A Dynamic Facilitation Manual and Reader: Evoking practical group creativity through generative dialogue

Rosa Zubizarreta and Jim Rough. Center for Wise Democracy, 2002.

This spiral-bound manual describes a transformational approach for facilitating dialogue in situations where people are highly invested, emotionally charged or polarized, and helping groups arrive at practical and creative breakthroughs.

Resource Link: http://www.wisedemocracy.org

Center for Wise Democracy

The Center assists communities in creating Wisdom Councils - randomly-selected, facilitated 'juries,' reflecting the larger diversity of the community - which engage in dialogue about the larger system and arrive at creative consensus on shared visions. These visions in turn serve to increase the quality of the dialogue among the larger community.

Resource Link: http://www.wisedemocracy.org

Center for Wise Democracy - Dynamic Facilitation Training

The Center assists communities in creating Wisdom Councils - randomly-selected, facilitated 'juries' reflecting the larger diversity of the community - which engage in dialogue about the larger system and arrive at creative consensus on shared visions. These visions in turn serve to increase the quality of the dialogue among the larger community. "Dynamic facilitation" is used to facilitate Wisdom Councils, and the Center provides trainings in dynamic facilitation regularly.

Resource Link: http://www.tobe.net/info/general.html

Consensus Statement and Survey for Wise Democracy Victoria II

The statements in this survey were formulated by local residents who agreed to meet as a Wisdom Council for Victoria on June 22-23, 2007. Wisdom Councils create consensus statements which are presented to the public or an institution in a public meeting. The public meeting starts a discussion that engages the broader community. In order to gauge the public's level of agreement with the Wisdom Council's statements, an online Opinionnaire® (a tool being demonstrated for this event by the Forum Foundation) is being used to reveal degrees of consensus for those who participate. We are posting the contents of the survey as a great example of two dialogue and deliberation organizations combining their assets to help promote, evaluate, and further a D&D program.

Resource Link: http://opn.forumfoundation.org/index.php?pid=30

D&D Success Stories

Compiled by the National Coalition for Dialogue & Deliberation (NCDD), 2005.

Below are dozens of links to dialogue and deliberation success stories and case studies that are available online. Approaches covered include Deliberative Polling, Citizens Juries, Future Search, National Issues Forums, Jewish-Palestinian Dialogue, AmericaSpeaks, Study Circles, the Public Conversations Project, and Wisdom Councils. NCDD has been compiling these resources for the D&D community for several years, but we could really use your help keeping this page updated. Email us at [email protected] with your additions and changes.

Dynamic Facilitation

Dynamic Facilitation is an energy-based way of facilitating where people address difficult issues creatively and collaboratively, achieving breakthrough results. It creates a process of talking and thinking that builds mutual respect, trust and the sense of community.

Innovations in Democracy: An Evaluation of the Rogue Valley Wisdom Council

Elliot David Shuford. A thesis presented to the Department of Planning, Public Policy and Management and the Graduate School of the University of Oregon in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Public Administration, 2004.

Discussions about participatory democracy frequently focus on levels of participation and its direct effects on policy-making. A new model for community dialogue has been developed called The Wisdom Council. This model focuses on high-quality conversation in a small group of participants, with a goal of affecting overall community conversation. Despite, or because of, its newness, there have been no critical evaluations of this approach. Recently, a Wisdom Council was held in the Rogue Valley of Southern Oregon. This 68-page thesis provides an evaluation of that event.

Resource Link: http://www.wisedemocracy.org/papers/InnovinDemocracyRVWC.pdf

Jim Rough & Associates, Inc.

Jim Rough & Associates offers transformational workshops on facilitating Dynamic Facilitation - generative dialogue for creative and practical problem-solving, applicable to both technical and social issues. Dynamic Facilitation is the essence of "emergent leadership." It's where one person helps others face difficult issues creatively and collaboratively, where they achieve unanimous, win/win solutions. It achieves this magic by engendering a nonlinear, heartfelt, transformational quality of thinking called "choice-creating" ?— vs. "decision-making" or "problem-solving" or "creative problem-solving."

Resource Link: http://www.tobe.net

NCDD Commentary: Dynamic Facilitation and the Choice-Creating Process

Tom Atlee and Rosa Zubizarreta. NCDD, 2003.

This commentary was submitted for the NCDD website by Tom Atlee and Rosa Zubizarreta in March 2003. The piece is adapted from Tom's book "The Tao of Democracy" (2002). It begins "To 'facilitate' means to 'help make easier.' If our goal is to have meaningful and powerful dialogue, the role of a facilitator is to help make it easier for the group to do so. Dynamic Facilitation, created by consultant Jim Rough, is a leading-edge process designed to help groups have meaningful conversations, access their creativity, and discover practical breakthroughs to challenging situations, even in the midst of divergent opinions, strong emotions, and conflicting beliefs.

Society's Breakthrough! Releasing Essential Wisdom and Virtue in All the People

Jim Rough. 1stBooks, 2002.

This book suggests that the U.S. adopt a Citizens Constitutional Amendment which says: Each year, 24 registered voters will be randomly selected in a lottery to form a Citizens Wisdom Council. This Wisdom Council will be a symbol of the people of the United States. With the aid of a dynamic facilitator, the group will meet for one week to choose issues, talk about them and determine consensus statements.

Wisdom Council

The Wisdom Council is a newly invented structural approach to achieving genuine democracy in cities, unions, associations, counties, or nations ... and even in corporations. No matter how many people are in the system, it structures a creative, thoughtful, system-wide conversation about the most pressing issues. It facilitates everyone to form a unanimous "We the People" viewpoint.

Wisdom Council workshop handouts

Jim Rough and Deanna Martin.

Here are the five great handouts from "The Wisdom Council: A Tool for Empowering 'We the People'" - facilitated by Jim Rough and Deanna Martin at the 2006 NCDD Conference in San Francisco.

Wise Democracy Victoria

Wise Democracy Victoria is a group of citizens concerned about the state of our democracy - in Victoria, in British Columbia, in Canada, and on the planet. Wise Democracy Victoria was initiated by the Victoria Branch of the World Federalist Movement - Canada in the spring of 2006 in order to help create genuine democracy in Victoria and in Canada. It is, however, an independent entity, not connected with the World Federalist Movement or any other organization. The mission of Wise Democracy Victoria is to seek out and investigate processes that can enhance the scope, collabarativeness, and co-intelligence of our democratic system.

Resource Link: http://wisedemocracyvictoria.com