtown Manhattan.    Meeting a fashion person, we exchange business cards.  His is thick, white, embossed on white.  (Mine is colorful.)  I look at it last night and cannot read it, assuming it will become visible in the morning.

This morning I look again, nothing is readable.  I become intrigued.   I look at it under a bright reading light, then scan and set it into blue-and-orange powerpoint to make it visible.  Much time is being spent on this envisioning activity, much more time than with any ordinary readable business card.  I still cannot.

However, I acknowledge mentally that the card’s owner’s persona is indelibly imprinted on my mind.  My efforts to make the invisible, visible, have created him as a solid vision, one whom I would now know if I encounter him again.

Mythologically, something about a totally white-on0white expensively embossed business card that seems initially unreadable points to a sign of the times.   We now live in a virtual environment in which communication is possible at every level, constantly, wanted or unwanted, with or without our permission.  The idea of inaccessibility seems resonating, contemporary, appealing.  An invisible calling card may allow us to retain control and be seen only by those whom we allow ourselves to become visible.

Is this the myth of the invisible, powerful warrior?  A god of the unseen?  A deity of the underworld?  A conquest within a computer warrior game that is spoken about but never shown?  The eternal allure of the invisible?  The irresistible motivation to make what is unseen, seen?  To have what cannot be easily owned?  To make the aspirational a reality?  To recreate what is already there but needs to come into visual generation?   The psychological dynamics of emergence theory?

I am considering a new branding that will appeal to technologically advanced, higher echelon, upper-income, educated targets who are bombarded by communication and seek another form of motivation — the ability to remain fashionably invisible, which prompts such powerful curiosity.. that we are motivated to make the unseen, seen.   There is a Magician archetype in operation, as a result of wishing to become warriors of creation.  By being initially aloof and unreadable, we begin to strive for greater control in a new kind of emergence experience.

I am motivated to seek what we don’t know, i.e., ignorance.  I just read of a course at Columbia University in the City of New York, a new book Ignorance, that describe how ignorance drives new forms of knowledge.  MF’s thesis is worth a deeper look.

Let me know what you think.  How has not knowing and ignorance driven you to generate new insights?

The dramatic category called Ignorance may have subtle implications for qualitative research, creative generation, and deeper understanding of the archetypes in relationship to branding, motivations, and therapeutic breakthrough.  It most certainly has implications for the area of synchronicity, although this has not yet emerged in my thinking or showed itself to my conscious mind.  When these do — most likely in forms of synchronous occurrences —  I shall report back.  But, the fact that I am posting on ignorance and its relationship to new knowledge would imply that insight on the causality of new forms of knowledge is imminent… or immanent.

These images illustrate the relationship of the drive for new forms of knowledge starting with the depths of the unconscious and ignorance.  Some are from Jung’s Red Book; others are from mythopoetic symbols; another is from nature.   The center moon shape on the barge (Jung) implies that what we assume is ignorance is actually cradled by the drives for new knowledge.  In the second image, the Fool represents the place of unknowing, a pathway from Kether-Crown to Chokmah-Wisdom on the Kabbalistic Tree of Life.  The third is a sea urchin deep in the ocean.

Below are reviews on MF’s Ignorance and upcoming lecture at Columbia University

The following comes from an announcement from Columbia University.

The best is yet to come.

The power of exploring archetypes and archetypal imagery to predict upcoming major events in the world is an usual role for these universal patterns in graphic form that are frequently used to explore deepening of authentic brand personas.  On October 1, during an archetypal brainstorming ideation session with clients and researchers, we explored a variety of potential archetypes and need states that the group felt was reflected by each of the U.S. presidential candidates.

On that early October day, the archetypes of World Community and Superhero were chosen for Barack Obama, while no clear archetype could be selected for Romney.

Last night, that World Community archetypal prediction has emerged with the significant victory of Obama.

That October 1 archetypal prediction was accurate.  Now we can celebrate, anticipate, and experience with happiness the reelection of a president who will fight for American prosperity, increasing jobs for everyone, and collaboration of life, democracy, and resources among nations.   It is a wonderful day.

What I’m discovering through my depth psychological research is that adding a strong component of creativity increases the level, power, frequency, and speed of synchronicity.  This relationship has implications for artists, musicians, and creators as well as for qualitative research in which a creative, visual component is added to the design, execution, intention of the team, and outcome.

For this post, I am speaking of synchronicity related to artists and musicians.

Here is a two-step relationship that might form the beginnings of a synchronous process:

1) To manifest synchronicity more rapidly and significantly, use the Magician archetype intentionally.  The Magician is the archetypal that intensifies the intentionality to create, to bring new ideas and creations into being, and to apply focus and tools to generate a new idea into reality.

2)  Then add a powerful component of art, music, filmmaking, photography, or composing —  creativity in some form that brings imagery together along with ideas and intentionality.   It is evident today from two days of evidence that the artist’s power as manifestor allows imagery from the depth of the unconscious — the mythological basis of archetypal reality — to emerge and take form rapidly.

This appears as synchronicity — images that coincide with internal visual images created to form a quantum effect in a startling and exciting embodiment.