Consider, for a moment, that the most widespread and pervasive learning in your organization may not be happening in training rooms, conference rooms, or boardrooms, but in the cafeteria, the hallways, and the cafe across the street. Imagine that through e-mail exchanges, phone visits, and bull sessions with colleagues, people at all levels of the organization are sharing critical business knowledge, exploring underlying assumptions, and creating innovative solutions to key business issues.

Imagine that “the grapevine” is not a poisonous plant to be cut off at the roots, but a natural source of vitality to be cultivated and nourished. Imagine that its branching, intertwining shoots are the natural pathways through which information and energy flow in the organization.

Consider that these informal networks of learning conversations are as much a core business process as marketing, distribution, or product development. In fact, thoughtful conversations around questions that matter might be the core process in any company — the source of organizational intelligence that enables the other business processes to create positive results. A more strategic approach to this core process can not only appreciate an organization’s intellectual capital, but can also create sustainable business value in the knowledge economy.

The Power of Conversation

All of us have, at one time or another, experienced a conversation that has had a powerful impact on us — one that sparked a new insight or helped us see a problem in a radically different light. What sets apart this type of generative, transformative conversation from the many exchanges that occur on a daily basis at our workplaces and in our homes? What are the qualities that make it worthwhile?

We have posed this question to hundreds of executives and employees in diverse cultures around the globe. While we have seen a wide range of individual experiences, common themes include:

• There was a sense of mutual respect between us.
• We took the time to really talk together and reflect about what we each thought was important.
• We listened to each other, even if there were differences.
• I was accepted and not judged by the others in the conversation.
• The conversation helped strengthen our relationship.
• We explored questions that mattered.
• We developed shared meaning that wasn’t there when we began.
• I learned something new or important.
• It strengthened our mutual commitment.

When we consider the power of conversation to generate new insight or committed action, its importance in our work lives is quite obvious. Fernando Flores, one of the first to highlight this crucial link has said that “an organization’s results are determined through webs of human commitments, born in webs of human conversations. ”We share a common heritage as fundamentally social beings who, together in conversation, organize for action and create a common future.

Yet this view of conversation as a way of organizing action contradicts a basic tenet in many organizational cultures — one based on the edict, “stop talking and get to work!” The underlying belief is that conversation takes time away from the more “important” work of the organization (see “Discovering Your Organization’s Capabilities”).

Paradoxically, what we are discovering is that the talking — the network of conversations — actually catalyzes action. Through conversation we discover who cares about what, and who will take accountability for next steps. It is the means through which requests are initiated and commitments made. From this perspective, a more useful operating principle for organizational life might be “start talking and get to work!”

Discovering Communities of Practice

Etienne Wenger and his colleagues at the Institute for Research on Learning (IRL), an outgrowth of Xerox’s pioneering Palo Alto Research Center (PARC), confirmed the centrality of collaborative conversation when they studied how learning actually takes place in an organization. Using interdisciplinary teams of anthropologists, sociologists, cognitive scientists, and technology specialists, IRL has found that knowledge creation is primarily a social rather than an individual process. People learn together in conversation as they work and practice together. Therefore, important innovations are constantly being created at the grass-roots level, on the periphery, and at the local level, as people share common questions and concerns.

“Communities of practice” is what IRL calls the foundation for this social process of learning. In our own large-systems change work, we have called them “work communities.” These self-organizing networks are formed naturally by people engaged in a common enterprise — people who are learning together through the practice of their real work.

Conversation as a Core Process

IRL has found that the knowledge embodied in these communities is usually shared and developed through ongoing conversations. Because of this, John Seeley Brown, chief scientist at Xerox PARC, sees a critical need to develop systems and processes that “help foster new and useful kinds of conversations in the workplace.”

The MIT Center for Organizational Learning (OLC) has also been pursuing this challenge through ongoing research into the role of conversation in business settings. For several years, the study and practice of dialogue — a process of collective thinking and generative learning based on the seminal work of David Bohm — has been a central part of the Center’s action research and training efforts. In collaboration with the OLC, we are now developing principles and practices to support strategic conversation as a key business leverage.

In addition, Peter and Trudy Johnson-Lenz, innovators in the field of “groupware” technologies, have initiated a multi-company Community of Inquiry and Practice focused on supporting coherent conversations in cyberspace. Group members are actively experimenting with ways of strengthening the conversational practices of on-line communities, including the use of formal dialogue and inquiry mapping. Underlying all these activities is the belief that collaborative conversation is a strategic asset for supporting organizational learning infra-structures.

Alan Webber, in his pioneering Harvard Business Review article “What’s So New About the New Economy,” goes one step further and asserts that conversation is the lifeblood of the knowledge economy. Where information is the raw material and ideas are the currency of exchange, he explains, good conversations become the crucible in which knowledge workers to share and refine their thinking in order to create value-added products and services. In his assessment, “The most important work in the knowledge economy is conversation.”

Tools and Technologies That Support Good Conversation

Given that many organizations still operate from a “stop talking and get to work” mentality, it will take some focused attention to create an environment that recognizes and supports conversation as a core process. Toward this end, many companies are beginning to experiment with collaborative technologies and process tools that encourage the development of knowledge capital.

For example, one major consumer products company has instituted an innovative planning process throughout its sales organization. The process begins with an extensive situation analysis, in which management and field personnel explore all facets of the current business and competitive environment. From this analysis, they frame several core questions that will guide their subsequent strategic conversations. By encouraging the sales staff to develop a more disciplined focus on asking essential questions, the organization is encouraging the use of an inquiry model for business planning.

Other companies are exploring ways to create physical environments that encourage knowledge-generating conversations. For example, Steelcase Corporation has created office areas designed as “neighborhoods” where product and business teams work together in close proximity. Adjacent to these office neighborhoods are community “commons,” where informal conversation and community interaction occur. In similar style, SAS Airlines in Stockholm has a “central plaza” in the midst of its corporate headquarters. The plaza contains shops and a cafe where people from all levels and functions are encouraged to visit and share ideas.

Other organizations are developing sophisticated tools for collaborative work. For example, Buckman Laboratories International has created a worldwide intranet that enables its global sales force in 90 countries to engage in ongoing conversations about meeting customer needs. Users can contribute to the conversations at any time, from any place, and in several different languages. The system automatically updates the evolving “knowledge threads” as questions are explored and answers discovered.

With a simple and consistent focus on questions that matter, casual conversations are transformed into collective inquiry.

Likewise, Xerox is experimenting with Jupiter, a “virtual social reality” computer system that its designers hope will “support the organizational mind.” Jupiter comes complete with virtual white boards, personal offices, meeting rooms, and “lounges” where members can take a break and bump into a friend from a completely different city. In this environment, people can participate in larger community conversations as well as work in small groups on specific projects. Michael Schrage, in his book Shared Minds, points out that such collaborative tools and techniques “will transform both the perception and reality of conversation, collaboration, innovation, and creativity.”

Questions That Matter

Developing processes and infrastructure for tapping into the collective intelligence in an organization is an important part of establishing conversation as a core business process. But one area of activity that is just as crucial is honing the skill of discovering and exploring questions that matter. Why? Because the quality of our learning process depends on the quality of the questions we ask. Clear, bold, and penetrating questions that elicit a full range of responses tend to open the social context for learning. People engaged in the conversation develop a common concern for deeper levels of shared meaning.

Focusing on essential questions enables us to challenge our underlying assumptions in constructive ways. With a simple and consistent focus on questions that matter, casual conversations are transformed into collective inquiry. As these questions “travel” throughout the system, they enable creative solutions to emerge in unexpected ways.

Leading Inquiring Systems

What skills, knowledge, and personal qualities will be required in the more collaborative, networked organizations of the future? What are the emerging leadership capabilities that will foster the evolution of inquiring systems— systems that strengthen their capacity to learn, adapt, and create long-term business and social value? We believe there are several capabilities that will be essential to this process.

Framing Strategic Questions. Ray Kroc, the founder of McDonald’s, launched that company to its preeminent market position by posing a simple but powerful question to his colleagues: “How can we assure a consistent hamburger for people who are traveling on the road?”

Mastering the art and architecture of framing powerful questions that inspire strategic dialogue and committed action will be a critical leadership skill. Strategic questions create dissonance between current experiences and beliefs while evoking new possibilities for collective discovery. But they also serve as the glue that holds together overlapping webs of conversations in which diverse resources combine and recombine to create innovative solutions and business value.

Convening Learning Conversations. As another core aspect of this new work, leaders will create multiple opportunities for learning conversations. However, authentic conversation is less likely to occur in a climate of fear, mistrust, and hierarchical control. The human mind and heart must be fully engaged in authentic conversation for new knowledge to be built.

Thus, the ability to facilitate working conversations that enhance trust and reduce fear will become an important leadership capability. To succeed in this pursuit, leaders will need to strengthen their skills in the use of dialogue and other approaches that deepen collective inquiry (see “Improving the Quality of Learning Conversations”).

These skills include:

• Creating a climate of discovery;
• Suspending premature judgment;
• Exploring underlying assumptions and beliefs;
• Listening for connections between ideas;
• Honoring diverse perspectives; and
• Articulating shared understanding.

In this process, the authenticity, integrity, and personal values of leaders will become central to their role as “conveners and connectors”—of both people and ideas. Strengthening personal relationships through networks of collaborative conversations will be essential for building intellectual capital.

Supporting Appreciative Inquiry.

Becoming open to the multiple possibilities that conversations create will require a shift in leadership orientation from focusing on what is not working and how to fix it, to discovering and appreciating what is working and how to leverage it. Appreciative inquiry was developed by David Cooperrider and his colleagues at Case Western University as a powerful business process for valuing previously untapped sources of knowledge, vitality, and energy. When used in a disciplined way, this type of inquiry stimulates lively conversations about fundamental organizational values, and uncovers hidden assets that create sustainable business and social value.

Shifting the focus in this direction enables leaders to foster networks of conversations focused on leveraging emerging possibilities rather than just on fixing past mistakes. This attitude creates a “generative field” of mutual trust and appreciation, in which groups feel encouraged to discover and share their unique contributions in order to build their collective intellectual capital.

Fostering Shared Meaning. As organizations enter the 21st century, leaders will discover that one of their unique contributions is to provide “conceptual leadership” — creating a larger context within which groups can deepen or shift their thinking together.

To build shared context, we must first understand the importance of language for shaping our thought. We make meaning of our experiences through stories, images, and metaphors. To tap into this pool of shared meaning, leaders need to put time and attention into framing common language and developing shared images and metaphors. This can be done by constructing compelling scenarios — “stories of the future” that provide shared meaning and collective purpose across organization boundaries. In addition, it is important to incorporate time for system-wide reflection, to enable the collective “sense-making” that is essential in times of turbulence and change.

Nurturing Communities of Practice. Much of the learning and knowledge creation in an organization happens through informal relationships. But few of today’s executives and strategists have been trained to notice and honor the social fabric of informal “communities of practice.”

Nurturing and sustaining these learning communities will be another core aspect of the leader’s new work. Principles of community organization — including recruiting volunteers, convening gatherings, developing partnerships, and hosting celebrations — will be essential to this practice. Finally, the existing communities of practice need to be taken into account when reengineering work processes, so new work flows do not destroy the collective knowledge that is woven into them.

Using Collaborative Technologies. The notion of personal computing is fast giving way to “interpersonal computing.” New collaborative technologies create possibilities for different kinds of conversations. People can “see” innovative ideas pop up on their computer screen or on large wall murals created by graphics specialists. Such multisensory, interactive conversations enable people to share their thoughts and create knowledge in ways that have rarely been possible before.

As these tools become more widely available, the notion of “leadership” will expand to include facilitating on-line conversations and supporting the design of integrated learning systems that enable the co-creation of products and services among widely distributed work groups.

Creating the Future

Where collaborative learning and breakthrough thinking are requirements for a sustainable business future, the development of appropriate tool and environments to support good conversations are also essential. Indeed, it is the network and nature of those conversations that will help determine the organization’s strategic capacity to create the future it wants, rather than being forced to live with the future it gets.

Seeing the systemic ways in which conversation helps a learning organization evolve, and utilizing process principles, tools, and technologies to support this evolution, are everyone’s responsibilities. For only in this way can organizations cultivate both the knowledge required to thrive today and the wisdom needed to ensure a sustainable future.

Juanita Brown and David Isaacs (Mill Valley, CA) are also senior affiliates at the MIT Center for Organizational Learning. They serve as strategists and thinking partners with senior leaders, applying living systems principles to the evolution of knowledge-based organizations and large-scale change initiatives.

The authors would like to thank the Intellectual Capital Pioneers Group as well as Jennifer Landau and Susan Kelly of Whole Systems Associates for contributions to the development of their recent thinking.

Editorial support for this article was provided by Sue Wetzler of Whole Systems Associates and Colleen Lannon of Pegasus Communications.

The post Conversation as a Core Business Process appeared first on The Systems Thinker.

knowledge and shape its future. But the process of co-creating the future through conversation is so natural we usually overlook it.

Since our early ancestors gathered in circles around the warmth of a fire, conversation has been a primary process for making sense of our world, discovering what we value, sharing knowledge, and imagining our future. Small groups exploring important questions — and connecting with other groups that are doing the same — have always played a major role in social and institutional renewal. Consider the sewing circles and “committees of correspondence” that helped birth the American Republic; the conversations in cafés and salons that spawned the French Revolution; and the Scandinavian “study circles” that stimulated an economic and social renaissance in Northern Europe. Reaching out in ever-widening circles, members of small groups spread their insights to larger constituencies, carrying the seed ideas for new conversations, creative possibilities, and collective action (see “Conversation as a Path to Large-Scale Change”).

Today, especially with the advent of the Internet, we are becoming increasingly aware of the power and potential of these dynamic networks of conversation and their systemic importance for large-scale collaboration, learning, and change. The crosspollination of ideas from group to group can lead to the emergence of surprising creativity and focus as we discover innovative ways to support a “system thinking together.”

What if we could create an intentional, simple, and effective approach for fostering greater collaborative learning and coherent thought than is often available in large group settings? Our research reveals that what we have come to call “The World Café” has a unique contribution to make when the goal is the focused use of dialogic inquiry to foster collective insight around real-life challenges and key strategic questions at increasing levels of scale.

What is The World Café? It is an innovative methodology that enhances the capacity for collaborative thinking about critical issues by linking small group and large-group conversations. In the process, knowledge grows, a sense of the whole becomes real, and new possibilities become visible. The World Café utilizes the principles of dynamic networks and living systems to access a source of deeper creativity and shared knowledge that might not be available through more traditional approaches to collaborative work.

The World Café is also an evocative metaphor that enables us to pay attention to aspects of organizational life that are often invisible, hidden by formal structures and policies. It highlights the naturally occurring networks of conversation and social learning through which we access collective intelligence, create new knowledge, and bring forth desired futures. Using The World Café as an organizing image allows leaders to intentionally design processes that take advantage of the natural dynamics that are already at play in order to create sustainable business and social value.

How The World Café Was Born

Several years ago, we serendipitously discovered the unique power of Café style conversations. One rainy morning, we wanted to provide a comfortable setting for participants in a global dialogue on intellectual capital to enjoy their coffee while waiting for the session to begin. We set up small tables in our living room and covered them with paper tablecloths. We added flowers and set out colored crayons, like in many neighborhood cafés.

People were delighted and amused. They got their coffee and gathered in small, informal groups around the tables. Soon, everyone was deeply engaged in conversation. As they talked, people scribbled ideas on the tablecloths. After a while, someone expressed curiosity about what was happening in other conversations. One person agreed to stay at each table as a host while others traveled to other tables to discover what interesting ideas were pollinating there.

People buzzed with excitement. At a certain point, they decided to leave a new host at each table. The other members traveled to new tables, connecting ideas, testing assumptions, and adding to each other’s diagrams and pictures on the tablecloths.

As lunchtime drew near, we took a “tour” of all the tablecloths, seeing what new connections and questions had emerged. Our interactive graphics specialist captured collective insights from the morning on a large piece of newsprint in the middle of the room. We suddenly realized that we had tapped into something very simple but potentially very powerful. Through the Café conversations, a shared knowledge base, larger than any individual or group in the room, had become accessible to us. Our unique contributions had combined and recombined into rich new patterns of living knowledge and innovative thought that had not been visible when we started.

The World Café As Methodology

What makes such a seemingly simple practice — that of talking together about things we care about and intentionally linking the essence of our conversations with others in ever widening circles — so useful? We think it’s because Café conversations offer us the opportunity to notice the possibilities for mutual insight, innovation, and action that are already present in any group, if we only knew how to access them. We are discovering that this process offers a unique mixture of freedom and focus, of coherence without control. Depending on an organization’s needs, Café events can be designed around particular themes or topics. The Café format is flexible and adapts to different circumstances, based on a few simple practices and principles (see “Café Hosting Tips”).

Groups as small as 12 and as large as 1,200 from around the world have engaged in Café learning conversations in a wide range of settings. In a global consumer products company, executives from over 30 nations used Café principles to integrate a new worldwide marketing strategy. In New Zealand, Maori leaders combined The World Café with indigenous meeting formats during regional treaty negotiations. Mexican government and corporate leaders applied The World Café to scenario planning. A Fortune 100 company is using “Creative Cafés” to explore corporate responsibility with stakeholders. And faculty members in the U. S. and Europe are creating virtual online “Knowledge Cafés” to conduct distance-learning programs.

After participating in Café conversations, members share comments such as, “I developed productive relationships and learned more from others than I ever expected. You can actually see the knowledge growing.” Participants often develop an increased sense of responsibility for making use of the practical insights they gain and for staying connected as they expand the conversation to larger constituencies.

The practice of The World Café is based on a set of working assumptions that we continue to explore:

• The future is born in webs of human conversation.
• Compelling questions encourage collective learning.
• Networks are the underlying pattern of living systems.
• Human systems — organizations, families, communities — are living systems.
• Intelligence emerges as the system connects to itself in diverse and creative ways.
• We collectively have all the wisdom and resources we need.

Five Key Operating Principles

We are discovering that the unique contribution of Café learning seems to come from translating these working assumptions into the following five operating principles that, when used in combination, increase the likelihood of generating breakthrough thinking.

Create Hospitable Space. Café hosts around the world emphasize the power and importance of creating a welcoming environment to enliven collaborative conversation. We thrive and are better able to confront difficult questions, explore underlying assumptions, and create what we care about in surroundings that evoke warmth, friendliness, and authenticity than in those that are less hospitable to the human spirit. Most meeting places are sterile, cold, and impersonal. Consider choosing environments with natural light. Create comfortable seating. Honor our traditions of human hospitality by offering refreshments. Play soft music as people enter. Decorate the walls with art. Hospitable space means “safe” space — where everyone feels free to offer their best thinking.

Hosts can create hospitable space even in large, impersonal venues. For instance, at a conference for 1,000 people, we asked the hotel staff to set up small, round cocktail tables instead of rows of chairs in the cavernous ballroom. We then decked out each table with a red-checked tablecloth and a vase of red and white carnations. Volunteers placed sheets of white paper over the tablecloths and left small containers of colored markers for doodling. We also brought in palm trees and other greenery. When people entered the room, they were greeted by soft jazz music. The buzz of conversation almost instantly filled the space.

Knowledge emerges in response to compelling questions that “travel well” as they attract collective engagement and exploration throughout a system.

Explore Questions That Matter. One of our most important learnings in working with The World Café is that discovering and exploring “questions that matter” opens the door to catalytic conversation, insight, and innovation. Knowledge emerges in response to compelling questions that “travel well” as they attract collective engagement and exploration throughout a system. Powerful questions provide focus and coherence to networks of conversation that might otherwise spin off in random directions. Well-crafted strategic questions define intention, focus energy, and direct attention toward what really counts.

Hone the skill of shaping open-ended questions that are relevant to the group’s real-life concerns. These questions need not imply immediate action steps or problem solving. Allow the questions to invite inquiry and exploration. At one Café in Denmark focused on improving a school system, the hosts framed the central question as “What could a good school also be?” rather than as “How can we fix the problems in this school?” In doing so, they opened up the conversation to appreciating what might be possible in the future, rather than limiting the focus to what is wrong in the present.

Connect Diverse People and Perspectives. “Intelligence emerges as the system connects to itself in diverse and creative ways,” according to Margaret Wheatley, author of Leadership and the New Science (Berrett-Koehler, 1992). By cross-pollinating ideas among tables in several rounds of conversation, we intentionally invite a more accelerated and richer network of dialogic interactions on a larger scale than is common in most dialogue circles.

One technique for enriching the ways in which the system connects to itself is to vary the different rounds of conversation. Hosts stay at each table to welcome guests while the other members travel to new tables to share as well as gather insights. Travelers might then return to their home Cafés or continue to move from table to table for several iterations. Sometimes the hosts change, with the first host becoming a traveler during the second cycle. Or several members might stay at the table while the others go out for brief visits as “ambassadors” to other tables, collecting new seed ideas that bring diverse perspectives to the home table.

Additionally, all living systems — including human systems — benefit from diversity. In her book The Quantum Society: Human Nature and Consciousness Defined by the New Physics (William Morrow and Company, 1994), Danah Zohar states: “Social evolution requires that different points of view, different ideas, different ways of life, and different traditions recombine into larger, more complex emergent wholes.” Breakthrough thinking is more likely to emerge when diverse viewpoints and perspectives contribute to the exploration. For example, “Strategy Cafés” that engage multiple stakeholders, including employees from all levels as well as customers and suppliers, can offer richer opportunities for innovation than traditional strategic planning activities among senior executives alone.

Listen Together for Patterns, Insights, and Deeper Questions.

Through Café conversations, participants often discover coherent patterns of meaning in what may appear, at first glance, to be a chaotic and messy self-organizing exchange of ideas and perspectives. The emphasis is on shared listening — listening for the wisdom or insight that no individual member of the group might have access to by themselves. To that end, invite members to offer their unique perspectives and listen for new connections in the “space in-between.” Allow for silence and reflection. Ask members to notice what’s evolving in the middle of the table. By focusing on these special qualities of collective attention, we have a greater opportunity to experience what our Danish colleague Finn Voldtofte calls “the magic in the middle.”

For example, in Sweden, hosts of a multi-stakeholder forum used Café conversations to clarify areas of inquiry that could influence the future of both the information/communications industry and the environment. They began the first round of conversation by giving each table of participants a “talking stone.” Each member took the talking stone in turn and presented his or her key insights, thoughts, or deeper questions about the query “How can information technology contribute to a sustainable future?”

The three other participants at each table were to listen carefully and draw any connections they noticed between ideas in the middle of the tablecloth. In the second and third rounds, the Café hosts asked everyone to begin listening as a group for the deeper assumptions underlying their perspectives and to write them on the tablecloth as well. When the final round was over, the group pooled the collective insights and “ahas” that had emerged from linking the small-group dialogues from Café tables and creating a “conversation of the whole.” Through this intentional process of discovering and connecting underlying assumptions and insights, participants who might have opposed each other in a different setting came to a mutual appreciation of the deeper questions they faced together in contributing to a sustainable future.

Make Collective Knowledge Visible to the Group. We’ve come to realize that the simple act of scribbling ideas and pictures on a paper napkin or tablecloth so that the others at the Café table can literally “see what you mean” is integral to knowledge creation and innovation. As Michael Schrage says in Shared Minds: The New Technologies of Collaboration (Random House, 1990), “The images, maps, and perceptions bouncing around in people’s brains must be given a form that other people’s images, maps, or perceptions can shape, alter, or otherwise add value to. . . . It takes shared space to create shared understanding.” By providing paper and markers, we encourage the use of “shared space” where people can build on each other’s ideas, weave together their thoughts, and engage in deeper collective listening.

Many Café events include an interactive graphics specialist, who creates large visual maps that synthesize key insights and ideas. Commented Nancy Margulies, who has hosted many Cafés, “It’s like having a big ‘tablecloth’ in the middle of the whole group. Participants can quite literally see that they are creating something new together.” Other possibilities for making collective knowledge visible include having a “gallery walk,” with participants taking a tour of the tablecloths created by the different groups; publishing a Café newspaper on the spot; and creating theater presentations that reflect group discoveries. Each of these techniques allows participants to capture and build on the momentum and ideas that emerge. In addition, creating “storybooks” from the session allows participants to take the results of their work to larger audiences after the event.

The five operating principles seem quite simple, but embodying them as an integrated practice demands creativity, thoughtfulness, artistry, and care. The creativity of the host can make the difference between an interesting conversation and the magic of experiencing what our colleague Tom Atlee calls co-intelligence in action.

Conversation As Action

But is all of this talk just that, talk? What about the urgent need for action in our organizations today? We have found that, by its nature, The World Café challenges the ways most of us think about creating desired results in organizational and community life. Many leaders still preach that we should “stop talking and get to work” — as if talk and work were two separate things. Humberto Maturana, a pioneering evolutionary biologist, has helped us see that human beings think together and coordinate action in and through language. Conversation is “real work.” Through conversation people discover who cares about what and who will be accountable for next steps. We are finding that when people come to a new level of shared understanding around real-life issues, they want to make a difference. When participants return from Café conversations, they often see additional action choices that they didn’t know existed before.

Café As Metaphor

As reported by members of Café events, The World Café is a powerful methodology for collaborative learning and knowledge evolution. We are also finding that it is a provocative metaphor that can help us see organizational and societal change in a new light. How might the metaphor of “The World as Café” invite us to think differently about ways to catalyze system-wide innovation and action?

We are learning that Café conversations are based on a larger natural process of mutual inquiry and discovery that does not depend on small, round tables and red-checked tablecloths. By experiencing the power of focused networks of conversation on a small scale, members see how they might utilize this strategic insight in the larger systems they are part of. What if conversation were as much a core business process as marketing, distribution, or product development? What if it were already the core process — the source of organizational intelligence that allows all of the others to generate positive results?

For example, imagine your organization as a series of Café tables, with employees moving between functions inside the organization as well as connecting with multiple “tables” of customers, suppliers, distributors, and other conversation partners. What difference would it make to your own action choices if you viewed your workplace as a dynamic, living network of conversations and knowledge creation rather than as a traditional hierarchy (see “What We View Determines What We Do”)?

Based on an understanding of The World Café, leaders can take greater responsibility for designing infrastructures that bring coherence and focus to organizational conversations. For example, they come to recognize the key role they play in discovering “the big questions” and hosting strategic conversations with multiple stakeholders. This shift of lens also has practical implications for how leaders work with strategy formation, organizational learning, information technology, the design of physical space, and leadership development.

In one Café session, senior leaders from major corporations were mapping the implications of taking this view. The director of global operations for a company with more than 50,000 employees suddenly jumped up from his seat and exclaimed, “Do you know what I’ve gone and done? I’ve just reorganized my entire global operation. I’ve broken up the informal knowledge networks and relationships that have developed over the years. If I had looked at my reorganization through these glasses, I would have done it a lot differently. It’s going to take us a long

time to recover!” His heartfelt comments stimulated a lively conversation about the role of leaders in developing organizational strategies that honor these less visible but critical conversational and learning processes.

We’re seeing many practical examples of how people are intentionally using the metaphor of The World Café to guide strategic work in larger systems. Executives in a high-tech corporation helped to decrease the injury rate dramatically by using Café principles to engage existing networks of conversation and introduce questions about safety risks. The World Café has led intellectual capital expert Leif Edvinsson of Sweden to observe that the office design of the past is inadequate to support effective knowledge work. In response, he has engaged leading-edge architects in alternative space design.

World Café principles are also being used to redesign a Museum of Science and Industry in Florida to highlight not only formal exhibits but also learning conversations as doorways to discovery. And the initiative From the Four Directions: People Everywhere Leading the Way is intentionally weaving a global network of conversations among leaders of all ages on several continents. Using the Internet and other information technologies, local conversation circles feed insights back into the network, catalyzing these worldwide leadership dialogues into a growing force for societal innovation.

Creating Sustainable Value

The World Café is one path for stimulating courageous conversation about questions that matter to our lives and work—especially in large group settings. We are now seeing the systemic ways in which focused networks of conversation, especially with the support of collaborative technologies, can help organizations and communities evolve. Using The World Café as a methodology and as a metaphor offers a practical yet innovative way to cultivate both the knowledge required to thrive today and the wisdom needed to create the futures we want, rather than being forced to live with the futures we get.

Juanita Brown and David Isaacs serve as strategists and thinking partners with senior leaders, applying living systems principles to the evolution of knowledge-based organizations and large-scale change initiatives. They have hosted Café conversations and strategic dialogues internationally in a wide variety of business and community settings. (Contact info@theworldcafe.com or call 415-381-3368). The World Café Community is comprised of a growing global group of leaders and others committed to courageous conversations and positive futures. We thank Anne Dosher, Ken Homer, Susan Kelly, Janice Molloy, Nancy Margulies, Karen Speerstra, and Sue Wetzler for their special contributions to this article.

The post The World Cafe: Living Knowledge Through Conversations That Matter appeared first on The Systems Thinker.

Strategic learning can occur, not only through formal planning activities, but also through webs of informal conversations and networks of relationships, both within an organization and among key stakeholders. Choosing to ask and explore “big questions” — questions that matter to the future of the organization — is a powerful force.

When people frame their strategic exploration as questions rather than as concerns or problems, a conversation begins where everyone can learn something new together, rather than having the normal stale debates. In effect, people begin looking at “the map of the territory” together. The questions encourage them to wonder “What is the map telling us?” rather than to push preconceived ideas of what they think it shows.

Why Don’t We Ask Better Questions?

If asking good questions is so critical, why don’t we spend more of our time and energy focused upon discovering and framing them? One reason may be that much of our Western culture is focused on knowing the “right answer” rather than discovering the “right question.” Our educational system focuses more on memorization and static answers rather than on the art of seeking new possibilities through dynamic questioning. We are rarely taught how to ask powerful questions. Nor are we often taught why we should ask compelling questions in the first place. Quizzes, examinations, and aptitude tests all reinforce the value of correct answers, usually with only one correct answer for each question asked. Is it any wonder that most of us are uncomfortable with not knowing?

Perhaps our aversion to asking creative questions stems from our emphasis on finding quick fixes and our attachment to black/white, either/or thinking. Often the rapid pace of our lives and work doesn’t provide us the opportunity to be in reflective conversations where creative questions and innovative solutions can be explored before reaching key decisions. This dilemma is further reinforced by organizational reward systems in which leaders feel they are paid for fixing problems rather than fostering breakthrough thinking. Between our deep attachment to the answer — any answer — and our anxiety about not knowing, we have inadvertently thwarted our collective capacity for deep creativity and fresh perspectives in the face of the unprecedented challenges we face, both in our own organizations and as a global human community.

The World’s Best Industrial Research Lab

One of the best corporate examples of how a “big question” — a truly strategic question — can galvanize collective conversation, engagement, and action occurred at Hewlett-Packard. The director of Hewlett-Packard Laboratories wondered why HP Labs was not considered the best industrial research lab in the world. As he thought about it, he realized that he did not know what being the “World’s Best Industrial Research Lab” (WBIRL) really meant.

One key staff member was charged with coordinating the effort. Instead of looking for “answers” outside the company, she encouraged the director to share his “big question” with all lab employees around the world. Instead of organizing a senior executive retreat to create a vision and then roll it out, she encouraged organization-wide webs of inquiry and conversation, asking people what WBIRL meant to them, what it would mean personally for their own jobs, and what it might take to get there. She invited the entire organization to join in exploring the question through informal, ongoing conversations; and she took advantage of more formal internal survey and communication infrastructures. When the lab director acknowledged his “not knowing” — an uncommon stance for a senior executive — an open field was created for multiple constituencies and perspectives to be heard.

The conversation continued for several months. The WBIRL leader developed a creative “reader’s theater” piece which reflected 800 survey responses, detailing employee frustrations, dreams, insights, and hopes. Players spoke the key themes as “voices of the organization,” with senior management listening. That made a difference to everyone’s thinking by literally putting a variety of points of view on stage together. But it wasn’t the only venue in which the “big question” was explored. Senior management met in strategic sessions, using approaches such as interactive graphics and “storytelling about the future” to see new opportunities that crossed functional boundaries. In these strategic conversations, they considered core technologies that might be needed for multiple future scenarios at HP Labs to unfold.

People throughout the labs, meanwhile, were initiating projects at all levels, resulting in significant improvement in key areas of the lab’s work. Weekly Chalk Talks for engineers, “coffee talks,” an Administrative Assistant Forum, and a Community Forum created opportunities for ongoing dialogue, listening, and learning. A WBIRL Grants Program provided small stipends for innovative ideas, enabling people to act at the corporate grassroots level, taking personal responsibility for work they believed in. In all of these efforts, the leader of the WBIRL project spent most of her time “helping the parts see the whole” and linking people with complementary ideas.
And yet, while productivity was improving rapidly, something was missing. During an informal conversation while planning for a “Celebration of Creativity” to acknowledge what had already been accomplished, one of the lab engineers spoke up. She wondered what was really different about HP that distinguished it from any other company that wanted to be the best in the world. She said, “What would get me out of bed in the morning would be to become the best for the world.”
Suddenly a really “big question” had emerged. What would it mean for HP Labs to be the best both in and for the world? (See “What Makes a Powerful Question?”)

Stakeholders in any system already have within them the wisdom and creativity to confront even the most difficult challenges.

A senior engineer created an image of what “for the world” meant to him. It was a well-known picture of the founders of HP looking into the backyard garage where the company began. He added a beautiful photo of Earth placed inside. This picture became the symbol of “HP for the World.” A “town meeting” of 800 Palo Alto employees with live satellite hook-ups enabling a global conversation focused on the question, “What does ‘HP for the World’ mean to you?” The “HP For the World” image spread throughout the company — appearing in lobbies, featured in recruiting brochures, and offered as executive gifts. More than 50,000 posters were purchased by HP employees around the world, stimulating a growing network of conversations about the meaning of the big question for the future of the company.

In the course of this exploration, people rediscovered that the company founders, Bill Hewlett and Dave Packard, had always maintained a commitment, as Packard put it, that “the Hewlett-Packard company should be managed first and foremost to make a commitment to society.” Growing numbers of people throughout HP reconnected to that founding governing idea — stimulating investigations into breakthrough technologies for education, remote medical care for third-world nations, and global environmental issues.

As part of this effort, the same senior engineer who had created the “for the world” poster image was persuaded to pursue a 25-year old dream: To create a mile-long educational diorama, placing human life in the context of evolutionary history. In 1997, this work — “A Walk Through Time: From Stardust to Us” — was featured at the annual State of the World Forum. There, the question of what it means to be for the world was posed to global leaders gathered from every continent. Public and private partnerships evolved from these conversations. Clearly, this is a powerful question that “travels well.”

Big Questions and Strategic Thinking

This approach to discovering and asking the “big questions” — strategic questions for which we truly do not have answers — is grounded in the assumption that stakeholders in any system already have within them the wisdom and creativity to confront even the most difficult challenges. Given the appropriate context and support, members of an organizational community can often sense where powerful strategic possibilities and opportunities for action may lie. Is it simply “luck” that enables us to stumble onto questions that really matter for strategic thinking? Or can we actually design processes that make it more likely for those questions to emerge? (See “How to Use Questions Effectively” on page 4.)

“Discovering strategic questions,” says one colleague, a senior executive at a major multinational corporation,

“is like panning for gold. You have to care about finding it, you have to be curious, and you have to create an anticipation of discovering gold, even though none of us may know ahead of time where we’ll find it. You head toward the general territory where you think the gold may be located, with your best tools, your experience, and your instincts.”

To evoke strategic thinking based on discovering powerful questions, several activities may be useful. They

may not apply to all situations and they may not always follow the same sequence, but they suggest ways that formal and informal processes can evolve together to support individuals as well as teams in discovering “gold” for themselves.

Assessing the Landscape. Get a feel for the larger context in which you are operating. Scan the horizon, as well as the contours of the current business and organizational landscape, related to the system or project you are working with. Like trackers in the mountains, look for obvious and subtle indicators that point to storms as well as to sunny skies. Allow your curiosity and imagination to take the lead as you begin to identify the many questions that the business landscape reveals. It will be tough, but important, to frame your findings as questions, rather than as concerns or problems. To help in framing those questions, ask yourself: “How does A relate to C and what questions does that suggest? If X were at play here, what would we be asking? What is the real question underneath all this data?”

Discovering Core Questions. Once you think you’ve posed most of the relevant questions (and there may be many of them), look for patterns. This is not a mechanical process, even though it can be disciplined and systematic.

You are on a treasure hunt, seeking the core questions — usually three to five — which, if answered, would make the most difference to the future of your work. Cluster the questions and consider the relationships that appear among them. Notice what “pops up” in order to discover the “big questions” that the initial clusters reveal.

Creating Images of Possibility. Imagine what your situation would look like or be like if these “big questions” were answered. Creating vivid images of possibility is different from pie-in-the-sky visioning, especially if people with a variety of perspectives have participated in the earlier stages of the conversation. This part of the conversation can also provide clues for evolving creative strategies in response to the “big questions.” It often reveals new territory and opportunities for action while remaining grounded in real life.

Evolving Workable Strategies. Workable strategies begin to emerge in response to compelling questions and to the images of possibility that these questions evoke. Of course, the cycle is never complete. Relevant business data, ongoing conversations with internal and external stakeholders, informal conversations among employees, and feedback from the environment enable you to continually assess the business landscape revealing new questions.

Many organizations are stuck in a “problem-solving orientation” when it comes to strategy. They can’t seem to shake the focus on fixing short-term problems or seeking immediate (but ineffective) solutions. Simply by moving their attention to a deliberate focus on essential questions, they can develop an inquiry-oriented approach to evolving organizational strategy (see “How Can I Frame Better Questions?”). In a knowledge economy, this approach provides an opportunity for developing the capability of strategic thinking in everyone, and for fostering sustainable business and social value.

How Can Leaders Use Powerful Questions?

In today’s turbulent times, engaging people’s best thinking about complex issues without easy answers represents one key to creating the futures we want. Leaders need to develop greater capacities for fostering “inquiring systems” in order to learn, adapt, and create new knowledge to meet emerging needs (see “Is Your Organization an Inquiring System?”).

The leadership challenges of the next 20 years are likely to revolve around the art of catalyzing networks of people rather than solely managing hierarchies as in the past. The ability to bring diverse perspectives to bear on key issues both inside and outside the organization and to work with multiple partners and alliances will be a critical skill for effective leaders. We believe the following core capabilities, rarely taught in today’s MBA or corporate leadership programs, will help define leadership excellence:

Engaging Strategic Questions. In a volatile and uncertain environment, one of the most credible stances leaders can take is to assist their organizations in discovering the right questions at the right time. A key leadership responsibility is creating infrastructures for dialogue and engagement that encourage others at all levels to develop insightful questions and to search for innovative paths forward. Leaders also need to consider reward systems that provide incentives for members to work across organizational boundaries to discover those challenging questions that create common focus and shared forward movement.

Convening and Hosting Learning Conversations. A core aspect of the leader’s new work is creating opportunities for learning conversations around catalyzing questions. However, authentic conversation is less likely to occur in a climate of fear, mistrust, and hierarchical control. The human mind and heart must be fully engaged in authentic conversation for the deeper questions to be surfaced that support the emergence of new knowledge. Thus, the ability to facilitate working conversations that enhance trust and reduce fear is an important leadership capability.

Supporting Appreciative Inquiry. Opening spaces of possibility through discovering powerful questions may require a shift in leadership orientation from what is not working and how to fix it, to what is working and how to leverage it. Shifting the focus in this direction enables leaders to foster networks of conversation based on leveraging emerging possibilities rather than just on fixing past mistakes. Leaders who ask, “What’s possible here and who cares?” will have a much easier time gaining the collaboration and best thinking of their constituents than those who ask, “What’s wrong here, and who is to blame?” By asking appreciative questions, organizations have the opportunity to grow in new directions.

Fostering Shared Meaning. Leaders of organizations in the 21st century will discover that one of their unique contributions is to provide conceptual leadership — creating a context of meaning through stories, images, and metaphors within which groups can discover relevant questions as well as deepen or shift their thinking together. To tap into this pool of shared meaning, which is the ground from which both powerful questions and innovative solutions emerge, network leaders need to put time and attention into framing common language and developing shared images and metaphors.

Nurturing Communities of Practice. Many of the most provocative questions for an organization’s future are first discovered on the front lines, in the middle of the action of everyday life. Key strategic questions that are critical for creating sustainable value are often lost because few of today’s leaders have been trained to notice, honor, and utilize the social fabric of learning that occurs through the informal “Communities of Practice” that exist throughout an organization. A Community of Practice is made of up people who share a common interest and who work together to expand their individual and collective capacity to solve problems over time. Nurturing these informal learning networks and honoring the questions they care about, is another core aspect of the leaders new work.

Using Collaborative Technologies. Intranet and groupware technologies are now making it possible for widely dispersed work groups to participate in learning conversations and team projects across time and space. As these tools become even more widely available, leaders will need to support widespread online conversations where members throughout the organization can contribute their own questions and best thinking to critical strategic issues. The Hewlett Packard case shows how important enabling technology infrastructures are for strategic innovation. Collaborative tools will be a critical factor in how well strategic questions travel both within the organization and among customers and other stakeholders who are key to success.

Co-Evolving the Future

It is quite easy to learn the basics of crafting powerful questions. However, once you have begun down this path, it’s hard to turn back. As your questions broaden and deepen, so does your experience of life. There is no telling where a powerful question might lead you. Transformative conversations can result from posing a simple question such as: “What questions are we not asking ourselves about the situation in the Middle East?” Tantalizing possibilities emerge from the simple act of changing a preposition from “in” to “for” as in the HP example. Profound systemic change can emerge from creating a process for discovering and acting on the “big questions” within a business setting.

Where collaborative learning and breakthrough thinking are requirements for a sustainable business future, asking “questions that matter” and engaging diverse constituencies in learning conversations are a core process for survival. Because questions are inherently related to action, they are at the heart of an organization’s capacity to mobilize the resources required to create a positive future. Seeing the organization as a dynamic network of conversations through which the organization evolves its future encourages members at every level to search for questions related to their real work that can catalyze collective energy and momentum. It enables each one of us to realize that our thoughtful participation in discovering and exploring questions that matter — to our team, to our organization, and to the larger communities of which we are a part — we can make a difference to the whole. For it is only in this way that organizations will be able to cultivate both the knowledge required to thrive today and the wisdom needed to ensure a sustainable future.

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The World Café is an innovative approach to large-group dialogue that has been widely adopted around the world. In this process, groups—often numbering in the hundreds of people—participate together in evolving rounds of dialogue at small café- style tables while at the same time remaining part of a single, larger, connected conversation. Participants record key insights in words and pictures on paper tablecloths. Intimate conversations link and build on each other as people move between groups, cross-pollinate ideas, and discover new insights into questions or issues that are important in their life, work, or community. As the network of connections increases, knowledge sharing grows. The collective wisdom of the group becomes more accessible, and innovative possibilities for action emerge.

Sounds simple? It is, and yet there is a depth of living systems theory and experience that underpins the successful operation of Café processes and influences what emerges from their use. This philosophical framework is woven throughout the book and is what distinguishes the World Café from many other conversational approaches.

Beginnings

In an early chapter, co-author David Isaacs relates the story of the origins of the World Café. On a rainy day in January 1995, a group gathered at a home in San Francisco as part of an ongoing session to explore a particular question. To create a welcoming environment, the organizers hurriedly brought out T. V. tables, festooning each with a large sheet of paper, crayons, and a small vase of flowers.

When people arrived, they sat in informal groups around the tables and immediately started talking about the question they had been addressing the day before. As people traveled from table to table to share ideas—something that one of the participants had suggested—Juanita and David noticed a palpable energy in the room that they had never experienced before. Later, they joined with others to reflect on the conditions that led people to engage with each other so spontaneously, naturally, and in such depth in that setting.

In their subsequent research with Café hosts and participants around the world, Juanita and her colleagues have discovered a set of principles that underpin the practice of a successful World Café:

1. Set the Context
2. Create Hospitable Space
3. Explore Questions That Matter
4. Encourage Everyone’s Participation
5. Cross-pollinate and Connect Diverse Perspectives
6. Listen Together for Insights, Patterns, and Deeper Questions
7. Harvest and Share Collective Discoveries.

Much of the book is devoted to exploring the precise meaning and implication of these principles. Each chapter begins with a quotation, an illustration, and a question. These are followed by personal stories of Cafés in action, guidelines, Juanita’s perspectives, and questions for reflection.

For example, “Connecting the Parts and the Whole: The Financial Planning Association” illustrates the spirit reflected in the case studies and describes just one of the creative ways in which groups have started to apply the principles. In this section, Kim Porto and Sean Walters describe an innovation they have invented for harvesting and sharing individual and collective discoveries from the Café process: what they call the Gallery Walk. During a Café, facilitators collect and post emerging questions; participants then walk from question to question, adding their comments and insights on sticky notes. According to Kim and Sean, “One of the aspects we think makes this particular approach to whole-group synthesis so engaging and useful is that people have control over what they contribute . . . each person gets the opportunity (and has the responsibility) to contribute exactly what is most meaningful to him or her, and put it exactly where he or she feels it best fits in the overall synthesis.”

At the Core

This case study extends some of the ideas put forth in the book’s Foreword, written by Margaret Wheatley. Meg says, “The World Café process reawakens our deep species memory of two fundamental beliefs about human life. First, we humans want to talk together about things that matter to us. In fact this is what gives satisfaction and meaning to life. Second, as we talk together, we are able to access a greater wisdom that is found only in the collective.”

Thus, the essence of this book is the observation that whenever people converse and treat each other well in the course of addressing questions that matter, they are likely to achieve constructive outcomes. If you are familiar with the work of Humberto Maturana, you will not be surprised to learn that the authors reference it in several places. Juanita speaks eloquently about coming to recognize, through Maturana’s work, that Conversation is our human way of creating and sustaining—or transforming —the realities in which we live.” Looking through this lens, she became aware of what key thinkers were saying about what happens when people feel secure and respected for expressing what they think is important. Juanita also came to understand that conversation is at the center of a wide range of fields that are integral to our everyday lives, such as strategy, information technology, conflict resolution, and global affairs.

One of the main components of conversation is listening. The book includes numerous references to how Café processes promote attentive listening—and how this process affects both speaker and hearers. A poignant comment by Lloyd Fell illustrates. When he was present at his first Café, he felt “a tremendous wave of energy …right across the room. It was as if something had suddenly been unleashed by the invitation to speak freely in the more intimate setting of the café tables.” Lloyd also noted his feeling of being heard. “I am never the first to enter into a group conversation, but I found myself listening with interest and beginning to feel that I wanted to join in. After a time I did and the respect with which my words were treated had a warmth and friendliness about it that I have never experienced at a meeting.”

The Café process also highlights the importance of questioning. Questions are the trigger for inclusive, respectful, purposeful, and animated conversing. The book is rife with examples of powerful questions, such as “What could a good school also be?” or Hewlett-Packard’s famous “How can we be the best industrial research lab for (instead of in) the world?” One of the key lessons from the Café is that genuine questions, questions to which we don’t know the answers, release energy in a way that focusing on “problems” or “answers” never could.

Creating Life-Affirming Futures

In addition to providing guidelines for action in our organizations and groups, this book’s most important contribution may lie in the insights it offers on how we may begin to address some of the global issues that have come into our consciousness in recent years. With regard to this big picture, the authors state, “Our deeper intention in a Café conversation is for people to experience themselves being an integral part of a living web/network of relational thinking and of experiencing conversation itself as a co-evolutionary force for accessing co-intelligence on behalf of life-affirming futures and the conscious evolution of social systems.” Could the Café process contribute by helping people everywhere see themselves as being interconnected cells in a complex organism, with all the duties and rights of an individual as well as the concomitant responsibilities for the health of the greater whole?

In his Afterword, Peter Senge shares that the power and potential of the “collective creativity” that arises in World Café conversations is seldom realized in most of our daily conversations—yet! He characterizes the ways in which we currently express our needs as “being too small, too self centered, too disconnected from the desires of others.” But using Café and other dialogue processes to expand our global vision and collectively address bigger questions could create a world engaged in conversations on questions that have real heart and meaning for us all—one conversation at a time. The prospects of such a dream coming to life—through the creation of intentional contexts such as Café conversations and other forms of dialogue—are much enhanced by the availability of this book.

Alan Stewart, Ph. D., refers to himself as a “professional conversationalist”—a facilitator of collaborative conversational processes. His report on a public consultation that he hosted for a local council in Australia has drawn wide interest (www.theworldcafe.com/storyconversing.html). Alan has been a Senior Fulbright Scholar at Stanford University. He is now promoting what he calls “Qin Tan Conversation,” or “Pure Talk,” in Hong Kong, where he now resides. For more information, go to www.creativestate.biz.

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