90+minute exercise in Ontological Commoning

This supersedes my initial formulation of 2025-05-05. This page is updated to 2025-05-30 and will continue to be updated.

The title above is not a general public title. It needs something more understandable — choose from these, or make up your own along similar lines.

• “Co-creating common ground”
• “How to find firmer common ground”
• “What is real between us?”
• “Do we share something real behind our stories?”

• Surfacing & aligning our hidden maps of reality
• (please suggest more)

This is an exercise, for just one pair of people (who we will call “protagonists”), supported by several other participant-listener-observers, who ask questions and help to focus down on the belief systems and the ontologies. It is not the familiar kind of dialogue between the two (or more) people exploring their stories or belief systems. Instead, the innovation in this approach lies in avoiding connecting directly at the story or belief system level, so that the protagonists bypass what are often the emotional issues of personal identification with stories and beliefs, and get down to the level of what looks like reality in their respective worlds, rebuilding relationship from there on up.

This is the reason why it is just for one supported pair of protagonists. More people trying to do this at the same time might get rather chaotic! However, if there are two well-knit groups, it could also work between them. Help me to work out how!

Please see the rationale for more detail on the background to the vision of how this works.

• 4 is absolute minimum, barely adequate
• 6 practical minimum
• 12 comfortable maximum: if more, split into separate sessions
• 16 maximum for reasonable participation
• no number limit for viewers, though viewing may be much less impactful

Time: allow 90 minutes: numbers given below are guessed guidelines. If more time is available, steps 6 and 7 may be extended.

• If face to face, two flipcharts with pens
• If online, a collaborative board or note-taking tool, familiar to the participants

This step is more important than I initially thought, and during trials it has not been easy to find two people from a random meeting who meet these requirements. So I'm now recommending that the protagonists be pre-arranged. We need to find two people who:

1. share an objective, goal, aim or vision of common practical interest (essential)
2. do not agree on detail, strategy, tactics, values
3. could at least imagine working/being together around this topic
4. are wanting, and open to, a better understanding of each other.

Don't count on finding such people unless pre-arranged. You are unlikely to get a very interesting outcome.

As well as finding two suitable people, a story prompt needs to be agreed, that can guide both protagonists to tell stories that

1. have sufficient commonality that the stories are focused without extending too far to be manageable
2. have sufficient difference in approach that the ontologies are likely to differ
3. are engaging for the protagonists, so that they can imagine the stories in detail

Time: ~10 minutes

1. The two protagonists introduce themselves, for not more than two minutes each.
2. Other participants briefly introduce themselves, saying how they relate to the two protagonists.
3. The pair of protagonists separate, and the participants splitting into two roughly equal groups, one team to support each protagonist.

The next 3 steps are done in the two separate teams.

Time: up to 10 minutes

• Each protagonist tells their listening team a story relevant to the topic
• Talking theoretically is much less likely to work. Everyone collaborates in keeping the story-telling protagonist in the imaginal realm and away from the theoretic.
• Participants note what they hear of the belief system and ontology
• Interruptions are ONLY if the protagonist
  • cannot be heard or is not understood
  • starts to speak theory instead of narrative
• Move on when the protagonist feels they have told a good enough story for the time being

Time: ~20 minutes

• A scribe may be chosen from the listening team
• Listeners ask questions to elicit and fill in protagonist's belief system
• Listeners MAY ONLY USE TERMS ALREADY USED BY THE PROTAGONIST when asking questions
  • The group as a whole shares responsibility for keeping this on track, and calling out when something uninvited is mentioned
• Listeners may:
  1. ask the protagonist “Do you believe … ?”
  2. ask protagonist to expand on part of the story
  3. ask “could you say more about X” (where X is a term already mentioned)
     • this may bring up other terms or beliefs, BUT MUST NOT BE FORCED!
     • again, anyone in the group may call out to keep this on track
• When a protagonist acknowledges a belief, scribe notes it for the team
• The belief system records are NOT shared between the two teams

Time: ~10 minutes

• In a separate place that can be shared, each team lists the terms used in the belief system
  • entities, with optional attributes
  • relationship terms — BUT NOT beliefs about the actual relationships
• Aim to produce a list of a dozen or so key terms, roughly ranked with more important and central ones earlier.

Time: as required within time available — this is the actual ontological commoning

• Teams rejoin and look at each other's ontologies
• Both protagonists, supported by their teams:
  • ask questions about the mapping of terms in each ontology
  • may ask for examples from the other story-teller or team
• Scribes and/or listeners note mappings
• The aim is to find and document common ontological ground
  • to be common ground, it must be confirmed by the protagonists
  • common ground could be found at the domain level, and/or at meta-levels
• WHERE THERE APPEARS TO BE COMMON GROUND on the ontological level, anyone may suggest or ask about common beliefs; and potentially common theories of change or other narratives
  • The important thing here is not to skip over establishing common ontological ground; no asking about shared beliefs before checking on shared ontology

Time: for the last 5 minutes

• Protagonists celebrate common ground, and may
  • identify and confirm shared beliefs
  • describe how their own ontology or beliefs have shifted
  • arrange to meet later to co-create shared stories
• Other participants:
  • describe their experience
  • comment on potential usefulness and possible contexts of use
  • suggest improvements or added details

The protagonists may also be invited to arrange to follow up later.

• More rationale around what this exercise is meant for

• ontological commoning
• Ontological Commoning index