This workshop engaged participants to co-create multiple personal futures in large and small group collaboration. This social experiment in personal foresight generated the creation of possible personal scenarios for the challenging next-future term possibilities. We started by creating a personal profile for the Low Tech Social Network. Communities listed on the profiles were shared in the closing circle to co-create a living network among the participants.

An amazing array of participants were involved, suggesting that DwD is reaching beyond its business + creatives + designerly roots. More and more people from dedicated social change communities are engaged and returning. While businesses can benefit from and afford these creative group processes, social change agents need to learn from each other. A community across communities is forming.

The event was framed by the question of considering the multiple futures we have choice to create. When we think of the future, we tend to push a vague collection of dreams, possibilities and wishes out to a speculative point in the years following the nearest term. We can guess about the world in two years, we can plan for 5 years, but 10 and 20 years challenge personal vision. Our concept was to confront the future opportunities for humanity, by learning to position our own inherent multiplicities as creative narratives to counter a technologically-determined future, whether a career ideal or the “singularity.”

The venue supported the creation of a circle and pairs for the exercises:

• Values conflicts at the Crossroads
• 3 Whys of 3 Values: Core, Calling, Contra
• Mapping Values to Actions
• Mapping V-A to future possibilities in the Diamond Star template

The workshop was convened by Peter Jones and Patricia Kambitsch (visual reflection) at The Design Exchange  Feb 24th in the DX boardroom as part of the Toronto Design Week Design Offsite Festival.

There’s a multitude of ways to conduct dialogues.  Which approach will be most appropriate for attaining desired outcomes among different groups?  This DwD engaged systems thinking for some foundations, with an overview of C. West Churchman’s design of inquiring systems.  With these foundations, participants (dialogue designers) sharpened their appreciation of alternative modes and techniques.  More open dialogic approaches might (or might not) be preferred over more bounded and structured approaches, under different conditions.  Theory was translated into reflective practice through group exercises. The session started by generating a range of concerns and ideas for inquiry. These were selected by groups for further

About the Convener

David Ing is president (2011-2012) of the International Society for the Systems Sciences, an organization with members with interests crossing disciplinary boundaries (e.g. social systems, technological systems, biological systems, ecological systems).  In that role, he is designing the program for the ISSS annual meeting (in San Jose, CA in July 2012), and working with the Systems Science Working Group of the International Council on Systems Engineering (INCOSE).  Over the past year, he developed new courses in systems thinking for the Master’s in Creative Sustainability at Aalto University in Finland.  He is a visiting fellow with University of Hull (UK), an itinerant scholar with the Tokyo Institute of Technology, and previously a cofounder of the Canadian Centre for Marketing Information Technologies (C2MIT) at the University of Toronto.  David has had a continuous 27-year career with IBM, with home base in Toronto.  He can be found on the Internet at http://coevolving.com

Discovery

Discovery explores the best in our experience, sharing and learning from our past and bringing forward the positive values to be honored in the inquiry. Paired shares led to whole-group expressions of valued experiences and impressions from Design with Dialogue in the 2011 season.

Dream

Dream envisions what might be, and generates a multiplicity of possibilities for the group to reflect and decide. Individuals generated their ideas, shared in triads to review and add more, and posted and clustered in a harvest sheet. We organized and labeled clusters in a following session, resulting in a document shared with participants. The original harvest appeared as follows (not the full image):

Design and Destiny

In concluding the review and vision, people expressed their own hopes and encouragement for the 2012 season. People added their personal commitments to their proposals, which all ensures a rich, diverse, and heartfelt community in 2012.

• Have continuity between sessions, with blogging and conversational support.
• Have workshops to explore the nature of inquiring systems (of which AI, DwD are representative)
• Evaluate the impact of learning from dialogue. Observe and evaluate the forms and outcomes of design. Relate the learning and observations to academic impact.
• Inquiry into experiential modeling and experiential learning. What contributes to enhanced perception in dialogue?
• “Listening sessions”  How to best share what we are learning in listening?
• Continue with “sessions on what’s going on right now.” Capturing relevance as its emerging.
• Holding new types of experiential dialogue sessions (e.g., Joanna Macy’s The Work that Reconnects)
• Continue to connect with conferences and academic groups
• Consider interim DwDs that provide continuity – Hold special interest groups for hot topics
• Develop the practice and “rituals” of dialogue:
  Save 30 min at Pre or Post for continuing topics
  Provide coaching / video in basic facilitation and process skills
  Start Web conferences or online sessions

The creation and sharing of a catalyzing question is a generative act, it creates a point of view. Such a true question provokes a deep response and outlook. Great questions are the inspiration of research, journalism, strategy, and our imagining of alternative futures.

September’s DwD session inquired into the “question of questions.”  We practice different methods and arts of the question, and explore the impact of powerful questions in dialogue.

We can see this principle in action around us. Companies, innovations, and social movements can start with a leader’s question that inspires others to get involved. People living in a question invite us to answer that question with action.

Such is the pull of the powerful question.

The session presented three challenges to participants:

1. The Question Game – Conduct three conversations entirely in questions.

2. Inquiry into: What is the process and practice of asking questions?

Based on asking the following three questions:

• What is the function of a question?
• What is the effect of a question on the person being asked?
• What kinds of questions have “potential” or the potency to open experience?

The comprehensive dialogue sketch was composed throughout the evening by Patricia Kambitsch, Playthink.

3. How might your questions shape an intentional future?

Writing and sharing powerful questions, which appeared on the board as:

Participation was engaged by a group of 30, at least half of whom were new to DwD. We appreciate the energized attendance!

ABOUT THE HOST. Peter Jones is a senior fellow of the Strategic Innovation Lab and teaches in the Strategic Foresight and Innovation graduate program at OCADU. He is managing partner of Dialogic Design International, a network firm that guides strategic dialogue to help clients navigate complex decisions and plans, and re-envision effective futures for planning and organizational design. Peter founded Redesign, Inc. an innovation research company based in Toronto. Redesign conducts ethnographic and design research to guide innovations consistent with advancing systemic change in organizations, social systems and markets.

The recent annual Summer Institute, held in Columbus, Ohio, was well attended by DwD community members. July’s DwD session engaged about 20 (mostly new) people with Greg Judelman, Patricia Kambitsch, Mark Kuznicki and others that attended revealing their learnings and insights. The structure and inquiry of the evening was inspired by processes from ALIA,  a movement exercise and reflection into our own deeper capacity to lead positive change.

The July DwD led to a voluntary continuation of dialogue at Sin and Redemption. It appears that our goal of re-creating the ALA experience was achieved – since the DwD, we’ve had numerous reflections on the core idea of vulnerability as authentic risk in leadership.

In his Attention Surplus podcasts, Sean Howard discussed his insights into the practice of attending to vulnerability explored in this DwD. Being vulnerable in leadership, listening, and engagement with others was a core notion from ALIA.  Highly recommended -

THE WORKSHOP

The session engaged the challenges of the Canadian Arab-Jewish Leadership Dialogue Group by an inquiry into their goals, community development, and future. About 20 participants workshopped strategies in small group sessions, with Patricia Kambitsch and Elsa Lam capturing proceedings in visual reflection.

         Photo by Pamela Purves

Issues directly related to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict were not addressed. The session was organized for the benefit of the Arab-Jewish Leadership Dialogue Group to have impact locally and in their larger mission to draw attention to alternatives for peacemaking.

OUR GUESTS

Dr. Karen Mock (Ph.D., C. Psych.) is an educational psychologist who has been the Executive Director and CEO of the Canadian Race Relations Foundation, and was  National Director of the League for Human Rights of B’nai Brith Canada, as well as Executive Director of the League’s Human Rights Education and Training Centre.

Dr. Mock has conducted research and published widely on multiculturalism, anti-racism, human rights and diversity, and has received many awards and honours for her work. Dr. Mock chaired the National Advisory Committee to the Secretary of State and Canadian Secretariat for the UN World Conference Against Racism, and was on the Canadian delegation in Durban South Africa.

She chaired the Hate Crimes Community Working Group for the Attorney General, and served as Senior Policy Advisor on Diversity and Equity to the Minister of Education for the development and delivery of Ontario’s Equity and Inclusive Education Strategy.

Raja Khouri is an international consultant in organizational development and capacity building, focusing on civil society and human rights work.  He is a commissioner with the Ontario Human Rights Commission, advocacy co-chair of Human Rights Watch Canada, and co-founder of the Canadian Arab-Jewish Leadership Dialogue Group.

Raja formerly served on various government and civil society bodies, such as Ontario’s Hate Crimes Community Working Group, the Minister of Education’s Equity and Inclusive Education Strategy Roundtable, Pride Toronto Community Advisory Panel, and the Couchiching Institute on Public Affairs.  He also served as president of the Canadian Arab Federation in the period following the events of 9/11. Raja has chaired conferences, given and moderated lectures, given numerous media interviews, and published commentaries in journals and major Canadian dailies.

The Canadian Community for Dialogue and Deliberation(C2D2) is a community of individuals and organizations dedicated to the creation and sustainability of vibrant communities, businesses, governments, not for profits and learning institutions through the good practice of dialogue, deliberation, collaborative action and decision-making processes.

The Reinvention of Civilization is an ideological shift in what constitutes the center of history. Such an invention comes about because of a change in awareness, which provides movement from a single locus of imagination and the knowledge it evokes, to an awareness of simultaneous, multiple, yet sovereign centers of history. This shift in the source of the imagination that constitutes knowledge brings a revolutionary matrix of history into existence.

In this workshop Yogiraj Charles Bates models his commitment to serve all sentient beings with designing in system inquiry (‘We’ can Relate), innovation (The 10th Dot^®), reinvention endeavors (The Reinvention of Civilization^tm) and leadership (Integrity and The Fourth View).

A collaborative dialogic process (Sacred Dialogues) provides the practicum format to demonstrate the ideas he will bring forth. This is a participatory experience with developmental and transformational intent. Anyone contributing to creating sustainable models that seek to benefit humanity will be supported by this workshop.

This was the first workshop in the Masters series.  A companion workshop ‘We’ Can Relate was held Saturday April 30, 2011 at the Redesign studio, 7 Fraser Ave. #12, Toronto.

• How are ecological changes moving us toward planning for urban resilience?
• How might we make the transition to resilience as a community and not as competing resource users?
• How is the city a medium, a media system? Can McLuhan’s notion of media ecology help guide historic changes in resource ecologies?
• What are the risks if we don’t act, or we fail to cooperate in “transilience?”

Video by Gregory Greene, ResilientPLANET

Although starting from different perspectives and communities, both movements are coordinated, advance responses to near-future impacts to urban planning, transport, food and water supply, energy, ecology, and habitation. The big question remains for citizens and communities, that, if foresight is true, what ought we to do – today?

Two global movements have emerged in the last few years as a civil societal response to foreseeable constraints and societal shocks resulting from changes in climate and energy resources – Resiliency and the Transition Town.

Peter Jones (DwD, OCADU) hosted the session and workshop. Peter Rose moderated a one-hour panel discussion with three leading thinkers and planners.  (Presentations are now available)

• Resilient City planner Craig Applegath (Dialog Design)                                  PDF
• Jeff Ranson (Innovolve and OCADU Strategic Foresight & Innovation)     PDF
• Transition Town planner Blake Poland (UofT Public Health).                       PDF

Many thanks to Patricia Kambitsch, whose live sketches provided visual reflection. And to documentary videographers Greg Greene (ResilientCITY, End of Suburbia) and Dexter Ico for their coverage and photos (all photo credits, Greg and Dexter).

Over 70 people from around the GTA joined us for an engaging, creative, hands-on thinking and doing workshop. Participants left the session wanting to know and do more. We planned this session with the hope that we might help our communities change values, habits, and communication to create and adapt to a more resilient future.

THE WORKSHOP

Just as the designer of a ship’s structure exerts more influence on its performance than does the captain or the crew, the structure of our thinking is the primary determinant of our actions and thereby the pattern of results we are getting in our lives. A change in how we think translates into a change in the results we are creating. Actions and results that were not possible before become possible. It is that simple—and also that difficult.

The most effective leaders are by no means perfect leaders, but they do have an upgraded thinking structure. This workshop will introduce you to and immerse you in this structure.

Key learnings:

• A ground breaking model for leadership
• Insight about which of 3 most commonly held illusions is getting in your way.
• A powerful tool for creative relating when experiencing conflict or resistance.
• An exploration of what really matters to you

The following image reflects the model used in the workshop process. A sample survey of how an organization might fit the different dimensions overlays the circle model.  The circle map shows the  the definitions of the creative competencies and reactive styles.

Also see:  Leadership: Uncommon Sense

Fernando Lopez is president of Bridgespace Consulting Inc., an executive coaching firm that specializes in helping clients create the space for powerful collaboration. Fernando coaches (in English or Spanish) clients in North America, Latin America, and Europe.

Fernando is well known for his expertise in organization and relationship systems coaching. He is a faculty member of the Center for Right Relationship and the Coaches Training Institute, an industry leader that has trained over 20,000 coaches worldwide. Motivated by discovering new coaching approaches and sharing them with others, he has been a speaker at both Toronto OD Network and International Coach Federation conferences and workshops.

Fernando’s mission is finding often-surprising solutions to leadership and relationship challenges.

Before founding Bridgespace, Fernando was at Medsite Inc. (now part of WebMD) where he bridged technology and business teams. Having lived in Mexico, Toronto, New York, Hawaii, Munich, Brazil, and Chile, Fernando is comfortable operating in different cultures.  Fernando has a dual degree in Management and Technology from the Wharton School and the School of Engineering of the University of Pennsylvania.