Conversation as a Core Process
My approach comes from The Art of Hosting, which blends a suite of powerful conversational processes as a highly effective way of harnessing the collective wisdom and self-organizing capacity of groups of any size. It invites relationship-based practices that support us to show up and stay present in complexity and uncertainty, deepens our ability to listen and participate in important conversations in generative ways, and uses powerful dialogue and harvesting methods to host conversations that unleash the creative spirit that leads to new possibilities and emergent solutions.
Strategic Adaptability
Most traditional change and planning approaches assume an orderly direction from point A to point B, however we operate in a changing and complex world and this linear approach doesn’t serve us well when adaptability and resilience are most needed. Instead of grand plan setting that creates huge lists of things that can’t or won’t be accomplished, we invite the collective wisdom from the group, and then articulate realistic actions and experiments that take us in the direction we want to go. The group can then move forward in an action/reflection cycle; an ongoing conversation of sensing, responding and of being strategically adaptable.
My Approach
My work begins in the planning stage with a core team planning team to understand the intention of your initiative. Here is a high-level overview of my approach:
Several planning calls with a core planning team to determine:
What is the need this initiative hopes to meet, what are the principles of how we want to work with and be together with the people present, who are the people impacted by the work and what is important to them.
What we want to have in our hands as a result of the initiative (tangibles and intangibles) and how to feed it forward so they have the desired effect and wise action.
What key questions are at the centre of this work.
What infrastructure is needed to follow-up, sustain and support next steps.
In collaboration with the planning team I recommend from different group processes a design that meets the need, purpose, principles, and wise action.
I also provide assistance with the invitation process to ready participants for inclusive, participatory and productive gathering (including what people need to be able to participate well technologically for online sessions).
Designing and facilitating the sessions using group processes and online collaboration tools that align to the purpose, need, principles and harvest outputs.
Post-session debriefings with the planning team to reflect on the experience, what we learned, and what next steps might be needed.
