In a follow up session to our visit to Inchcolm Abbey, we were exploring the fact that many of the islands in the Firth of Forth are known as Inches. In this context, the name Inch is derived from Innis, the Gaelic word for an island, and so Inchcolm is Gaelic for Columba’s Island.

As we drew more Dreamwork Maps, more and more islands representing different parts of the enterprise appeared, and these Inches were named correspondingly. Later in the session, as we worked our way through the strategic topography, the phrase ‘Inch by Inch’ kept being voiced.

The challenge that the innovation team was facing was one that often appears in large enterprises. Although nominally the same enterprise, organisations usually form internally into islands of self interest and intention. These self focused islands then become defended with entrenched opinions in the same way that Inchcolm was once fortified.

The group realised that the way to move beyond this damaging silo mentality was to somehow connect the island dwellers. Attempts had previously been made to try and integrate and unite the islands of interest in the organisation. However, these had all ended in further alienation and animosity as the islanders felt that they were being forced to integrate and as if they were losing their unique identities.

A story began to emerge about connecting the enterprise Inches together, one Inch at a time, and this culminated in a viewing of Al Pacino’s wonderfully inspirational speech in Any Given Sunday. In his role as coach Tony D’Amato, Al powerfully articulates the true nature of a winning team.

Tony D’Amato understands that a team is not an homogenous entity or an integral holon; it is a collection of individual inches which are fundamentally connected. These inches are all around, and when all those inches are added up, that’s what makes the difference between a team winning and losing, between an organisation living and dying.

During a recent Dreamwork Maps session with group of innovators, a recurring Common Ground feature was a research facility on an island. As we started exploring the imagined research facility using Dreamwork Stories, it inevitably started to emerge as something in the same archipelago as Tracy Island.

However, by the time everyone was wearing Thunderbirds black bushy eyebrows and realising that they all looked like Alistair Darling, and we had explored who was really pulling the strings, we moved on from Thunderbirds are Go to Thunderbirds are Gone.

The group decided that what they were really looking for was possibility space, rather than technology derived from futuristic misadventures. They felt that they needed to go back to first principles and the phrase a priori was used by a number of the participants.

In Dreamwork, we often use the phrase ‘from the archetypal to the specific’ when we connect a fundamental pattern to a particular idea, and so the group came to the conclusion that they would like to experience a priori in an archetypal possibility space. Perhaps in a real ecclesiastical priory. On an island.

As often happens when an intention is stated in possibility space it soon begins to manifest in reality. Just a few miles from where we were working was Inchcolm Abbey which had been used as a priory until fairly recently. It is located in on the island of Inchcolm in the Firth of Forth.

We sailed out to Inchcolm on the Maid of the Forth and began to explore and experience a priori in a priory. The abbey is a very peaceful place and one of the key insights from the group was that it provided a sense of grounded possibility. This theme was developed further in a series of Story Fragments. As the story emerged the group realised that the fundamental platform for their research and innovation was a solid grounding of intentions, needs and perspectives, rather than fetishising the latest technologies.

The island that had appeared in Common Ground was no longer an improbable puppet state, but a solid and tangible foundation for their vision, rising forth from their oceans of experience.