Applied Vision

Our topic for today is logical levels to identify underlying structures and patterns in our thinking about ideas, events relationships or organisations.
It is a framework which gives us a way of making important distinctions in our experience using different kinds of information.

Question: What does this framework help us to understand?

It empowers us to understand five things

1. What kind of information is being dealt with
2. Where an issue or situation originates
3. On what level the issue or situation is being experienced or manifested
4. What the ‘real’ issue at stake is
5. What the appropriate interaction or intervention is

Working with this framework enables us to self-manage and/or help others who ask for assistance, by asking key questions about an issue or situation.

Question: What are the key questions to get to the logical levels and identify underlying structures and patterns?

There are six groups of questions. Let’s take them one at a time:

1. WHERE? & WHEN?
   These questions scrutinise the environment, the surroundings, the
   external context, the social environment and the internal environment.
2. WHAT?
   This helps us look at our behaviour and what we do or don’t do. Issues on this level relate to what is happening or being done.
3. HOW?
   This assists us in looking at our capability and is about the how and how- to’s of life.
4. WHY?
   Here we are tuned into our beliefs and values that provide the criteria for assessment and action. These provide us with a rationale and drive our actions.
5. WHO?
   This links us to our identity and who we are. This is a significant area and one which we are inclined to find ourselves defending or even reacting too strongly.
6. FOR WHOM? & FOR WHAT?
   This level relates to the bigger picture and phases us into some larger purpose that is in play, such as our mission, vision and the meaning of our life taking us beyond our identity.

Question: How do we sum this up?

The framework helps us identify where the point of leverage for change is.
So when we want to make changes to our lives it identifies the level at which we are doing this and whether this is the appropriate level at which to do so. It also helps us understand situations that seem puzzling and just what the real issue is.
Using the analogy of a tree …the roots of a tree are as important as its leaves and branches and everything between…so too all the levels are important and the framework tells us exactly which part or parts we are dealing with.

Exercise:
Listen to an interview on radio or television and pick the key questions that are being asked and, as a result, the levels involved in the discussion.

Les Boulle