A Resource Guide for Hosting Conversations That Matter at the World Cafe

The World Café is an easy-to-use method for creating a living network of collaborative dialogue around questions that matter to the real-life situations of your organizations or community. In this beautifully illustrated booklet, Juanita Brown collaborates with Nancy Margulies and the World Café Community to articulate seven guiding principles for people to use to host their own Café. Learn about the thousands of people on five continents who have experienced the World Café, a model for setting up the ideal Café for your group, the roles of the hosts, crafting powerful questions, Café assumptions and etiquette, and more.

Resource Link: http://www.theworldcafe.com

AiList: Appreciative Inquiry Discussion List

This listserv, hosted by Jack Brittain, is a forum for individuals interested in learning more about the practice of Appreciative Inquiry. The list has nearly 800 subscribers from all over the world. To subscribe, go to http://lists.business.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/ailist or send a message with the word 'help' in the subject or body to [email protected]. To submit, send messages to the list manager at [email protected].

Resource Link: http://lists.business.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/ailist

Appreciative Inquiry

Appreciative Inquiry (AI) is about the coevolutionary search for the best in people, their organizations, and the relevant world around them. In its broadest focus, it involves systematic discovery of what gives "life" to a living system when it is most alive, most effective, and most constructively capable in economic, ecological, and human terms. AI involves, in a central way, the art and practice of asking questions that strengthen a system's capacity to apprehend, anticipate, and heighten positive potential.

Appreciative Inquiry Commons

The AI Commons is devoted to the sharing of academic resources and practical tools on Appreciative Inquiry and the rapidly growing discipline of positive change. The site is hosted by Case Western Reserve University's Weatherhead School of Management. Appreciative Inquiry is the coevolutionary search for the best in people, their organizations and the relevant world around them.

Resource Link: http://appreciativeinquiry.case.edu

Change Management Toolbook

The Change Management Toolbook includes a broad range of tools, methods and strategies which you can apply during different stages of personal, team and organizational development, in training, facilitation and consulting. It is based on the wealth of tools and principles that have been provided by Kurt Lewin, Edgar Schein, Peter Senge, Arie de Geus, Robert Dilts, Virgina Satir, Bert Hellinger, Harrison Owen, David Cooperrider, Marvin Weisbord, Steve de Shazer - just to name a few - and many other great teachers.

Resource Link: http://www.change-management-toolbook.com

Dialogos - Dialogue Introduction: AoTT

Dialogue Introduction: AoTT (The Art of Thinking Together) is a two and a half-day, integrated introduction to multiple levels of dialogue, group structures and individual effectiveness. As a participant, you will learn new communication, action, and awareness skills, and see what dialogue feels like through actual practice. You will walk away with new ways of seeing familiar group patterns and structures, as well as new tools for understanding and impacting the larger systems in which you work and live.

Resource Link: http://www.dialogos-inc.com

Dialogos - Leadership for Collective Intelligence (LCI)

Leadership for Collective Intelligence (LCI) is an intensive 10-month learning and professional development experience. It draws on, and has been built by, pioneers in organizational learning, dialogue, family system therapy, systems thinking and the improvisational arts. The dominant focus of the LCI is the art and practice of dialogue, which we see as a means of enabling deep change within individuals, groups, and larger collective settings such as organizations, communities and, ultimately, society itself.

Resource Link: http://www.dialogos-inc.com

Dialogue and the Art of Thinking Together

William N. Isaacs, Dialogos. New York, NY: Currency, 1999.

Isaacs is a colleague of organizational learning guru Peter Senge (who wrote the introduction) and one of the founders of MIT's Organizational Learning Center. He also directed MIT's Dialogue Project, on which this book is based. Isaacs argues that organizational learning cannot take place without successful dialogue.

Resource Link: http://www.dialogos.com

Dialogue: Rediscover the Transforming Power of Conversation

Linda Ellinor and Glenna Gerard. New York, NY: John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 1998.

Ellinor and Gerard draw upon their combined 50 years of experience in organizations to show how dialogue can change the way we work by widening information arteries so that employees at every level begin to think along 'leadership' lines and take responsibility for how their actions affect the whole organization. Leading companies including Levi Strauss, Shell, Hewlett-Packard, Motorola and AT&T are unleashing the wellspring of power that flows naturally from the trust, mutual respect and spirit of inquiry that are at dialogue's core.

Fielding Graduate Institute - School of Human and Organization Development

Fielding's School of Human and Organization Development is a global community of lifelong learning professionals who place a premium on student and faculty interaction through mentoring and dialogue, both face-to-face and online. The program offers distance learning doctoral degrees and online masters degrees. The School of Human & Organization Development currently offers three Continuing Education Certificate programs: the new 16-week Dialogue, Deliberation, and Public Engagement Certificate, the Online Facilitation Certificate, and the Evaluation and Organization Development Certificate.

Resource Link: http://www.fielding.edu/schoolhod/index.htm

Future Search Network (and trainings)

The Future Search Network initiates future search conferences, innovative planning conferences used world-wide by hundreds of communities and organizations. The conferences meet two goals at the same time: helping large diverse groups discover values, purposes and projects they hold in common; and enabling people to create a desired future together and start implementing right away.

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

Future Search: An Action Guide to Finding Common Ground in Organizations and Communities

Marvin Weisbord and Sandra Janoff, Future Search Network. San Francisco: Berrett-Koehler Publishers, 1995.

This book describes a step-by-step process for planning and leading a Future Search conference, where diverse community members come together to envision and plan their shared future.

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

Group Facilitation: A Research and Applications Journal

Group Facilitation is a multi-disciplinary publication focused on the art and science of group facilitation. It aims to advance our knowledge of group facilitation and its implications for individuals, groups, organizations, and communities. It is published semi-annually. Group Facilitation is intended for facilitators, mediators, organizational development and training specialists, managers, researchers, and others who seek to use facilitation skills in their practice.

Resource Link: http://www.iaf-world.org/i4a/pages/index.cfm?pageid=3498

Meetings as a Strategy for Change

The William & Flora Hewlett Foundation and BTW Consultants, 2004.

Meetings are a ubiquitous, time-consuming, and often expensive feature of organizational life. They range from ad hoc meetings of two or three people to multi-day events with hundreds of speakers and thousands participants. To maximize the value of meetings, grantmakers who fund them and organizations that sponsor them must be clear about their objectives and must think strategically about both the benefits and costs of the events. This packet includes three tools that provide a series of questions to be asked of meeting planners or foundation staff in considering whether a meeting is the best strategy for accomplishing the desired results.

Resource Link: http://http://www.hewlett.org/NR/rdonlyres/047CCF02-D038-4C0E-9121-FDD4074E6ACD/0/HFBTWmeetingspilot.pdf

NTL Institute

Through the use of the applied behavioral sciences, NTL strengthens relationships and organizations by fostering self-awareness and interpersonal, group and system effectiveness. NTL pioneered a particular kind of learning environment called the T-Group, and has had a profound influence on the theory and practice that presently underlies the professional field of organization development.

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

Open Space Technology Process

Open Space Technology, created by Harrison Owen, is a self-organizing practice that releases the inherent creativity and leadership in people. By inviting people to take responsibility for what they care about, Open Space establishes a marketplace of inquiry, where people offer topics they care about, reflect and learn from one another, to accomplish meaningful work. It is recognized internationally as an innovative approach to creating whole systems change and inspiring the best in human performance.

Organization Development Network

The Organization Development Network is an international professional association of organization development practitioners. The OD Network is dedicated to being a leader in the advancement of the theory and practice of organization development.

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

Partnerships Online

David Wilcox's Partnerships Online site focuses on collaboration, including how technology can help people build partnerships, networks, participation. The Partnerships Online site is a mix of personal observations and insights from projects Wilcox works on with other people, mainly in the UK. It includes blog items, web pages and bookmarks mainly focused on how to make collaborations work through facilitation in workshops and online, with various digital technologies.

Resource Link: http://www.partnershipsonline.org.uk

Society for Organizational Learning

SoL is an intentional learning community composed of organizations, individuals, and local SoL communities around the world. A nonprofit, member-governed corporation, SoL was formed in 1997 to continue the work of MIT's Center for Organizational Learning (1991-1997). Peter Senge, author of the The Fifth Discipline: the Art and Practice of the Learning Organization, is the founding Chairman of SoL. Senge's work emphasized the importance of dialogue as a tool for creating learning organizations.

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

The Change Handbook: The Definitive Resource on Today's Best Methods for Engaging Whole Systems

Peggy Holman, Tom Devane and Steve Cady (editors). San Francisco: Berrett-Koehler, 2007.

The first edition of The Change Handbook, published in 1999, was the most comprehensive guide available on methods of organization and community change. The first edition provided a snapshot of a nascent field that broke barriers by engaging ?“whole systems?” of people from organizations and communities in creating their own future. The completely revised and updated second edition overviews 61 change methods - up from 18 in the first edition. A great introduction to large-group methods for participatory planning and redesign.

Resource Link: http://www.thechangehandbook.com