Common Patterns

Tom Hurley and Otto Scharmer described the evolution of the respective bodies of work of the World Cafe and U Process.  This stirred interest in the personal stories of the original impulse giving rise to the innovation and naming the respective approach as this took place during a similar time period in the mid 1990s.  Their descriptions also included stories of the unfolding of the work, to current forms and formation of networks taking shape worldwide.  The group listened intently, noticing commonalities and potential points of synergy and collaboration.  Such listening opened doors to imaginings and to sensing possibilities.

Open Sourcing:  A significant insight was in noticing how the shared value of open sourcing has contributed substantially to co-evolution of both of these social technologies.  Open sourcing (with a complementary mindset of “gifting” the work) has enabled very rapid and wide spread use of both approaches all over the world.  A large network of people are now using the World Cafe approach in all types of settings worldwide, this as a consequence of open sourcing that has enabled the principles and processes to moved easily and naturally from friend-to-friend.  Over a period of thirteen years, an extensive and diverse network of people using World Cafe has formed.  

Otto Scharmer made note of the shared intention and the enabling influence of open sourcing has had for the U Process work: “There is a lot of similarity [of World Cafe and U Process] in our early beginnings and around the intention of open source.  I always thought about the work I am doing as contributing towards and being part of a larger movement.  I always tried to make it a part of a larger, open source based community rather than just delivering it through a consulting company. As a consequence, a global community or movement around Presencing work is emerging, most importantly already there.  You don’t need to bring it to any place because people are already experiencing it through their own modest experience.”   

Stewarding a Community: Another significant insight from the conversation was in seeing even more clearly from the shared stories the enabling influence of stewardship and global community building. “Up until about three years ago [the global network of people using the World Cafe] was very loosely connected, a very tenuously connected network.  It was connected mostly through the bonds of friendship between individuals and was not really visible to itself or conscious of itself as a network.

In the last two years, we’ve been working to foster the emergence of what we are calling a World Cafe Stewardship Network. Through that process, a number of key stewards have stepped forward to steward different parts of the co-evolution of the World Cafe both as a process and a global community and as a doorway into the deeper work. The Network has coalesced around different stewardship groups, for example by city, by region and by particular aspects of the work such as developing learning tools, on-line communications, multigenerational leadership and research.” -- Tom Hurley

Otto Scharmer described community building in the use of U Process through action projects and collaborative learning:  “Where I try to focus is creating networks through specific activities. The ELIAS Project (Emergent Leaders Innovating for Sustainability) is one such project that has connected high potential leaders from business, government, and NGOs around practical innovation projects.  Other projects that I am currently working on are in Namibia transforming the health system and in Zambia on HIV AIDS.  These are partly business, partly community or partly society based.

It has become a main priority for me in my learning journey lately to come out of the trenches working with projects in the field, to spend more time and focus on [global community building], helping people to link with each other with a global community connection. In addition, part of our experimentation or prototyping around community building has been through our offering of the Global Presencing Classroom on-line.  This is a global network creation around people doing innovation and transformation work in their own context and yet linking with each other in the Global Presencing Classroom infrastructure to support each other and learn how to apply the social technology. How to weave it together and make it more sustainable for a larger whole is becoming more focused for going forward.”  

Possibilities and Proposed Action

George Pór framed an instrumental question as complement to a series of proposed actions and possible opportunities that came from the group: “What are the gifts that this thought leader circle can bring to the circles of practitioners to enhance and encourage their intention for cross fertilizing and exploring synergy in practice, in action across the various social technologies?”  The thought leader group gave voice to a number of prospective joint endeavors and potential opportunities:

Proposed Action: Meet in Person to Share Experience From the Evolution of the World Cafe Network and to Learning More of Deep Listening and Emergence

“I’d like to suggest a follow-up conversation in which those of us who have been working to guide the evolution of the World Cafe network over the last few years, Juanita, Anne, myself and others, could really share that experience in more detail for whatever insights it might offer to Otto and others who are thinking about those questions for the Presencing Institute. The spirit of inquiry and listening and emergence that’s at the heart of the Presencing work would be a gift back to us as we continue to delve into those deep questions ourselves.” --Tom Hurley

Proposed Action: Deeper Integration of the U Process and World Cafe Processes

“I think there is a lot we can learn together about how to support the process of opening to the truly new, truly generative and to what is coming from the highest self.  Not only what we can learn together about this capacity of opening but also learn how to embrace and give form to that which comes through.”  Tom Hurley

“What are the tools, what are the processes, what are the ways of being, relating, learning together, what are the ways of implement and executing on what emerges for us that we can continue to co-evolving at the process level?”  -- Tom Hurley

Proposed Action:  Interweaving Work, Stewards and Practitioners in the Field

The request for integrating the two social technologies brought Otto Scharmer to call attention to the integration that is already happening among people in the field: “Regarding integrating the two bodies of work, in my view it is not really bringing two things together that are separate because they are already connected. People in the field are already integrating the two bodies of work.”  Our question might best be:  “How do we interweave that field within communities and with stewards in ways that best serve [the larger] field?”  

The attention to practitioners, stewards and networks of practitioners already engaged in the work, lead to a proposed action of consciously connecting stewards and networks with one another: “Consciously connecting the stewards and leadership of the networks [of practitioners] is crucial in taking this global movement to a next level.” --Tom Hurley
 
Proposed Action:  Noticing Opportunities to Invite One Another Into Working Together and to Make Visible One Another’s Work

“I think there are ways as individuals that we can be better at noticing opportunities to invite each other into the spaces in which we work and very consciously to use those opportunities and invitations as a way to deepen the relationships and deepen the field of consciousness that is serving the global awakening. At a collective level this means to be more conscious of the many ways of making our respective bodies of work visible, e.g., through postings on our respective websites.”  --Tom Hurley

Proposed Action: Explore Shared Interest in Emerging Leaders &  Multigenerational Collaboration

“Otto had mentioned through MIT or the work of ELIAS a conscious network of mentoring, inspiration and mutual support [to young emergent leaders].  We’ve been very engaged in the conceptual work around multigenerational collaboration, hosting multigenerational dialogue, around multigenerational collaboration in large scale systems change.  That arena of emerging leaders is clearly one worth exploring in further conversations.”  -- Juanita Brown

Further Ideas

Anchoring Profound Transformational Work within a Major Academic Institution

Establishing a base for the work in a major academic institution could make a significant contribution to the movement worldwide. Such a convening place could provide a stronghold for support of the new global consciousness.  It could also provide a platform for developing a new pedagogy, creating a new type of school and a place of opportunity for the next generation of leaders.

“Life put me into this place where I have one part of my life at MIT, another part of my life going around the world, working in these distant places where I have deepening partnerships with organizations and communities.  I know that in this global movement there could be a stronghold in a major academic institution like MIT while doing this kind of profound transformation work, i.e., work that leads individuals and communities to connect with different states of consciousness. 

The place [and anchoring] at MIT could make a big contribution [to the larger movement] particularly if we would allow people from the next generation to connect with the global network that we know informally.  [These young leaders could connect with experienced leaders and practitioners worldwide] in ways that are not generally accessible to them, as a collective network for mentoring, inspiration and support. That is part of my intention.

If [we] could utilize MIT not only as a convening place but as a place that could give birth to a new type of school that in the rapidly evolving global network we are all part of, it would anchor [and enable] part of this new global consciousness inside a major academic institution." -- Otto Scharmer

 

Presencing and World Café Technologies are Directly Relevant to Evolution of A New Approach to Governance Now Being Considered in America

“I think this movement [seen in the Barack Obama Campaign for President] -- which you know is pragmatically very much like our movement--  is needed to shift the direction of this country and therefore the world.  It will have to continue as part of the governance system that has never been acknowledged before, that a President Elect should be mature enough to have a governance system of a movement that would also include in it the issues of a subsidiarity and then the structuring down through that system.  It occurs to me that Presencing and World Café are both [approaches] that [will be] needed should this new movement continue in a positive direction.”  -- Anne Dosher