VOLUME 6, NUMBER 4/5

Reflections
The SoL Journal

on Knowledge, Learning, and Change

FEATURE ARTICLE

Building a Systems
Thinking Culture at
Ford Motor Company
Jeremy Seligman

Commentary

Michael Goodman

EMERGING KNOWLEDGE

Committees and Boards in
Healthcare Organizations
Manoj Pawar

BOOK EXCERPTThe World Café

Juanita Brown
with David Isaacs and theWorld Café Community
RECOMMENDED READING

Steve Waddell
Russell L. Ackoff andSheldon RovinJanine M. Benyus
Charles Parry, Joseph Moore andMarilyn Darling
Adreas Priestland and Robert
Hanig

Published by The Society for Organizational Learningreflections.solonline.org
ISSN 1524-1734

PUBLISHER’S NOTE: VOL. 6, NO. 4/5

IN THIS ISSUE OF REFLECTIONS we bring together the themes of systems thinking and conversation. One of SoL’s unique contributions is its blend of fresh analytical perspective on the causes andconsequences of structures and policies, and insight into implementing the cultural shifts that are required
for effective action. The combination of these two approaches evokes the intelligence of systems whose
complexity otherwise can be overwhelming.
The Ford Motor Company was an early sponsor of the MIT Center for Organizational Learning, and has
been a member of SoL since its inception. In our lead article, Jeremy Seligman, a passionate systems thinker,
has captured some of the story of building a systems thinking culture at Ford from the perspective of a relative
newcomer. The candor of this piece helps us appreciate the fact that organizational systems will naturally
limit the success of even the best-intentioned efforts. Recognizing, planning for, and learning to correctthese limits helps build organizational capacity for systems thinking that survives and grows over time.
A key ingredient in developing a deep appreciation for the systemic nature of issues is the ability to consider diverse perspectives. Our Emerging Knowledge feature, “Committees and Boards in Health Care
Organizations: Barriers to Organizational Learning?” presents the story of redesigning a structure in order tochange the nature of conversations within an organization. The case is an interesting example of systems
thinking itself, because the intention of the intervention is not simply to improve the quality of conversation, but to experiment with a structure for governance that is enabled and reinforced with new tools.
One of these tools is the World Café process. “Conversation as a Core Process: Co-Creating Business andSocial Value” is our featured excerpt from the new book The World Café: Shaping Our Futures ThroughConversations That Matter by Juanita Brown, with David Isaacs and the World Café Community. This
chapter features two more stories of transforming working relationships and stimulating significant innovation by encouraging the participation of whole systems.
Finally, I’d like to remind you that SoL gatherings are a great way to sharpen analytical skills and deepen
conversation on the topics that matter most to us. You can still sign up to attend SoL’s 2nd Global Forumin Vienna – “A Symphony of Innovation” – September 13-16th by visiting http://www.solonline.org/
events/GlobalForum2005Public/ (There will be a special pre-meeting session for those interested in theevents/GlobalForum2005Public/.
World Café process.) In future issues of Reflections we will share some of the work presented at this meeting, and feature work from other SoL gatherings as well.
As always, we welcome your suggestions, requests and comments. Happy reading, and we look forward
to hearing from you!

C. Sherry Immediato
Managing Director, SoL

ii Reflections ■ Volume 6, Number 4/5

READERS WRITE: VOL. 6, NO. 4/5

T I M E LY P R A C T I C A L I T Y
T H E L A S T I S S U E O F R E F L E C T I O N S (Vol. 6, No. 2/3) arrived at a most opportune time. Over thelast few months, several colleagues and I in the Technology and Manufacturing Group within Intel havebeen investigating the implications of social networks on diversity and inclusiveness in the work environment. Specifically, we have been looking at the nature of “dominant” and “non-dominant” networks andtheir impact on such things as culture formation, business process design, and the definition of what might
be called the “ideal” member. The Reflections lead article “The Nature of Social Collaboration: How
Work Really Gets Done” by Dennis Sandow and Anne Murray Allen, provided useful insight.
Of particular interest was the authors’ definition of collaboration as “simply the social coordination ofaction around a shared purpose” and the related casual loop “Figure 5: Reinforcing Trust” with its associated explanation (i.e. Listening ® Understanding ® Trusting ® Collaborating ® Listening).
Several questions emerged for us that have helped to focus our inquiry. What is the quality of “listening” between members of “dominant” and “non-dominant” networks? What process might create“shared purpose” across current networks and help drive collaboration in order to form new networks?
Many of us commented on the practicality of the article – and how it seemed to arrive at just the time
it was needed. Thank you for it and your continued good work.
Robert M. O’Bryan
Senior OD Consultant, Intel Corporation..............................................................................

PUBLIC AND PRIVATE INQUIRYA S A N E X E C U T I V E C O A C H W H O SPECIALIZES in women’s leadership, I found the discussion

between Peter Senge and Saj-nicole Joni (“A New Tool for Inquiry,” Reflections 6.1) fascinating for several reasons.
Joni’s framework for first, second, and third opinions names a strategy that many coaches advise. But
Joni’s model more clearly articulates the value and distinctions of the levels of inquiry and how the connectedness and interdependencies of the opinions help to develop the thinking of the leader. Joni makes awonderful point in emphasizing that public and private inquiry are interdependent. Regardless of how
many questions are asked in public, it’s essential for individuals to reflect on their own and to ask questions of others in private. This combination of public and private inquiry helps to shape thinking by sorting through and integrating what’s learned.
A related point of interest is that to me, Joni’s concepts reflect “feminine” thinking. It might be justcoincidental, but Joni’s model is reflective of the way in which many women approach leadership. In my
experience and research, women tend to gather information from many sources. They ask a lot of questions, publicly and privately, before they come to a decision. This process can often be misinterpreted byreflections.solonline.org

Readers Write iii

READERS WRITE continued

men who equate the inquiry process with the inability to make decisions. Women say, as Joni herself
says, that they need to “talk it out.” Women look for sounding boards to process their thoughts and theyrecognize the value of talking to people who have insider feedback and to people who can be completely objective.
Joni’s model reinforces the critical concept that leaders, both men and women, have to know whento ask particular questions, whom to ask, in what setting to ask, and how to integrate and interpret the
information they receive. Thank you for bringing it to your readers’ attention.
Ginny O’Brien
Executive Coach, and author of Coaching Yourself to Leadership:
Five Key Strategies for Becoming an Integrated Leader and Success on Our
Own Terms: Tales of Extraordinary, Ordinary Business Women.............................................................................
Send your comments, questions, and suggestions to reflections@solonline.org

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FEATURE

Building a Systems Thinking
Culture at Ford Motor Company
By Jeremy Seligman

M
Jeremy Seligman

any of us in the systems thinking (ST) and organizational learning communities
have experienced frustration in creating sustainable communities of practice incorporate environments. Sharing that frustration with each other has generated
much reflection and dialogue as to why these efforts are so consistently challenging. It canbe disappointing to return years later to the site of initiatives – many of which were undertaken with substantial initial internal support and the best resources on the planet – to findlittle evidence of either measurable benefits or ongoing active practice fields. The benefits ofpracticing systems thinking – gaining an understanding of the dynamics of a system and how
to intervene in it successfully – are incontrovertible. Yet sometimes it seems doubtful that ST
will ever gain the critical mass required to make it an integral part of how major corporations
practice strategic thinking.

The Legacy of Systems Thinking at Ford
There was already a rich history of systems thinking at Ford Motor Company when I arrived
there as a consultant to the information technology (IT) group in early 2001, although I was
not aware of this at the time. When word began to spread that there was a consultant on site
who was asking about and talking about systems thinking, people quietly approached me,
and hesitantly revealed that they too were systems thinkers, but that we probably ought toclose the door if we wanted to continue the conversation. I found the behavior curious, and alittle alarming, but over time I came to understand the behavior and the reasons behind it.
When I broached the subject of adding ST to the learning curriculum of IT at Ford, one of
the survivors of the last ST era at Ford pulled me into a conference room to speak. Over time,
we talked regularly, shared ideas, and learned to trust each other. It was clear that the chief
information officer (CIO) was a strong supporter of ST, and slowly a small group coalescedaround the idea of reinvigorating systems thinking in IT. We began to plan an approach tobuilding capacity in the organization in a way that would be sustainable. We did not want
to do anything that would reanimate Ford’s quiescent but vigilant “immune system,” theinstinctive response of all organizations to reject anything “foreign” or new.
In the mid-1990s, Ford had opened its doors to Peter Senge, Russell Ackoff, Daniel Kim,
and others in order to learn about ST and to apply it to an increasingly high-profile range of
projects and programs. The story of that time is not the subject of this article, and it has been
documented and reported elsewhere. It was an era that produced some remarkable results,
including new model launches that were accomplished with better communication, lessreflections.solonline.org

Feature � Seligman 1

rework, and improved cost performance. The era also left its mark on a number of people atFord, whose introduction to and deep immersion in ST forever changed their way of looking
at the world and getting results at work.
Participants in these early efforts had some difficulties. Learning labs and coursework during this era were characterized by a “learning for the sake of learning” approach, without
sufficient focus on real-world problems. As a result, many people walked away with transformational personal insights but little idea of how to apply these insights to their everyday
work. Also, ST’s innovative approaches, new language, and challenges to existing mental
models energized the company’s immune system, and over time, many of the initial champions of the ST projects moved on to other positions within and outside the company. Those
who remained came to feel that espousing the language and practices of ST was increasingly
unacceptable, and even risky. In the words of one of these “survivors” with whom I subsequently spoke, “We all went underground. There are more systems thinkers here than you
know about, but they are not willing to come out of their caves yet.”

The Edison ProjectIn the fall of 2003, Ford Motor Company’s Information Technology Group began to look at the organization’s
fragmented IT infrastructure. This undertaking was named the “Edison Project” in hopes that it would “shedsome light” on the complexities of the group’s business of warehousing, building, and transferring data throughout the company. Everyone agreed that IT fragmentation was a costly and time consuming issue that needed
to be dealt with, but not on the definition of the problem trying to be solved. Some saw it as a problem of data
integration across a shared network of servers. Others saw it as a problem of mixing legacy systems with modern
day applications. And everyone had questions. How would they know if they were solving the “right” problem?
In solving it, would they create a whole host of new issues? Were they willing to bet their reputation with thebusiness on their instincts about the right solution?
The champion, or sponsor, of the project suggested taking a systemic approach so that the group could see
the interrelations of the system and gain a better understanding of the issue. Participants in the project firstcreated an accurate picture of Ford’s IT infrastructure. This included what the system looked like to customers,
the complexity of the servers, and the complexity of the types of applications. Using systems thinking tools –which included causal loop diagrams and stock-and-flow computer models – helped them articulate and builda shared understanding of the (then-current state) of the organization’s IT infrastructure without assigning
blame or trying to “fix” a problem.
Eventually team members identified leverage points within three main themes, all of which were critical forthe integration project to be successful. One was “technology,” using factory-like, assembly-line processes thatwould help migrate existing applications and infrastructure smoothly into a new system. The second was called“adoption,” which included the social technology to support that migration. This involved long range activities
such as working with customers beforehand to improve their willingness to submit their owned infrastructure,and early identification of related software applications to the group for integration. This work became very important in building a trusting working relationship between IT and its customers in the business. The third theme
was developing an understanding of the “network effect” benefits of infrastructure defragmentation. Once theteam understood what the costs and benefits would be to the entire system – which had not been analyzed
previously – it was easier to make the case for change to everyone who would be affected.
Initially many people thought that a change of this nature – integrating IT in a new, virtual, user-friendly
environment – would be cost prohibitive. At Ford, IT is not strictly a cost center. Most funding for the Edison
Project would need to come from business customers. Using systems tools demonstrated that despite a larger

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A New Champion
The existing small band of practitioners had been doing some very limited ST work, but
mostly behind the scenes and on small projects, given the sense they all shared of being
medieval monks preserving the arts and sciences through the Dark Ages. Around, this time,in 2001, the then-new CIO Marv Adams sponsored several very high visibility ST-based
analyses and began speaking to a broad range of audiences about what had been learned
from the project, “openly” using causal loop diagrams (CLDs) and praising the benefits of
ST as a way of seeing the bigger picture. Partially as a result of this and partially because the
ST community was taking on more public projects, interest in the discipline began to increase
throughout the IT community.
Adams, an engineer by training, had long been convinced of the power of a systems thinking approach in understanding both information technology and business problems. He
clearly saw that the problems endemic to large IT organizations could be understood as failures to understand the whole system of which those problems were a part. The IT environ-initial investment, the payback over time would be larger than expected. Armed with this information and agreater understanding of the system at large, group members were able to explain the change in a way that
customers could understand, encouraging adoption of the new methodology, and allowing better partnerships between IT and the business.

Figure 1: Edison Service Environment: Adoption Rate

Applications
on
Consolidated
Servers

Applications

+

-

+

time toconsolidate

OS conversion rate+++
time toconvert

Applicationson
Commodity
Servers

Applicationson
Common OS
commoditization
rate+

time tocommoditize

averageapplications

Potential
Adopters-

Applications
in Virtualized
Enironment
virtualization rate+
time to virtualize

Adopters
adoption rate

This stock-and-flow diagram (part of a larger model) helped the group see the probable impact of therate at which customers adopted the new “commonization” of applications and servers. The development of the model pointed out the need for policies and measurements that could offset the “worse
before better” syndrome that customers would experience as the systems changed. Intuitively, thegroup had understood there would be a savings, but the model made it clear that costs would rise
immediately and more dramatically than anticipated. The model helped the group determine how toaddress those cost impacts, build a truer understanding of the benefits of the change, and position
the business case more clearly – which helped build trust between IT and its customers, and increase
the rate of adoption.

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Feature ■ Seligman 3

ment has become immensely more complex in the last 20 years, but methods for coordinationand control of this complex environment have not kept pace. One study was commissioned
to use systems dynamics tools to look at an internal program designed to defragment thecomputing infrastructure. Although the program had made substantial progress in simplifying the computing environment, it was running up against many unanticipated obstacles, andthe harder the team pushed to accelerate the program, the more it seemed to slow down. A
systems thinking project produced a broader understanding of the causes of the resistance,and provided insights into how to intervene in the system and get things moving again. (Seesidebar, “The Edison Project.”)

Dealing with “Limits to Success”
As the success and positive reception of some of these early programs filtered through theorganization, along with the recognition and support these programs were getting from the
CIO, new ideas and project requests began to pour in. By mid-2004, our list of potential projects totaled more than 75, but the resources available consisted of a small handful of people,
only one of them truly dedicated to ST full time. This was a situation likely to produce a“limits to success” scenario (one of the most common system archetypes) and a probably
fatal blow to the reemergence of ST at Ford.
Below is a map we put together to help us understand the phenomenon of our own limitations. As we saw this map, we began to realize a leverage point in the system: We needed
more practitioners.
In response to this situation, we decided to focus all the efforts of the existing group on
building capacity within the organization. This meant that we would decline almost all

Figure 2: Limits to SuccessCustomer
Satisfaction

+

+

R1

B2

Productivity-

Improvement
Results-+

B1

Sponsorship+

Number of
Initiatives
+

R3

R2
Visibility-

This segment of alarger causal loop
diagram shows that as
customer satisfaction
with the results of new
projects increased, thedemand for new, larger,
and more visible projects also increased,
which decreased the
productivity of thesmall group of people
whose job it was towork on these projects.

+

Scope

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requests to take on new projects, except as a part of training or immersion experiences forwhich the primary outcome was new practice capability. When accepting a new project, wemade it clear that unlike a typical IT project, this project came with no promises for any
particular results or findings. The primary goal was learning; the secondary goal was results
or intervention. This was not an easy concept to sell to the organization, as it strongly challenged executives’ mental models of what a project was supposed to be.

Building Capacity for Systems Thinking
The question, then, was “How do we go about building ST capacity in this very large corporate IT environment?” At this point in 2002, the team consisted of one full-time person,a small band of “ST survivors,” and some new volunteers. We agreed that we needed toaccomplish two complementary goals.
First, we needed to create an awareness of ST basics across a broad band of the organization. This would require a comprehensive curriculum, and good broad-based learning
resources. It would also require ways to sustain the learning, a part of which had to include
opportunities to practice in relevant ways. Since then, we have created a comprehensive curriculum that looks at ST from three perspectives:• The mechanics of ST, including the CLDs, archetypes, and methods for designinginterventions.
• The ST theory, including looking at mental models.
• “Telling the Story,” learning how to package and communicate the lessons andfindings of ST to the organization.
We created the curriculum, including learning objectives, activities, and resources, along acontinuum leading the learner from initial acquisition of skills and knowledge to development of the ability to guide others and ultimately shape and foster the program in years tocome. We have shared our work at several Society of Organizational Learning (SoL) forums,
and continue to make substantial progress in establishing for the first time a phased, comprehensive curriculum for teaching ST in the corporate environment.
The second goal of the program was to create an expanding base of advanced practitioners, who were able to lead ST projects, design interventions, and eventually teach and leadothers in building their capacity. It was immediately obvious to us that these two goals weredeeply intertwined and needed to be addressed systemically, but it was not immediately obvious how that was to be accomplished. That’s where the Multidisciplinary Action Projects(MAP) came in, and provided an important key to building ST capacity at Ford.
Through our partnership with the University of Michigan, we had been hosting a groupof graduate students from the business school in seven-week internships. Three years ago
we conducted the first session in what has developed into a unique internship experience
for the U of M students. This internship program, named MAP by the university, involved ateam of students given a project to work on, typically an analysis of a program or process
at the sponsoring company’s site with recommendations for improving the project due asa final report. Many corporations have been partnering with the university for more than
10 years in offering these types of opportunities to the graduate students. Potential projects are displayed at a fair each year, and students bid on the engagements in which they
are most interested.

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We broke this mold by engaging the students in seven weeks of intensive ST training, andalthough this was centered on some relevant business issue, the desired outcome was new
systems thinkers, not a specific solution to the problem, which was offered up mostly as grist
for the ST mill. The focus of this effort was action learning. Students would learn about the“Ladder of Inference” tool, for example, and immediately apply the concept
The presentations
to the data-gathering stage. Powerful results ensued when students were able
to apply a tool to a real-world situation, note the results, and look for addiproduced thetional business issues to tackle, such as finance, purchasing, or other business
Holy Grail of ST
units we thought had minimal input to the opportunity we were addressing.
It was more than a little interesting to us that the MAP students, whenoutcomes: greattransplanted from their collegiate setting to Ford, were able to go through thedialogue and atransformation required to understand the notion of mental models, examinemood of reflection
and question their own, coalesce as a group, and learn to analyze and understand complex issues from the perspective of a systems thinker in a very shortamong thetime. Further, the team noted with a mix of elation and curiosity that thesenior team.
presentations the MAP students made to the senior IT team produced theHoly Grail of ST outcomes: great dialogue and a mood of reflection among
the senior team. These are the gateways to more informed decision making.
We realized that we now had all the elements we needed to produce an integrated curriculum and approach to ST at Ford. We proposed and got support for a series of MAP-like
programs for Ford IT. These Ford–MAP (FMAP) programs would pull a small number of
employees out of their regular work for as much as 15 weeks, during which time they would
be led and coached through an intensive immersion in systems thinking basics, and would
work through the sequential steps of an ST project. Upon completion of the FMAP experience they would return to their everyday work, but their problem solving tool set would havethe additional skill of systems thinking. At present our constraint for these FMAP sessions
was the numbers of coaches we had to each and lead the course; however we are getting
fairly clever and adaptable at our timing without compromising the quality of the results.
Recently I had a conversation with one of the FMAP groups. They were nearing the end of
their project, and wanted to discuss how to make the transition back to the “real world” ofday-to-day IT. They were concerned with how to deal with the corporate immune system,
and we were able to strategize together about how they could take what they had learned
and embed it in their work and approach to problems.
I fully believe that we are building a small core of people inside IT who will never be able
to look at problem-solving with a linear approach again, who will always seek to ask the
deeper, more systemic questions, and who will look for the intended and unintended consequences of every decision. Whether we will ultimately anchor ST in the Ford IT organizationis still an open question, and of course will never be answered definitively. The word organization shares the same etymological root as organism, and like organisms, organizations
change over time, responding and adapting to their environments in ways that will determine
their survival or extinction. We recently had conversations with the organizational development group of a company once widely known for its ST practice, of which there is little trace
today. We understand that sustainability is a quality that can and should be part of the designof such a practice. However, in the final analysis it is an emergent phenomenon that will
depend on a number of factors not always within our control, including changes in leadership and the broader business environment.

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Ford is much like other large corporations in its fondness for large programs designed tocascade a methodology or culture change initiative through the organization. It is our observation that the failure of ST to take hold and grow roots in large organizations has in partbeen because we practitioners of ST have forgotten the insights we ourselves developed over
the years: The result of a great ST project is not a set of elegant causal loop diagrams, but a
new capacity for reflective dialogue, deep insight, and shifting entrenched mental models.
This is often a long, painstaking, and slow process, achieved through numerous challenging
and carefully crafted conversations led by skilled, experienced, and compassionate practitioners. However, when it comes to teaching ST itself to an organization, we may forget theselessons, and rely on the power that we have seen in ST to be inherently knowable andequally attractive to the organization and the people within it. This is almost never the case,since any approach that challenges entrenched mental models, disturbs patterns of power
and influence, or potentially exposes faulty thinking or causes embarrassment is certain to
produce significant resistance and even active suppression.
It is too early to conclude that ST will become an ongoing integral part of how we understand our environment and make decisions at Ford, and perhaps it’s best never to make thatsort of conclusion in a complex dynamic system such as a large corporation. But it has been
our experience that it is possible to energize an organization with the practice of systems
thinking even in the aftermath of a difficult period. Indeed, the failures of the past may provide the very embers that systems thinking can fan into full blaze.

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Guidelines for Practicing Systems Thinking
Understand your history
There is no ideal, perfect, or correct plan or template for rolling out ST in an organization. Every situationis unique and can best be understood as the aggregate of all the history and conditions that came before.
• What has the response to change programs typically been?
• What has the attitude to learning been in the company?
• Has ST made an appearance before? What was the reaction
Respect and appreciate the current state of the people in the organization
People love change, but they hate to be changed. Base your strategy on what the likely response will beto each part of the program, and don’t try to overcome resistance. Appreciate the resistance and give peoplea chance to do more of what they find satisfying and nonthreatening.
••••

What is the pervasive mood of the organization?
What events have taken place that might have built resistance to the introduction of an ST initiative?
Have you spent sufficient time understanding the existing mental models of the potential participants?
What small successes have occurred that you could leverage to bring ST practices into play?

Create the conditions for self-reflection inside a safe practice field
Building a safe and collegial environment multiplies the chances of people examining and shifting their own
mental models a hundredfold, which will increase the impact of the work on both the individuals and theorganization immeasurably.
• Can you make and accept provisional findings without fear of the “failure” label?
• What does it mean to truly practice, allow yourself to think about new ideas out loud, and invite others
to share and build them with you?
Take the deep structures into account
The larger, older, and more traditional the organization, the more you will discover deep structures that produce
patterns of behavior that explain the resistance to change you will encounter. Don’t fight deep structures unlessthey are in your circle of control. Understand them, however, and you will know how to create micro-changes
that over time can and will reach a critical mass that will impact and shift the structures.
• From an ST perspective, what are the deep structures, which will inevitably reproduce the same patternsof behavior within the organization?
• Can you intervene in those structures, or should you take them as givens, providing a set of strategic
guideposts for designing your interventions?
Look for similar or parallel successes in the organization, and seek to leverage them
Spend more time studying successes than failures. Failures are enlightening in telling you which paths arelikely to be blocked. Successes indicate which paths may be open to you.
• Can you think of a time in your organization when people embraced a new idea, method, or tool?
What characterized that time?
• What are the ways that you can get a pilot program going in your company with the fewest bureaucratic
hurdles or layers of approval?

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Concentrate on building capacity rather than achieving results or completing projects
In one of our projects, the participants didn’t draw a CLD until practically the last day, but this group has
produced some of the most committed systems thinkers to come from any group. To be overly focused on
the product and not the process will inevitably produce bad results and fail to teach the core lessons of ST.
• Have you clearly communicated the purpose of your project to the sponsors and the organization?
• Have you identified people within the organization who are likely to become practitioners, and concentrated
your early efforts on them?
Create a “pull” program by concentrating on small groups of early adopters.
Large cascaded programs are an invitation to the immune system to go into overdrive. Start quietly, withpeople who are interested and willing to commit, and don’t be in a hurry. Remember that immune system!
• Who will sponsor an initial pilot, whether it is under the radar or on the screen?
• Is there a group of alternative thinkers, survivors of an unsustained major change initiative, or a groupthat already meets to discuss ways to improve the work environment that you can connect with?

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Jeremy Seligman is director, Information Technology (IT) Strategy and Organizational Development,
Ford Motor Company, a position he was appointed to in 2005. After time spent in teaching and as aprofessional musician, Seligman began his business career at Xerox in Finance and later in Information
Systems, then moved to Frontier Communications, where he was appointed CIO in 1997. A two-time
graduate of the University of Rochester (with a bachelor’s degree in Education and an MBA in Financeand Economics), he is a lifelong student of organizational dynamics and change and is a member of
the Founding SoL Council of Trustees.
jseligma@ford.com

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Feature ■ Seligman 9

COMMENTARY

Commentary
By Michael Goodman

Michael Goodman

When I began working as a consultant in thebring about sustainable change in organizations.

field of organizational dynamics and change

The guidelines he offers reinforce the lessons

more than three decades ago, my colleagues

many of us have learned, often the hard way.

and I believed that once people saw the rich-

Heaving dealt with a diversity of organizationalness, compelling logic and value of thinking

immune systems all over the world, I can offer

systemically about serious business, organiza-a few additions – many developed with mytional, and social issues, they would naturallycolleague Cliff Bolster – that may help thoseadopt this approach in making decisions andwho are newer to the work.

setting policy. We assumed our job was in largepart a marketing challenge: “show and tell” theworld about what systems thinking (and laterorganizational learning) offered and “theywould come.”
Ironically, most of us failed to think systemically about the change process itself. We did
not fully grasp the power and resilience of theresistive forces and pressures inherent in every
system, no matter how well intended or beneficial the proposed change. Take the case that
Jeremy Seligman briefly alludes to in his article:“Go slower now in order to be able togo faster later” is always a winning strategy
in systems thinking work. Proceed carefully, andlet expectations about results grow slowly andin alignment with internal capacity.
Doing systems thinking alone is notenough. In my experience, the practice andapplication of systems thinking must be usedin concert with the other learning disciplines,
especially mental models and building sharedvision.

the systems thinking work at Ford related to

The process is more important than thethe launch of the Lincoln Continental in the

product. How you go about using systems

mid-1990s. It is often cited as one of the mostthinking matters. As Seligman notes, the Holyvisible and measurable corporate systems

Grail is generating serious dialogue which canthinking success stories. Yet upon hearing it,then produce shifts in mindsets and behavior. It

people usually ask “What became of all that

isn’t about getting the diagrams right, it’s about

success and learning within Ford?” It appears

getting the process right: getting the right stake-that despite the clear bottom line impacts theholders in a “safe” environment or “practice field”

program generated, little of the tools andwhere they can start to discover the hidden

methods associated with the launch dispersed

consequences of their collective actions andto the wider system. The immune systemchallenge their own thinking. It’s about learning.

seems to have kept a local success frombecoming an organization-wide success.

Sheep dipping often leads to drowning.
As Seligman again notes, organizations hold

As Seligman’s article demonstrates, systems

an unfortunate bias in assuming that everyone

thinking practitioners are still learning how toneeds to be exposed to systems thinking.

10 Reflections ■ Volume 6, Number 4/5

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I know of no better way to evoke the wrath of

Do not make systems thinking a separate

the immune system than by forcing everyone

initiative. If you can keep your program “underthrough some sort of training program.

the radar,” you can accomplish a lot more. We

Intervene at organization, team, andindividual levels. This is an easy one to miss.
Capacity building at the individual level is necessary but insufficient. Working with intact teams

often advise our clients not to label what they
are doing as systems thinking. Just start using
the tools and processes with people andobserve what happens.

is very high leverage. But the policies, processes,

Given the difficulties in getting started impliedand procedures that drive the organization’sby these guidelines, you may wonder why we

inner works are most critical. It is often here

should bother trying to create a systems think-that you find some of the sources of theing culture at any organization. My own answer

immune system or deep structures that resist

is that systems thinking is a powerful languagechange: the reward system, the appraisal

for diagnosis and action. Its focus is on thesystem, the financial priorities, and thecritical relationships and connections often

management development strategies.

missed or undervalued that can make or break

Learn from the implementation experience
itself. When it comes to organizational change,
there is no better teacher than direct experience.
In Ford’s case, realizing that the MAP (Multidisciplinary Action Projects) could be used tobuild internal capacity was a real breakthrough.
But what is true for Ford IT may not be replicable for other organizations for reasons suchas access, tradition, history, etc. Start small,see what works, and build on your experience.

a change effort. It enables us to recognize theoften hidden and unintended consequences of
our actions, to change our own thinking tomatch the way complex systems operate, toalter our behavior so that we are working withthese complex forces instead of against them,and to expand the choices available to us.
When we see those choices, we have theability to pick the high leverage changes
that will really make a difference.

Watch out for initiative overload. People

Michael Goodman

are overwhelmed from the number of change

Founderand improvement programs, efforts andInnovation Associates Organizational Learning

initiatives rolling through their organizations.

Mrginhop@aol.com

While each of these programs is well intended
and should yield positive returns, the reality isthat often individuals do not have enough time,energy, or commitment to fully engage andcommit to those programs. Demand seems tohave exceeded capacity, and the unfortunate
byproduct of too many large-scale initiatives
is often cynicism.

© 2005, Society for Organizational Learning. All Rights Reserved.

reflections.solonline.org

Commentary ■ Goodman 11

Committees and Boards
in Healthcare Organizations:
Barriers to Organizational Learning?
Manoj Pawar
Are Healthcare
Organizations LearningDisabled?
In our work, my colleagues andI have found that the organizational dynamics in hospitals,
medical groups, and other
healthcare organizations tend
Manoj Pawar
to include an overemphasison advocacy, power and control, personal agendas,
blame, and other fear-based dynamics. Although it
is true that these elements are seen in all industries,
these dynamics seem to be the norm in healthcareorganizations.1 Additionally, fear-based dynamics
seem to manifest themselves more in healthcare
teams, and especially at the board and committee
levels, where managers and physicians interface.2
This severely limits an organization’s capacity to create, adapt, and innovate effectively – skills needed tomeet current and future industry challenges related
to cost, consumerism, patient safety, and outcomesbased in quality3. Health care organizations willneed to evolve into true learning organizations if
they are to survive these industry trends.4
Our review examines the challenges of creating aculture conducive to team learning at the level ofhospital boards and committees, the nature of theteam learning skills lacking in healthcare organizations, and the approach we took with one organization to replace its “governing board” with that of astructured dialogue group, in an effort to advance its
efforts in becoming a learning organization while
fostering closer relationships with physicians.

12 Reflections ■ Volume 6, Number 4/5

One Source of Dysfunction:
Hospital Boards and Committees
Although a full discussion of the factors that contribute to barriers to organizational learning is beyond
the scope of this article, many can be attributed tothe training environments of physicians, nurses, andother skilled healthcare professionals. These tend
to be hierarchical “command-and-control” environments that discourage true creative inquiry and the
exploration of new concepts or approaches throughgenerative dialogue.5, 6 The decision-making styles
that evolve in the fast-paced clinical settings are
grounded in a need to assess large amounts of data
in a rigorous manner, while also doing so in a fashion that allows a team to take action quickly. Whentransferred to settings that do not involve potentiallylife-threatening clinical outcomes, however, this particular approach to conversation and decision making can be problematic.
Barriers to organizational and team learning in
healthcare organizations are present on fairly highlevels, in boards and committees particularly. Wellmeaning managers assume that, like themselves,
healthcare professionals are reasonably comfortablewith learning in teams and that, via their involvement, they seek to fulfill the mission of the team,board, or committee. The mental models that arise
from two substantially different types of training –healthcare and business – can lead to suboptimal
performance and failure to meet mutual expectations
if not addressed. Leaders in healthcare grossly
underestimate the degree to which healthcare professionals expect that their roles in meetings of teams,

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boards or committees will be directive in nature,
involving decision making, advocating for their constituencies, and mandating solutions to problems.
Although the “right” people may have been selected
for these teams, leaders must understand that gaps
exist in terms of the skills required to achieve effective team learning. While more directive approaches
do play an important role in team dynamics (a decision must be made or an action taken at some point),
generative dialogue must become the primary workof these groups.7 Failure to do so will inhibit theorganization’s ability to rapidly adapt to changing
market trends, and to truly explore the real questions that are essential in reducing medical errors
and improving outcomes.

Defining the Disability and the Natureof Its Impact
In order to better understand the nature of the“learning disability” that is common among healthcare organizations today, it is helpful to review theconcepts of a learning organization and of dialogue.
Learning Organizations
Learning organizations are organizations whose
members are continually focused on expanding theircollective awareness, capabilities, and intelligence.
These organizations are open to challenging theircommonly accepted assumptions, structures, andnorms, to gaining actionable knowledge, and to
sharing knowledge among all their members. As aresult, learning organizations are not only able toadapt effectively to current challenges, they also
embrace the challenges of the future.8 As the sharedpool of knowledge within the organization grows,
so does the collective organizational intelligence,
making the organization more adept at quickly
identifying opportunities, meeting challenges, andinnovating. As many healthcare organizations strive
to become learning organizations, they struggle withperhaps the most critical skills needed to foster a culture of organizational learning and trust: the skillsof dialogue.

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Dialogue
Dialogue, then, is a form of conversation throughwhich people think together to arrive at a muchlarger shared understanding. Whereas discussion,or the fragmentation of thought through debate andargument, seems to be the norm for many healthcare teams, dialogue seeks to heighten the collective
intelligence of the group.9 As defined by the physicist
David Bohm, dialogue implies a “flow of meaning.”
Effective dialogue achieves this “flow of meaning”
through the use of two important skills: the ability tounderstand and make apparent mental models, andthe ability to balance advocacy and inquiry.
Mental models are the “filters” through which weperceive and interpret the events of our worlds, and
it is upon these often incomplete perceptions that webase actions and decisions. Developing awarenessfor our internal mental models, with all of theirflaws, and continually seeking to clarify and to complete these models requires that individuals maketheir thinking visible to one another.10
The second of these dialogue skills, balancing
inquiry and advocacy, places emphasis on generating
conversation directed towards understanding thethinking of others. In general, our culture tends tofavor advocacy more than inquiry, and the same
holds true for teams in healthcare, perhaps to aneven greater degree (consider the formats of grandrounds, or “mobidity and mortality” rounds inmany hospitals).11 Inquiry adds a great deal to thecollective knowledge by eliciting important perspectives or facets from others that could alter the mental
models within the group. Refining the shared understanding of a concept is essential before taking
action, making decisions, or reacting with strong
emotion.
When performed effectively, dialogue leads tohigher levels of trust, true and honest exploration ofimportant concepts and challenges, shared understanding, and innovative thinking that raises thecollective knowledge of the group. In healthcare,dialogue most certainly is a critical competency12 foreffective process improvement, as it relates to cus-

EKF ■ Pawar 13

Figure 1: The Compass Group: Service Excellence and Patient Satisfaction
Learning Objectives:
By the end of this session, participants should be able to:• Describe the strategic importance of customer service
and patient satisfaction.
• Describe the process by which the most recent patientsatisfaction surveys were developed, implemented, andanalyzed.
• Use inquiry skills to engage in more revealing dialogue
with providers, staff, and patients regarding service.
Action Oriented Goals:
As a result of this session the following action can be
expected:• Participants will share their views on patient satisfaction,
as well as their “best practices” in the context of theirservice-related plans at their sites.
• The “best practices” flip chart maintained during thesession will be communicated to all providers and staff.

tomer service, quality outcomes, financial outcomes,
and strategic dilemmas. The skills of dialogue in this setting have impact at a number of interfaces: physicianphysician, physician-nurse, physician-administrator,
and physician-patient, among others. Organizations
that master these skills will be able to achieve highlevels of success at each interface as a result. The
specific dialogue skills that we have found elusive in
healthcare organizations are those related to understanding mental models, and those related to inquiry.
Failure to achieve successful dialogue with theseskills in an organization leads to cultures based onblame, organizational rituals that are never questioned, processes that cannot be managed effectively,
and short-sighted strategic thinking. In today’s marketplace, the lack of this competency will place organizations at a competitive disadvantage.

Case Study: The Challengesof One Organization
The governing board of a healthcare organization
with which we worked was typical of many seenin this industry. Physicians attended meetings withthe expectation of advocating for their constituen-

14 Reflections ■ Volume 6, Number 4/5• The management team will assimilate observations inthis forum with those of other stakeholders to potentiallymodify the survey content, questions, and process in the
future.
• The frequency and method of monitoring satisfaction on
an ongoing basis will be refined.
• The “action items list” maintained during the session will
be delegated and acted upon.
• Interested provider-participants will be invited to work on
this project with administrative project leaders in the
future.
Pre-Work:
Participants will be expected to be familiar with the patientsatisfaction survey results for their own sites, and shouldhave already had discussed with their managers and directors
regarding their action plans based on these results.

cies based on location or specialty, while personal
agendas promoted a need for control while defending one’s position. Many physicians questioned thevalue of the board, wondering if they really had any
formal control, and these same physicians had indicated to the chairman that they were advocating andlobbying to dissolve the group. Managers learned tofear these meetings, as interactions tended to focus
on criticism of the existing situation, solution, or
dilemma. Reports on the progress of key departments devolved into “feeding frenzies” for the critical healthcare professionals who were accustomed tosuch thinking and interaction in the purely clinicalsetting. Not only were expectations not met, true
exploration of challenges through healthy dialogue
were rarely observed.
As the chairman and the management team contemplated the future of this board, we were invited
to facilitate a retreat to help assess the true beliefs of
the current attendees and other stakeholders. Our
preliminary work with this organization revealed thefollowing perceptions:• Physicians and managers believed that there
was, indeed, value in meeting together regularly.

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• Both groups felt that the “new” strategic
themes within the organization (satisfaction ofcustomers/patients; satisfaction of employees;
strengthened physician relationships, and financial stewardship) were very important to address, for the benefit of all stakeholders,
including patients, and the themes resonatedwith many on a personal level. We were able toelicit specifics from the group that described
how they would envision that their collaborative work might bring value to the following
stakeholder groups:
Patients/Customers – Provide guidance for administration in monitoring and developing culture andprocesses that seek to improve service standards
across clinics, and to leverage these service successes
for contracting/market share
Employees – Provide direction for administration inmonitoring and developing processes that improve
employee morale, retention, and communication
Physicians – Provide administration with guidance
related to reimbursement issues, contracting, and set
a direction for ongoing provider education efforts
related to practice management and professional
development needs
The Organization – Develop physician leaders byworking collaboratively to integrate provider ideas
and input and by sharing information and best practices.
• Managers understood that they could not
develop tactics that address these themes, andthat they truly needed to have a collaborative
relationship with physicians to realize the fullpotential of possible approaches.
• Physicians expressed a wish to help create approaches these strategic themes, but wondered
if they would have the power and control tomake policies and decisions.
• Both groups had difficulty seeing beyond thecurrent formal board structure, envisioningreflections.solonline.org

that the same struggles and limitations would
arise.
• Other physicians, nurse practitioners, and physician assistants in the organization were passionate about participating, although they had
not had the opportunity to do so historically.

The Compass Group
Based on observations from the retreat and the strategic themes of the organization, it became clear thata mere evolution or transformation of the existingboard structure would be inadequate, resulting infrustration and failure due to the persistence of deeprooted norms. Nothing short of a complete destruction of the existing paradigms would provide thisorganization with the freedom to explore new paths
to achieving its stated goals. With this understandingin mind, we recommended complete dissolution of
the existing structure, in favor of a dialogue-based
forum structured around the stated organizational
imperatives of customer service, employee satisfaction, strong physician relationships, and financial
stewardship. This forum came to be called the“Compass Group,” for the following reasons:• The group felt that these strategic themes orimperatives were analogous to the directions
on a compass.
• The name seemed to convey a sense of purpose,in that the forum could be leveraged to keep
the organization on track with strategic goals,
just as a compass provides direction for travelers.
• The name also removed the implications andcontextual associations with the terms “board,”“council,” or “committee.” It was importantfor every detail to dissociate the new dialogue
sessions from the mental models the group had
developed from prior board experiences inhealthcare, in which emphasis was placed on
debate, advocacy for one’s constituency, power,and “governance.”

EKF ■ Pawar 15

The Compass Group was seen as a risky endeavor bymany within the organization, both physicians andmanagers. Much of this fear, as expected, was basedon the uncertainty of where dialogue around theseconcepts could lead the group. The organization,
however, was able to understand that some degreeof risk is involved in any learning.

“Uncoupling” Old Norms
Old norms that prevailed in this group were important to consider. These cultural and conversational
norms had been a major barrier to true learning
within the organization. A great fear among many
physicians and administrators was that the “oldways” of dealing with each other would carry forward into the new efforts. We recognized that a
number of important steps were needed to “uncouple” the organization from old ways of interacting,thus allowing for new ways to emerge and thrive.
Associating Pain with the Status Quo
A critical event during the retreat included dialogue
around existing aspects of the meetings that board
members disliked, involving not only content, butalso emotions, unmet needs, and frustrations. A
significant amount of facilitation was required touncover these real issues, but did result in the sharedunderstanding that all of the participants were concerned about (1) the feeling that they were not being
heard by each other or by the administration, and (2)the feeling that they wanted to “make a difference”
but were not. By linking these two perceptions, andtheir associated emotions, we were able to markedly
raise the level of discomfort with the “status quo”
for this group. This discomfort created a compellingneed for change among all board members that was
instrumental in effecting necessary change.
Incorporating New Perspectives
The group felt strongly that the constancy of themembership of the board over the past several years
had contributed to some degree of stagnation, andhad been a major factor in perpetuating norms forinteraction among group members that may not

16 Reflections ■ Volume 6, Number 4/5

have been acceptable for those outside the group.
Understanding that many others in the medicalgroup expressed an interest in and saw value in dialogue meetings, it seemed natural to invite new participants that possessed new and fresh perspectives.
Eliciting Desired Norms and Expectations
Several of the current board members were able toarticulate rewarding and fulfilling experiences thatthey had enjoyed in other meetings and committees.
By identifying the specific cultural aspects of theseother team experiences from a minority of board
members, virtually all of the other participating
physicians and administrators were able to articulate their own “best experiences.” Common among
these experiences were feelings of “being heard,” of“contributing proactively,” of “understanding one
another,” of mutual respect, and of building uponcollective contributions to generate new and creative
approaches. By explicitly listing these desired norms
and expectations, the group was eventually able
to develop momentum for change, striving for this“new way.”

Generating “Buzz”
By communicating the themes of dialogue that took
place at the retreat, along both formal and informal
communications, others in the organization becameaware that the Compass Group was “no ordinary
board or committee.” The communications were
lively, genuine, informal, and carried with them afeeling of realism, openness, and innovation thatwas not typical of standard emails and memoranda.
This “buzz” was instrumental in generating interest
and participation from many others who might nothave been comfortable in the traditional board setting, and set expectations that helped to “uncouple”
the norms of the past.

Setting the Stage for Dialogue: Designing
the Compass Group
Because of the risk inherent in any team or organizational learning process, a great deal of thought mustbe focused on planning for a dialogue session thatreflections.solonline.org

allows people to relax, and thus fosters collaborative dialogue, engagement, and exploration of creative possibilities for action. Described here is ourapproach to the planning of the Compass Group forthis particular organization, based on some of theprinciples used in developing a “World Café.”13
Establish a Clear Purpose
We understood that a significant need for this group,
both healthcare providers and managers, was tohave a clearly defined purpose and objectives, alongwith concrete actions. Without these elements, it was
unlikely that either group would perceive significant
value. Because participants were unfamiliar with theconcept that dialogue, by itself, is a valuable endeavor, we felt that it was important to work towards
eliciting clear goals that were meaningful from theirperspective.

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For the first of the Compass Group sessions, themanagement team had chosen to focus on the strategic theme of customer service. Some smaller projects
and work had already begun at a number of facilities
along the lines of customer service, and a patientsatisfaction survey had recently been completed. The
management team wished to gain insight into how tobest proceed with this information. With this theme
in mind, we structured the dialogue based upon aseries of questions that led to greater insight andshared knowledge. Along with a memorandum
regarding the outcomes of the recent retreat, the dissolution of the old board, and the creation of the“Compass Group,” a communication regarding the
purpose, objectives, and goals of this first Compass
Group session was distributed to the medical group’s
management team, physicians, nurse practitioners,
and physician assistants (see Figure 1).

EKF ■ Pawar 17

Invite Great Guests
With a clearly defined purpose and objectives, we
worked with the organization to help them decide
who should be invited to attend the retreat for theCompass Group. At one time, the governing board
for the organization was comprised of elected positions, which many felt excluded potential contributors within the organizations, while contributing to
the dynamic of pushing personal and constituencybased agendas. More recently, the organization had
appointed a representative from each of its facilities
to serve on the governing body, which balanced
contribution somewhat better, but resulted in apathy
due to what was perceived as “forced” participation.
We supported the management team’s preference tooffer invitations to all interested physicians, nurse
practitioners, and physician assistants, feeling thattrue engagement can only be achieved when individuals are free to choose to participate, rather thanbeing forced to do so.
In addition, we felt that the process of inviting
participants must convey the sense that the Compass
Group was “no ordinary board meeting.” Participants were clear on the purpose and goals of the new
dialogue-based forum, and were also aware of thesense of urgency for the change, based on the need tomeet organizational and market-driven demands.
Enthusiasm was also generated among invitees byactively setting the expectation that this forum, innoFigure 2: Compass Group Dialogue Questions

Dialogue
During this dialogue
activity, share answers to:• How did you react to there-enacted service• What is your experience
with customer service inyour faciltiy• How might these results
best be used for
improving service acrossall facilities

Let one person comment,
then use inquiry skills:• Seek first to understandcompletely• “What leads you to...”• “Tell me more about...”• “How did you...”vative for this organization, would result in dialoguethat would truly make a difference.
Plan for a Safe and Welcoming Environment
In planning an effective dialogue session, paying
close attention to details such as ambiance is critical to creating a physical space that is perceived as
inviting, hospitable, and intimate. The purposefulcreation of a welcoming space brings a tremendous
amount of power, and it is surprising how often
leaders fail to consider the impact such planning canhave. The successful creation of such an environment changes the emotional frame of reference forparticipants, such that they feel a greater degree ofpsychological safety, with the openness necessary fortrue and engaging dialogue.
For this organization, we recommended that thecreation of a welcoming environment begin with theinvitation process itself. Rather than utilizing thetypical emailed appointment scheduling that is used
extensively within the organization, stationary andfonts with earth tones were used to convey the message that this experience would be different from thetypical hospital board or committee meeting, while
also setting the groundwork for creating a sense of
hospitality and intimacy during the event.
We continued our work with the organization’splanning team to assist them in designing the physical layout and ambiance for the dialogue session. A
number of critical details, described here, were elicited:• Round, café-style tables with seating for 5–7 people, staggered randomly, rather than in straightrows• Place cards for seating arrangements to foster
dialogue among diverse participants• Flip charts for recording dialogue themes at
each table• Soft, natural lighting• Soft jazz as background music• Catered food around a local theme

18 Reflections ■ Volume 6, Number 4/5

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• A table for a host or greeter to welcome guests,
to orient them to the environment, and to provide them with materials for the event• Name tags for each attendee including aninteresting fact (in this case, participants wereasked to write down the location of their mostmemorable service experience)
Form Powerful Questions
Well-structured, open-ended questions are the mostimportant determinant of a successful dialogue session. By framing a dialogue session around a seriesof questions, we were able to help the organization
explore important concepts in a logical progression of discovery. As opposed to traditional board
meetings, where agenda items focus on one-way
communication of information, or on the presentation of statements to be debated, dialogue sessions
framed around questions to be answered set the

groundwork for greater levels of inquiry and mutual
discovery.
The formation of these questions is perhaps the
single most important factor in determining the success of a dialogue session. The most effective questions are simple, yet thought-provoking, and willboth focus dialogue and open the door to exploringnew possibilities. Because the theme chosen for the
first Compass Group session centered on customer
service, questions related to service, and to the recent
internal efforts in measuring service perceptions, weredeveloped. See Figure 2 for an example of the questions for one round of dialogue during the Compass
Group.
If participants are unfamiliar with dialogue as aprocess, planners of dialogue sessions sometimes feelpressure to create questions that lead to concrete
action planning. Although in some cases this may be
a rather natural progression, there is value in having

Figure 3: Compass Group Outline
Topic

Time Allotted

Objectives for Participants

Arrival and Welcome

6:30-6:40 pm

Relax, mingle, and meet your colleagues!

Intro and Overview

6:40-6:50 pm

Develop a framework regarding purpose, roles, and ground rules.
Understand inquiry as the basis for dialogue.
Provide an overview of the evening.

Video

6:50-7:00 pm

Observe practice site staff feelings regarding patient satisfaction, taking note of yourown reactions, through this entertaining reenactment of actual patient experiences.

Project Description

7:00-7:10 pm

Gain an understanding of how the most recent patient satisfaction project took
place, from the driving force, to planning, to implementation and data analysis.

Reactions andDialogue

7:10-8:00 pm

Participants, in groups, will share their reactions to (1) the video; (2) their own
experience with the project & its results; and (3) what they would like to see happen
with the results.
Participants will practice inquiry skills as they dialogue.

Travel Plans

8:00-8:40 pm

Participants will participate in dialogue to answer the following questions:• How do you feel about the structure and questions that are part of the patientsatisfaction survey process?
• How will we continue to monitor progress?
• What do you envision happening as a result?
Provide direction for the management team.

Forum Feedback,
Door Prizes, andClosing Comments

8:40-9:00 pm

To gather feedback regarding this forum.
To provide recognition to selected participants.
To provide more questions for reflection.

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EKF ■ Pawar 19

the process of dialogue by itself as a goal without
assuming that any decision or action will take place.
Focusing on inquiry and exploration to truly understand is a valuable outcome by itself. With this organization, as with many in healthcare, we understoodthat many administrators and physicians perceived
value by also arriving at some action. For this reason, we chose to provide the management team witha specific flip chart for “Action Items” to record
observations that might require further research orplanning, or at least further dialogue.
Facilitating for Success
By hosting the initial session, we felt that our role
as facilitators was (1) to model the process for internal facilitators in the future, (2) to provide a larger
structure for the evening in the context of facilitating between rounds of dialogue, and (3) to provide
some training around the skills involved in dialogue,
with a heavy emphasis on inquiry. Figure 3 shows an
overview of this organization’s first Compass Groupsession, focused on customer service.
Members of the management team had alreadyreceived some training from us in hosting a dialogue
session and in facilitating smaller conversations,mainly by encouraging a balance of inquiry andadvocacy. We decided to leverage these skills by placing one management team member as a facilitator ateach table. The other members at each table were
carefully distributed to ensure sufficient diversity of
conversations.
The Compass Group opened with a designatedamount of time for attendees to arrive, get oriented,
and to enjoy food and beverages while conversing
with colleagues. Participants were asked to write theanswer to the question “What is the location of yourmost memorable service experience?” on their nametags. Prior to starting the session, participants wereencouraged to use this as a starting point for conversation with others.
We provided participants with an overview of theevening, as well as a brief didactic session on dialogue. We find that it can be immensely helpful touse “recipes” or “protocols” for dialogue, especially

20 Reflections ■ Volume 6, Number 4/5

in situations where some individuals may be new todialogue skills. The participants were reminded of
the basic elements of the “recipes” for effective
inquiry prior to each round of dialogue.
Each round of dialogue was structured around aseries of questions. In this particular circumstance, areview of the organization’s patient satisfaction data,
as well as the video reenactments of actual patient
experiences, was used as the starting point for forming dialogue questions. During the rounds of dialogue, facilitators at each table helped to encourage
effective inquiry, and to surface hidden or underlying
assumptions. In addition, the facilitators were asked
to record the predominant themes of each round of
dialogue.
Between each round, each table was asked toshare their dominant themes, discoveries, andinsights with the group and to comment on their success with using dialogue skills.
As one of the goals of the Compass Group was toprovide an opportunity to share “best practices,” aseparate flip chart was maintained specifically forthis purpose. In addition, another chart was maintained to document items that warranted action,
follow up, or future dialogue.

After the Dialogue Session
The feedback from post-session surveys indicated an
overwhelmingly positive level of enthusiasm, engagement, and perceived value. Participants, both managers
and healthcare providers, felt that they had achieved
a level of shared understanding that was greater than
the sum of their individual knowledge. Most importantly, the attendees felt that they truly had accomplished a great deal in terms of the “real work” ofthe organization, something that had not been felt by
the previous board structure, and that they felt passionate about continuing the conversations.
The themes and best practices that were identified
through table dialogues were distributed to all members of the organization, and clear plan was describedfor future dialogue. In addition, efforts to continue
the dialogue around service were implemented byproviding powerful weekly questions for each man-reflections.solonline.org

ager, physician, or department to use with their staff.
Ongoing dialogue sessions continue to focus on
the strategic directions defined by the “Compass,”and high levels of engagement continue.

Conclusion
Based on our observations, boards and committees in healthcare organizations tend to operate
in a mode that is heavily dependent on one-way
communication, debate, and criticism. Indeed, thesame dynamics also tend to be present at other levels of these organizations, including clinical teams.
Unfortunately, these dynamics present a barrier todeveloping learning organizations that are able toinnovate and adapt effectively to tumultuous market
conditions, a necessity for the healthcare organization of today.

Dialogue – specifically, the skills of understanding
mental models and of balancing advocacy withinquiry – are essential for building organizations thatlearn effectively. Such skills are sorely needed inhealthcare at all levels.
By challenging the assumption that committees
and boards in healthcare must always be structured
in the traditional, formal manner, organizations may
be more likely to explore formats that are more conducive to dialogue. Shifting to dialogue-based forums
focused on organizational strategic imperatives canbe one approach that fosters organizational learning,
while engaging and improving relationships withphysicians.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Manoj Pawar, MD, MMM is a managing partner with Nivek
Consulting and the Medical Director for the Exempla Physician Network.
He is committed to developing high-performing teams and organizationsin healthcare.
pawarm@comcast.net.
Special thanks to Gene Beyt, MD, Richard Hays, DBA, Charles Jacobson,
MD, and Bob Myrtle, DBA for their wisdom, and for their gracious andinsightful contributions in the development of this article.

Endnotes

1

Creative Conflict Management in Healthcare. Final

3

Report. March 24-26, 2004. Vancouver, BC, Canada.

(2000). To Err Is Human: Building a Safer Health Sys-

The Morris J. Wosk Centre for Dialogue. Simon Fraser

tem. Committee on Quality of Health Care in America.
Institute of Medicine. 2000.

University.

2

Kohn, L. T., Corrigan, J. M., and Donaldson, M.S. (Eds.).

Baker, G. R., Ph.D., Tregunno, D., Ph.D., and Law, M.,

4Boan, D. and Funderburk, F. (2003). Healthcare Qual-

M.A. (2004). Challenges in Linking Team Effective-

ity Improvement and Organizational Culture. The Del-

ness and Health Outcomes Research. Presentation.

marva Foundation. November 3, 2003.

Academy Health Conference. June 9, 2004. Universityof Toronto. Toronto, Ontario, CA.

5

Creative Conflict Management in Healthcare. Final Report.
March 24-26, 2004. Vancouver, BC, Canada. The Morris
J. Wosk Centre for Dialogue. Simon Fraser University.

reflections.solonline.org

EKF ■ Pawar 21

6

Baker, G. R., Ph.D., Tregunno, D., Ph.D., and Law, M.,

10 Senge, P., Kleiner, A., Roberts, C., Ross, R., and Smith,

M.A. (2004). Challenges in Linking Team EffectivenessB. (1994). The Fifth Discipline Fieldbook: Strategies

and Health Outcomes Research. Presentation. Acad-and Tools for Building a Learning Organization. New

emy Health Conference. June 9, 2004. University ofYork, NY: Doubleday/Currency.

Toronto. Toronto, Ontario, CA.

7

Taylor, B. E., Chait, R. P., and Holland, T. P. (1996,
September-October). The New Work of the Non-Profit
Board. Harvard Business Review.

8

ity Improvement and Organizational Culture. The Delmarva Foundation. November 3, 2003.

12 Brown, J. and Isaacs, D. (1996, December-1997, Jan-

Senge, P., Kleiner, A., Roberts, C., Ross, R., anduary). Conversation as a Core Business Process. The

Smith, B. (1994). The Fifth Discipline Fieldbook: Strat-

Systems Thinker, 7;10.

egies and Tools for Building a Learning Organization.

9

11 Boan, D. and Funderburk, F. (2003). Healthcare Qual-

13 Brown, J, Isaacs, D., and The World Café Community.

New York, NY: Doubleday/Currency.

(2001, June-July). The World Café: Living Knowledge

Issacs, William. (1994). Dialogue. In Senge, P.,

Through Conversations that Matter. The Systems

Kleiner, A., Roberts, C., Ross, R., and Smith, B. (1994).

Thinker, 12; 5.

The Fifth Discipline Fieldbook: Strategies and Tools
for Building a Learning Organization. New York, NY:
Doubleday/Currency.

22 Reflections ■ Volume 6, Number 4/5

BOOK EXCERPTConversation as a Core
Process: Co-Creating Businessand Social Value

The World Café: Shaping
Our Futures ThroughConversations That Matter
By Juanita Brown
with David Isaacs and theWorld Café Community
Berrett-Koehler, 2005

“Managing in the new economy requires not just change programs but
a changed mindset…. Conversations are the way workers discover what theyknow, share it with their colleagues, and in the process create new knowledge
for the organization. In the new economy, conversations are the mostimportant form of work.’—ALAN WEBBER, “What’s So New About the New Economy?” Harvard Business Review

Juanita Brown

David Issacs

The World Café process is based on a simple premise: conversation matters.
Juanita Brown and David Isaacs began using this conversational practice in
1995, after a serendipitous series of events at a meeting they hosted in theirhome. It has since developed and spread around the world. A mainstay of thelearning organization community, World Cafés are also now routinely used ingroups that are too large for traditional dialogue formats. Café conversations
are designed so that everyone in a given setting can participate in several
continuous rounds of small group dialogue while still remaining connected
to a larger, single conversation. What emerges from these sessions is often
a new sense of shared purpose, knowledge, and opportunities for action.

Perspectives and ObservationsW

hen Tom Johnson firstwalked in the door of
our home, I must admit
I stereotyped him. I assumed he’dbe focused only on the numbers.
After all, he was a famous professor of accounting history and had
written a seminal book on management accounting, Relevance
Lost, which had an impact on
measurement systems around theworld (1991). However, when heactually began to speak as partof the opening circle at the intellectual capital dialogue wherereflections.solonline.org

the World Café was born, I was
dumbfounded. He was searching,he said, for a new way to think

about performance, measurement, value creation, and results.
Tom was concerned that leaders
were using his writings on activity-based costing as one moremanagement tool to drive shortterm financial targets rather thanto nurture sustainable businessand social value.
Tom challenged the group withthe following set of questions: Is
it the financial and performancetargets or the relationships
among people and their patternsof working and thinking together

Book Excerpt ■ Brown, Isaacs 23

Conversation Matters!
Learning Organizations
True learning organizations are aspace for generative conversations and concerted action which
creates a field of alignment that
produces tremendous power toinvent new realities in conversation and to bring about these new
realities in action.
Fred Kofman and Peter Senge“Communities of Commitment”
Organizational Dynamics

Politics
Democracy begins in human conversation. The simplest, least threatening investment any citizen canmake in democratic renewal is tobegin talking with other people,
asking the questions and knowingthat theirs answers matter.
William Greider
Who Will Tell the People?

Strategy
Strategizing depends on creating arich and complex web of conversations that cuts across previously
isolated knowledge sets and creates new and unexpected combinations of insight.
Gary Hamel“The Search for Strategy,” Fortune

Information Technology
Technology is putting a sharper,
more urgent point on the importance of conversations. Conversations are moving faster, touching
more people, and bridging greater
distances. These networked conversations are enabling powerful
new forms of social organizationand knowledge exchange to occur.
Rick Levine and others
The Cluetrain Manifesto

24 Reflections ■ Volume 6, Number 4/5

Education
Within communities that foster human growth and development, change
seems to be a natural result of constructing meaning and knowledge
together – an outgrowth of our conversations about what matters. Leaders need to pose the questions andconvene the conversations that invite others to become involved….In
social systems such as schools anddistricts, one good conversation canshift the direction of change forever.
Linda Lambert and others
The Constructivist Leader

The Knowledge Economy
Conversations are the way workers
discover what they know, share itwith their colleagues, and in the process create new knowledge for theorganization. In the new economy,
conversations are the most important form of work…so much so thatthe conversation is the organization.
Alan Weber“What’s So New About the New
Economy?,” Harvard Business Review

Family Therapy
Our capacity for change lies in “thecircle of the unexpressed,” in thecapacity we have to be “in language”
with each other and, in language todevelop new themes, new narratives, and new stories. Through thisprocess we co-create and co-develop our systemic realities.
Harlene Anderson and
Harold Goolishian“Human Systems as Linguistic
Systems,” Family Process

Leadership
Talk is key to the executive’s work…
the use of language to shape new
possibilities, reframe old perspectives,and excite new commitments…theactive process of dialogue, and thecaring for relationships as the corefoundation of any social system.
Suresh Srivastva and David
Cooperrider
Appreciative Management andLeadershipCollective Intelligence
Dialogue is the central aspect of
co-intelligence. We can only generate higher levels of intelligenceamong us if we are doing some highquality talking with one another.
Tom Atlee, Co-Intellgence Institute
The Tao of Democracy

Conflict Resolution, Global
Affairs
The reality today is that we are allinterdependent and have to coexist
on this small planet. Therefore, theonly sensible and intelligent way ofresolving differences and clashes ofinterests, whether between individuals or nations, is through dialogue.
His Holiness the Fourteenth
Dalai Lama
“Forum 200” Conference, Prague

Executive Development
As the new business landscapecontinues to emerge, and newforms of organization take shape,
our ability to lead will be dependent
upon our ability to host and convene quality conversations.
Robert Lengel, Ph.D., Director
Center for Professional Excellence
University of Texas at San Antonio
Executive MBA Program

Futures Research
Conversation is the heart of the
new inquiry. It is perhaps the corehuman skill for dealing with the tremendous challenges we face. The
culture of conversation is a different

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culture, one that can make adifference to the future of theworld. If we combine conversations that really matter…with
the interactive reach of the Internet, we have a powerful force
for change from the ground up.
Institute for the Future
In Good Company: Innovationand the Intersection ofTechnology and Sustainability

Consciousness Studies
I’m suggesting that there is thepossibility for a transformation of
the nature of consciousness,both individually and collectively,
and that whether this can besolved culturally and sociallydepends on dialogue. That’s
what we’re exploring.
David Bohm
On Dialogue

Evolutionary Biology
Our human existence is one inwhich we can live whatever world
we bring about in our conversations, even it if is a world that
finally destroys us as the kind ofbeing that we are. Indeed, thishas been our history since ourorigins as languaging beings –namely, a history or creation of
new domains of existence as different networks of conversation.
Humberto Maturana andGerda Verden-ZöllerThe Origin of Humanness
in the Biology of Love

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that produce the outcomes wevalue? If organizations are living
systems, then what core processes
can an organization utilize thatmirror nature’s patterns? Where
do you as a leader place intention
and attention in a living system?
These powerful questions strucka chord with the other participants at that initial World Caféand have continued to resonate
in our thinking and research into
the role of conversation as a core
process.

On Means and EndsWith his colleague Anders Bröms
of Sweden, Tom later wrote anotherseminal book, Profit Beyond
Measure, focused on these questions (2000). Based on extensive
research, it encouraged leaders to
shift their attention from a focus
on management exclusively by
results (MBR) toward “management by means” (MBM) – the relationships and processes that shape
the organization’s capacity tolearn, adapt to changing circumstances, and create the knowledge
necessary for its long-term performance. Tom and Anders point out
that because we’ve separated theends (financial targets and performance objectives) from the means(the processes and practices used
to create them), ends have cometo seem more concrete, more
“real,” and therefore, more valuable than means. In contrast, Tom
and Anders show how means andends co-evolve simultaneously.
“The task of managers,” theyargue, “is to stop treating results
as a target one reaches by aiming

better. Instead, results are an outcome that emerges spontaneously
from mastering practices that harmonize with the patterns inherent
in the system itself. In other words,
manage the means, not the results.
Means are ends in the making”(2000, p. 50, italics mine).
Tom Johnson’s work has greatly informed our thinking about
the role of conversation as a core
process, a fundamental “means”
by which relationships are built,
knowledge is shared, and value iscreated. As we explored this thinking with Tom and his wife, prominent educator Elaine Johnson,
we began to see how the World
Café can help make this naturalprocess more tangible and real,
and therefore more actionable. In
Elaine’s words, “What we’re saying is that conversation is theessential, fundamental, and indispensable means. But how theseconversations are viewed andstructured will lead to different
outcomes.” Tom adds, “If conversation is seen as a core means forcreating organizational performance, then how leadership works
with conversation will be a key
factor in determining how well
the organization does. If people
say ‘Conversation means shut up
and don’t speak until you’re spoken to, or don’t talk until the boss
authorizes you to,’ that will leadto one set of results, and if theconversations occur more along
the lines of the World Café principles, that will lead to a different
set of results.”
We’ve developed a simple picture
to depict one way of visualizing

Book Excerpt ■ Brown, Isaacs 25

Figure 1: A Core Process for Value Creation

A CORE PROCESSFOR VALUE CREATIONKNOWLEDGE/WISDOMVALUESTAKEHOLDER
VALUE

FINANCIALVALUE

SOCIAL
VALUE

Communities
of Practice

ECOLOGICAL
VALUE

Networks
of Relationships
Learning
Conversations

QUESTIONS THAT MATTER
Purpose • Principles • Tools • Technology

this core process of value creation
at work.
As our living tree, A Core Process for Value Creation, illustrates,
questions that matter stimulate
learning conversations. These conversations, in turn, strengthen the
networks of relationships andcommunities of practice throughwhich an organization creates thefruits of its labors. The main challenge is that this core process isgenerally invisible, unfocused, andrarely used intentionally by leaders as a means to create sustainable business and social value.

Start Talking and
Get to WorkFor most leaders, accepting thecentrality of human conversation
as a key organizational means for

26 Reflections ■ Volume 6, Number 4/5

achieving desired results entails a
profound shift of mind – fromseeing conversation as a peripheral activity to seeing conversation
as one of the organization’s mostvalued assets. Experiencing a World
Café conversation makes it easier
to visualize your whole organization or community as a dynamic,
naturally occurring “Café,” so you
can work more intentionally withthe often invisible conversationaland social networks underlying
organizational performance.
Stop for a moment. Pause, asPeter Senge of MIT and I have inCafé gatherings with key executives, to consider the practical implications of the following question:
If critical organizational knowledge really does get created throughnetworks of conversation andpersonal relationships, what doesthat mean in practical terms forstrategy evolution, for training anddevelopment, for technology infrastructures, for the physical designof workplaces and spaces, and foryour own action choices as anorganizational member or leader?
I’ll never forget the booming
voice of a six-foot-four Texan, thehead of global operations for amajor multinational auto manufacturer who was responsible formore than fifty thousand employees. As he contemplated the implications of this shift in point ofview, his voice rang out, “Damn!
Do you know what I’ve gone anddone?” All eyes turned in his
direction. I held my breath. “I’ve
just gone and reorganized myentire global operation. I’ve broken up the learning communities
and ongoing conversations thathave gotten built up over theyears. It’s going to take us a longtime to recover from this!” Hisheartfelt comment stimulated alively conversation about what
leaders could do to work more
effectively with conversation as acore process in their own organizations.

The Relationship Between
Talk and Action
One of the most important shifts
required in this new way of viewing conversation is to re-evaluate
our traditional view that talk andaction are separate activities. We
had a fascinating conversation
with Café hosts in Denmark that
explored this question. One par-reflections.solonline.org

ticipant suggested that we consider revising our traditional viewsof talk and action, seeing them asa single integrated whole rather
than as separate activities. Whatif, when conversations are highly
energized and relevant, you arealready in the action phase? What
if it’s not talking and discovery
followed by action planning andimplementation in the linear way
we in the West think about it?
As he suggested, perhaps thewhole process is part of a single
action cycle – reflection/insight/harvesting/action planning/implementation/feedback – in which conversation is a lively core process every
step of the way. We’re discoveringthat when people care about thequestions they are working on
and when their conversations are
truly alive, participants naturally
want to organize themselves to do
whatever has to be done, discovering who cares about what and
who will take accountability for
next steps. Perhaps my eightyfour-year-old mom said it bestwhen she shared a fundamental
insight from her lifetime of organizational work. “You see,” shemused, “conversation is action.
You can think things and you canfeel things but it doesn’t become‘real’ until you express it. Then it
begins to germinate. Other people
hear it, other people begin to feel

Figure 2: The Relationship Between Talk and Action

THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN TALK AND ACTION
TRADITIONAL VIEWTALKACTIONEMERGING VIEW
Reflection &Exploration
Feedback &Assessment

Collective
Insights

Conversation
as a Core
Process
Implementation
Harvesting
Discoveries
Action Planningreflections.solonline.org

it, you share ideas together – andif it’s important enough, relevant
action becomes just a natural thingthat happens.”
The World Café is designed
primarily to generate collective
knowledge-sharing, webs of personal relationships, and new possibilities for action. A Café dialogue
sets the stage for more traditional
forms of action planning, which
often occur during the same session
but at a later point in time. Yvon
Bastien, of Sanofi Synthelabo,
Canada, raises an important question for leaders who are reconceiving the dichotomy between
talk and action and are harnessing conversation as a core process:“How can we invent conversational processes for on-going action
planning and implementation thatgenerate the same energy andspirit as the World Café generates
for strategic thinking and collective insight?” This is a questionthat those who believe we need to“startstart talking and get to work”
can profitably explore as we consider how to develop innovative
conversational processes that arealive throughout the whole action
cycle – from initial exploration
through implementation.

Doorways to Dialogue:
Entering a Common
Courtyard
The World Café is not the only
doorway to the type of dialoguethat enables us to tap into thepower of conversation as a core
process for generating innovative
possibilities and bringing forthBook Excerpt ■ Brown, Isaacs 27

new futures. The image I hold of
this rich territory comes from myexperience as a teenager livingwith my adopted grandmother ina colonial town in Chiapas,
Mexico. When you entered thehome through the large carved
wooden door, the first thing you
saw was a large central courtyardwith vivid bougainvillea, lush
flowers, and verdant trees in big
clay pots with a large fountain in
the center. You could enter thecentral courtyard by going throughany of the multiple arched entryways that surrounded this open,
flower-filled space in the middleof the house.
For me, entering the space ofauthentic dialogue is like entering
this central courtyard in the spacious home of our common
humanity. The World Café is only
one valuable doorway into thiscentral courtyard of collective
possibility. Strategic dialogues,
indigenous councils, salons, wisdom circles, citizens’ deliberative
councils, women’s circles, study
circle, Bohmian dialogue groups,
Appreciative Inquiry, Open Space,
Future Search, public deliberation
models, and other conversational
modalities from many culturesand historical periods have contributed to and draw on this lifeaffirming experience. Information
on many of theses is listed in“Resources and Connections,”
which you’ll find at the back ofthis book. I encourage you to seekout a variety of dialogue approaches. Find the doorways todialogue that best connect to your

28 Reflections ■ Volume 6, Number 4/5

personal life experiences, yourneeds, and your own unique pathof contribution. Then use yourcreativity and imagination to
become a conversation host in
your own life and work.
For the rest of our time together, we’ll be focusing on the theory
and practice behind the World
Café. The seven World Cafédesign principles, which we introduce on the following page andexplore in the chapters that follow, provide one easy-to-use approach to engaging the power ofconversations that matter, whether or not you ever decide to hosta formal World Café event.

Cultivating Conversation
as a Core Process
The following set of seven integrated World Café design principles has been developed over theyears as a means of intentionallyharnessing the power of conversation for business and social value.
Here’s a quick overview of eachprinciple:
Set the context: Clarify the purpose and broad parameters within
which the dialogue will unfold.
Create hospitable space: Ensure
the welcoming environment andpsychological safety that nurtures
personal comfort and mutual
respect.
Explore questions that matter:
Focus collective attention on powerful questions that attract collaborative engagement.
Encourage everyone’s contribution: Enliven the relationshipbetween the “me” and the “we”

by inviting full participation andmutual giving.
Cross-pollinate and connect
diverse perspectives: Use the livingsystem dynamics of emergencethrough intentionally increasing
the diversity and density of connections among perspectives while
retaining a common focus on corequestions.
Listen together for patterns,
insights, and deeper questions:
Focus shared attention in waysthat nurture coherence of thought
without losing individual contributions.
Harvest and share collective
discoveries: Make collective knowledge and insight visible andactionable.
These simple principles, whenused in combination, provide useful guidance for anyone seeking
creative ways to foster authentic
dialogue in which the goal isthinking together and creating
actionable knowledge.

The World
Café is designed
primarily togenerate collective
knowledge-sharing,webs of personal
relationships, andnew possibilities
for action.

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Stories from the World Cafe
The following two stories offer real-life examples of how leaders in very different settings are using
the World Café to create business and social value through fostering conversations that matter.
Story 1Creating a Culture of Dialogue:
Museum of Science and Industry,
Tampa BayAs Told By Wit Ostrenko andFred Steier
Wit Ostrenko is the president of theMuseum of Science and Industry(MOSI) of Tampa Bay, Florida. Fred
Steier, Ph.D., is professor of communication at the University of South
Florida and a research fellow at MOSI’s
Center for Learning. MOSI is a major
regional science center that receives
eight hundred thousand visitors per
year. This is the story of how themuseum has been using World Cave
conversations and conversational leadership a cornerstones in its efforts toredefine the relationship between theinstitution and its internal and external
communities.

We’ve designed MOSI tobe a center for learning conversations. We
don’t want it to be a one-way,
don’t-touch-anything science center, so we’ve struggled with what
hands-on learning really means,
both for our visitors and for ourselves. How do we learn together
as families and as communities?
For us, our best learning has been
embedded in conversations – withthe board, staff, the larger community, and other science museums and associations.
The very nature of the museum
is like a World Café, and each of
our exhibits is like a Café table.

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Most people visit the exhibits insmall groups, so there’s alreadyinformal conversation and collective discovery happening right there
on the spot. Then, as people gofrom one exhibit to another, talking to others they don’t evenknow, they become part of a lively
web of conversations and shareideas, just like in an actual World
Café event. And because we have
many seniors as well as children
visiting the museum, the conversations become intergenerational– they naturally cross-pollinate
ideas by learning with and fromeach other.
But our use of the World Café
is not only metaphorical. We use
the Café process to engage withmany of our key issues. We findthe Café approach so useful with
our internal staff, our professional community, and the public that
the Café principles have become
an integral part of our thinking
about who we are as a community
institution.
The first Café we held was at aboard retreat. People came withthe expectation that it would be
another boring board meeting. But
at the end, several people said,
almost apologetically, that thiswas the first time they’d reallytalked with each other. The World
Café built relationships – not only
between individual board members but also between the museum
and the board as representativesof the community we serve.
So often boards are given theassignment simply to raise money.
Bu the best fundraising comesfrom talking together and understanding the reason for doing it.
For example, it came out during
our Board Café that there were no

As a resultof ideas generated
in that Board Café,
we’re halfway toraising a milliondollar endowment
scholarships available to enable
the community’s blue collar families to visit our museum. They’re
not poor, but spending $14.95 for
adults and another $10.00 forkids is really cost-prohibitive, sothey’re not coming as often as wewould like. It became a fundraising priority to help blue collar
and other low-income families.
As a result of ideas generated inthat Board Café, we’re halfway toraising a million-dollar endowment to provide full access to ourmuseum to anyone who doesn’t
have the ability to pay.
We use our Café conversations
to generate what we call “actionable knowledge.” For us, this meansthat we intend for whatever emerges
from a Café to be something thatcan be put into practice. For
example, in the middle of 2003
we realized we weren’t going to
make our budget. We couldn’t
afford the staff we had, and weBook Excerpt ■ Brown, Isaacs 29

were going to have to make several cuts. So, we brought a groupof about thirty staff people together and held a World Café tofigure out what to do.
The objective of the Café wasto generate new revenue-producing programs, with the goal ofraising $175,000. We had no
preconceived ideas of how to do
this. During the Café, we came up
with roughly $188,000 worth of
new net revenue ideas. One of thewilder ideas was a Yu-Gi-Oh tournament. Nobody had ever heardof Yu-Gi-Oh except for a coupleof the parents on our staff who
knew how popular the game isbecause their kids watch it on
television. They were the ones
who encouraged the rest of thegroup to say yes to it. We put thestamp of approval on it, alongwith the other key ideas, rightthen and there. Do you know
what? By putting our key ideas
into practice, we ended fiscal year
2003 in the black by $267,000!
So where is the leadership inthat kind of situation? The leaders at that Café weren’t thosewith formal management titles,
but rather anyone with greatideas for how to produce the mostnet revenue in a manner that is
consistent with our mission andvalues. There were some real
heroes that day! The Café conversations allowed people to contribute whom others don’t normallysee because they work nights andweekends or lead trips. All of asudden one of these “invisible”
people would put forth a great
idea that everyone rallied around.
It was very gratifying, and hashelped build the feeling of MOSI

30 Reflections ■ Volume 6, Number 4/5

as a collaborative community that
includes our board and staff.
It’s starting to become a habit
with us to recognize when there is
an issue that we need to workthrough together in a more dialogic manner. We’ve also noticed
that our people get better and better results as they get more experience in using the Café process.
We’ve discovered that we canlearn to be better Café contributors. As we get more practice, we
generate more actionable knowledge and collective wisdom. For
example, our Cafes are helping us
generate creative program ideasthat we anticipate will bring us$750,000 in net income this fiscal
year. That’s unheard of for a public institution in an uncertain
economy.
The Café is also enabling us to
explore the relationship between
play and learning that is at thecore of MOSI’s mission. That kindof creativity and playing withideas is now happening in othersettings, so even when we are notin a Café setting, people still behave in “Café fashion.” For example, in a particularly innovativeuse of the World Café, we’ve held
a number of Café conversations
to engage visitors or potential
visitors – including senior citizens,
members of our minority communities, and children – in codesigning exhibit experiences. This useof the World Care really builds
community, and the groups that
help in the design process have agreater sense of ownership – theexhibits are truly “theirs.” Thus,
instead of MOSI being a kind ofdictator of community values
around science, it is becoming

more of a partner with community members in discovering thecollective knowledge and in-terests in science that people didn’t
even realize counted as knowledge.
We’re now reaching out to theassociations we belong to beyond
our local area. For example, Wit
hosted a large four-hundred-person Café with members of theGiant Screen Theater Association,
and another with the international board of the Association of
Science and Technology Centers.
In both cases, World Café conversations helped us identify andprioritize key issues and what
actionable steps we’re going totake to address those issues. Caféconversations are like a positive
virus spreading out way beyond
where we began!
Story 2
It’s Win-Win All the Way:
Sanofi-Synthelabo

As Told By Yvon Bastien
Yvon Bastien has served as the president and general manager of SanofiSynthelabo, Canada, a Paris-based
global pharmaceutical company focusedon the research, discovery, and development of innovative medicines to treat
many diseases. Sanofi-Synthelabo affiliates operate in over one hundred
countries worldwide. This is the storyof how Café conversations have helped
Sanofi-Synthelabo, Canada, create
sustainable business value.

I

was looking for a way toengage all of our people inthinking about the future ofour business. I’d tried several different approaches, but they justreflections.solonline.org

weren’t bringing out our people’s
best thinking. I was searching forsomething that connected theheart, the mind, and the bottom
line. It seemed to me that Caféconversations combined those threeelements, and I decided to experiment with them.
We were in the midst of planning a celebration of our first $100
million in sales, a big achievement!
I asked David Isaacs to come toToronto to host a Café conversation with our sixteen-person designteam in order to plan for ourJanuary strategy event. We wanted to create both a celebration of
our success and a strategic conversation about the future of ourbusiness with all of our Canadian
employees. At the end of the
Design Team Café, David asked
the group, “Well, what do you
think?” And they replied, “Oh,
it’s great. Café conversations are
powerful for a small group of 10
or 20, but they will never workwith 250 people.” David assured
them that a Café dialogue could
work even better with a lot of
people, so we decided to try it,
although there were some who
were still skeptical.
As it turned out, the January
Strategy Café Conversation andCelebration was extremely successful in generating key ideas formoving the business ahead. Something about the World Café approach helped people drill throughthe formal layers of their professional titles and bring more of
their whole person to the conversation. I could see it in people’seyes and body language at thesmall tables. Afterwards, many
people were excited by what had

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occurred at the January Café, andthey began to go out and hostCafé conversations themselves on
all kinds of business questions.
We counted seventeen Café dialogues in the months followingthat first experience! It was a bitclumsy at first, since we werelearning as we went – it was a real
challenge to craft the questions,use reflection in a more disciplined way, and give space forreal dialogue. But several of us
sensed that we were on to something, and I used my “executive
privilege” as the president toencourage it to continue.
Then I decided to push theenvelope a little bit further andask, “What if we were to do our
long-range plan using Café conversations?” David was instrumental at that point in encouraging us to explore this possibility.
We invited twenty or thirty people– the whole senior team, as well
as younger leaders who had notbeen asked to contribute in thisway before – and convened anumber of Café conversations focused on the long-range plan. We
took our time, but we did it. And
it was a success! Our Café work
generated innovative but realistic
action ideas for the strategic plan,
as well as the collective commitment to make them happen.
Next I said, “We did a threeyear plan using Café conversations – what if we used it for next
year’s budget?” At that point,some people thought I was taking
this Café idea too far! But others,
including the director of finance,
said, “Well, let’s try it.” And so
we based the following year’s
budget on the selection of priority

action ideas from our Café conversations, which we then grounded in our projected return on
in-vestment and return on effort.
To our surprise, we discoveredthat the Café conversation process was quite well-suited to thispurpose. You see, in a way, thestructure of the World Café obliges you to create a clean slate – azero-based mentality – that’s notencumbered by preconceived ideas.
You can then select the ideas thathave the most promise and linkthem to the hard-nosed accounting requirements.
To me, it was critical that ourCafé conversations be directly
focused on business needs andresults. But the business is linked
to the other worlds we live in –not just the organization but also
our families and our communities. I saw our Café conversations
as the glue that could hold theseWe wanted
to create botha celebration of
our success anda strategic conversation about
the future of ourbusiness.
aspects together. So we began toexperiment with Café Conversations in areas where we had important stakeholder relationships.
For example, our VP of sales andmarketing hosted Café conversations with our business partners.
And we did another long-range
plan using Café dialogues where

Book Excerpt ■ Brown, Isaacs 31

we pushed the envelope even further by inviting other external
stakeholders – physicians, pharmacists, representatives from the
Stroke Recovery Association, andeven patients.
These Café conversations havehelped us recognize that we don’t
work for ourselves alone. A special moment occurred during thewhole-group conversation at theend of one of our Strategy Cafes
when a person from the Stroke
Recovery Association said, “Youhave a great product that prevents
strokes. Why can’t a part of yourlarger mission be to stand for no
more strokes in all of Canada?”
The room just lit up. It was like a
volcano. All of a sudden, there
was a feeling of “Oh, yes, that’sit!” Now we’re seeing patients,
physicians, and hospitals as directly linked to our contribution
to society. So, beginning to engage
corporate social responsibility ina more focused way is an important outcome from this work.
For the last several years, we’vebeen in hypergrowth mode, withdouble-digit increases. We’re consistently surpassing the expectations of the corporation. I can’t
say if that is the direct result of
our Café conversations or the
result of other things we’ve also
been doing, many of which havecome from our Café work. But
here’s what I can say: the World
Café has been very essential, very
unique, because it’s the only pro-

32 Reflections ■ Volume 6, Number 4/5

cess I’ve found that consistently
connects intellect and emotion toa business frame of reference.
That’s a key strategic businessadvantage.
For a businessperson, the numbers are the measure of success. If
we don’t have the numbers, that’s
the end of the conversations. But
if we don’t have the conversations, that’s the end of the num-

But here’s what
I can say: the World
Café has been very
essential, very unique,because it’s the only
process I’ve found thatconsistently connects
intellect and emotion
to a business frameof reference.
bers. It’s a paradox. The numbers
are only the outcome of actions
that you’ve taken upstream, where
the pulse of the organization lives.
You need to look at how alive theorganization is, how people interact and talk with each other– their relationships. That is a key
part of the value-producing capacity of the organization. It’s very
difficult for people to measure
that, since the only tool they haveto measure is the numbers.
But there are other indicators. I
know we’re succeeding when I see

people more engaged in our business decisions, taking risks, getting the issues on the table, notbeing afraid to speak and to takeaction. For example, if you lookat the first Café conversation
versus the tenth one, you can see
a huge evolution in confidence-aknowledge that whatever theissue is, we’re going to solve it.
Of course, there are always
challenges. I think there’s greatvalue in the kind of thinking andknowledge that Café conversations generate. But at the sametime, we need better ways tomove between the discovery partof a Café conversation and theaction-planning part. We need tomake sure when moving into theimplementation phase that we as
leaders don’t go back to our old
control mode of doing things.
For me, Café conversations arean act of respect for our people
and their capacity to contribute.
A Café dialogue is like the onramp to a freeway – you enter
into the flow of the traffic by contributing to the conversation andsuddenly you’re on the highwayof the natural evolution of thebusiness. Deep down, I believethat Café conversations are a carrier of life. I like to see people
coming to life – and me coming tolife at the same time – all aroundour business. It serves the individual, it serves the community,
and it serves the shareholders. It’s
win-win all the way.

reflections.solonline.org

Questions for ReflectionThink about the conversations taking place in yourorganization or community. To what extent do members
actively consider and work withconversation as a core process forcreating business or social value?
If you began to consider con-versation a fundamental means forco-creating value in your organization, what specific implications
would it have for how you doyour own work?
What are some practical ways
you can imagine to raise people’s
awareness, in your family, yourorganization, or your community,
about the power of conversation
as a key means for creating valued
outcomes – whether those be tangible outcomes, like new ideas, orintangible ones, like trust, respect,
and a feeling of inclusion?

ABOUT THE AUTHORS

Juanita Brown, with her partner, David Isaacs, is a co-originator of theWorld Café. She collaborates as a thinking partner and design adviser withsenior leaders, creating and hosting innovative forums for strategic dialogue
on critical organizational and societal issues. A long-time SoL member,
Juanita has also served as a Research Affiliate with the Institute for the Futureand is a Fellow of the World Business Academy. David Isaacs is the presidentof Clearing Communications, an organizational and communications strategy
company working with senior executives in the United States and abroad.
inquiry@theworldcafe.com
Reprinted with permission of the authors.

reflections.solonline.org

Book Excerpt ■ Brown, Isaacs 33-RECOMMENDED READING

Recent and Relevant Work
While great systems insights come

Societal Learning and Change:

Beating the System: Using

most often through conversation and

How Governments, Business

Creativity to Outsmart

action, the right book or article canand Civil Society are Creating

Bureaucracies

plant the seed that unlocks systems

Solutions to Complex Multi-

mysteries. Following are a few new

Stakeholder Problems

Russell L. Ackoff and Sheldon RovinBerrett-Koehler, 2005

references that may open up new pos-

Steve Waddell
Greenleaf Publishing, 2005

sibilities and shed some light on persistent challenges. I invite you to shareyour own recommendations and summaries with us for inclusion in futureissues.
— C. Sherry Immediato
Societal Learning and Change:
How Governments, Business
and Civil Society are Creating
Solutions to Complex MultiStakeholder Problems
Steve Waddell
Beating the System: Using
Creativity to Outsmart
Bureaucracies
Russell L. Ackoff and Sheldon Rovin
Biomimicry: Innovation Inspired
by NatureJanine M. Benyus“Learning in the Thick of It”
Charles Parry, Joseph Moore andMarilyn Darling“Developing First Level Leaders”
Adreas Priestland and Robert Hanig

34 Reflections ■ Volume 6, Number 4/5

Many of you had the chance to hear
Steve Waddell speak about societal
learning at SoL’s Annual Meeting in
2002 (http://www.solonline.org/
repository/item?item_id=360607).
During the forum he shared his modelof cross-sector collaboration as anatural extension of organizational
learning. Steve’s passion for thiswork, and for building capacity for
new forms of coordinated action,
has resulted in Societal Learning andChange: How Governments, Business
and Civil Society are Creating Solutions to Complex Multi-Stakeholder
Problems. This book features a number of useful concepts that help explain how organizations with quite
different interests recognize what
they share in common, and how they
go beyond their local culture to work
together. All key points are illustrated
through a variety of cases. While you
might think that cross-sector collaboration is only for those who havemastered systems thinking locally,in fact the opposite may be true: by
actively inquiring into issues wellbeyond your normal boundaries, you
may also develop much greater capacity to appreciate and address local
issues. When we last checked, contacting the publisher directly was thefastest way to get the book: http://
www.greenleaf-publishing.com/

Beating the System consists largelyof many anecdotes reminiscent ofJack Nicholson’s efforts to get anorder of toast – which wasn’t amenu item – in a diner in the movie
Five Easy Pieces (http://en.wikipedia.
org/wiki/Five_Easy_Pieces). The goodnews is that the system underdogs
in these stories – all given the pseudonym “David” (as in “David and
Goliath”) almost always get their
toast. But unfortunately, even as we
identify with being victims of systems
stupidity, if we are honest we mustacknowledge that we are also thearchitects of exasperating bureaucracies. Like so many system phenomena, the consequences of our actions
are so removed in time and spacethat we can hardly identify them as
related to our own policies or actions.
While I hoped for more guidance
about how to make your system
one that doesn’t need to be beaten,
I found this book sobering and provocative. You’ll finish this quick readwondering how your organization can
inspire the kind of generative creativity you want, rather than requiring
initiative on the part of customers to
redesign your policies and procedures.

reflections.solonline.org

Biomimicry:“Learning in the Thick of It”

Innovation Inspired by NatureCharles Parry, Joseph Moore
and Marilyn Darling
Harvard Business Review
Reprint #R0507G, July 2005

Janine M Benyus
Perennial, 2002

Biomimicry: Learning from Nature(2-part video program – total 90 minutes)
http://www.bullfrogfilms.com/catalog/
bmic.html

The subject of biomimicry is notnew, but it may have escaped yournotice. The concept is a simple one:nature has fantastic examples of
elegant systems “thinking” that wewould do well to emulate. Systems
thinkers appreciate the importanceof design, and yet many of us associate complex and elegant design with
our mechanical inventions. Author
Janine Benyus was a keynote speakerat the SoL Sustainability Forum in
2004, accompanied by a designer
from Interface Industries who demonstrated how the concepts of biomimicry had been brought to life in
the design and production of carpet.
I was humbled to find that my ideaof what constituted “good design” wastransformed in an instant. In recognizing the amazing feats performedby nature without extraordinary
conditions, we must ask whether
our notion of what’s possible needs
modification. Janine’s basic text is
still a good one, but you may also
enjoy the video series that captures
the key ideas beautifully.

reflections.solonline.org

Many of you will be familiar withthe work Marilyn Darling andCharles Parry have already sharedwith the SoL community on the After
Action Review principles and process.
Repackaged for the Harvard Business
Review audience, you may find thisversion hits home with your senior
managers. Two previous pieces on
this subject have been published in
Reflections: “After-Action Reviews:
Linking Reflection and Planning ina Learning Practice” (Vol. 3, No. 2)
and “Cultivating a Learning
Economy” (Vol. 5, No. 2).
“Developing First Level Leaders”
Adreas Priestland and Robert Hanig
Harvard Business Review
Reprint #R0506G, June 2005

SoL consultant member Robert
Hanig has been co-designing leadership development processes within
BP for many years. This article
describes an unusual process ofbuilding grassroots leadership, andin the process, furthering leadershipat all levels by actively building relationships between this group andmore senior managers. Andreas andRobert will also share this workwith the SoL community during asession at SoL’s Global Forum in
Vienna in September.

Recommended Reading 35

Reflections
The SoL Journal

on Knowledge, Learning, and Change
Volume 6, Number 4/5

Editorial Team
Editors-in-Chief
Karen Ayas and Peter Senge
Managing Editor
Nina Kruschwitz
Publisher
C. Sherry Immediato
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