A Mind Shift With Narrative Mosaic™

A Special Edition from Spatial Shift Narrative Ideation Labs

Apr 30, 2024

Welcome to a Now New Next that dives into the deep end of the Ideation Lab at Spatial Shift. I have been leaning into my artisan self, building out the mechanics for Narrative Mosaic™.

The more I engage in human connection, the more fascinated I get with helping people realize their full “self”. We are additive. Our experiences shape how we think, respond, and observe. We are a collective of our historical outcomes. Many of which, we don’t put on a resume or even in our bio.

These personal experiences may not seem relevant to how we work, but these experiences are very pertinent. They shape your capacity to lead, create, and achieve new heights. They reflect the very essence of your character and determination.

They are who you are now and potentially who you are to become. The reason that Now | New | Next became my storytelling framework.

Over the last few weeks, I engaged several people to work with me to build out a Narrative Mosaic™ based on a headshot or portraiture-type photograph. I had a brief interview or asked them to provide a story, bio, or write-up, so I had a context to work with.

The following represents the playback from a few of the people who took me up on this alpha effort.

A CEO JOURNEY

Karen, a CEO from Australia leading the charge to eliminate single-serve cups from our lives, sent a beautiful professionally done black and white headshot with a short story about her work. I went to her website and LI profile and pulled several more insights to add to the “by Tobin mosaic LoRA” created by www.followfox.ai.

I crafted several narrative mosaics, each of which, told a different story from the same image. This particular mosaic unbeknownst to me triggered a flood of emotions and insights for Karen about her passion for surfing. She saw components of herself in the eyes, the color palettes, the resilience of the look, the confidence in her conviction.

This outpouring of feedback made me realize that my hypothesis for unlocking hidden gems, deep-seated passions, and tipping points in someone’s journey could happen before someone goes through my Personal Narrative sprint program.

The original idea for creating a Narrative Mosaic™ was designed to become a mnemonic device for an executive who had gone through my Personal Narrative sprint program. It was a behavioral reminder of the deep work you had just gone through to design your Narrative Playbook™. But, now I am discovering, that the “by Tobin mosaic LoRA” tool is capable of generating a powerful story through a visual intelligence approach. A concept pioneered by Amy Herman and her Art of Perception offering.

I am reading Amy’s book Visual Intelligence and am learning the difference between seeing and observing. It is an Art Historian’s perspective of paying attention to the art and observing the details, versus just seeing the art and moving on. Her work is applied widely across the world. I believe the Narrative Mosaic™ has a similar persuasive quality.

A PAINTED WORLD

Take my friend Dan. He was intrigued by some of my earlier posts and was curious to learn more about making a Narrative Mosaic™.

Dan is a musician. He is also a business development executive, working in the fusion of content, music, and technology sectors. He is good at what he does, but when you dig a layer deeper Dan is bringing a soulful level of musicality to his craft. An authentic component that allows him to really understand the roots and ambitions of the deal structures he works on.

We talked about a song he wrote 20 years ago. He brought recording equipment to the jungle of Costa Rica and recorded a song that went on to win an international music award. I asked for the lyrics and went to work on designing a Narrative Mosaic™ that would reflect this input.

The Narrative Mosaic™ took on likeness and brought the jungle into the mix. His song “Painted World” will soon be re-released by his band. I felt goosebumps listening to him remember the details of what went into making that song. If you were looking to hire someone like Dan to lead your BD team, how would you view someone who moved a mobile recording studio to a jungle to produce a series of songs? Hell yes, I would want him on my team.

HOOPS TO PERSONAL BRANDING

Kristina has a rich professional background that spans working with NBA players from the Toronto Raptors to working with executives on building their personal brand. She lives in Toronto with her wife and two children and is quick with her witty vivacious humor.

Kristina and I work in similar capacities. We both seek to design personal narratives for individuals. We just met and I only recently learned about her background and approach to working with athletes, executives, and individuals.

She has created a unique GPT approach to storytelling that enabled someone to answer a series of questions based on prompts. That input led to a rich story output that someone could use to build their personal brand.

So, I was curious to see what kind of output the Narrative Mosaic™ would generate to represent Kristina’s passions and background. She had provided a very rich headshot that sparked a series of vibrant outcomes.

I loved receiving her feedback about how she could see herself in each of the Narrative Mosaics - some more so than others, but also how some were Now, some New, and one had the impact of being Next.

It was the emotional resonance of looking at yourself in a different context that really struck me as the main driver of the Narrative Mosaic. This takes me back to my work on Looky Loo - a social shopping app aimed at women to share their dressing room experiences with cohorts for feedback on the shape, fit, and color of the outfit they were trying on.

That effort led me to discover the work of sociologist Charles Horton Cooley and his “Looking Glass Self” framework essay about how humans see themselves looking in a mirror. That insight was created in 1902.

The context about the Looking Glass Self: In hypothesizing the framework, "the mind is mental" because "the human mind is social". From the time they are born, humans define themselves within the context of their social interactions.

Thank you for reading Now I New I Next. This post is public so feel free to share it.

NARRATIVE MOSAIC EXPRESSION

As I mentioned in my Exponential Self-Expression newsletter at the beginning of the year, we are in a structural change. How we show up will become ever more important as we move forward in an AI-enriched era of communication.

I believe the resume is a relic of the past - dating back to Leonardo Da Vinci in 1482. It is limiting and is being homogenized into a keyword algo sport. It served its purpose when the world was tidy and defined by boxes to be checked. That world ended in 2019.

We are in a new era being shaped by spatial sensibilities. Our verses are becoming multiple and moving beyond a linear representation of what used to be a resume. We are richer than a resume. Our context is being shaped by experiences, not just rote skills learned in classes.

It is time to reimagine your entire self into your story. To live your capacity as a sum of your parts, not just the dimension of work.

The Narrative Mosaic™ is in its infancy as a tool. The vision is to become a Spatial Shift in how we express ourselves. That goes for companies as well as humans. Human Connection points run deeper than meeting a quarterly KPI.

NOW (How you are realizing this today)

How are you expressing yourself today?
What are you doing to change your lens to realize the sum of your parts?
Do you understand how to tell your unique story beyond a chronological resume?

NEW (How you will realize this tomorrow)

I will review my current headshot and or uplevel my headshot by July.
I will dig into my Narrative Equity (stories, pictures, experiences) to put all of my assets into one place by August.
I will see what it takes to create a Narrative Mosaic™ before September.

NEXT (I see a world in which)

I see a world in which the Narrative Mosaic™ will change how we express ourselves to each other.

THE PAYOFF

“Perception is how we interpret the information we gather during observation; think of it as an internal filter. It can color, cloud, or change what really exists into what we think we are seeing.” ~ Amy E. Herman, Visual Intelligence, Sharpen Your Perception, Change Your Life.

If you are curious to design your Narrative Mosaic™, DM me. I will take on 10 new enthusiasts as part of my alpha creative phase.