When you listen to somebody else, what they say becomes part of you. A common pool is created. And at some point people recognise that this common pool is more important than their separate pools.
David Bohm

As we organise, we need to keep inquiring into the quality of our relationships. How much access do we have to one another? How much trust exists among us? Who else needs to be included?
Margaret Wheatley

Participation and collaboration are important cultural responses to the issues of our generation. When we are not working this way, we’re out of sync with the way life works.
dya | the culture challenge

The things people say!

"It was a comparatively simple process, and yet we managed to say a lot and learn a lot in a relatively short time."

"I was amazed by the depth of people's responses in the drawings, including my own. The similarities in the pictures people drew highlighted just how much we have in common."

"Beginning with our stories instead of our opinions led to a different kind of conversation than we are used to having. It was very liberating."

"I understood in a new way the value of taking concerns seriously. We gave a whole session to listening and responding to people’s concerns and that proved to be very important. The decision came very easily once that was done."

culturework

changing organisations
...naturally

Changing the
social architecture

Communicating

As a living system, an organisation is healthiest and most resilient when its internal and external relationships are strong and generative. Communication is the currency of those relationships so it is literally the lifeblood of organisation and community.

We’ll help you to frame a communication agenda that will cultivate a coherent and resilient culture with appropriate ways of planning, practising and evaluating communication so that it continually supports your key objectives, and strengthens the internal and external relationships that make work work. read more

Organising

The conventional hierarchical model of organising limits participation, distorts perceptions of responsibility and accountability, stifles communication and weakens the web of relationship.

The principles of Nature can help us to work better together. With the design principles of viable living systems as our touchstone, we can help you to increase participation, distribute responsibility and leadership, and make the organisation more effective, responsive and resilient. read more

Meeting


It’s easy to undervalue and therefore overlook the power of conversation, but a human system only comes to life when it connects with itself and talking together is one of the primary ways we connect.

Tomorrow is shaped through today’s webs of conversation so the way we meet, matters. Meeting the same people in the same way almost guarantees that nothing new will emerge. The past will inevitably be recreated. Conventional meeting processes limit the way complexity is handled, while top-down agenda-setting tends to curb participation and erode the intelligence of decisions and of the system itself. If you want different outcomes, you need different processes.

The challenge is to find ways of engaging a wider system in addressing the issues you care about, but can’t work on alone, and organisations have barely begun to explore what can be achieved when diverse perspectives converge and collaborate in new ways around common concerns.

We are capable of far more than current practices allow, and the deep dilemmas in the public and private spheres and in our communities won’t be resolved by people and institutions working in isolation.

Adapting and borrowing from various systems-inspired processes such as World Café, Open Space and Future Search, we’ll help you to design and host meetings that really improve the participation and the contribution of the people who matter.

When you appreciate the nature of intelligence in living systems and the power of participation it becomes clear that creating the conditions for people to engage and talk together in new ways has the potential to renew our culture. And it isn’t complicated - indeed it’s a wonderfully simple idea. And it works!

Want to talk?

In our work with organisations and communities these living systems-inspired processes have been richly rewarding for the participants. If you would like to talk to us about a specific need or consider taking a different approach to a particular event, click here

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