Conceptual vs concrete

I watched a meeting some years ago in which there was a major mismatch in communication between 2 planners and a group of 3-4 community members all trying to work together to develop a district plan.

The planners would put out a question with some background and then the group of community people would sit there and try and work out what it meant in terms that would help them answer. This was a complex task - they had to listen to the question, work out what it meant by finding concrete examples of what it might mean, gauge the reactions of the planners to see uf they were on the right track, and then think about what they should do in their plan.


The planners were frustrated that the community group had to 'go round in circles' before they could come up with what, to the planners seemed like a simple answer. As an outside observer, I guess I was able to see what was happening - the planners were conceptual thinkers who worked across a range of communities. The community group were much more grounded in the local area and as such were more concrete thinkers.

I got the opportunity to point this out to the planners over lunch and they were immediately able to try to communicate using concrete examples up front which made life much easier for all concerned (so they told me).

This , I think, was part of what was going on the other night (see my last post). What I found difficult was providing relevant concrete examples of new ways of doing things. I realise now that its relatively easy if you can give examples of what exists now but coming up with relevant, credible ideas that provide options for new ways of doing things is more difficult. I need to ponder this too, because there are some other issues here about the way I see participatory research which might be intervening here.