MG Taylor
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Matt Taylor, an architect by training and passion, and Gail Taylor, formerly a kindergarten teacher, formed MG Taylor in the mid-1970s and have been helping catalyze "Group Genius" in groups ever since. They are partners in both life and work, they have spawned a network of at least a thousand "Value Web" members — people who have been trained in and who practice their philosophy, including large set of practitioners at Capgemini and PriceWaterhouseCoopers — all over the world, and they have personally inspired and mentored many more, including me.
I have met, worked with, and learned from many members of the Value Web, which speaks to the scope of Gail and Matt's influence. I want to focus this page on things I learned directly from them, although I will occasionally mention others from their network. Sadly, I won't be able to do justice to the many, many great folks I have learned from in this short amount of space.
How I Met Gail and Matt
I first learned of Matt and Gail's work in 2001. I went to see Larry Leifer, director of Center for Design Research, speak at Stanford. (My friend and later Blue Oxen Associates advisor, Ade Mabogunje, whom I met through Doug Engelbart, was the associate director at the Center for Design Research and worked for Larry.) Larry gave a wide-ranging talk covering many interesting topics, but one of the things that stood out to me were the "collaborative technologies" developed by MG Taylor at the knOwhere Store in Palo Alto. They were using moveable whiteboard walls, special furniture, and all sorts of other tools to bring meetings alive.
I was intrigued enough that I made a special trip to visit the "store" a few weeks later, only to discover it wasn't actually a store. It was a workspace for the future, except it was here and now, and Matt, Gail, and their colleagues and clients were practicing and experimenting with high-performance collaboration within its walls. I realized all of this later. At the time, I was confused and disoriented, and I was too chicken to walk in and ask what was going on, so I left without going inside. But Larry's talk and my brief run-in with the knOwhere Store (which unfortunately closed soon thereafter) left me curious, and I started reading more about their work.
In late 2001, shortly before I started Blue Oxen Associates, I met Jim Fournier, the director of Planetwork, a network + community gathering that emerged as a reaction to the anti-technology sentiment among the Bioneers community. They had had a successful conference in 2000 and were planning another one in 2003. Curiously, they were interested in digital identity as a lever for social change, and they were interested in my work with Doug and my approaches to supporting asynchronous collaboration. Jim later asked me if I would help support and facilitate the 2003 conference pro bono. He added that he had also talked to Matt and Gail Taylor about doing the same, and they had agreed. As soon as he mentioned the Taylors, I agreed, as it was my excuse to meet them and work with them.
As it turned out, Matt was unable to help out, so I worked primarily with Gail and one of her sons (Jeff Johnston). Gail was so wise and skilled and gracious and curious. I wasn't surprised when I learned that she had been a teacher, because she had the same soft, powerful presence that all my favorite teachers had growing up. It was eye-opening to see how thoughtful and systemic she was about thinking about design and bringing the best out of groups. At the same time, she was so humble and curious and supportive. Not surprisingly, she and Matt knew and admired Doug among a host of other influences. As it turned out, Christine Peterson — co-founder of Foresight Institute, coiner of the term, "open source," and another Blue Oxen Associates advisor — was also familiar with and inspired by Matt and Gail, so much so that she co-authored a book about their philosophy and process, Leaping the Abyss: Putting Group Genius to Work.
I worked with Gail again on the Planetwork 2004 conference (this time we were both paid), and I later got to know Matt more as well. They already had a strong ethic around documentation and synthesis, but they relied primarily on a centralized support team (dubbed "Knowledge Workers," or "KreW" for short) to do the synthesis. They were intrigued by how I used wikis and other practices to support groups in self-documentation.
They invited me to help support their 2005 7 Domains Workshop — a peer learning gathering of their tribe — which is where I got to see their process in action to an extreme. It was an extraordinary 4.5 day meeting at Vanderbilt University's Navigation Center in Nashville, Tennessee. (NavCenters were physical spaces designed to support the kinds of gatherings MG Taylor designed. Remember, Matt is an architect, and they had all sorts of custom furniture and philosophies around using physical space. The knOwhere Store in Palo Alto was the showcase space, but many others had licensed their technology and had built NavCenters around the country, including Capgemini. See this and this for more on NavCenters.)
That meeting was and remains a landmark for me professionally. It was and continues to be the best meeting I've ever experienced, and it is is the standard by which I measure every meeting. I was in an unusual position, because I was part of the support team, which meant I was putting in 16-hour days grinding away trying to create a great meeting experience, but I also occasionally got pulled into design conversations and the meeting itself, thanks to the unique work I was doing. Thanks to this unique role, in addition to everything I learned about design, facilitation, systems thinking, and collaboration (which I describe in more detail below), I got to practice with an extraordinary team, and I got to know many of the extraordinary participants, several of whom I remain close to today.
Shortly after 7 Domains, several practitioners in the Value Web from around the world formed a loose network called (appropriately) The Value Web. Their first joint project was supporting the World Economic Forum, and they invited me to help support the support team from afar, which I did for two years. I continued to stay engaged with Gail and her other son, Todd Johnston.
I also partnered with Jeff Shults — the manager of the knOwhere Store, who led the support team at the 7 Domains Workshop, and who brought a lot of his own experience with adult learning — to host a number of our own one-day peer learning gatherings. We dubbed these, "Tools for Catalyzing Collaboration," and we held these at Jeff's space with a lot of the original knOwhere Store furniture. Working with Jeff really deepened my own understanding and skill around designing and facilitating meetings, and it was also a great excuse to bring together my growing tribe, which always made me happy. All of my mentors, including Gail and Matt, participated in at least one of these gatherings, which was gratifying, exhilarating, and just a bit intimidating.
Over the years, I have continued to stay close with both Gail and Matt. I learn something new every time I'm with them, and I have been inspired by them and have leaned on them when I've felt discouraged more than they'll ever realize. Most recently, I attended a Happening (an informal gathering of the MG Taylor tribe) in July 2016, where I got to meet a slew of newer practitioners. They accelerated my own progress as a practitioner by two orders of magnitude, both through their considerable wisdom and modeling, also their kindness and generosity. I owe them a huge debt of gratitude, and I try my best every day to live up to the standards they set and to pay their gifts forward.
Lessons Learned
Group Genius. Camel story.
Philosophy, not methodology. Importance of practice.
Contrast, however, between elders and practitioners. Lessons on scale.
Also, still stuck on how to apply principles to asynchronous. Fascinating the block.
Modeling Language.
Stuart Kauffman. Patches and nodes. Ship product.
Matt's vision. Sketchbook.
Frank Lloyd Wright and professionalization.
Scan Focus Act. Shared understanding. What Phil Windley called the "butt sniffing stage."
Systemic approach to face-to-face meetings.
Design is more important than facilitation. Everyone is a facilitator. You are not facilitating the room by yourself.
Hide the agenda. Fancy restaurant approach.
Anyone can have a bad day. Saw Gail have one. Design a more resilient system.
Importance of Knowledge Workers (KreW). Mechanics of running a successful meeting. Hard freakin' work!
Knowledge capture / artifacts. Alicia Bramlett.
Backcasting. Can't get from here to there, but can get from there to here. Link to rubber band blog post.
Work big.
Glass Bead Game. Cardboard boxes.
Red Threads.
Yellow Threads.
Bigger groups easier to design than small groups. Have to let go of control, trust the makeup of the group. Link to collective intelligence blog post.
Business and IP. Impact of business adoption.
The Value Web.
Leaping the Abyss. Written by others!
First time I saw graphic recording in action. Was familiar with Bob Horn's work. Interesting to compare it with what I had learned from Jeff Conklin.
