RealityCharting e-book .pdf - SERC Home Page

Introduction
Introduction
If You Have Ever Asked Why
Asking why things happen is an essential part of being human.
When we ask why something happened, we are looking for causes to
help us understand reality. But what is reality How can we know it What
is its structure and is there a single reality that we can all see As you
will learn in this book and the accompanying electronic exercises, there
is no single reality, but you will learn how to create a common reality
by defining evidenced-based causal relationships. With this common
reality, we can predict the outcome of certain scenarios, which allows
us to recognize various patterns and thus control the causes to guide
us in reaching our goals. The better we understand causal relationships,
the higher the probability of attaining our goals both as a group and
individually.
The purpose of this book is to help you better understand the notion
of reality and provide the basis for teaching everyone how to think causally
using a simple process and some very helpful software.
One of the fundamental reasons we are challenged in understanding
reality is that it is very complex and our minds simply cannot deal with the
complexity without some help. To make matters worse, our language and
communication skills have heretofore prevented us from expressing the
complexity that is reality—more on this later. However, with the advent
of the computer and the creation of a simple tool called RealityCharting®
we are now able to unlock the complexity of reality and more importantly
provide all stakeholders of a given problem the ability to express and
combine their realities. By creating a common reality that defines the
known causal relationships of a given event, stakeholders can easily come
to agreement on which causes can be controlled and how to control them,
to meet their common objectives.
At the heart of this book is a new way of communicating that is
revolutionizing the way people solve problems and make decisions
together. Imagine your next decision-making meeting where everyone is
in agreement with the causes of the problem and the effectiveness of the
proposed corrective actions—no conflicts, arguments, or power politics!
This is the promise of the RealityCharting process.
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