Michael Cheveldave - Cognitive Edge

Michael is based in British Columbia, Canada. Contact details are:
 

Michael completed the Cognitive Edge training in Canada - Victoria Dec 2003. Michael has experience in ...And the Butterfly Stamped; Model Creation by Social Construction; The future backwards; Nodal networks and new forms of organisation; Dynamics; Managing complexity by experiment; Archetype Creation; Story Construction; Ritual Dissent; Anecdote Circles; Population sampling; Naive interviews; Getting ready for SMI database; and Information / DP mapping.

Industry Specialisation

(non-Cognitive Edge experience included)
Forestry; Wood Products; Mining and Metals; Utilities; Government; Oil and Gas; Automation

Professional Background

Michael Cheveldave is Director, Business Development for Cognitive Edge Pte Ltd, based in Singapore. Michael's primary responsibility is to support the Cognitive Edge network, globally for the purposes of expanding Cogntive Edge's business capacity and commercial developments. Michael has held this position since September of 2008 however has been working on contract closely with Cognitive Edge since 2007. Cognitive Edge develops tools designed to enable informed decision making in organisations using both structured and unstructured data, in order to provide new perspectives in solving complex problems.

Projects Undertaken

Ministry of Forests and Range - Strategic Conversations (micro/fragmented scenarios)

Ongoing support of the following project.

Employee retention

Applied narrative methods to explore employee work life to generate deeper insights into an existing high turnover situation.  Completed an initial scan of a preliminary set of narrative data which revealed some challenges to prior held beliefs on what factors are contributing to high turnover.  Project in progress.

Employee satisfaction

Applied narrative methods to explore employee work experiences to better assess the quality of the work environment from employees perspectives.  Assisted with a detailed analysis of the data and co-facilitated a leadership workshop assessing the patterns and moving to 'fail-safe' action planning (on complex issues) to improve the work environment according to the patterns revealed in the narrative.

Market research

Applied narrative to assist a large utility company to generate deep insights into how a segment of their customer base feel and perceive services delivered.

Culture mapping for Mergers and Acquisitions

Completed the design and first phase of a project to map cultures through narrative from an acquired and acquirer company perspective.  The objective was to better understand where tension points due to perception and cultural differences may occur and where synergies exist to facilitate a more effective integration of operations. 

Ministry of Forests and Range – British Columbia Provincial Government

Led a narrative inquiry project together with an internal team of accredited practitioners to pilot test the effectiveness of narrative for yielding greater insights into traditional survey results and trends regarding employee engagement. Collected over 575 indexed stories (indexed by each story teller) and facilitated the project team and project participants in identifying patterns in the narrative related to the objectives of the inquiry. Tools and methods applied

• Anecdote circles (with captured narrative
• Emergent properties (archetypes, themes, and values) including Archetype illustrations
• Narrative tagging
• Narrative pattern identification by participants in the project
• Application SenseMaker software including Mass Narrative Representation.
• Used narrative patterns and emergent properties within the narrative to generate greater insights into the work environment as they relate to the objectives of the project.

Co-facilitated and assisted in the design of a large leadership event (approximately 180 participants) with Dave Snowden.

Healthcare

Assisted a team of frontline care providers, support staff, and management, from a regional health service area in British Columbia, develop a more complete and thorough understanding of their work environment challenges through the application of narrative collection and indexing. The objective was to facilitate a team of voluntary management and frontline employees , and physicians, through a process of identifying “bottom-up” staff driven changes that would have a sustainable impact on improving the work environment as well as employee to employee (including management) relations. Methods and tools applied:

• Population sampling
• Anecdote circles (with captured narrative)
• Emergent properties (archetypes, themes, and values) with Archetype creation (contrasting perspectives).
• Narrative tagging
• Narrative pattern identification by participants in the project
• Application of Sensemaker software including Mass Narrative Representation.
• Decision Information Mapping
• Complex Facilitation
• Used Archetype-Value-Theme Comparison, Decision-Information map to formal process comparison, and Narrative patterns to facilitate the creation of a list of actionable initiatives.

Mining and Metals

Assisted a research and development group understand its challenges related to knowledge sharing. Methods and tools applied:

• Anecdote circles
• Contrasting Future Backwards outputs
• ASHEN and the identification of Knowledge Objects/Issues
• Creation of a Knowledge Map that related emergent Knowledge Objects/Issues to a prioritized list of managements goals and objectives
• Used the Cynefin framework to identify formal and informal communities
• Developed SNA perspective maps between identified communities
• Moved to action in teams and applied Ritual Dissent to refine and improve action items

Developed a detailed concept design for a Social Network Stimulation initiative to build employee relations between three diverse (in function and geographic location) groups that were combined into one division following a corporate restructuring.

Large Electric Utility in Western Canada

Worked with the employee team from a business services group to assist them in understanding their employee satisfaction issues from new perspectives and insights as derived from narrative. The project was in response to management not understanding the results and trends from a series of traditional employee satisfaction surveys. The group was led through an action planning process where they had to develop a collective understanding of two differing perspectives of their situation – one from management and the other from the employee base reporting to management. Methods and tools applied:

• Anecdote circles (with captured narrative)
• Emergent properties (archetypes, themes, and values) with Archetype creation
• Narrative tagging
• Narrative pattern identification by participants in the project
• Application of earlier versions of Sensemaker software including Mass Narrative Representation.
• Model Creation by Social Construction
• Action planning during an AVT Comparison Workshop

Not-for-profit community organization (voluntary engagement)

2004 Project – Explored Generational Perception Differences and Similarities

Facilitated a ½ day session with three perspective groups – youth (15-25), mid-aged (25-55), and senior (55+). The purpose was to understand some of the underlying issues that are resulting in a lack of youth and mid-aged participation in a community organization that is primarily supported by senior member participation and voluntary contributions. Applied Anecdote circles and Future Backwards. F-B outputs were contrasted across three perspective groups.

2005 Project – Moving to Change: Attracting Non-member Interest and Participation

Applied Anecdote Circles, Archetype Creation, emergent properties identification, in contrast between member and non-member perspective groups. Facilitated an action planning session with key organization representatives to identify actionable activities to attract greater interest and participation in the transition of the organization.

Kootenay Association for Science and Technology (voluntary engagement) www.kast.com

Facilitated a ½ day strategic planning session with the KAST Board of Directors. Used future backwards to ground the participants’ understanding of the history and evolution of KAST as a regional economic development organization and reveal perspective differences and similarities between shorter and longer serving directors. Applied Model Creation by Social Construction to build Cynefin frameworks using the outputs from the F-B exercise to help the Board identify complex, chaotic, and ordered situations so that strategic planning for their upcoming year was better informed.