Customer Reviews

The World Cafe: Shaping Our Futures Through Conversations That Matter

5 star:		(27)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This book can help people break out of the linear, encapsulated world of every-day life, in which most are ensnared and help organizations and networks achieve collective intelligence and formulate future-focused plans.

The book provides a means for engaging with many others in exploring important issues at a variety of levels: group, corporate, community, national, or international. It presents the World Cafe Process (Cafe or WCP), which generally consist of three rounds of progressive conversation, each lasting about 20 or 30 minutes, followed by a dialog among the whole group.

This is the story of the discovery and evolution of the WCP, enabling people to foster constructive dialogue, access collective intelligence, and create innovate possibilities for action.

The process has seven core design principles: set the context; create hospitable space; explore questions that matter; encourage everyone's contribution; cross-pollinate and connect diverse perspectives; listen together for patterns, insights, and deeper questions; and harvest and share collective discoveries. Each chapter begins with a quotation, an illustration, and a question; these give you an overview of the book's themes.

Speaking as a consultant (FutureOrganization.com) I believe that business leaders will find the Cafe a potentially powerful process to increase organizational effectiveness and achieve change. One president of a pharmaceutical company, Yvon Bastien, reports how he successfully used the process to develop the company's long-range business plan. But this story is only one a vast array of successful experiences reported by leaders in all types of organizations.

Chapter 10 provides a guide to successfully hosting a Cafe; it is specific, to-the-point, and very helpful. Closing chapters provide stories of how leaders are using the Cafe, and its societal implications. For further information, the book concludes with a section on resources and connections.

The Cafe concept is very appealling and, from reports, works. It opens the door to learning, creativity and action through a powerful process that deserves consideration by all leaders. As a leader and faciliator of change, this is a book you will want to read. At the very least, Cafe, as a dynamic process, is extremely alluring.

This remarkable book has a foreword from Margaret Wheatley, genius guru and author of Leadership and the New Science: Discovering Order in a Chaotic World who inspired Robert Buckman's tremendous work on Building a Knowledge-Driven Organization and it has a review from Tom Atlee, author of The Tao of Democracy: Using Co-Intelligence to Create a World That Works for All and founder of the Co-Intelligence Institute.

As I finished this book and dealt with my teen-ager who at 16 is quite certain that even the great schools of Fairfax County are largely boring and dysfunctional, still teaching by rote and testing memory rather than the ability to discover, it occurred to me that this book is in fact a handbook for both educating the world, and for reforming education. Instead of the current didactic form of instruction (one-way lectures) we should be teaching, at every level, interactive discovery. It's not what you can remember from the past, but what what you can discover in tandem with others, and apply constructively!

EDIT of 12 Dec 07: Lots has happened since I reviewed this book, and it was a delight to discover that this long buried insight actually found itself manifested in the new non-profit, the Earth Intelligence Network, whose 24 co-founders recognize that we need an EarthGame where we all play ourselves, and that to save the planet, we must educate the five billion poor "one cell call (or conversation) at a time," something we can do by giving out free cell phones and recruiting 100 million volunteers with Internet access who among them cover the 183 languages we do not speak--that will create infinite wealth (see books at bottom of this review).

As someone who has been trained to be dysfunctional, overly reliant on "command and control" and predictability, I can certainly see how this book would cause discomfort and inspire disbelief among the mandarins of industry and government, but I can also see this book sensibly defines the only path likely to lead to collective intelligence and collective consensus solutions.

Context, hospitable spaces, questions that matter, encouraging everyone's contribution, cross-pollination of diverse perspectives, listening for patterns, cultivating collective intelligence and insight through dialog instead of debate--this book has it all.

My last annotation in the book is "Wiki!" As smart people like Jock Gill and Howard Rheingold start to think about how to create a global Wiki that enables a World Cafe with a space for every topic, every challenge, every zip code, every neighborhood, I have a strong feeling that "bottom up people power" may at last be in the offing.

Alvin and Heidi Toffler are publishing a new book in April called Revolutionary Wealth: How it will be created and how it will change our lives Knowing their past work, I suspect it will be an epic statement that carries the work of Tom Stewart The Wealth of Knowledge: Intellectual Capital and the Twenty-first Century Organization and Barry Carter Infinite Wealth: A New World of Collaboration and Abundance in the Knowledge Era to new heights, and that is where I will end this review: the world cafe is about creating wealth and peace through dialog. Done right, there are no limits to our ability to engage one another in conversation, and no limits to the wealth that we might create, the peace we might foster, by so doing.

EDIT of 12 Dec 07: two additional books have had a deep impact on me since this was first written:
The Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid: Eradicating Poverty Through Profits (Wharton School Publishing Paperbacks)
The Wealth of Networks: How Social Production Transforms Markets and Freedom

This book is very serious, very valuable. It is worth reading and it is worth sharing with others. It is part of our "Collective Intelligence" and leads straight to Peace Intelligence and Commercial Intellligence. In the next ten years I plan nothing less than the reduction of the secret budget of $60 billion a year, to $12 billion, with the savings redirected toward national education and connection the five billion poor to knowledge so they can create infinite stabilizing wealth.

Juanita Brown's THE WORLD CAFE is a profoundly insightful and richly practical book, designed for evolutionary times. For me, it is already a classic.

One expects it to be a book about one conversational practice, the World Cafe, written by its co-founder. It is. And it isn't.

What it is -- most of all -- is an exploration of the power of CONVERSATIONS THAT MATTER -- ALL conversations that matter. It is also an exploration of the conditions under which QUESTIONS THAT MATTER can be deeply and productively explored.

The essence of true dialogue is the exploration of questions that are important to us, that shape how we think and what we do next. These questions are central; they are the channel through which our life-passion flows when we are evolving, deepening, and learning. When we do that together -- in rich conversation -- our passions can flow and evolve together, usually going deeper and wider than we tend to go alone.

In THE WORLD CAFÉ, this creative dance of conversations and questions is chronicled by more than 100 practitioners, each more articulate than the last, each leading us to another level of understanding about one more important dimension of the transformational magic of dialogue. Their voices are warm, engaged in the shared exploration, not lecturing.

Juanita includes all these folks quite intentionally and comfortably. She is being more than "author". She is being "host" -- as in a café conversation in her living room -- welcoming all voices, including her own, into a place of common learning and deepening.

I know -- because I have experienced it -- that she has a habit of interviewing practitioners and thinkers who visit her, one by one, sitting on her couch, and collecting their recorded words. And then there is her library of beloved books and articles. In creating this book, THE WORLD CAFÉ, she has dived with friends down to these seabeds of accumulated wisdom, coming up with treasures, food, and exotic life from the depths, eager to share them with the rest of us. They read like poetry:

Questions function
as open-handed invitations to creativity,
calling forth
that which doesn't yet exist.

What do we NOT know,
that if we DID know,
could transform this situation
for the better?

Human systems grow towards
what they persistently
ask questions about.

We contribute
because we are part of something
larger than our own lives and efforts,
but the form of our contribution
is based on our uniqueness
and our individuality.

One of the hard questions is
asking ourselves,
'Is this not working, or is it just uncomfortable?'
Sometimes the uncomfortable
is necessary
to break through
to new thinking.

Silence is the pulley,
similar to the rope in a well,
that enables members
to draw a deeper wisdom up
from the common well
of mutual exploration and experience.

A leader these days
needs to be a host -- one
who convenes people,
who convenes diversity,
who convenes all viewpoints in creative processes
where our intelligence can come forth.

Pro-activism involves people
actively co-creating -
helping each other through dialogue
to be, as it were, in our dreams awake,
collectively shaping our future.

Every act
helps to repair some larger whole, but
the repair not only patches it,
it also modifies it,
transforms it,
sets it on the road to becoming
something else, entirely new.

(These quotes are from Marilee Goldberg; Susan Skjei; David Cooperrider and Diana Whitney; Carol Ochs; Janet McCallen, Elizabeth Jetton, Kim Porto and Sean Walters; Juanita Brown; Margaret Wheatley; Samantha Tan; and Christopher Alexander, respectively.)

If I had any criticism of this book (it is fashionable, after all, to always have a criticism in a review), it would be that Juanita's specific practice -- The World Café, as a methodology -- is not adequately summarized until quite late. Hidden on page 4 are two sentences hinting at the mechanics of World Café, which slip by quickly as we toboggan into a vast and fascinating landscape of the principles underlying high quality conversation.

However, over and over along the way, we hear more about how actual World Cafés work, often through the many compelling stories of past Cafes. Then, in Chapter 10, we stumble on the amazing "World Café Hosting Guide" which - despite Juanita's disclaimer that "this book is not a how-to manual" - tells you pretty much everything you need to know to organize and host one.

Still, I would advise those unfamiliar with the core World Café process to read the short description at <co-intelligence.org/P-worldcafe.html> before reading the book. It will help ground you, providing something upon which to hang the sumptuous details you will soon discover.

(This may be a minor point: I am so familiar with the process that I had no problem with it. I don't know if anyone will ACTUALLY have trouble with the lack of early summary.)

As I made my way through THE WORLD CAFE, I found myself drawn into ever deeper understanding -- of the process (World Café), of the larger patterns of conversation that World Café mimics (the social water through which we humans swim our lives), and of the underlying principles for juicy conversation which apply so broadly to so many diverse conversational techniques.

The seven principles of World Café are:

* Set the context - Clarify the purpose and parameters of the conversation and its place in the larger environment in which it will happen.
* Create hospitable space - Provide a welcoming, safe, life-serving environment.
* Explore questions that matter - Invite collective attention into what's important to the participants.
* Encourage everyone's contribution - Engage meaningful participation by each person, with real respect.
* Cross-pollinate and connect diverse perspectives - Facilitate juicy diversity and equally juicy interconnectedness.
* Listen together for patterns, insights, and deeper questions - Help coherent group insight emerge naturally from the dance of individual perspectives and passions.
* Harvest and share collective discoveries - Make the group's collective intelligence visible to itself.

In the seven chapters that form the core of THE WORLD CAFÉ, you will explore each of these principles, learning practical insights and many tools for applying each one. The blending of theory and practice is both seamless and visionary.

I guess this is what justifies Juanita's insistence that this is not a manual: It becomes increasingly clear that a comprehensive manual for World Café would be impossible. World Café is not a single, well-defined A-B-C process. It is an evolving and expanding family of processes emerging in the conceptual space created by those seven principles. Page after page I found more and more variations on those themes. By the time I was finished, I found myself quite awed by the symphony they made. I also felt freed -- even encouraged -- to make some music of my own, informed by a new deeper understanding of both harmony and dissonance.

I could go on for quite a while. There is so much to say. For example:

* This book is filled with pictures and graphics that not only clarify major points, but themselves evoke deep understandings and feelings. I think they play a greater role in the overall effect than I realized before writing this review (the learning continues even after the book is done...).

* There are surprising insights into (for example) the role of flowers and art, the relationship between talk and action, "the magic in the middle", common sense, the power of setting, itself, to govern the quality of conversation, and -- most important for me -- the sources and dynamics of collective intelligence.

* There are well over a hundred questions peppered throughout -- I lost track at 120 -- providing ample models and stimulation for what may be the most critical skill of all -- the creation of powerful questions -- "What could a good school also be?" "What would this workplace be like if it were the kind of place I looked forward to getting up and coming to every morning?" "How can our laboratory be not the best IN the world, but the best FOR the world?"

* The resource section, bibliography, index, and the annotated acknowledgments collectively offer a useful and intriguing overview of the network of people and information from which this vibrant work has emerged.

I can't recommend this book highly enough. For anyone interested in process, in any kind of dialogue, or in the dynamics of emergence and collective intelligence, THE WORLD CAFE offers a fascinating adventure with helpful hints, profound insights and engaging stories dancing at each turn in the road.

And, for a world undergoing one of the most profound and complex evolutionary transitions of its four billion year life, this book offers a path -- of both method and understanding -- through which we can move, in the most natural way possible, into new forms emerging to meet these times. THE WORLD CAFÉ is a midwifery gift to a future struggling to be born.

There is nothing more important to the future of the world than encouraging people to engage in meaningful conversations with one another. The World Cafe shares the wisdom of a very effective large group process that facilitates the exchange of stories, experiences and ideas. The case studies in the book are intermixed with practical guidelines for running world cafes. This format makes the book easy to use since it does not have to be read from cover to cover but which stimulates and inspires readers to put the lessons learned from running World Cafes into practice. As an Organizational Development Consultant and practioners of narrative this book is a wonderful contribution to the field.

The theories and philosophical principles of The World Cafe are sound and powerful. What is not explored in this book--and should be--are the inconsistent results of what is promoted.

Yes, the Cafe experience can be transformative. It can also be boring, despite what Meg Wheatley says. It can also be quite unpleasant and negative. The book appears to present only the success stories as if no other type of story could be found.

The book does lack (as another reviewer has noticed) practical "how to" information. The information that is provided does not guide a practitioner sufficiently to use the Cafe method.

Authors David Isaacs and Juanita Brown came up with the idea for the World Café when they tried to rescue a meeting in their home that was threatening to turn into a disaster. Leaders from the Skandia Corporation were supposed to have a discussion on their northern California home's beautiful patio. Unfortunately, it was pouring. Brown and Isaacs had to squeeze 24 Swedes into their living room. They hastily covered small TV tables with sheets of newsprint anchored with small flower vases. Soon, the place looked like a coffee shop. The delighted guests began conversing immediately, eventually moving among the small groups to hear what others had to say. Thus, the World Café movement was born. Isaacs and Brown include many stories about ways that organizations have used World Café conversations. They provide lists, drawings and discussion questions. Brown's commentary on process and principles weaves all this together. She makes grand claims for this approach, believing that conversation is the wave of the future and the best way for people to learn and change. Jargon alert: the authors truly adore New Age gobbledygook. One example suffices: "Optimum learning and development occur in systems in which there is a rich web of interactions, along with an environment of novelty where new opportunities and spaces of possibility can be explored." Despite such warm-hearted mush, we recommend this book to managers who are willing to experiment with an innovative meeting format that lets them synthesize experts' ideas with the experiences of their own people.

This book amazed me with its thorough and readable approach to a process that is at once simple and profound. Read this and you will learn how the cafe process has worked worldwide to bring people together for meaningful conversation. People who host cafes in the style explained in the book are able to create an atmosphere in which everyone can feel heard, can deeply listen to others and then halp weave the ideas together. I plan to use it for my workplace as well with community groups.
I also send copies to several friends who are facilitators in the corporate world.

I feel very privileged to consider Juanita Brown and her partner David Isaacs as good friends and trusted colleagues. We worked with David Isaacs last year to apply the World Café to the first World Congress on the Future of Work in San Francisco. It was so successful that we'll be using it again in Philadelphia this spring.

For those of you who haven't yet experienced a World Café, we can only offer our condolences. It's unlike any other "tool" we've ever seen or used for enabling a group of individuals to become what Juanita likes to call a "collective wisdom." The World Café enables all participants at an event to meet, interact with, and learn from all the other participants. It is as different from a typical conference (with PowerPoint presentations and jumbotron television screens) as an intimate dinner with a lover is from a gathering of the faithful in St. Peter's Square in Rome.

This remarkable book is a rich and compelling conversation in itself about an incredibly important "new" process for generating new ideas, insights, relationships, and deep personal conversations. We are true believers, and even with our past experience with the World Café we found the compilation of personal stories, guidelines, and case examples wonderfully inspirational.

This is truly a remarkable book. I endorse it without reservation. No, let me go further: whether you know it or not, you need to buy this book.

Now, let me take just a few moments to give you a flavor of what this is all about. David Isaacs is fond of saying that conversation is for people what water is for fish: we are surrounded by it, but we hardly recognize how critical it is for life and meaning.

The World Café is an approach to group interaction that helps us remember what conversation really is: "the medium though which all of us together understand and create the realities we live in" (David Atlee, founder of the Co-Intelligence Institute, quoted in the Introduction).

When you participate in a World Café you find yourself seated at a small round table with three other people, who you may or may not know. The table is covered with a large piece of butcher paper, and there is a small vase of fresh flowers in the center. You have access to several crayons or markers, and you are engaging in conversation about something that really matters - typically one or two "Big Questions."

You work together for anywhere from 20 minutes to an hour, and then your Host/Hostess asks three of you to get up and move to three different tables to continue the conversation, while one remains behind to report to three new participants on the meanings behind the scribblings you've left behind on that butcher paper.

It all sounds so simple - yet the total experience is incredibly profound. You discover very quickly that the whole truly is greater than the sum of the parts. There really is a collective intelligence that is far more powerful than any of our individual insights.

To get back to the book for a final moment, it is written as a compilation of stories and examples of events where the World Café has been used. The book actually has many voices (what could be more appropriate?), and Juanita graciously (but not surprisingly) gives ample credit to the many thoughtful, caring people who have contributed to the process and operational design of the World Café over the years.

And the book is a "how to do it yourself" compendium as well. The core of the book articulates and makes real the seven core design principles of a 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.

Applied in combination, these basic design principles virtually ensure that you'll have a powerful learning and relationship-enhancing experience. Even if you never read the book, try living by these principles, and I'm willing to bet you'll find yourself having more meaningful conversations than you realized were possible.

And the best part of all this is that it isn't rocket science, a foreign language, or some elite skill that requires years to master. As David Isaacs says over and over again, it's just a matter of remembering (practicing and acting on) what you've known all along.

This book is amazingly thorough. It includes the theory as well as the process of The World Cafe. This process enables people to enter into conversations that generate shared meaning, new ideas and deeper relationships. I have participated in World cafes and am delighted that a book is now available. Stories from around the world convey the many varieties of World cafes possible. The book alsosheds light on the metaphor of World cafe -- the way we as humans literally shape our future through networks of meaningful conversation.

At last, the book! As an education administrator and professional development facilitator I have been searching for ways to apply all that good theoretical stuff around learning organizations like dialogue, mental models, team learning, etc., including appreciative inquiry principles. As many organizational leaders and developers know, it is very difficult, tedious and downright frustrating to get past the entrenched culture of any highly resistant organization and apply these principles. Serendipitously, a few years ago, I came across "the World Café." I was hooked.
It was such a revelation to experience, first hand, how important, strategic and generative work can be done while people are having so much fun. Organizations who go through the World Café experience enter into a creative flow and do crucial, real, energizing, important learning.
I was fortunate enough to be able to learn by doing. What is surprising is the ease and natural feel of the whole experience from my first attempt. It is such an elegant process, as natural as breathing. I have seen, first hand, the World Café process do magic from a scale of a few people in a room to huge ballrooms containing hundreds of participants. I have seen it work from the classroom to the boardroom. I have seen it loosen stuck, rigid patterns of thought and transport cynics and critics back into the center of the fold. What was unfortunate was the difficulty in explaining the experience to someone who has never been through it, until, this book.
I bought several copies (at the price, it's a steal!), as they are inexpensive enough to hand out to people who have been searching like myself. Of course, there is one for myself to regularly thumb through, earmark, bookmark, highlight; there is one on the bookshelf (people routinely go through my shelves to see the latest and the best) and a spare one on the coffee table (where else?).
Some revelations in the book include: the experience transcends cultures (look up the World Café stories from Sweden, South Africa, Singapore and Saudi Arabia); the rigorous theoretical underpinnings of how and why it works (any graduate students out there?); everything you need to know to start one (including a list of supplies on page 172); numerous suggestions and examples (more than anyone will ever need) of how it can be adapted to fit almost any organizational situation; and finally, a worldwide community of practitioners whose work and descriptions beggar mine.