exercise · all tools
3D Mapping (Sculpting the Current Reality)
Also known as: Prototyping with the hands, Theory U 3D mapping
A team sculpts its current reality with physical objects: stakeholders and — crucially — invisible forces (power, frustration, hope) are each given an object, with distance, size and shape carrying meaning. The sculpture is then read from four directions — East (feeling: what ignites, what frustrates), South (truth: what hard truths need speaking), West (reflection: underlying assumptions, systemic barriers), North (purpose: what is ending and wanting to die, what is emerging and wanting to be born) — before the team rearranges it into the reality it wants, asking which single change moves the whole system.
Prerequisites
- A real shared situation the team owns and is willing to look at
- The South round ('what hard truths need to be spoken') is a genuine candor invitation — contract for it, and keep truths about the system, not verdicts on persons
- The objects' projective distance is what makes honesty possible; don't force interpretations of someone else's placement
Practical
- Time
- 90 min + 15 landing
- Group
- 3–15 · small-group
- Settings
- in-person, online
- Materials
- Assorted small objects; a table to move around. Online: one guide plus one person as the team's 'hands'
- Mechanisms
- systems-sensing, creative-expression, dialogic-encounter, perspective-taking
- Change scope
- state · repeatable
Origin & where it lives
Presencing Institute (Otto Scharmer et al.); this adaptation by Vivianna Rodriguez Carreon — Theory U — 3D/4D mapping; adapted from the Ashland Institute and Cliff Barry's Shadow Work
Instructions: open online · CC BY (Presencing Institute)
In this directory via u-school for Transformation — Theory U tools · IDG Phase 2 Research Report & Toolkit (2022)
Related: case clinic (pairs-with)
"The power of the practice lies in participants relying on their hands, rather than on habitual ways of thinking" (Presencing Institute). The Phase 2 Toolkit recommends it for prototyping a team's current reality; full four-direction question script is published there.
status: checked · added 2026-08-25