We believe that we make meaning all the time through our conversations. We create culture, identity and make decisions based on our conversations. They shape our close relationships, our organizations, communities and societies. We need to be cultivating and growing our capacities for hosting and participating in these conversations.
We offer learning spaces that connect people, places, and communities of practice. Come and learn and play with us. Check out our courses and community offerings like the Origin Story series.
Realtime Courses
We design and host learning experiences that enable to you engage with the most experienced practitioners in our field.
Flex Courses
We offer "flex" courses that allow you to learn at your own pace & stay connected to a global community of practice
Origin Stories
Knowing our collective history is core to evolving our practices, so in this series we invite origin stories from our field.
Origin Stories
As part of a thriving community of practice, we believe that knowing our lineage and history as a field is core to our collective evolution. In this series, which started in November of 2018, we have been inviting founders of many of the practices we steward, and those who inspired them, to share their stories of origin and evolution. We've gathered their stories here.
CHAORDIC ORIGINS AND EVOLUTION
POSTPONED - NEW DATE WILL BE POSTED SOON
with Tom Hurley
An Origin Story of The Spectrum of Public Participation
The Chaordic space, path, practice, organizations, lenses and chaordic leadership have been the foundation of how so many of us, understand complexity, living systems and our work in an ever changing world.Â
Tom will join us to share stories from working with Dee Hock and being the CEO of the Chaordic Alliance, what he sees and the core of the chaordic ideas and how these have travelled and evolved over the years.
Over the years we have had deeply inspiring and insightful conversations about the stories of origin from many of the elders and pioneers who have gone before us and shaped parts of the field of dialogic practices that we know today. Here you can see our previous guests.
Juanita Brown
Juanita and Toke share stories about the early days of the World Café and Art of Hosting and how they have co-evolved and stayed close through subsequent years.
Toke Møller
Toke shares perspectives on the early beginnings of Art of Hosting and his influential friendships with Juanita Brown and David Isaacs and the World Café community.
Peter Senge
Peter reminds us of the interconnection of all things - how we as systems thinkers show up, and what made it possible for his ideas to find fertile soil.
Harrison Owen
Harrison shares the beautiful story of how Open Space emerged and was named, as well as an invitation to create an open space for a conversation of 8 Billion people today.
Meg Wheatley
During a rich and very timely conversation, Meg shared some of the initial inspiration for her work, and a focused invitation for how to "be with" the uncertainties of our time.
Christina Baldwin
Christina shares part of the origin story of The Circle Way that she founded with her partner Ann Linnea. Have a listen to this beautiful and heartwarming story.
Otto Scharmer
Otto shares with us not only the powerful origins of his influences and inspirations, but a compelling vision of the future, shared by thousands via his U.Lab & Gaia initiatives.
Finn Voldtofte
World Cafe co-founder, primary contributor to the Art of Hosting & Flow Game, a leading light in the inquiry into collective consciousness - Finn's is an Origin Story with relevance in many fields.
David Sibbet
David shares about the early days of visual sense making about the field of visual practice today and gives us peek into what he is working on today.
Joe Jaworski & Susan Taylor
Joe & Susan explore where our creativity and inspiration for core leadership capacities come from, noting nature's role in connecting us to Source.
Keith McCandless & Henri Lipmanowicz
Together Keith and Henri share answers to the question: Why is it that so many organizations are dysfunctional, with disengaged workers, & wasted ideas?
Pioneers of Change: Maariane, Mille & Colleen
After 25 years, the PoC have inspired countless young international change agents to transform systems and create initiatives and practices that now influence society on all levels.
Dynamic Flex Courses
Learn at your own pace, in your own time, with some of the most experienced practitioners in the field while being part of a thriving global community of facilitators, hosts and sense makers. Throughout the year we will connect in our live Community Calls to inspire and support you to deepen your practice.
The Art of Questions
We need good questions to guide us in our personal lives, families, organizations and nations. We need questions to seed the conversations that really matter, engaging others to address and explore new and better ways of doing what needs to be done.
“Don’t be afraid of the answers. Be afraid of not asking the questions.” – Jennifer Hudson
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Harvesting and Collective Sense Making
With this course we offer sophisticated theory of strategic harvesting to give direction and meaning to our practice, beginning with a deeper understanding of how we learn, know, and make sense of the world around us – as individuals and in groups.
"We don´t design for a meeting but for a harvest."
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Grounded Response to Online Engagement
Staying grounded while responding to the urgent need of meaningful and effective online collaboration
Many of us find ourselves adapting to the new reality of finding alternative ways to connect, do our work and connect with our loved ones online in this time of physical distancing.
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Chaordic Design
In this course we explore the constant dance between Chaos and Order. As we are increasingly working with more uncertainty and more demands to design solutions adaptive and relevant in this complexity we need a good framework, which Chaordic design offers us.
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Hosting in Complexity
With Chris Corrigan we deepen our practice of working with complexity informed principles and practices for group facilitation and participatory process. We explore how to host emergence of meaning and self-organization for adaptive action.
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Developmental Evaluation
Developmental Evaluation can help us make sense in unpredictable and complex situations. In this course we explore how DE helps us learn and evaluate our progress as we go, informing our next steps
Join us in exploring a practical introduction to Developmental Evaluation!
TO BE PUBLISHED INÂ OCTOBER
Evaluation in complexity
How do we know if what we do makes a difference?
It can be hard to know. We are deepening our understanding adaptive evaluation and why it matters. This course will increase your evaluation literacy and enable you to make better strategic decisions, building in the right kind of evaluation.
TO BE PUBLISHED INÂ OCTOBER
Leaning in to ConflictÂ
How do we build capacity to be with conflict in creative and generative ways, with kindness and courage at the center?
In this course we will explore what are we learning about working in the liminal space between conflict and collaboration?
TO BE PUBLISED IN NOVEMBER
Course Compendiums
Part of our commitment to strengthening the community and our capacity to collaborate is to harvest the learning from our courses and make it available to all. (Compendiums are included in all our flex and real-time programs.) This is our current selection, but there are more on the way, so stay tuned!
"Fantastic event. Loved the content, the process & the technology. Pretty seamless. Thank you very much."
Randi
Participant
"I was very much struck by the phrase âLeave more community than you findâ. I think this was really on my mind when I began the job and I hope in some way that is what we did."
EIMEAR MCNALLY
Participant
"Good to know so many interesting people are thinking about these things and willing to spend time sharing knowledge and questions."
Sharon
Participant
"Trust the collective wisdom within groups and allow it to emerge without bias. Thank you to Rowan, Amy, Viola, Chris and others for creating an amazing container for learning!"
