Tag Archives: Strategic Planning

What is the True Nature of Partnership?

Written by . Posted on March 8, 2013. Filed under Think. Tagged , , , . 1 Comment.

March’s DwD session was hosted by Mary Pickering of the Toronto Atmospheric Fund.

What is the true nature of “partnership”?

 Funders want it, social innovation demands it and professionals now “broker” it. With the rising clamor to establish partnerships within and across organizations to get people working together more effectively, the time has come to reflect on what a partnership really means in the social change context.
 
At this dialogue session we explored these questions:
  • What defines a true partnership?
  • Is there partnership potential in every working relationship?
  • When should – and shouldn’t – we create partnerships to advance our causes?
  • How might a partnership impact an initiative?
  • What are the key principles for making, managing – and breaking up – working partnerships?
Mary Pickering Mary Pickering has been with Toronto Atmospheric Fund since 2004, serving as VP Programs and Partnerships. Previously she worked for six years for World Wildlife Fund Canada as a major gift fundraiser. Her work with TAF focuses on incubating collaborations focused on local greenhouse gas reduction strategies. Mary has led TAF’s work on Solar Neighbourhoods, ClimateSpark, MOVE the GTHA, and the Collaboration on Home Energy Efficiency in Ontario (CHEERIO). She is currently undertaking Level 2 accreditation with the Partnership Brokers Association and is very interested in your experiences and views on creating effective partnerships.

Long-term Thinking

Written by . Posted on February 7, 2012. Filed under Think. Tagged , . 1 Comment.

LENGTH MATTERS:
How might we bring a long-term perspective to near-term decisions?

Consumers, organizational leaders and politicians make daily decisions that will affect our families, communities, prosperity and habitat for decades into the future. How would our culture and world be different if we made decisions in consideration of the well-being of our children’s children, rather than only looking at the next tweet, fiscal quarter or electoral cycle?

February’s DwD explored approaches to over-coming “short-termism” with a long-term view to make our resources and systems more sustainable.

  • Unpack the assumptions that keep us locked into a short time frame
  • See what our decisions might look like if framed in a long view
  • Explore how a values shift might reframe our perspective
  • Jam ideas on new incentive structures that could influence our behaviour

References:

 Images from the session

How do our values drive our decisions? How might that skew us towards a short-term view?

 

 

What incentive structures might shift values such that our decisions will consider a long-term view?

DwD Reflection & 2012 Shared Vision

Written by . Posted on December 9, 2011. Filed under Dream, Retreat. Tagged , , . No comments.

Every end of year we retreat and reflect on what we learned over the year’s events and who we are becoming in DwD community and practice. Fifteen people attended to co-create the vision for 2012 priorities, sessions, and direction. An Appreciative Inquiry guided the exploration and reflection, leading to harvests for each phase, as illustrated:

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.

Visual reflection of DwD 2012 by Patricia Kambitsch.

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 Toronto Star: Dialogue on Thriving in a Changing News World

Written by . Posted on April 12, 2011. Filed under Dream, Think. Tagged , , . 1 Comment.

DwD hosted John Cruickshank (Publisher) and Kate Collins (Product Director, Star Media Group – Digital) from The Toronto Star for a special community design workshop. This was a DwD “innovation fishbowl” that explored the future of news media in a changing media landscape. The framing of the evening was:

What might the Toronto Star look like in the future as a dynamic and thriving content platform that effectively serves a range of audiences from loyal traditionalists who are used to paying for a singular authoritative newspaper product to younger ‘digital natives’ who participate in real-time news and meaningful content from a distributed network of sources utilizing a variety of devices?

The session unpacked the context, trends, audiences, and possible approaches for The Star to take with its platform to continue with its civic imperative and remain a thriving commercial business.

Results of the session are not provided publicly, as this was an invitational event and was held for the benefit of aiding the Star in its strategic innovation by drawing on the experience and intellectual and creative diversity of the DwD community.