The Power of Appreciative Inquiry

The Power of Appreciative Inquiry by Diana Whitney and Amanda Trosten-Bloom

Here are a few of my notes…

Shortly before he passed away, I met with Peter Drucker and had what I call my Peter Drucker moment. He was interested in hearing about Appreciative Inquiry, and then I asked him a question: “Peter, you have written more on management thought and change leadership than anyone in history. Is there one lesson you can share, something everyone should know?” “Yes,” he said, “and it is ageless in its essence: the task of leadership is to create an alignment of strengths in ways that make a system’s weaknesses irrelevant.”

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To continue to succeed, organizations need more inquiry. They need less command and control by a few and more exploration of possibilities among many. They need less certainty in their usual plans and strategies and a greater capacity to sense and adapt quickly as their world changes. They need leaders who can acknowledge what they don’t know and who will enthusiastically ask provocative and inspiring questions.

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The process used to generate the power of Appreciative Inquiry is the 4-D Cycle—Discovery, Dream, Design, and Destiny (Figure 1). It is based on the notion that human systems, individuals, teams, organizations, and communities grow and change in the direction of what they study. Appreciative Inquiry works by focusing the attention of an organization on its most positive potential—its positive core—and unleashing the energy of the positive core for transformation and sustainable success.

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Appreciative Inquiry posits that organizations move in the direction of what they consistently ask questions about, and that the more affirmative the questions are, the more hopeful and positive the organizational responses will be.

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As an improvisational approach to change, Appreciative Inquiry is guided by a series of questions: What is your overall Change Agenda? What Form of Engagement will best suit your needs? What is your overall Inquiry Strategy? What steps will you take at each phase of the 4-D Cycle?

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We are not saying to deny or ignore problems. What we are saying is that if you want to transform a situation, relationship, organization, or community, focusing on strengths is much more effective than focusing on problems.

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It builds relationships, enabling people to be known in relationship rather than in roles. As one participant put it, “Appreciative interviews are energizing every time you do them. They build relationships and give you a chance to connect. This tells people that they are important and that they belong.”

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She created a three-week summer camp for students using Appreciative Inquiry. There were three criteria for attending: students had to have failed the proficiency exam three times; their teachers had to believe they had no chance at college; and the students had to freely choose to participate. The process was simple. Students conducted interviews with teachers, administrators, parents, and other people who were academically successful. Their interviews explored how other people study and learn, what kinds of job opportunities exist for college graduates, and what college is like. After their interviews, the students shared stories and data, prepared and made presentations, and taught one another. Thirty-one students were selected; twenty-nine completed the program; and twenty-eight passed the proficiency exam at the end of the program and were determined to go to college. In the process, both the students’ self-esteem and their academic proficiency improved significantly.

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Our book Appreciative Team Building: Positive Questions to Bring Out the Best of Your Team offers specific tools and examples for applying Appreciative Inquiry

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And organizational change occurs through language, storytelling, and human communication.

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Human systems—organizations and people—move in the direction of what they study, ask questions about, inquire into, and explore with curiosity.

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The practice of Appreciative Inquiry is based on the idea that the seeds of change are implicit in the first questions we ask. Given this, in Appreciative Inquiry we no longer concern ourselves with the reliability of a question to produce right or wrong answers. Instead, we consider the direction indicated in the question, and its capacity to enhance lives. As William Martin, modern interpreter of the Tao Te Ching, states: Your conversations help create your world. Speak of delight, not dissatisfaction. Speak of hope, not despair. Let your words bind up wounds, not cause them.

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Based on their research into Appreciative Inquiry in team building, management professors Gervase Bushe and Graeme Coetzer elaborate: The more positive the questions we use to guide a team building or organization development initiative, the more long lasting and effective the change effort.

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The Wholeness Principle leads participants to focus on higher ground rather than common ground. The experience of wholeness and healing emerges not in the discovery of commonalities but rather in understanding, accepting, and enjoying differences. The sense of understanding the whole story—with all its differences and distinctions—brings with it a kind of contentment that does not require agreement. Thus, it creates a context in which people can safely focus on issues of higher purpose and greater good for the whole.

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The Free-Choice Principle posits that people and organizations thrive when people are free to choose the nature and extent of their contribution. It suggests that treating people as volunteers—with freedom to choose to contribute as they most desire—liberates both personal and organizational power.

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Organization development consultant Tom McGehee also emphasizes the benefits of free choice when he describes Creation Companies. According to McGehee, people in Creation Companies join teams and contribute as volunteers, yielding a number of long-term benefits to the organization: Whenever possible, a Creation Company lets people work wherever they want and correct themselves. People usually choose to work for the best leaders and on the best opportunities. This has the advantage of identifying where the best ideas are, the best projects are, and the best leaders are. Think of it as an internal free market.37

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The interviews seemed to encourage people to reinforce success stories about the organization at its participatory best. In other cases, the interviews encouraged people to make positive new meaning of their past experiences.

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The Appreciative Inquiry training provided value beyond the project. It affected how people asked questions, evaluated things, and approached difficult situations and conversations. It transformed the hallway talk in palpable and positive ways. At the same time, camaraderie within nursing increased. The process unleashed nurses’ capability and energy to realize their value within the system. It gave nurses a heightened responsibility for their own satisfaction.

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Facilitate an interview experience. The introduction may be loosely designed around the 4-D model, but always, always include an appreciative interview, however brief. Mini-interviews give people a taste of the power—the affect—and what one executive described as the intimacy of the Appreciative Inquiry process. A tried-and-true approach is to ask people to partner with someone they don’t know well and then answer the question, What was a peak experience or high point in your professional, organizational, or personal life? Experiencing the mini-interview creates both a conscious and unconscious desire to re-create peak experiences—moving in the direction of what works. It tangibly demonstrates the capacity of AI to build relationships among diverse stakeholder groups. The four mini-interview core questions can be found in Figure 8, in Chapter 6.

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For example, when leaders in the Accenture organization took part in their four-hour introduction, two of the ten participants were teleconferenced in to the presentation. We showed PowerPoint slides on the company’s network and on the screen in the conference room. When it came time for interviews, we arranged breakout office space, and four people interviewed four others by phone. Feedback from the virtual interviews was extraordinarily positive, leading to continued exploration of how AI could be used to design the “workplace of the future” in the Chicago office.

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Cross-organization interviews. Some of the most exciting approaches to Appreciative Inquiry come when one organization interviews another. This occurs in benchmarking, partnership and alliance building, and merger integration. We have also used this process with great success in overcoming communication barriers between business units within the same organization. In cross-organization inquiry, a team of interviewers from one organization interviews a group of people from another organization—and then the roles are switched. In some cases, people will interview their counterparts in the other company; in others, they will interview people from other functions to broaden their understanding of the whole business. After the conversations, interview teams prepare feedback reports and presentations, telling their interviewees what they learned.

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So they set aside a day. In that one day they asked the consultants to give them enough of a feel for AI to allow them to see if and where it might apply. The agenda for that day is outlined in Exhibit 1. Exhibit 1. Agenda for the Leadership Introduction Meeting Objective: Provide a basic introduction to the philosophy and practice of Appreciative Inquiry, together with an exploration of possible applications. Opening and Welcome Background on Appreciative Inquiry Paired Interviews (The Four Core Questions) Topic Selection Crafting and Piloting of Questions Interim Summary of Learnings Field Trip to Production Facilities Debrief of the Experience Revisiting of Common Themes Application Conversation Go/No-Go Decision

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We paraphrased their stories to demonstrate an understanding of their concerns for the issue. Then we repeated the Appreciative Inquiry principle that leads to powerful, strategic Affirmative Topics: “Given that organizations move in the direction of what they study, what is it that you want more of in British Airways? In this case, we know you do not want more lost or delayed baggage. But what do you want more of?”

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In the end, the group of forty determined that one thing they really wanted more of was to hear stories of times when customers had an exceptional arrival experience. They wanted to uncover and transport from station to station all the best practices that would support British Airways’ world-class service.

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There are only two decisions to be made during Affirmative Topic Choice, but they are powerful: Who will select the topics? Executives? A core team? The entire organization? What topics will we study? What do we want more of in this organization?

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Affirmative Topic Choice Step by Step 1. Introduce Appreciative Inquiry. 2. Conduct mini-interviews. 3. Identify themes. 4. Share themes and stories. 5. Discuss criteria for Affirmative Topics. 6. Identify potential topics. 7. Share and discuss potential topics. 8. Cluster potential topics. 9. Select topic clusters. 10. Finalize topics.

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Participants then engage in mini-interviews, using four core questions (see Figure 8). Depending on the setting, these mini-interviews require thirty to forty-five minutes per person. This allows time for people to connect, share stories, and delve into their hopes and dreams for the organization. It also gives them an experience of the positive impact of appreciative questions—and the story-based raw material from which Affirmative Topics will be selected.

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Mini-Interview Core Questions

We ask people to conduct these mini-interviews with people who are different from themselves—different functions, levels, gender, age, tenure, ethnicity, and so on. This gives them a chance to form a genuine relationship with someone they wouldn’t otherwise have known.

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Following mini-interviews, we ask people and their original partners to form groups of six or eight. On a round-robin basis, members of this small group should introduce their partners and share highlights from their interviews. As they do the introductions, they focus primarily on great stories and inspiring best practices and ideas that they heard.

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Small groups then continue to share stories and determine the factors that contributed to their high-point experiences.

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After about an hour of storytelling and narrative analysis, small groups join others in a plenary session. Each small group shares one or two great stories with the whole group—stories that represent the essence of what the small group has been learning. As they share their stories with the whole group, the small groups also communicate the themes that emerged over their previous hour of conversation. Often these themes are simply listed on flip chart pages; other times they are drawn or painted on a collective mural or communicated in some other creative fashion. However it transpires, individual groups’ themes are listed and then compiled into a master list of themes. This master list becomes the raw material for the next activity.

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Discovery, Step by Step 1. Craft appreciative interview questions. 2. Develop an Interview Guide. 3. Create an interview plan. 4. Communicate the Inquiry Strategy. 5. Train interviewers. 6. Conduct appreciative interviews. 7. Disseminate stories and best practices. 8. Make meaning. 9. Map the positive core.

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Sample Appreciative Interview Questions

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A comprehensive Interview Guide has six parts that appear in the following sequence:

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We have experienced great success with three- to-four-hour interviewer training sessions. During this time, interviewers receive the following: Background information about the inquiry itself—what we are doing and to what end. Practice interviewing, using the Interview Guide. Guidelines regarding note taking, summary sheets, and quick action sheets, if any. Practice redirecting negative feedback. An interview schedule—who will interview whom by when. Instructions on how to invite others to join in the process, if appropriate.

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The Key Components of Good Appreciative Interviews Several years ago we asked a group of interviewers for tips on conducting great appreciative interviews. Their responses included the following:

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Lovelace Health Systems, introduced in Chapter 4, used a participant-guided process for meaning making during its AI Summit. Prior to the gathering, a three-person “story-collection team” reviewed summary sheets and determined which stories and quotes best brought the original topics to life.

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In small groups of six or eight, participants take turns sharing the most inspiring story they heard during the interviews. As stories are shared, group members listen and together find the meaning in them by naming the root causes of success embedded in the stories. Ideas can be recorded on a worksheet or flip chart page, as in the Excellence in Health Care example illustrated in Figure 11.

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Creative, playful dreaming is not the norm in many organizations. Because of this, we periodically find ourselves faced with questions like these: Can’t we just talk about what we want? Isn’t all this play a distraction from the real work? Our answer is no, this is the real work—of having fun at work, of being creative, of bringing out the diverse strengths of people, and of generating images of a more desirable future. In short, we strongly recommend using experiential approaches to dreaming in even the most conservative environments. Without this temporary shift in energy and approach to knowing, organizations seriously limit their capacities for creating new images and forward progress. If your organization would balk at the idea of dramatic skits, consider drawing or painting dreams. Consider poetry or an awards show. Consider making collages by cutting images from magazines. Or consider building a giant model out of cardboard boxes, egg cartons, and supplies from a hardware store. Whatever activity you use to reveal and uplift your organization’s dream, make it creative and fun.

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Dream, Step by Step 1. Reflect on a focal question. 2. Engage in a Dream Dialogue. 3. Clarify the collective dream. 4. Creatively enact the dream. 5. Determine common themes and opportunities. 6. Create an opportunity map. 7. (Optional) Document the dream.

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How the groups make meaning of their dreams will depend on the question(s) you ask them. Consider and choose among the following questions: What are the three most energizing themes you saw presented in the dream enactments? What are the three boldest opportunities for innovation that you saw presented in the dream enactments? Based on your dream enactments, what elements of your organization—processes, systems, leadership, purpose, strategy, relationships, and so on—offer the greatest opportunities for improvement? What new possibilities presented in your dream enactments best build on the strengths of your positive core?

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Participants had already been reflecting and dreaming in groups of eight. Having all formulated their version of the company’s strategic vision, each small group designated one person as its representative to the whole. Thus, members of a new subgroup of ten seated themselves around a table in the middle of the large group, where they became like fish in a fishbowl: they could talk to one another, but other participants could only listen and take notes. In addition to the ten chairs for designees, this central table contained a single empty chair. This was an open seat, available for anyone in the room, including facilitators, who felt they had something to contribute. The only ground rule was that these “drop-in” participants would empty their seats as soon as they felt they had made their contributions. The people in the “fishbowl” were given the task of crafting a ten-year vision statement for the division that captured the best of what had been discussed and enacted within both the small groups and the whole.

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The purpose of organization design is to give form to the expression of human creativity and values and to enable the realization of human aspirations. Organization designs are expressions of values embodied in structures, systems, strategies, relationships, roles, policies, procedures, products, and services. As a result, organization design requires choice.

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And so the Appreciative Inquiry Design methodology involves people sharing stories of their organization at its best and then writing statements of their ideal organization. These statements are most often called Provocative Propositions but have also been called Design Statements, Possibility Propositions, and Design Principles. At different times we call them by different names, always ensuring that they are Narrative statements, proposing the ideal. Provocative, stretching beyond the norm into novel and more desired forms of interaction. Stated in the affirmative, using vivid positive imagery. Statements of intention, constituting the ideal.

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Design, Step by Step 1. Identify a meaningful social architecture. 2. Select relevant and strategic design elements. 3. Identify organizational design preferences. 4. Craft Provocative Propositions.

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The Destiny phase involves unleashing self-organized innovation, through which the future will be made real. Decisions to be made in this phase include: How will we learn about the gains we’ve already made? Surveys? Appreciative Inquiry? Open storytelling sessions? How will we celebrate? What needs to happen to keep people aware of and excited about ongoing innovations? How might recognition inspire ongoing action? What are our parameters for self-organized action? Time? Resources? Domains? How shall we self-organize? Should we engage existing work groups or form separate AI Learning Teams? How will we support success? What resources, support, and expertise do people need? Who are the best people to provide what’s needed?

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Destiny, Step by Step 1. Review, communicate, and celebrate accomplishments. 2. Generate a list of potential actions. 3. Self-organize for inspired action projects. 4. Support the success of self-organized projects. 5. Begin systemic application of Appreciative Inquiry.

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All too often, after months or years of a substantial change effort, companies’ inner dialogues are full of the message, “All that time and money and nothing changed around here.” A great deal may have changed, but no one knows about it.

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Remember, words create worlds.

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Asking people to respond to “Tell me about all the positive changes that have occurred around here since we began the Appreciative Inquiry” will definitely prompt a litany of successes and good reasons to celebrate.

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Now, in Destiny, consider all the creative ways your ideals might be actualized. Either in an AI Summit or a series of small-group meetings, ask stakeholders “What are all the ideas you have for tangible actions, programs, or processes to bring the design into being?” Ask people to address this question for each of their Provocative Propositions. Encourage them to reflect upon their interviews and recall best practices and exemplary organizations as sources of inspiration.

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Even in the midst of clear and apparent unfolding transformation, we are often asked, “When are we going to create action plans, set priorities, and decide what to change?” Recognizing that all good things in life result from a combination of forethought (planning) and opportunism (improvisation), we often suggest forming Innovation Teams during the Destiny phase of Appreciative Inquiry.

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No matter what project they select, Innovation Teams can benefit by getting off to a good start. We have found that providing a planning framework—in the form of either a worksheet or a flip-chart-sized template—helps get team members on the same page and frees their minds for creative conversations. When creating a planning framework, we consider the organization’s culture and planning needs. In particular, we use a language and graphic style that will appeal to members of the Innovation Teams, including as many of the following categories or prompts as teams have time to meaningfully agree on in their first meeting: The project name or description. The team’s purpose or vision for the project. A list of group members, including a “team lead.” A project overview—what, when, where, how, and so on. Short-, mid-, and long-term actions, help needed, and due dates.

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Everyone participates in round 1 of the gallery walk. Each round is brief—fifteen to twenty minutes at most. During that time, presenters read their plan to each small group of visitors, sharing primary discussion and decision points and answering questions. Visitors then write feedback and comments on color-coded index cards in response to such prompts as “Concepts I love . . .” (white) “Ideas to strengthen the plan . . .” (yellow) “Potential redundancies with other initiatives . . .” (green) “Available resources . . .” (blue) 4. Step 3 is repeated through three or four rounds. 5. When all rounds are complete, people return to their original Innovation Teams to share what they learned from their visits, review and discuss the feedback they have received, and make quick notes about how their plan will change based on what they have heard.

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A week after the summit, more than half of the Action Groups reconvened and began thinking about what they wanted to accomplish. But within days, it became clear to the division’s leadership that some of the groups would need help if they were to succeed. The good news was that groups had been convened by people who were passionate to do something. The bad news was that only some of these people had the background, skills, or abilities to successfully facilitate such a team.

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Each convener/facilitator received four hours of training on facilitation, including guidelines for leading an Action Group. Here are the guidelines that were provided: Clarify what you want your Action Group to accomplish. Recruit two cochampions from the business leadership team to support you in your work. Be sure to recruit people who, because of their function, expertise, or interest, are uniquely qualified to provide meaningful support and insight to your group. Schedule Action Group meetings in advance through production supervisors to ensure coverage on the floor. Members of your group may work up to two hours per week on Action Group–related activities during regular work hours. Members of your group will also be paid overtime for voluntary Action Group work performed during off-shift hours. In the end, your Action Group will develop a detailed proposal to implement your chosen change. Each proposal, including timelines, costs, accountabilities, and so on, will be presented to the Advisory Team for resource allocation and support. Action Group cochampions attended an hour-long training, where they learned the importance of guiding, supporting, and helping the teams to succeed in their chosen task.

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Sometimes the Advisory Team point person happened to be serving already on an Action Group, either as member or cochampion. In other cases, he or she was simply an interested third party whose job was to do the following: Keep up with what the group was doing. Keep the Advisory Team informed about where the group was heading. Keep the question of resources and support in front of division leadership as necessary.

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Appreciative Inquiry has helped community leaders address three questions that are essential to successful participatory planning in community settings: 1. How do we build leadership alignment and engage large numbers of people who live and work in the many varied subcultures and groups that constitute the community? 2. How do we ensure that everyone in the community has the opportunity to be involved and to be heard, so that the resulting plan is truly the community’s plan? 3. How can our planning set the stage for inspired action and noteworthy results while building and strengthening relationships and the sense of community wholeness?

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“We imagined the city as a giant web, with influential individuals residing at crossover points. These were the people who knew people—who, if engaged in the process, would attract attention and influence others to join. These were the people we wanted to help us get others to the table later in the process.”

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Finally, a group of community members conducted what they called best-in-class interviews with other cities to learn about practices that might be adopted or adapted by Longmont. They identified 159 comparable cities across the nation and decided to visit four. Each of the four was a known leader in an area related to one of Longmont’s four Appreciative Inquiry Affirmative Topics:

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The plan outlined strengths and goals and prioritized activities that would give rise to “vibrant communities in which we all age well.”

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As you think about your community and its potential use of Appreciative Inquiry, we encourage you to start small. Find a community issue, project, or goal that requires widespread engagement and input, and use it as your ground for learning. Review this book with your project in mind. Invite other concerned community members to join you in your experiment. Now you have your core team and are ready to go.

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Personal and organizational power is unleashed when certain essential conditions are present for people within organizations. Our research suggests that there are at least six of these conditions, which we call the Six Freedoms: 1. Freedom to be known in relationship. 2. Freedom to be heard. 3. Freedom to dream in community. 4. Freedom to choose to contribute. 5. Freedom to act with support. 6. Freedom to be positive. Any one of these Six Freedoms can significantly alter people’s perception of their power within an organizational context. Because individuals learn and are motivated differently, we believe initiatives that provide the opportunity for people to experience multiple freedoms have the potential to make the greatest impact on the largest number of people—and ultimately on the organization as a whole.

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In work settings, people are often known in roles rather than in relationship. They are vice presidents and operators, doctors and nurses, employees and customers—in short, they are perceived as what they do rather than who they are. However, human identity forms and evolves in relationship.

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Much has been written on the act of listening, but surprisingly little has been written about the experience of being heard. A person can listen without truly hearing or understanding the person who is speaking. To feel heard, the speaker must recognize that the person listening is attentive, is listening with sincere curiosity, empathy, and a willingness to learn. It requires the listener to hear a person’s story and words. In other words, the experience of being heard requires a relationship between speaker and listener.

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Engaging Emergence

Engaging Emergence by Peggy Holman

Here are a few of my notes…

I use what I now call emergent change processes—methods that engage the diverse people of a system in focused yet open interactions.

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Just think of the possibilities if more of us knew how to bring together diverse, conflicted groups that creatively coalesce and generate innovative and wise outcomes!

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Though all change begins with disruption, not all change is emergent. This book focuses on emergent change because it is least understood and we need more effective ways of working with it. Knowing how emergence fits with other forms of change provides perspective on why we are experiencing more and stronger disruptions.

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After a Future Search, Marv and Sandra advocate regular review meetings so that people reconnect and share their activities. Thus you are less likely to hear, “Well, not much has happened since the event. Though we did this thing in my department/neighborhood.” When 30 or 50 people each name the little something they are doing and hear each other’s stories, they realize that remarkable change is occurring. It energizes and amplifies everyone’s work.

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With little or no seed money, the networks surrounding different emergent change practices—Future Search, Open Space, World Café, Art of Hosting, Appreciative Inquiry, Dynamic Facilitation—are growing. Thousands of practitioners around the world could be catalyzed into action should an intention of sufficient magnitude arise.

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As newspapers are discovering, denying disturbances leads to loss or death. Disruption has an interesting way of becoming more extreme when not adequately addressed. Ultimately, it forces our hand, and we acknowledge that business as usual is over. We mourn what is lost as best we can. We are well served to also let go of the operating rules from the past and admit that we don’t know what to do. We can even ask for help. We are in a special moment. Letting go of how things were opens the way for engaging emergence. What does it take to find the potential in the mess, to make it through the fear of loss or death?

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The practices are the conversational backbone for improvisation, enabling us to stay in the flow even if we don’t know the specific path we’re taking. Honing these conversational skills is how we engage emergence.

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Taking responsibility for what you love as an act of service is a great life practice. The next time you notice yourself acting from obligation, test it out. Maybe you don’t want to join the family dinner at Aunt Mabel’s. What matters to you? Perhaps when you think about it, the sense of family is worth the questions about when you’re going to get married. Or not. You choose. If you decide to go to Mabel’s, it’s guaranteed that your attitude will be different.

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With practice, we learn to moderate our responses, increasing our capacity to witness without the need to judge, fix, blame, correct, applaud, cheer, shout, or say or do anything else.

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I found an inquiry that served me well whenever I disagreed with something. I’d say, “That’s an interesting perspective. Tell me more.” The responses always took me deeper into another’s world.

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One of my favorite stories about the transformative power of listening comes from my longtime learning partner, Mark Jones, who developed a practice he calls HSLing (hizzling)—hearing, seeing, and loving.

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I turned to face the “mouthiest” of the group. I had determined that he was the leader and the one that I would attack if I decided to respond aggressively. In a friendly and interested tone of voice, I asked him to tell me his personal story about why he wanted to harm me, how I was an affront to him. I told him that regardless of the outcome of the day, it was important to me to understand him, his life, his suffering, his frustrations, and his dreams.

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But I learned an important lesson about people needing first to be heard, in order to be seen. And that lesson probably saved my life.

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Listening, through all of our senses, informs us. It equips us to engage. LISTEN WITHOUT JUDGMENT. By all means, notice your responses. Use them to understand the other person more fully. If, for example, you are shocked by what you hear, rather than reacting, ask a question that helps you to understand more fully. USE MORE THAN YOUR EARS. We can listen through all of our senses—ears, eyes, touch, taste, smell, intuition, and technologies that expand our senses. We are remarkable instruments for taking in information, finding patterns, making meaning. CHECK FOR UNDERSTANDING. Repeat what you heard and ask if you heard correctly. At first, it can take many tries before another feels understood. JOIN THE “HIZZLE” EXPERIMENT. Hear, see, and love everyone, including yourself. Listening often tunes us to another. It helps us to discover connections with each other and our environment. Connect: Bridge Differences and Bond with Others How do we link ourselves and our ideas with others similar to and different from ourselves? Surprisingly similar ideas surface over and over when people with different perspectives creatively interact. We discover that what is most personally meaningful is universal. And more, we discover that we are not alone but part of some larger whole. As we experience this discovery, something shifts. “I” see myself as part of a larger “we.” In this marriage of “I” and “we,” something else emerges. We relate not just to each other but also to the whole. A social system—a community—emerges. It has its own identity, distinct from the individuals in it. And we are part of it. We share a common story, common intentions. Because we know in essence that we want the same things, our differences

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Listening, through all of our senses, informs us. It equips us to engage. LISTEN WITHOUT JUDGMENT. By all means, notice your responses. Use them to understand the other person more fully. If, for example, you are shocked by what you hear, rather than reacting, ask a question that helps you to understand more fully. USE MORE THAN YOUR EARS. We can listen through all of our senses—ears, eyes, touch, taste, smell, intuition, and technologies that expand our senses. We are remarkable instruments for taking in information, finding patterns, making meaning. CHECK FOR UNDERSTANDING. Repeat what you heard and ask if you heard correctly. At first, it can take many tries before another feels understood. JOIN THE “HIZZLE” EXPERIMENT. Hear, see, and love everyone, including yourself.

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TIPS FOR TAKING RESPONSIBILITY FOR WHAT YOU LOVE AS AN ACT OF SERVICE This simple, radical notion liberates us to act on what matters most. Be aware: it is contagious. LISTEN TO INNER GUIDANCE. Ask yourself what matters to you. Discover, in essence, what brings you meaning. Consider the “shoulds” in your life. If they have no deeper meaning, let them go. Do what brings you joy, trusting that it serves the greater good. STAND FOR WHAT MATTERS TO YOU. Learn how to disrupt productively. You can make your voice heard, even on unpopular matters, if you do it with compassion. LEARN, CONTRIBUTE, HAVE FUN, OR LEAVE. Pay attention to your energy. If you have no juice for what is happening, do everyone a favor—be respectful and leave. BE GENEROUS. When we give ourselves room to follow our passions, it awakens a sense of abundance in us. Honor the space that others need to grow more fully into themselves.

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When people discover that they are the system, everything changes. Not only can they act, but they are eager to do so, even when the work is challenging.

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How do we equip ourselves to engage disturbance? Three practices—embracing mystery, choosing possibility, and following life energy—are particularly useful to cultivate.

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TIPS FOR EMBRACING MYSTERY Embracing mystery is less about doing and more about a state of being. GET CURIOUS. Curiosity is a desire to know, to learn. Open to the unknown. CLARIFY INTENTION. Why go to the trouble unless there is something you value? Intention—purpose—acts as a compass, setting direction while you travel in the wilderness. INVITE OTHERS WHO CARE. People notice different aspects of a situation. With a shared intention, more eyes and ears, hearts and minds, increase the chances of uncovering the gems. DEVELOP EQUANIMITY. Being calm in a storm increases the likelihood of surviving and bringing others with you. Personal disciplines—running, daily affirmations, practicing an art, regular meditation—are among the ways that people cultivate a capacity for facing the unknown.

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TIPS FOR CHOOSING POSSIBILITY Like embracing mystery, choosing possibility is a state of mind. NOTICE YOUR HABITS OF THOUGHT AND LANGUAGE. Are they filled with deficits: “don’t,” “can’t,” “not,” “isn’t,” “couldn’t,” “the problem is,” etc.? Shift your focus from what you don’t want to what you do want. REFRAME. Turn your thoughts and words around. If you’re thinking, “I don’t want that” or “The problem is that we aren’t old/wise/creative/strong enough,” ask yourself, “What do I want?” or “Given all that, what is possible?” HAVE FUN WITH IT. Because we’re surrounded by deficit language, I’m constantly turning it around in my mind. “State fails to pass budget.” I ask, “What would it take to pass a budget that meets our needs?” When we’re presented with possibilities, creative juices flow. As creative juices flow, we become more positive. BE PATIENT. It took years to form current habits. Give yourself time to develop new ones.

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Complexity scientists tell us that initial conditions are crucial in shaping what emerges.1 Welcoming conditions make the difference between a screaming mob and a circle of peace. Creating containers that foster creative engagement sets up initial conditions for engaging emergence.

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We are cued both consciously and unconsciously about how much of ourselves to reveal, how deep we are willing to go together. When the environment supports us in expressing what might be considered disruptive in other settings, disturbances tend to show up as far less toxic. In welcoming spaces, people take charge of their situation, compelling facilitators to move out of the way and traditional leaders to contribute as one part of a larger system.

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TIPS FOR WELCOMING Pay attention to the physical, emotional, psychological, and spiritual messages you send. SET CONTEXT. What do we need to be ready to engage? Knowing the purpose, why it matters, who is involved, is a good place to begin. Often, history is important. How did this get started? Who is hosting? Where does funding come from? Because so many elements can be part of the context, we won’t always get it right. Prepare for that. Create the means for answering questions as they arise. TEND TO THE SPACE. Be clear about the tone you wish to create. Create a physical space that says, “You belong,” to the diverse people involved. Be sure that the room is clean. Perhaps a “Welcome” sign would help. Or nametags. Pay attention to the emotional space and the psychic space. For example, are both the head and the heart welcome? Since we can never predict all needs, put the means for adjusting in place. IMAGINE YOURSELF ON THE RECEIVING END. What makes you feel welcome? Consider the diverse people—their roles, backgrounds, ages, and other factors—and stand in their shoes. What expectations do others have? If they are old, young, of another culture, of another discipline, what communicates hospitality? SAY “YES AND … “ In the heat of the moment, welcome what comes. Whether we like it or not, working with the unexpected as it arises increases the likelihood of a creative outcome.

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How do we decide whom to invite? The simple answer is: those who care. Involve those with a stake in what occurs. Marv Weisbord and Sandra Janoff, creators of Future Search, offer useful guidance based on the principle of getting the whole system in the room. They say, invite all who “ARE IN”: those with authority, resources, expertise, information, and need.

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TIPS FOR INVITING DIVERSITY Inviting the diversity of the system is a critical and challenging task for engaging emergence. DEFINE WHO/WHAT MAKES UP THE SYSTEM. What functions, constituencies, or roles are involved? What mix of race, class, gender, geography, and generation is important? Are there nonhuman elements—for example, the environment or animals—that need to be present in some way? GO WHERE THOSE YOU WANT TO PARTICIPATE LIVE AND WORK. If you wish to engage people from a different age, race, culture, etc., put yourself in their settings. Be humble. Listen. Learn. Reach out. They are more likely to join with you if they see that you are interested in a respectful partnership. CREATE AN ORGANIZING GROUP THAT REFLECTS THE SYSTEM. The more a hosting group includes the mix of people you wish to engage, the more equipped you are to invite them to participate. WORK WITH WHAT ARISES AMONG YOU. The organizing group is in the intensive course. The disturbances that exist in the system will show up in a diverse organizing team. Welcome the issues and work them through. Not only does it strengthen the group, but it prepares you for what’s to come as you increase the scale and scope of your work.

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Inquire Appreciatively: Ask Bold Questions of Possibility How do we inspire explorations that lead to positive action? If your first impulse when facing disaster is to ask questions that surface images of a positive future, your chances of making it through upheaval increase. It kept psychiatrist Viktor Frankl alive, as he continually sought meaning even in a concentration camp during the Holocaust.1 Ambitious, possibility-oriented questions are attractors. They bring together diverse people who care. They disrupt, but do so by focusing on opportunities for something better, more meaningful. They help to create a welcoming environment, opening the way to discover what wants to emerge. A useful general question is “Given all that has happened, what is possible now?”

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TIPS FOR INQUIRING APPRECIATIVELY Inquiring appreciatively is a life-changing skill. It helps us to find possibilities in any situation, no matter how challenging. DEVELOP THE ART OF THE QUESTION. Practice asking questions that focus on possibilities. Here are some characteristics of great questions: They open us to possibilities. They are bold yet focused. They are attractive: diverse people can find themselves in them. They appeal to our head and our heart. They serve the individual and the collective. Some examples: What question, if answered, would make a difference in this situation? What can we do together that none of us could do alone? What could this team also be? What is most important? Given what has happened, what is possible now? ASK QUESTIONS THAT INCREASE CLARITY. Positive images move us toward positive actions. Questions that help us to envision what we want help us to realize it. PRACTICE TURNING DEFICIT INTO POSSIBILITY. In most ordinary conversations, people focus on what they can’t do, what the problems are, what isn’t possible. Such conversations provide an endless source for practicing the art of the question. When someone says, “The problem is x,” ask, “What would it look like if it were working?” If someone says, “I can’t do that,” ask, “What would you like to do?” RECRUIT OTHERS TO PRACTICE WITH YOU. You can have more fun and help each other grow into the habit of asking possibility-oriented questions. But watch out: it can be contagious. You might attract a crowd.

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TIPS FOR OPENING Opening takes only a moment, but it may be the most courageous practice for engaging emergence. BE CLEAR ABOUT INTENTIONS. Openness requires boundaries. Intentions clarify focus and set direction. Clarity of purpose creates boundaries that guide us from the inside out. DO YOUR HOMEWORK; LET GO OF THE REST. Identify what matters and handle it. How we work with a crisis is a great teacher: we quickly discern what is critical and release everything else. TRUST YOURSELF. We can study, prepare, and practice forever. Ultimately, safety, confidence, and the ability to rise to the occasion come from within. Decide what you need, handle it, and step in. GO WITH FRIENDS. Challenges are best met with a diverse company of friends. Among you are more eyes, ears, hands, skills, and knowledge to respond. It is also more fun.

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“If we vote to approve this plan, I cannot be on board. I care about our parks too much. I couldn’t threaten to close one of them or do that to those who love them and use them as much as I do.” In my old facilitator mindset, with five minutes left, I would have ended there. Instead, I invited possibility. I asked, “Given that, what else might this group do?”

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TIPS FOR REFLECTING Reflection has two meanings. One meaning is to contemplate, to consider, actively seeking coherence. The other meaning is to be a mirror for another. Coherence arises in the process. BE A MIRROR. Help others to feel heard. Repeat speakers’ words to them. Describe their actions or expressions. Sense their feelings or deeper essence and tell them what you notice. Do it without judgment, with no strings attached, and without giving them advice. LET GO OF THE NEED FOR IMMEDIATE ANSWERS. Make time to explore the depth and breadth of diverse perspectives without requiring a coherent response. Ideas need room to percolate. Relationships take time to form. ASK QUESTIONS THAT SEEK CONVERGENCE. Reflective questions are different from questions that open us to face disturbances. Opening questions help us to discover distinctions by making space for wide-ranging exploration. For example, “What’s possible now?” Reflective questions are useful once explorations are well under way. They focus on understanding coalescing themes and patterns. For example: What are we learning? What themes are surfacing that excite us? What is working well? What gifts have we received from this experience? PAY ATTENTION TO THE TIMING. Checking for coherence too soon frustrates us. Waiting too long leads to fragmentation, the shadow of differentiation, in which we feel lost in our separateness. Casually ask a converging question—one that connects the dots. For example, what themes and patterns do you notice? What are we learning? What can we name now that wasn’t possible before? If people aren’t ready, the question is soon forgotten in the flow of interactions.

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TIPS FOR NAMING Emergence culminates in naming. It is the moment when novelty arises. CALL “IT” FORTH. Ask what wants to emerge. Then let go. It may not come. Yet I am amazed how often someone speaks unexpected wisdom that has everyone nodding yes. SENSE THAT RING OF TRUTH. Listen for that moment of surprise and elation, when the diverse people of a system say yes to what arises. Amplify it. Celebrate it when it happens. IF YOU FEEL AS IF YOU’RE WORKING TOO HARD, TAKE A BREAK. Naming can’t be forced. If you keep working it, sometimes names become more elusive. If there’s time, sleep on it. Social psychology offers a body of evidence showing that a night’s sleep supports our ability to sort through complexity. In what is called the Zeigarnik effect, we continue processing uncompleted or interrupted tasks.2 Our unconscious helps new patterns to form that are too tough for our analytic mind. We have all experienced the effect of “sleeping on something” and having it come into greater clarity in the morning. HAVE FAITH. Names arise in their own time. Though analysis may contribute information to the mix, ultimately, naming novelty into being is a complex, nonlinear act. Names arise spontaneously when conditions are

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TIPS FOR HARVESTING Harvesting tells the stories that are ripe, seeding new possibilities in the process. INVITE ARTISTS—BOTH DECLARED AND THE ONES WITHIN EACH OF US. Art—music, poetry, movement, visual arts—carries meaning. When artists are present or the artists within are invited to participate, they naturally harvest stories. MAKE TOOLS AVAILABLE. Anticipate the need. Have supplies on hand: paper, markers, recorders, cameras—whatever can serve the harvest. USE MANY MODES. Different people absorb meaning through different means. For many of us, the most effective stories are multi-modal. Use text, images, movies, audio, and more. SHARE THE ESSENTIAL STORIES. What meaning do we wish to share? What happened? How did it happen? Why does it matter? THINK ABOUT WHOM WE WISH TO REACH AND HOW BEST TO DO SO. A combination of advance thought and ideas that surface in the moment clarify who can benefit from the stories and the forms that work to tell them. Harvesting

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It sheds light on an important and elusive challenge of change: sustaining the gains.

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And my conclusion that when a government doesn’t want people to organize, it designs buildings without a place for them to gather in community.

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Approach sustainability with resilience in mind. Think of sustainability as the capacity of a system to remain congruent with changing realities.

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Leadership for engaging emergence involves stewarding shared intention and tending to the social fabric—both of which require welcoming spaces for conversation. Conversational leadership, like knowing how to engage emergence, invites us all into leadership work. This, too, is a turning of the spiral, redefining the who and what of leadership. We are in the midst of grappling with a new story that shifts leadership from tops of hierarchies to hubs of networks, a topic deserving of its own book.

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TIPS FOR ITERATING Emergence is part of a cycle of change. Doing “it” again … and again reaps rewards over time. STEWARD SHARED INTENTIONS. As events unfold, periodically affirm that our reason for being is still relevant and still fuels us. Revisiting intentions often reinvigorates and refreshes us, reminding us of why we said yes when the work gets hard. TEND THE SOCIAL FABRIC. When people feel they belong, they show up, bringing their gifts. Coupled with shared purpose, a sense of community keeps the fires of commitment burning, fueling ever more creativity and innovation. AS “IT” TAKES SHAPE, GIVE “IT” AWAY. The more attractive and accessible our outcomes, the more they inspire others to join in. New participants bring fresh energy and questions. Although disturbances are part of the package, we now know that just sparks creativity. Make it easy for people to get involved. KEEP THE FAITH. The effects of our actions need time to take root and grow. If it matters, stay with it.

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PRACTICES FOR WELCOMING DISTURBANCE Prepare EMBRACE MYSTERY: SEEK THE GIFTS HIDDEN IN WHAT WE DON’T KNOW. What does it take to be receptive to the unknown? Let go of the need for immediate answers. CHOOSE POSSIBILITY: CALL FORTH “WHAT COULD BE.” What do we want more of? Seek positive guiding images. FOLLOW LIFE ENERGY: TRUST DEEPER SOURCES OF DIRECTION. What guides us when we don’t know? Work with the energies that are present. Engage INQUIRE APPRECIATIVELY: ASK BOLD QUESTIONS OF POSSIBILITY. How do we inspire explorations that lead to positive action? Ask questions that focus on a positive intention and invite others to engage with us.

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Never tell people how to do things … they will surprise you with their ingenuity. —General George S. Patton, Jr., War As I Knew It

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The environment is quite good at giving us feedback. We just need to listen and adapt to the signals we receive. When all is harmonious, proceed with business as usual. When dissonance appears, interrupt the habitual with something counterintuitive. Here’s a radical way of thinking differently about a signal: What if we viewed a terrorist attack as the system shouting at us? What message could such a vicious act contain that would be useful to our well-being? Such a question would take us into unexplored terrain. It could provide different feedback about the root causes of and responses to terrorism.

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PRACTICES FOR PIONEERING FOCUS INTENTIONS: CLARIFY OUR CALLING. What purpose moves us? Tune in. Sense what is stirring in you, others, and your environment. WELCOME: CULTIVATE HOSPITABLE SPACE. How do we cultivate conditions for the best possible outcomes? Create a spirit of welcome—physically, socially, intellectually, emotionally, and spiritually. INVITE THE DIVERSITY OF THE SYSTEM. How can we include the true complexity of the situation? Reach out to those who ARE IN: witha uthority,r esources,e xpertise,i nformation, andn eed. TAKE RESPONSIBILITY FOR WHAT YOU LOVE AS AN ACT OF SERVICE. How can we use our differences and commonalities to make a difference? Get involved with what matters, listening and connecting along the way. LISTEN: SENSE BROADLY AND DEEPLY, WITNESSING WITH SELF-DISCIPLINE. How do we more fully understand each other and our environment? Pay attention using all of your senses to learn and adapt.

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Although we can’t tell a system to change, we can create conditions that support it in doing so.

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PRACTICES THAT ENCOURAGE RANDOM ENCOUNTERS FOCUS INTENTIONS: CLARIFY OUR CALLING. What purpose moves us? Tune in. Sense what is stirring in you, others, and your environment. WELCOME: CULTIVATE HOSPITABLE SPACE. How do we cultivate conditions for the best possible outcomes? Create a spirit of welcome—physically, socially, intellectually, emotionally, and spiritually. INVITE THE DIVERSITY OF THE SYSTEM. How can we include the true complexity of the situation? Reach out to those who ARE IN: witha uthority,r esources,e xpertise,i nformation, andneed. OPEN: BE RECEPTIVE. How do we make space for the whole story—good, bad, or indifferent? Be willing to be more in questions than answers. TAKE RESPONSIBILITY FOR WHAT YOU LOVE AS AN ACT OF SERVICE. How can we use our differences and commonalities to make a difference? Get involved with what matters, listening and connecting along the way. CONNECT: BRIDGE DIFFERENCES AND BOND WITH OTHERS. How do we link ourselves and our ideas with others similar to and different from ourselves? Listen for deeper meaning, to seek common ground.

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Harrison Owen, creator of Open Space Technology, introduced me to an elegant design question: What is one less thing to do and still be whole and complete?

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PRACTICES FOR SIMPLIFYING REFLECT: SENSE PATTERNS, BE A MIRROR. What is arising now? Get curious. Ask questions that tease out what is coming into being. Be a witness for another. NAME: MAKE MEANING. How do we call forth what is ripening? Be receptive to a leap that can come from anywhere. HARVEST: SHARE STORIES. Once meaning is named, how does it spread? Tell the stories. Write, draw, sing, dance, etc. Capture the spirit in print, video, online, and other media. Since we absorb more through multiple forms of expression, the more media, the better. ITERATE: DO IT AGAIN … AND AGAIN. What keeps us going? Integrate what we know into what’s novel and what’s novel into what we know.

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The principles help us understand what to do, and the practices help us understand how to do it.

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The three questions below orient us to a fundamental pattern of change: disturb, differentiate, cohere. They help us to think strategically about how to work with change, particularly emergent change, by offering guidance on useful actions: disrupt, engage, and renew.

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TIPS FOR CULTIVATING COMPASSION Because compassion is something many of us rarely contemplate, I offer some thoughts on reconnecting with your sense of compassion. LISTEN WITH YOUR HEART. It is a good companion to the mind. Our emotional center brings a different perspective. Hear what it has to say, without judgment. If it’s been a long time since you have listened deeply to yourself, chances are there’s a message backlog. It can be overwhelming at first. If so, try the following: Create a welcoming environment for yourself before you begin. Ask for support from a friend, a counselor, or even a workshop. Journal. Write without judgment. And, if you wish, burn the pages when done. FORGIVE YOURSELF AND OTHERS. Forgiveness frees energy that keeps us stuck. South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission provided a remarkable space for clearing national pain and anger. PRACTICE. It gets easier the more we do it. Ultimately, checking in with your heart feels as natural as listening to your mind. They are great partners. DO YOUR OWN RESEARCH. Find out what works for you. A growing body of evidence suggests that compassion affects our health, productivity, and lifespan.

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The Dalai Lama told Mark that we all need to be heard, seen, and loved, or mischief occurs. HSL stands for hearing, seeing, and loving everyone, including yourself. Mark developed a simple diagnostic: When people don’t feel heard, they shout or shut up. When they don’t feel seen, they get in your face and turn into bullies, or they become invisible. When they don’t feel loved, they do a dance of approaching and avoiding—coming closer to you and then moving away. In all cases, the remedy begins with listening.

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Most of us think, if the “problem” person would just leave, everything would be fine. While sometimes that is true, more often, if the person leaves, someone else takes her or his place. More likely, the disruptiveness is a sign that something deeper is going on. Perhaps a value or perspective is currently not welcome in the system.

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TIPS FOR DISRUPTING COHERENCE COMPASSIONATELY Disrupting compassionately involves keeping your heart open, honoring those you are disrupting. BE CLEAN ABOUT YOUR INTENTION. If your actions serve a greater good, proceed. If you have even a hint of ego, desire to overpower another, or want revenge, revisit your intentions. RESPECT THOSE YOU DISRUPT. Treat others with dignity. Whatever they have done, be conscious that your actions affect them and others. SEEK THE DIFFERENCES THAT MAKE A DIFFERENCE. Disturbance causes differences to surface. Look for the gems hidden in disruption. A key principle: WELCOME DISTURBANCE. How do we find potential in the midst of disruption? Ask possibility-oriented questions. A key practice: INQUIRE APPRECIATIVELY. Asking appreciative questions is the most effective practice I know for disrupting compassionately. It interrupts the status quo so smoothly that even in challenging circumstances, those disrupted can access enthusiasm and creativity. It often finesses the feeling of disruption.

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Deep and essential truths often hide in dissonant behaviors like shouting or silence, bullying or invisibility. Creating conditions welcoming enough to surface these gifts enables us to use our differences creatively.

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TIPS FOR ENGAGING DISRUPTIONS CREATIVELY WHEN FEELING OVERWHELMED, BREATHE. Chaotic settings are stressful. Catching our breath helps us to reconnect with ourselves. PAY ATTENTION. If you can’t see the guiding patterns, listen, observe, and be receptive to what surrounds you. Notice what is meaningful. Make an intuitive inventory of what is happening. BRING A BEGINNER’S MIND. Look at the familiar with new eyes. Is it still meaningful? Is it something to conserve? What is new and unexpected? Look through the eyes of someone who finds excitement in it. Is it something to be embraced? Key principles: PIONEER! How do we discover our way forward? Seek new directions. Think different. Break a habit. Act courageously. ENCOURAGE RANDOM ENCOUNTERS. How do we create conditions in which chance interactions among-diverse members of a system lead to breakthroughs? Widen the circle of participation. Invite the diverse members of the system to take responsibility for what they love as an act of service. A key practice: TAKE RESPONSIBILITY FOR WHAT YOU LOVE AS AN ACT OF SERVICE. This practice liberates our hearts, minds, and spirits, calling us to put our unique gifts to use. The more it becomes an operating norm, the more innovation, joy, solidarity, generosity, and other qualities of well-being appear. It is the essence of engaging disruptions creatively.

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In a wise society, people continually grow their capacity to care for themselves, each other, and the whole.

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Creatively Engage The more we reach beyond our usual friends and colleagues to engage others, the more potential there is for creative outcomes. Get curious about something. Ask yourself a question and be playful with it. Set up your own random encounters. Go someplace you don’t ordinarily go. Talk with people you rarely meet.

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Be a compassionate voice of possibility in settings that are fixated on what’s wrong. You know what to do. Break the habit that too many of us have, of focusing on what’s wrong. Ask some variant of “Given all of that, what’s possible now?”

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When you overhear a complaint, ask a friendly question. Perhaps, “What do you really want?” Or “What would it look like if it were working?”

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Just as microscopes help us to see the infinitely small and telescopes help us to see the infinitely large, macroscopes help us to see the infinitely complex. Rather than a single instrument, they are a class of tools for sensing complex interconnections among information, ideas, people, and experiences.

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Questions for Engaging Emergence How do we disrupt coherence compassionately? How do we engage disruptions creatively? How do we renew coherence wisely?

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COHERENCE/COALESCING—Coming together; converging into relationship, harmony, unity, bonding, community, shared sense, wholeness.

The World Cafe

The World Cafe: Shaping Our Futures Through Conversations That Matter by Juanita Brown

Here are a few of my notes…

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It’s never enough just to tell people about some new insight. Rather, you have to get them to experience it in a way that evokes its power and possibility. Instead of pouring knowledge into people’s heads, you need to help them grind a new set of eyeglasses so they can see the world in a new way. —John Seely Brown, Seeing Differently: Insights on Innovation

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Are you telling or helping grind new glasses?

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Conversation is the core process by which we humans think and coordinate our actions together.

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Learning Organizations True learning organizations are a space for generative conversations and concerted action which creates a field of alignment that produces tremendous power to invent new realities in conversation and to bring about these new realities in action. Fred Kofman and Peter Senge “Communities of Commitment” Organizational Dynamics

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Consider the conversations you are currently having in your family, your organization, or your community. To what degree do they create frustration and fragment efforts or offer new insights and ways to work collectively?

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For the last several years, we’ve been in hypergrowth mode, with double-digit increases. We’re consistently surpassing the expectations of the corporation. I can’t say if that is the direct result of our Café conversations or the result of other things we’ve also been doing, many of which have come from our Café work. But here’s what I can say: the World Café has been very essential, very unique, because it’s the only process I’ve found that consistently connects intellect and emotion to a business frame of reference. That’s a key strategic business advantage.

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For a businessperson, the numbers are the measure of success. If we don’t have the numbers, that’s the end of the conversations. But if we don’t have the conversations, that’s the end of the numbers. It’s a paradox. The numbers are only the outcome of actions that you’ve taken upstream, where the pulse of the organization lives. You need to look at how alive the organization is, how people interact and talk with each other—their relationships. That is a key part of the value-producing capacity of the organization. It’s very difficult for people to measure that, since the only tool they have to measure is the numbers.

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But there are other indicators. I know we’re succeeding when I see people more engaged in our business decisions, taking risks, getting the issues on the table, not being afraid to speak and to take action. For example, if you look at the first Café conversation versus the tenth one, you can see a huge evolution in confidence—a knowledge that whatever the issue is, we’re going to solve it.

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But at the same time, we need better ways to move between the discovery part of a Café conversation and the action-planning part. We need to make sure when moving into the implementation phase that we leaders don’t go back to our old control mode of doing things.

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With his colleague Anders Bröms of Sweden, Tom later wrote another seminal book, Profit Beyond Measure, focused on these questions (2000). Based on extensive research, it encouraged leaders to shift their attention from a focus on management exclusively by results (MBR) toward “management by means” (MBM)—the relationships and processes that shape the organization’s capacity to learn, adapt to changing circumstances, and create the knowledge necessary for its long-term performance.

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In Elaine’s words, “What we’re saying is that conversation is the essential, fundamental, and indispensable means. But how these conversations are viewed and structured will lead to different outcomes.” Tom adds, “If conversation is seen as a core means for creating organizational performance, then how leadership works with conversation will be a key factor in determining how well the organization does. If people say, ‘Conversation means shut up and don’t speak until you’re spoken to, or don’t talk until the boss authorizes you to,’ that will lead to one set of results, and if the conversations occur more along the lines of the World Café principles, that will lead to a different set of results.”

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For me, entering the space of authentic dialogue is like entering this central courtyard in the spacious home of our common humanity. The World Café is only one valuable doorway into this central courtyard of collective possibility.

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What if context is like the banks of a river through which collective meaning flows?

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We sent the Café questions to keynote speakers and other presenters in advance. This helped clarify the framework in which they would share their own reflections in their morning keynote addresses as well as in the circle dialogues among key speakers and presenters prior to each afternoon’s Café.

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Context is the situation, frame of reference, and surrounding factors that, in combination, help shape the ways we make meaning of our experiences. Most of us are not used to thinking consciously about context even though its presence is critical for our minds to create patterns of understanding (Johnson, 2001). We become confused and uncomfortable when the relation between the larger context and the content we are exploring or the process that’s being used is unclear.

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Bringing nature to the Café—or the Café to nature, as we did in this case—serves as a reminder that the Café itself is a natural process, reflecting nature’s deepest self-organizing principles. To the degree that you, as a host, create a space that taps into this element, you invite participants to engage more easily in authentic conversations and enjoy creative ways of being with one another.

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Balancing safety and adventure . . . is at the heart of good Café hosting

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Juanita: Welcome to our Café on Questions. Everyone here has been part of other World Café conversations, but let me just share again how we’ll be working together. We’ll have three rounds of conversation. As your Café host, I’ll let you know when each round is coming to a close. One person will stay at the table as a host to welcome guests who have been a part of other conversations. They’ll be bringing seed ideas from their tables into the next round. The important thing is to capture the essence of what’s been said in drawings, symbols, and words on your tablecloths. Continue to link and build ideas. Notice patterns and common themes as well as the aha’s. Perhaps we could play with the Café question I’ve put on the flip chart here:

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You know, David Isaacs shared with me that he sometimes finds it works well not even to have prepared a question in advance. He often likes to ask a Café group: “What core question, if explored, could make the most difference to the situation we’re considering?” or “What do we not know, that if we did know, could transform this situation for the better?”

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“What are the ways we can begin to discover what questions are at the heart of things, even before the Café begins?” Perhaps it might mean including a request in the invitation for people to send in their own burning questions related to the Café topic ahead of time. Then you can post these all around the room for people to see as they come into the Café, or begin with a key question you’ve discovered in advance from the people themselves that seems really powerful and relevant.

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For example, in addressing the results of more than a decade of research and practice in the area of Appreciative Inquiry, David Cooperrider and Diana Whitney state unequivocally that “the most important insight we have learned with AI to date is that human systems grow toward what they persistently ask questions about”

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“One of the basic assumptions of the strategic questioning process is that knowledge resides and is alive in all people. . . . The point here is to ask questions in such a way that it lets the ideas and energy come from the individual or the system itself”

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In their Encyclopedia of Positive Questions (2002), Diana Whitney and David Cooperrider share hundreds of questions that have been used in their work with Appreciative Inquiry to elicit innovative ideas and new possibilities in both organizations and communities.

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Years later, I was working on a corporate project where we were experimenting with what might be possible if we were to look at the organization as a community. As we shifted our thinking toward the idea of building community, we found that honoring and encouraging each person’s unique contribution seemed more compelling than focusing on either participation or empowerment—concepts still dear to the hearts of many organizational change specialists. The distinction is subtle but important. Contribution has a different tone and feeling than individual participation. Important as it is, the focus on individual participation can lead to an overemphasis on the I: I’m voicing my opinions. I’m speaking up. I’m participating. In contrast, focusing on contribution creates a relationship between the I and the we. Employees in the corporate community began to ask themselves, “What is my unique contribution to our larger mission as a company?”

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As Café hosts, we’ve become increasingly intentional about encouraging everyone’s contribution as a core design and operating principle—whether that be the contribution of ideas and insights or of concrete support related to critical operations. For example, World Café etiquette, often shared at the beginning of a Café dialogue (see chapter 10), focuses on inviting everyone’s contribution rather than simply assuring each person a voice or asking that everyone participate.

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In addition, Café hosts often introduce a talking piece—a stone or other object—which slows down the conversation and provides an intentional space for each person to make his or her unique contribution to what is emerging in the center of the table.

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“There are people who listen, there are people who see patterns, and there are people who think in images.

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When people arrived, we set the tone. First, I asked people to remember a time when they’d had a really good conversation—a conversation that made them think, or made them curious, or caused a good laugh or cry. I asked them to share it with a neighbor if they liked—and then to share with the whole table what had helped that good conversation happen.

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It wasn’t until I was introduced to Mitchell Waldrop’s spellbinding book Complexity: The Emerging Science at the Edge of Order and Chaos (1992) that I began to consider more deeply the way the World Café process engages new levels of collaborative thinking and supports the development of unexpected insights, particularly in large-group settings. Waldrop brings scientific ideas to life as he describes the adventures of the multidisciplinary scientists at the Santa Fe Institute who did groundbreaking work in the field of complex adaptive systems.

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However, it is the creative cross-pollination of people and ideas combined with the disciplined use of questions as attractors that is perhaps the World Café’s defining contribution to dialogic learning and collective intelligence. David Marsing, former senior executive at Intel, points out that carefully framed questions operate as attractors around which the web of cross-pollinating ideas evolves to create coherent patterns of meaning.

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Another possibility, developed by our colleague Finn Voldtofte, is for the host to stay at the table at the end of the first round, while the three or four others at the table “travel for the listening,” each going to a new table for brief ten-minute learning visits. Their job is to collect one or two gems or seed ideas from the stories shared with them by the hosts of other conversations, and bring these key ideas back for consideration during the final round of synthesis at their home table.

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People sat in small conversational clusters. In that instance, each participant was given a card on which to write what he or she considered to be an essential idea or key insight from the first round of conversation. Each person then stood and faced outward from their cluster and exchanged the cards as an idea gift with a person from another group. Each small group continued by reading the ideas they’d received as gifts from members of other clusters, using the new connections these suggested for their ongoing dialogue. Members can also use cards or large sticky notes to synthesize core questions or key insights from the table as a whole, which can be sent forward from one table or conversation cluster to another to seed the inquiry as the conversation progresses.

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On a learning journey that explored Mexico’s social development, members moved periodically between minivans at rest stops, sharing their emerging perspectives as they continued to travel. One innovative host had members move between Café groups located at nature’s “tables,” each of which was a large redwood tree. Another used different colored mugs to facilitate the mixing and moving of people from different functional areas in a single business unit. The colored mugs enabled a “max-mix” for creative exchange, and at the same time, allowed people from the same area to find each other easily during the action planning phases of the Café dialogue.

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We then did something even more daring, but that worked amazingly well. We didn’t do any teaching about dialogue. Instead, we simply introduced a “dialogue stone” as a way to encourage better listening and avoid arguments and defensive positions. We brought in beautiful stones that were thousands of years old from a pebble beach on an island not far from the outskirts of Stockholm. They symbolized our land and the history of the natural world. We placed one stone in the middle of each table, along with a small vase of fresh flowers and colored pens. We then shared the basic idea behind the dialogue stones. We said that usually in meetings like this the discussion speeds up so fast that people have a hard time listening because they want to make sure their own ideas get heard. This is especially true when the participants come from very different camps. We asked the group to experiment with the dialogue stone as a practical tool for listening together and finding what was in the middle of the table. Only the person holding the stone would speak. As long as he or she held the stone, others would simply listen without interrupting. This would allow the individual who was holding the stone to stop and take a breath while thinking about what she really wanted to say instead of having to keep babbling so someone else wouldn’t cut in while she finished her thought.

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We encouraged people to speak in the first person, for themselves, and not with their formal organizational hat on—another departure from traditional meetings.

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The task of the other three participants at each Café table was simply to listen, but in a special way. We asked them to keep track of the ideas that emerged, and to draw in the middle of the tablecloth any interesting connections they could see among the ideas.

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In the second Café round, we added something new. We asked everyone to begin listening together as a group for the deeper assumptions and patterns of meaning underlying their varied perspectives and write them on the tablecloth as well.

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Each time we asked them to listen together for the next deeper layer of understanding they actually seemed to become even more interested in each other’s ideas and in the issues.

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Anne drew upon insights from the late theologian and author Nelle Morton (1985), who spoke of the special quality of listening to another person with one’s full attention as being a creative force that can evoke ideas that actually didn’t exist until the other was “heard into speech.”

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Yet we’ve discovered that something quite unexpected happens in World Café conversations when we ask everyone in the room to become ambassadors of meaning—listening together and carrying forward the essential ideas or aha insights into progressive rounds of conversation.

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As the host, you can encourage more reflective listening and thoughtful consideration of ideas during the conversation by introducing a talking piece, like the dialogue stone that Christina Carlmark introduced to the Café participants in her opening story. In addition, many hosts use musical interludes or poetry related to the topic, coupled with individual journaling at appropriate times, to create a reflective tone. Samantha Tan of Singapore points out that the use of music and poetry has the unique capacity to “shift people into a different state . . . opening a space for true reflection.” Using these approaches, or simply asking members to take a couple of minutes of quiet time to make notes on cards about what struck them in the conversation, all serve as powerful preludes to collective reflection on learnings, insights, and deeper questions, either toward the end of a round of conversation or prior to the large-group sharing of discoveries.

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I sometimes think of silence as a way to access a deep well in the center of the group. Silence is the pulley, similar to the rope in a well, that enables members to draw a deeper wisdom up from the common well of mutual exploration and experience.

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We are discovering that thinking together in conversation requires spaces between the notes in order to hear the music of collective wisdom. As a conversation host, give yourself permission to experiment with multiple approaches to creating the space for reflection—for listening individually and collectively to the deeper currents beneath the surface. Time for reflection is a gift that we too rarely give ourselves in the frenetic life of most organizations and communities. Yet World Café and other dialogue hosts are finding that creating time for reflection is essential to accessing the often surprising strategic insights that lie at the heart of effective action.

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At each table the team gave participants four different piles of colored paper. They asked the members to first take the yellow paper and write one phrase or sentence per sheet that reflected what people were saying publicly during meetings in their unit. They collected the yellow sheets in a manner that preserved the anonymity of the author. Then they asked the group to take the blue paper and write on it what people were saying in the restroom after the meeting, or at lunch when they were with friends. What was that conversation like? The blue papers were then collected in a similar manner. On the pink sheets, participants were asked to write what they thought other people in the university were saying about student affairs. Finally, the green sheets captured the answers to the question, “What are you not saying that you wish you could?”

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From these sheets, the Café team created a monster sticky wall with the colors clustered together from all the tables . . . all the yellows, greens, pinks, and blues. The idea was to harvest the group’s collective thinking and make their ideas visible so people could see new connections. They asked the group to take a gallery walk and notice the common themes and unique perspectives that stood out.

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We’ve found that although the raw data like tablecloths and wall graphics are extremely useful for members who have participated in Café dialogues, they are rarely in a form that can easily engage focused conversations in other parts of an organization. This is a real challenge in Cafés as well as other types of strategic dialogue. But when the outputs are intentionally blended into a coherent story, then this story can travel and engage others. For example, the DVD stories produced for student affairs have been widely shared across the university and have stimulated conversations about key questions with groups far removed from the original participants.

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Second, effective strategic conversations—conversations that can move learning forward in a large system—are made up of a repeating cycle of planting seeds, harvesting the fruits, refining the new seeds, and replanting them in new soil. I believe that the role of the leader is to tend the garden of strategic conversations and make sure that this type of planting and harvesting happens throughout their unit or their organization.

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If there are a lot of tables, we may have each table turn in a large card or sticky note with one key idea that expresses the essence of what was important from their conversations. If the group size is smaller, each member can contribute a card with the idea he or she feels is most essential. Then we can post these on a wall or cluster related cards and make a gallery tour from that. Other times we do a quick computer turnaround and publish a newspaper right on the spot, so participants can read the headlines and build on them for further conversation or action planning. We’ve even used video to create news stories about what people have learned.

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Another option is to have each Café table create an exhibition. You tell people, “In one hour you will have the opening show for the exhibition. We’ll serve drinks and everyone can come to the gallery and see what each Café table or group of tables created in terms of the essence of what’s been explored, what people learned, and possible action steps” (or whatever you want as output). After they have each created their own exhibition, people can take a tour of the other contributions in the gallery—but they can also add their insights and put actual comments on each other’s contributions. It’s like growing a living picture of the whole.

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In Poland, the American Society for Quality was hosting a Café at a conference on quality sponsored by the United Nations, a situation where formality and hierarchy had often affected the free sharing of ideas. In this case, Paul Borawski, the executive director of ASQ, used keypad polling technology to harvest insights and stimulate further exploration. “We’d pose a Café question . . . for example, ‘What do you think will be the future of quality in Poland?’ While the groups were in their Café dialogues I put up several options along a continuum—such as ‘It’s strong,’ ‘It’s at risk,’ and so on. Then, based on their sense of the discussion at their Café tables, we asked people to respond to the questions and we posted the aggregated results of the anonymous poll for the whole group to see. The moment they saw the varied results it completely opened the conversation in the large group. People asked questions, listened to insights from others, and got the benefit of seeing how their answer fit with the sense of the majority of people in the room.”

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In each round, people write personal insights and thoughts about their table’s question on large individual sticky notes that they keep with them as they move to subsequent rounds.

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During round two or three, the overall Café host or hosts walk around the room and write down the question that’s on each table’s tent card. We create a flip chart page for each one of these questions. If several of the table questions are the same, we put them on a single flip chart page, and if several are similar or related we post them near each other. By posting the questions around the room, everyone can begin to see the emerging outlines of the larger patterns of inquiry.

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At the conclusion of the last round, rather than giving a formal break (which tends to disperse the energy of the group) we give folks ten minutes to place their individual sticky notes next to the questions posted on the flip charts around the room. This gives people the opportunity to add their insights, ideas, inspirations, and what-if’s to the questions they were part of exploring as well as any of the others posted around the room.

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How then can members share collective insights without resorting to traditional report-outs that rarely reflect the liveliness or depth of the smaller group conversations?

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In addition, ask people to speak personally (and briefly) about what’s at the center of the collective conversations of which they’ve been a part. This enables what Swedish Café host Bo Gyllenpalm calls a “shared understanding of individual meanings” to emerge, revealing key facets of the conversational web while not requiring agreement on a single shared meaning in order for multiple perspectives to be included in later priority setting or action planning. In addition, encouraging the contribution of key personal meanings enables not only “head knowledge” but also “heart wisdom” to be revealed.

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One way this happens is through constant inclusion. I paid close attention to everyone’s needs because they were so explicit, watching to see if somebody was outside the process or somehow not included, and then inviting her in and encouraging her contribution. This an important job for the host, even in more conventional situations.

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As a conversation host, ask yourself: What can I do to make whomever I am with feel physically comfortable, emotionally safe, and intellectually challenged? How can I support members in discovering a deeper understanding and appreciation—for each other and for the questions we’re exploring? How can I engage the Café participants themselves in hosting each other and in discovering the magic in the middle of their conversations? Whatever answers you get and however they reveal themselves, begin to experiment with putting them into practice. Leave aside the techniques that don’t work and refine the ones that seem most effective. Above all, keep asking yourself the questions and integrate your answers into your hosting practice. You’ll soon discover the way of hosting that is most natural for you.

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Being clear about basic Café assumptions and Café etiquette orients members to underlying beliefs and personal behaviors that are useful in supporting constructive dialogue without being heavy-handed about “shoulds” and “shouldn’ts.”

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Ask hosts to welcome their new guests. Remind everyone that when they arrive at their new table, they should briefly introduce themselves before the table host shares the essence of the conversation from the previous round. Then the travelers add connections and ideas from the conversations at their previous tables. Ask everyone to listen carefully and build on each other’s contributions. Let people know if there is a new question for this round, and make sure it is posted where it can easily be seen.

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At times people will participate in the first round, go traveling for the second, and then return to their home table for a final round of synthesis.

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At times people will participate in the first round, go traveling for the second, and then return to their home table for a final round of synthesis. At other times, members will continue traveling for several rounds while the host stays as the ongoing steward of the evolving conversation and insights at their table. On occasion, people will simply travel for a very brief listening tour to hear what’s being explored at other tables prior to returning to their home table to both connect common threads and introduce diverse perspectives.

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However, we have found it often helpful to have a talking object on the tables to help ensure that no single participant takes over the group’s airtime. Originally used by indigenous peoples, a talking object can be a stick, a stone, a marker, a saltshaker—almost any object that can be passed among the people at the table. Ask people to pick up the talking piece when they are ready to speak, and return it to the center of the table when they are done. The talking piece can also be passed around the circle, or the person who begins can offer it as a gift to whomever he chooses, though people have the opportunity to pass if they wish. As the host, you can introduce the use of the talking piece as the Café begins or at any appropriate point in the process where you sense that deep listening and “slowing down the action” for more thoughtful engagement may be needed. There are two aspects to the talking object that encourage helpful member participation. Whoever is holding it is encouraged express his or her thoughts as clearly and briefly as possible. Whoever is not holding the talking piece is asked to listen with respect, appreciating the other’s perspective as a part of the larger picture. As host, you can assess what combination of free-flowing exchange and reflective listening to other members using the talking piece will work best. If you anticipate intense emotions or differences of opinion, it’s often helpful to begin with a talking piece and then move to a more free-flowing dialogue.

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If you anticipate difficulties or discover that a conversation seems to be getting really stuck, then in an upcoming round you might encourage participants to use the following three statements as their dialogue unfolds. What I heard you say that I appreciated is . . . What I heard that challenged my thinking is . . . To better understand your perspective I’d like to ask you . . .

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As the Café host, you can encourage the kinds of listening that will make insight, innovation, and action more likely to occur. At the start of the Café, ask members to enter the conversation with the goal of learning from each person at their table.

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Give people a few moments of silence to reflect on or jot down what they have learned in their travels, what has heart and meaning, or what is present now as a result of their conversations. Ask anyone in the room to share briefly a key idea, theme, or core question that holds real meaning for them personally.

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Post your insights. Each participant can write one key insight on a large sticky note and place it on the wall so that everyone can review the ideas during a break. They can be used at the end of a Café for consolidating key themes or action items.

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Questions for Focusing Collective Attention What question, if answered, could make the greatest difference to the future of the situation we’re exploring here? What’s important to you about this situation, and why do you care? What draws you/us to this inquiry? What’s our intention here? What’s the deeper purpose—the “big why”—that is worthy of our best effort? What opportunities can we see in this situation? What do we know so far/still need to learn about this situation? What are the dilemmas/opportunities in this situation? What assumptions do we need to test or challenge in thinking about this situation? What would someone who had a very different set of beliefs than we do say about this situation?

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Questions for Connecting Ideas and Finding Deeper Insight What’s taking shape here? What are we hearing underneath the variety of opinions being expressed? What is in the center of our listening? What’s emerging that is new for you? What new connections are you making? What have you heard that had real meaning for you? What surprised you? What puzzled or challenged you? What question would you like to ask now? What is missing from the picture so far? What are we not seeing? Where do we need more clarity? What has been your major learning or insight so far? What’s the next level of thinking we need to address? If there was one thing that hasn’t yet been said but is needed in order to reach a deeper level of understanding/clarity, what would that be?

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Questions That Create Forward Movement What would it take to create change on this issue? What could happen that would enable you/us to feel fully engaged and energized in this situation? What’s possible here and who cares about it? What needs our immediate attention going forward? If our success was completely guaranteed, what bold steps might we choose? How can we support each other in taking the next steps? What unique contribution can we each make? What challenges might come our way, and how might we meet them? What conversation, if begun today, could ripple out in a way that created new possibilities for the future of [our situation . . . ]? What seed might we plant together today that could make the most difference to the future of [our situation . . . ]?

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The teachers discovered that they didn’t need a whole lot of training or new materials in order to have productive dialogue; they just needed the focused time to talk together and discover what they already knew about their kids and about what needed to be different.

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So, first we asked, “If you were to get hurt, how would that happen?” People began answering the question with risks that they identified from their own work situations. Then we’d ask the second question: “Do you want to manage these risks before people get hurt or after?” And of course they’d say, “Before.” Then we’d ask the final question: “Great! What do you want to do about it?” At that point, we didn’t have to facilitate anymore. We had invited them into in a meaningful conversation called “I don’t want to get hurt at work.” We’d talk together about methodologies—their own creative approaches for managing those risks. And finally we’d say, “Try out the answers you’ve come up with. Keep asking the questions, and revisit your answers as you learn more.”

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The first meeting that employed the World Café methodology—conducted with the board’s Strategic Planning Committee—was definitely a risk! Unlike past sessions, this two-day meeting was not designed to produce a traditional one-page plan. Instead, the goal was to develop key strategic questions that called for further exploration.

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David’s and my heroes. Two years earlier, Alan had written an HBR article, “What’s So New About the New Economy?” (1993, p. 28) where he posited—may I add, somewhat before his time—that in the new economy, where ideas and information are key currencies of exchange, conversation is the mother of invention.

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Two years earlier, Alan had written an HBR article, “What’s So New About the New Economy?” (1993, p. 28) where he posited—may I add, somewhat before his time—that in the new economy, where ideas and information are key currencies of exchange, conversation is the mother of invention.

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Yet even today, conversational leadership is not taught in most leadership development programs. How can we begin to cultivate both the organizational infrastructures and personal leadership capabilities that are needed to access and act on the wisdom that already exists in our organizations and communities?

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Mastering the art and architecture of powerful questions that evoke knowledge-sharing, inspire strategic dialogue, and invite committed action is a critical personal leadership skill (Vogt and others, 2003).

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As Bob Veazie discovered in his safety work at Hewlett-Packard: “It was the questions themselves, coupled with the invitation to explore them, that moved people from compliant behavior to committed performance.

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Authentic conversation that deepens a group’s thinking and evokes collaborative intelligence is less likely to occur in a climate of fear, mistrust, and hierarchical control. When the human mind and heart are fully engaged in exploring questions that matter, new knowledge often begins to surface. To succeed, leaders need to strengthen their personal skills in hosting dialogue and other approaches that deepen mutual inquiry. These capabilities include: Creating a climate of discovery Suspending premature judgment Exploring underlying assumptions and beliefs Listening for unexpected connections between ideas Encouraging the expression of a wide range of perspectives Articulating shared understandings Other aspects of effective hosting are also key, including clarifying the larger context, ensuring a welcoming environment, encouraging everyone’s contribution, and managing divergent viewpoints. Your personal authenticity, integrity, and values become increasingly central to establishing your credibility as a legitimate host and convener who can inspire trust and foster collaboration among diverse constituencies.

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How often do you hear a leader pose the question, Whose voices need to be included in this conversation? Who’s not here who should be? Not often. Yet cultivating conversational leadership requires leaders to become active connectors—of diverse people and stimulating ideas.

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As Gary Hamel of the London School of Economics points out, “Strategizing depends on creating a rich and complex web of conversations that cuts across previously isolated pockets of knowledge and creates new and unexpected combinations of insight”

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Developing meaningful dialogue is about creating conceptual fields that deepen or shift thinking”

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In today’s complex environment, leaders are discovering that one of their unique contributions is to provide conceptual leadership—creating shared contexts and common frameworks in which groups can deepen or shift their thinking together. We make meaning of our experiences through the language we use, the stories we share, and the images we favor. For example, holding the image of your organization as a battlefield, where members carry out “preemptive strikes” and “decimate the competition” evokes very different behavior than a shared understanding of the organization as a dynamic web of conversations and personal relationships, part of a living system that includes key internal and external stakeholders—at times even those you’ve traditionally thought of as “the competition.” Conversational leaders also put time and attention into framing a common language and articulating compelling scenarios—stories of the future—that can shape collective purpose and provide direction for organizational conversations.

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To what extent does your organization consider conversation to be the heart of “real work”?

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David had been asked by a small group of moms at the local West Marin School to host a World Café dialogue on the question, “What are the elements of an ideal educational experience for young people in our community?” The gathering was, it seems, a first—a large bilingual, bicultural event in which all advertising and every aspect of the meeting itself would be conveyed in both Spanish and English. The whole community, whether parents or not, was invited to attend. And for the very first time, schoolchildren were included as equal partners in the conversation about the future of their own learning.

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As humans we have the unique capacity for reflective awareness—the capacity to step back together and ask, “Why is this happening? Is there a better way?” In fact, the word consciousness comes from con-scire, meaning “knowing together.”

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Now that we know what is possible, how will we evolve a global culture in which people—including our national and international leaders—use dialogue and deliberation rather than vindictiveness and violence as the preferred way of dealing with differences and of living together as a human community? The Chinese character for crisis means both danger and opportunity.

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The work of biologist Humberto Maturana reminds us that “our human existence is one in which we can live in whatever world we bring about in our conversations, even if it is a world that finally destroys us as the kind of beings that we are”

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What is one question or issue that you personally care deeply about in relation to your family, your work situation, your community, your church, or any other part of your life, that, if explored with others, could make a difference to the future of that situation? Who else might you invite to engage with you in exploring that question? How might you use the Café conversation principles (whether or not you use a Café format) to support the quality of that conversation? What is the next step in your own learning about hosting and convening conversations that matter in your own spheres of influence? (Amanda’s note: good for my First Wednesday idea).

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Later, studying the armistice conditions ending the war, it became very clear that the lack of ongoing and authentic dialogue among nations created conditions for future conflict. I determined that, when I grew up, I would study ways in which these mistakes would not be repeated.

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In my contemplation and study of these questions, it became clear to me that every societal change process I knew of started with an informal conversation in which men and women—young or old—were witnessed and “heard into speech,” sharing their dreams and hopes for making a difference around something they cared about. In being truly seen and heard, people were transformed and discovered their mutual commitment to act. That small group then went on to invite other groups into the conversation and the change became more and more real.

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What if we thought of teams of people working together—either formal or informal teams—as being like individual “table conversations” in a larger Café? What if we thought about each such team interacting with other teams as being like what happens when team members rotate from one Café table to another, influencing and being influenced by each other through the web of conversations in which they are participating.

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The answer to this question lies, I believe, less in the character or talents of the individuals involved than in the quality of the questions that sit at the heart of their conversations.

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Could it be that, when left on their own in a conducive environment, people naturally gravitate toward questions that matter? That they naturally do not waste their time on things that are unimportant?

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The Breakthrough Group http://www.thebreakthroughgroup.net The Breakthrough Group is a pioneer in engaging the art and the science of storytelling, including theater, simulation, and living case studies, to stimulate catalytic conversations and organizational learning. Breakthrough collaborates with the World Café to create innovative strategic dialogues in conferences and other organizational settings.

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Conversation Cafés http://www.conversationcafe.org Conversation Cafés are dialogues hosted in cafés and other public venues for meaningful conversations about our thoughts, feelings, and actions in these new times. Using a highly effective circle process, Conversation Cafés and the World Café have partnered in linking small-group and large-group dialogue approaches.

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Fran Peavey and Crabgrass http://www.crabgrass.org Fran Peavey, founder of Crabgrass, an NGO working on social and environmental issues, is a pioneer in the art of strategic questioning, particularly in community settings. She and her colleagues offer periodic trainings in strategic questioning.

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World Café (Denmark) http://www.worldcafe.dk This site, hosted by Danish World Café pioneer, Finn Voldtofte, contains excellent information on Café hosting, conceptual pieces on dialogue and strategy, and leading edge thinking about “the magic in the middle.”