Print catalysis report

Pandoc does a good job of converting NarraFirma's HTML reports to a variety of word processing formats, such as ODT and DOCX. We recommend it as the best option if you want to work on your catalysis report outside of NarraFirma. Pandoc is a command-line tool, but it is reliable, and it's easy to use once you understand it. For a gentle introduction, see pandoc's "Getting started" page, or search the internet for "pandoc getting started." If you don't want to use pandoc as a command-line utility, there are several editors that incorporate or work with it. See pandoc's "Extras" page, or search for "pandoc gui".

You also have a few other options. If you save your web page to an HTML file, you may find that your word processor can open it directly. Another option is to print the web page to a PDF file, then open the PDF file in something that can save the file in other formats (like Acrobat Pro). Or you can use one of the free file converters on the internet. We like the pandoc solution best because it's local and simple. But there are many options.

So you can facilitate and record a group catalysis session, where a group of people writes and clusters interpretations for your catalysis report.

1. Look at the patterns in your data on the "Explore Patterns" page. Write an observation for each pattern that stands out. Do this as objectively as possible; for example, you might write an observation for each statistically significant difference.
2. Print a catalysis report with only the observations you wrote.
3. Also print out a set of story cards.
4. Invite some people to work with you. You'll need at least two or three people.
5. Plan to spend at least ten minutes per observation. If you have a lot of observations, invite more people, or choose a subset of your observations to put before the group (maybe only the ones you've marked as strongest).
6. At your workshop:
   • Show the people your observations, one at a time. Ask them to talk about each observation and look at some of the stories involved. If you have enough participants to break into groups of three, you can split up the observations and get through them faster.
   • Ask people to collaborate on writing at least two competing interpretations of each observation. For each interpretation, ask them to write a clear explanation of what the observation means from a particular perspective.
   • Be sure to explain that the interpretations must disagree with each other. Remember to explain why this is useful.
   • Ask the people to give each interpretation they come up with a short name (on a sticky note) and a description (on a sheet of paper). They can write both things down, or they can only write down the name and say the description into an audio recording (which you will later transcribe).
   • At the end of the workshop, ask the people to cluster the interpretation names they wrote. Ask them to give the clusters names.
   • Take good photographs of the session, making sure that you can read all of the clustered sticky notes.
7. After the session:
   • Go back to NarraFirma. For each observation, enter the interpretations people gave for it. If you made an audio recording, transcribe what they said about each interpretation.
   • After you have entered all of the interpretations, arrange them into the clusters people put them in, and use the cluster names for the perspectives.
   • Now you're ready to print your catalysis report and use it in a sensemaking session.

• To involve your project participants more fully.
• To get better "buy-in" from people who might feel their words are being twisted or misrepresented otherwise.
• To help interested participants make sense of the topic more fully than they could by participating in sensemaking alone.
• To help your participants learn how to do PNI.
• To improve the utility and relevance of your catalysis report.
• To draw on a wide range of experiences and imaginations, not just your own.
• To make up for gaps in your own understanding.
• To spread the work around and reduce costs.

• You can't find anyone who has the time or energy or interest or patience to help you.
• The topic is too painful or emotional for your participants to be able to look at it from multiple perspectives.
• None of your participants know how to work with graphs and statistics, and they aren't willing to try, even with help.
• As an outsider, you can see and say things that people deeply embedded in the situation cannot.
• Your participants (or your funders) trust you more than they trust anyone else.
• Your project involves groups of people who don't trust each other, but everyone trusts you.
• You have a lot more experience doing catalytic work than anyone else involved in the project.
• Your participants or funders asked you to do the catalysis yourself.

• In your workshop, do not ask different groups of people to come up with competing interpretations for the same observations. It won't work. People will just argue. The same people must come up with interpretations on multiple sides of each observation.
• If people don't like the idea of disagreeing with themselves, explain that they are doing a sort of "devil's advocate" brainstorming exercise. It also helps to explain how the interpretations they are writing will be useful in the sensemaking exercise(s) yet to come.
• Don't do this via email. People have to be able to talk with each other in real time (an online video call is fine, though).
• Some people have an easier time making sense of graphs and charts than others. You can help with this by giving people a five or ten minute introduction on what each graph type means and how to read it. You can also ask people to team up in such a way that each group has at least one person who is familiar with graphs (and maybe statistics).
• How many people is too many for such a session? Divide the number of people you expect by three (because three is the best small group size). Then divide the number of observations you have by how many groups you will have. That's how many observations each group will need to go through. If that number is in the 5-10 range, you've got the right number of people. If each group will have fewer than five observations to look at, the session will be unsatisfying. If each group will have more than ten observations to look at, they will get overwhelmed or bored.

You can control the formatting of your report sections in three ways.

1. You can use these simple markup tags: **bold** and __italic__.
2. You can use these HTML tags: address, article, b, big, blockquote, br, caption, cite, code, del, dd, d1, dt, em, h1, h2, h3, h4, h5, h6, hr, i, kbd, li, ol, p, pre, s, small, sup, sub, strong, strike, table, td, th, tr, u, ul.
3. You can use custom CSS.