D as Diagramming: The iART Diagram Network
This article aims to expand the original iART diagram into a diagram network.
The previous article introduced iART Framework. However, the original diagram of the iART Framework is too simple, this article aims to expand it from a simple diagram to a diagram network in order to discuss more relevant topics under the framework.
I have introduced Diagram Blending and Diagram Network in a previous article: D as Diagramming: Tripartness and Diagram Blending. You can find more details there. The article also introduced three meta-diagrams:
- The Dialectical Room
- The Interactive Zone
- The Hierarchical Loops
I will use these three meta-diagrams to expand the iART framework with a set of sub-diagrams. Together, they form a diagram network.
Part 1: A Transactional Anticipatory System
Let’s consider the relationship of “Fonder — Investor” as a transactional anticipatory system.
1.1 The iART Framework
The name iART stands for i +Activity + Relationship + Themes. For the iART Framework, the T also can refer to Time because the framework focuses on the relationship between Present and Future.
The iART framework offers an ecological perspective on personal adult development. The term “ecological perspective” means the following three contexts of personal development:
- Practice context: the “Know — Act” ecology (Activity).
- Spatial context: the “Self — Other” ecology (Relationship)
- Temporal context: the “Present — Future” ecology (Time).
You can find more details about the framework from the previous article: D as Diagramming: The iART Framework.
1.2 The “Founder — Investor” Transactional Anticipatory System
As an abstract model, the iART framework doesn’t refer to a particular type of interpersonal relationship. The previous article used my own story as an example which refers to the relationship of “mentor — mentee”.
Today I’d like to use the relationship of “founder — investor” in general as an example for discussing the iART framework.
Why do I choose the “founder — Investor” relationship as primary example? Because it is a perfect topic for applying the iART framework.
- Practice context: the “Know — Act” ecology (Activity).
First, the core of the “founder — investor” relationship is Startup which is about both knowing an opportunity and acting on the opportunity. Both founders and investors are members of the Startup Activity.
- Spatial context: the “Self — Other” ecology (Relationship)
Second, the “founder — investor” relationship is unique. If a founder decides to invest in a startup, then he forms a formal collaboration relationship with the founder of the startup. However, the “founder — investor” relationship is different from the “founder/leader — team member” relationship and “founder — family member”. The investor shares the future of the startup with the founder, but he doesn’t involve the daily performance while team members are active on daily performance. The investor only cares about the future of the startup while the family members also care about the founder’s ideal life.
- Temporal context: the “Present — Future” ecology (Time).
The Investing activity is a game of buying the future. If an investor invests in a startup, it means he agrees on the anticipation about the startup with the founder. Forevermore, the investing activity and the startup activity are not one movement event, it is a developmental process. That means both the investor and the founder are living with a dynamic “present — future” ecology.
Thus, the “founder — investor” relationship is great for applying iART framework.
1.3 A Typology of “Founder — Investor” relationship
I use the Theme U diagram to general a typology of “founder — investor” relationship. This is just a rough intuitive assumption. I just use it as a starting point for our discussion.
The above two diagrams present the same typology with different details. The left diagram is called Theme U which only presents six themes. The right diagram is called WXMY which offers more details about the six themes, especially the three containers.
Now let’s have look at the six types of actions within the “founder — investor” relationship:
- Ignore: an investor ignores an idea presented by a founder.
- Inspire: the investor doesn’t decide to support the founder, however, the founder’s idea inspires the investor. For example, the investor likes the idea, but he doesn’t believe the founder can turn it into a real product. Or, the investor gets a new idea based on the founder’s idea.
- Intervene: the investor invests in the startup, he starts advising the founder on the development of the business.
- Interpret: the founder may don’t agree with the investor, so he has to provide some reasons and evidence to support his decisions in order to reject advice from investors.
- Improve: the founder accepts advice from the investor and improves his product and business.
- Initiate: the founder shares his idea with the investor.
From the perspective of iART framework, the Startup Activity is formed with these six types of actions between the founder and the investor. Both six types of actions are about “Present — Future” and “Self — Other”.
The Container Z at the right diagram includes four types of actions: inspire, intervene, interpret, and improve. These actions are about daily actions of a startup and a formal relationship of “founder — investor”.
I consider the Container Z space as a Transactional Anticipatory System.
Part 2: A Diagram Network
The diagram of the iART Framework is a simple diagram. In order to discuss related topics, I adopted several meta-diagrams for expanding the iART framework. Together, they form a diagram network.
2.1 The Present Room
First, I use the Dialectical Room meta-diagram to generate the diagram below for discussing the relationship of “Present — Future”.
The name of the above diagram is The Present Room, this means only the present room is real. The future room is not real. However, we are not always staying in the present room because it needs to be oriented to the future room. This is the value of the concept of Anticipation.
For the present room, I highlights three concepts:
- Exploitation
- Emergence
- Exploration
The pair of concepts of “Exploitation — Exploration” is inspired by James March. Though, James March’s original paper is about organizational learning, I think it is very useful for iART Framework. According to James March, “It is clear that a strategy of exploitation without exploration is a route to obsolescence. It is equally clear that a strategy of exploration without exploitation is a route to elimination. But it is not clear where the optimum lies between those two extremes. The problem is partly one ignorance about the distribution of costs and benefits, but it is only partly that. A deeper problem is that specifying the optimum requires comparing costs and returns across time and space. An exploitation/exploration balance that is good in the short run is likely not to be good in the long run. And a balance that is good for the individual actor is likely not to be good in the long run for the community of actors. Thus, although we cannot specify the optimum balance, we know that that optimum depends on the time and space perspective taken. More specifically, the longer the time horizon and the broader the space horizon, in general, the more the optimum moves toward exploration.” (Explorations in Organizations, 2008, p.109)
There is no theory for finding the optimum balance. It all depends on the real practical situations. For the iART Framework, I think it is good to adopt the relationship of “Self — Other” to solve this tension.
Why?
According to Construal level theory (CLT), a social psychology theory that describes the relation between psychological distance and the extent to which people’s thinking is abstract or concrete.
Yaacov Trope and Nira Liberman pointed out in their article Construal-Level Theory of Psychological Distance, “According to CLT, then, people traverse different psychological distances by using similar mental construal processes. Because the various distances have the same egocentric reference point, they should all be cognitively related to each other and similarly affect and be affected by level of construal. As psychological distance increases, construals would become more abstract, and as level of abstraction increases, so too would the psychological distances people envisage. Construal levels thus expand and contract one’s mental horizon.”
Inspired by CLT, I think we could turn individual differences into a great iART system. For example, if a founder focuses on Exploitation, his investor could help him on Exploration.
I also adopt the concept of Emergence for the present room. I was inspired by Henry Mintzberg’s ideas on strategic planning.
According to Henry Mintzberg, “…we believe, is that the concept of strategy formation has always been misconstrued, forcing strategic control to bypass one critical aspect — the possibility of emergent strategy. As shown in Figure 6–5, there is certainly the need to assess the performance of deliberate strategies (shown as B on the figure), and, stepping back (A), the need to assess the degree of realization of the strategies that were formally intended in the first place (in the words of Schended and Hofer’s book on strategic management, “whether (1) the strategy is being implemented as planned; and (2) the results produced by the strategy are those intended” [1979:18]). But before these must come another activity ( C ), namely the assessment of whatever strategies were, in fact, realized, whether intended or not. And the last activity must be enlarged (D) to encompass the assessment of the performance of all those strategies. In other words, strategic control must assess behavior as well as performance. Once again it must be appreciated that there is more to strategy formation than planning.”(1994, p.359)
By adopting the concept of Emergence, we can make a good balance between Exploitation and Exploration.
The concept of Emergence is also related to the concept of By-product which was introduced in Life as Activity (version 0.3). See the diagram below.
For example, the present room diagram led to a new diagram which covers past, present, and future. Originally, I named it the Life-as-Activity framework (v1.0), yesterday I renamed it the Path of Creative Life. You can find details about the naming from the previous article: D as Diagramming: The Path of Creative Life. This is a by-product of the iART Framework.
I also use the relationship of “Shaper — Supporter” to discuss the path of creative life. The basic idea of the diagram is that a creative person needs to develop a great relationship of “Shaper — Supporter” in order to improve his/her predictive model.
Thus, this by-product also connects back to the iART Framework. This is the power of a diagram network.
2.2 Themes of Practice
On August 7, 2021, I reviewed the historical development of a concept: Themes of Practice. Now we can adopt it to expand the iART Framework.
The relationship of “Self — Other” can be represented by a meta-diagram: the Interactive zone. For the iART framework, we can focus on the feedback.
There are many possible themes within an interactive zone. Some themes are close to one side. For example, the theme of “decision” and the theme of “information” are closed to the founder (Self) while the theme of “reflection” and the theme of “solution” are closed to the investor (Other). The theme of “challenge” is in the middle.
This is just a rough description. I just use it to describe a zone for the feedback between the Founder and the Investor.
2.3 Complexity and Performance
The hierarchical loops meta-diagram is for representing nested levels. I use “center”, “content” and “context” to name three levels. For example, the startup system can be understood as the three levels:
- Center: Founder
- Content: Startup
- Context: Investor
From the perspective of career, the founder’s career can be understood as the following three levels:
- Center: person’s purpose and experience
- Content: the startup activity (object and objective)
- Context: domain (impact and reward)
We can also highlight three concepts from the iART framework and turn them into a nested levels:
- Center: Performance
- Content: Complexity
- Context: Anticipation
In fact, I realized the hierarchical loops diagram is too simple for discussing complexity and performance. Thus, I made the diagram below:
The above diagram clearly visualizes the dynamics of complexity of iART framework. At T1 which is an early time point, the complexity of anticipation is high and the complexity of performance is low. For the startup activity, T1 is about strategy formation.
At T2 which is a middle time point, the complexity of anticipation reduces to medium level and the complexity of performance rises to the medium level. For the startup activity, T2 is about the market-product fit.
At T3 which is a late time point, the complexity of anticipation reduces to low level and the complexity of performance rises to high level. For the startup activity, T3 is about the take-off stage.
The above diagram roughly represents an ideal path. This is just a product of a “Thinking as Diagramming Sprint”. If you want to read more formal research, you can read an article from Harvard Business Review: The Five Stages of Small Business Growth by Neil C. Churchill and Virginia L. Lewis.
Part 3: A Self-study project
This post is for the D as Diagramming project which aims to explore the power of diagrams and diagramming. What I really want to know is about the value of diagrams for turning tacit knowledge into explicit knowledge.
I use three approaches for the project:
- Reflect on my own works
- Interview others
- Collect examples
This post is about my own work around the iART Framework. On August 16, 2021, I got the initial idea about the framework while I was reading a book. After designing an initial diagram for the framework, I expanded it to a diagram network with a set of diagrams.
I realized this is a great example for the D as Diagramming project. However, I need to write several articles to complete a self-study report.
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