Structuring for Collective Wisdom

By Jim Rough

(DRAFT for the Upcoming Book “The Future of Public Participation”)

Lake Constance is at the heart of Europe bordering three countries: Germany, Austria, and Switzerland. On the Austrian border is the ancient city of Bregenz, capital of the wealthiest state in Austria, Vorarlberg. Dr. Manfred Hellrigl is Director of the Department of Future Related Issues for Vorarlberg and a pioneer in the art of democracy.

After a bitter public battle over the development of a key waterfront plot of land, Dr. Hellrigl proposed a new idea to the mayor of Bregenz for addressing the next high profile project. He suggested a new kind of public participation strategy, a way to involve mainstream citizens, not just the stakeholders, and where they really understand the issues, where everyone’s points are valued, and where the process builds the spirit of community. Dr. Hellrigl proposed a Creative Insight Council (CIC) and the mayor agreed.

So twelve citizens were randomly selected from the voter registration roles. They met for two days and listened to the proposed plans and to a range of views about them. They were dynamically facilitated to reach a shared perspective. The CIC determined that this project offered a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to link the city more tightly to the lake. That became their theme as they suggested major changes to the proposal. One main idea was to make the second floor of the project the center of gravity rather than the first. They suggested a wide bridge over the rail tracks, rather than the planned pedestrian underground path. Plus, they wanted a sweeping set of steps on the side toward the lake. With this new emphasis on the second level money could be saved because the parking garage no longer needed to go below ground level.

The CIC presented this unanimous perspective to the investors, architects, city planners and mayor. All were surprised by the depth of thinking and pleased. The principal investor who had been working on this project for two years said in approval,

“We had been looking at the trees and didn’t see the forest.”

A few weeks later the CIC presented their perspective to a community gathering with a large media presence. One at a time each member of the CIC spoke about how enjoyable and how rewarding it was to be on the Council. Each of them was proud of the difference that their work may make in the community. At this meeting the investors, mayor and architects also expressed their support.

There were about 60 citizens attending this community gathering, who then met in small group dialogues. Using the World Café model, they switched groups and so their dialogue would extend outward. The gathering was held in a spirit of celebration, community building and seeking what’s best for all, rather than the usual grandstanding, posturing and arguing. This process is a way of generating a viewpoint that mainstream citizens can understand, consider and embrace. It’s way that there can be a legitimate “public interest” perspective, rather than one portrayed by government or special interests. (Click here to listen to a conference call featuring Dr. Hellrigl sharing about their Wisdom and Creative Insight Council efforts in Austria.)

What’s special?

The Creative Insight Council is a recent social invention that is unlike other forms of public participation. The group is random and speaks unanimously. So, it creates a legitimate voice of “the people.” And the special thinking process used in the Council, builds a spirit of community and often generates breakthrough solutions better than what anyone had thought before.

Recently, I witnessed a group of frustrated property owners threatening my County Commissioners with costly lawsuits. The Commissioners are trying to implement a new policy that restricts building within 150 feet of shore. It’s an attempt to protect the environment and assure that we as a society don’t unwittingly destroy our natural resources. But when government tries to impose restrictions on citizens like this, the ordinary form of public involvement often spark a pushback against both the regulations and the politicians. Releasing the anger of these citizens can hold up action on the issue for years, wasting valuable public funds, undermining the protection to the environment, and even unseating the officials.

This is not the best way for communities to be talking about these kinds of issues, in yes/no terms about regulations that are clearly suboptimal. Better would be if all citizens could come together, hold a creative conversation that included each person’s unique viewpoint and determine a shared perspective. The CIC seeks to facilitate this kind of talking in the community, by framing issues in a way that inspires people to think creatively. Consider how the Bregenz Wisdom Council framed the issue, for example,

“How can we use this project to bring the city closer to the lake?”

Governments today face many difficult situations where the long-term needs of the environment must be balanced with the short-term need for jobs and economic growth. There’s other issues too, like addressing the budget crisis, assuring fairness in taxes, designing a reliable election process, and balancing civil liberties and security. To address and effectively resolve controversial issues like these, government is increasingly seeking to involve the public through hearings, town meetings, citizen advisory groups, Citizens Juries, stakeholder panels, and many different online approaches. These methods are more limited in scope.

When problems are really difficult, the CIC is called for because it involves mainstream people, generates better answers with more support, creates a legitimate voice of “the people” on the issue, and sparks more trust in government. Key in how it achieves this magic is the quality of conversation it elicits… choice-creating instead of decision-making.

Assuring Choice-creating

When people first hear about the CIC it’s often difficult for them to appreciate how it’s different from other forms of citizen participation, or how it might work at all. At first glance it seems similar to a citizens’ advisory panel… or that more than twelve people would be needed… or that a random group of citizens could never address really difficult issues and achieve meaningful unanimous conclusions in a short time.

But these concerns are readily overcome in practice. It works because the CIC facilitates a quality of talking and thinking called “choice-creating,” where people are open minded and open hearted, where they face the most important issues, and where they work creatively and collaboratively with their peers in trying to solve them. The group reaches a joint perspective via creative shifts and breakthroughs, rather than through the usual back and forth negotiation.

Consider these six different kinds of conversation a community might use to determine collective actions:

1. “Power struggle” where people seek to get their way by using argument, status or money. Our representative system is largely structured to use this form of decision-making. Public participation happens when people support candidates or political parties.
2. “Reasoned debate” where there is a thoughtful competition of ideas and a vote, where hopefully the best ideas win. To many this form of decision-making is how our system should work. Public hearings, debates between candidates or pundits on television, or stakeholder meetings are examples of this kind of public participation.
3. “Discussion” where government leaders present their intentions to the voters, answer questions, and listen. “Town meetings” and informal gatherings often follow this model of public participation.
4. “Deliberation” where experts, wise elders, informed citizens, or legislators investigate selected problems, carefully weighing the given options before recommending one to decision-makers. This process is used in citizen advisory panels, National Issues Forums, and Citizens Juries.
5. “Dialogue” where there is a large gathering of people or a network of small gatherings that explores topics open-mindedly. Conversation café’s or salons are examples. In these dialogues people grow in their understandings of issues and one another, but group decisions are rare.
6. “Choice-creating” where diverse people address the most pressing issues collaboratively and creatively, evolving unanimous, win/win conclusions through “shifts” and breakthroughs. The Creative Insight Council and the Wisdom Council process, to be considered later, are examples of this kind of public participation.

Choice-creating is the ideal quality of thinking for a democracy, where everyone is involved equally and respectfully, seeking what’s best for all. This form of thinking often occurs naturally in a crisis, when people recognize that the normal ways of thinking cannot work. Then they rise to the occasion to accomplish miracles. For example, maybe as a student you would wait until the last moment before starting an important assignment. This is an artificial crisis but it often evokes the best in a person.

Dynamic Facilitation (DF) is a way of helping a small group address its most pressing, seemingly impossible issues in the spirit of choice-creating. Rather than relying on agendas, guidelines, step-by-step thinking, or prepared questions, the dynamic facilitator uses four charts: Data, Solutions, Concerns and Problem-Statements. People just talk, but the dynamic facilitator structures the conversation so that all comments have a place and are valuable. No one feels judged and all feel included. He or she helps the group follow their energy in a way that a new, shared perspective emerges.

To achieve these results participants need not be trained ahead of time. They can just be themselves. As people feel fully heard they put aside their preconceived ideas and feelings and become open hearted and open minded. It’s enjoyable. It builds the spirit of community and yields answers that all support.

The Creative Insight Council uses Dynamic Facilitation to engender choice-creating in the small random group as a microcosm of the city. Then through the citizen gathering and ongoing conversations, it seeks to invite all citizens into that new conversation.

A Vision of Change

One big advantage of the CIC is that it is scalable. It can work for a town, a city, a state, or a nation. It offers new promise at large scale, even on intractable issues. Consider the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, for example. The Israeli (or Palestinian) government could establish a series of four CIC’s on this conflict. The first group will present a thoughtful unanimous perspective designed to spark a new, more creative national conversation.

In a month or so when the next randomly selected CIC meets, this new group will build on what happened since. Because it is a continuing process, it is likely to engage ever more citizens and invent ever more new possibilities. One of these new breakthrough possibilities, for instance, arises because of the process itself. Here is a way that the Israeli citizens, not the government, could speak with one voice to the Palestinians and to all Arab neighbors. Just the new tone of conversation alone would be an improvement over the current dependence on media sound bites and hype.

The key is to have the new conversation be part of the ongoing structure of how communities make collective choices. The “Wisdom Council” process (WC) is like a CIC in that it is formed from randomly selected citizens being dynamically facilitated to address difficult issues, and presenting its joint conclusions to the public. But rather than starting with a given issue, the WC is chartered ahead of time by the citizenry to be ongoing and it chooses its own issues. Every four months or so a new randomly selected WC is convened, chooses a topic, reaches a shared perspective on that topic and presents those results. This is a structural change to the system that has the potential to involve all citizens in one public conversation that is ongoing. Where the CIC offers a new voice of “the people” on specific chosen issues, the WC speaks with the voice of “We the People,” ultimate authority.

Obviously, if there could somehow be a nation-wide public conversation where all citizens are involved, facing the big issues creatively and collaboratively, and seeking answers that work for everyone, then many pressing, impossible-seeming issues would just go away. How, for instance, could racism or wars or terrorism exist, if all people were talking together in one respectful, listening conversation? How can we have a lopsided distribution of wealth or special interest dominance of politics if all are seeking what’s best for everyone? And how could we continue to trash the planet if we have a way to work together in thoughtfully adjusting our system?

In Bregenz, just before the Creative Insight Council meeting, a Wisdom Council met. At the beginning of the meeting the citizens selected their issue:

“How could Bregenz become a more European city?”

But in the dynamically facilitated conversations this issue became something else. The group recognized a more fundamental, heartfelt, systemic, issue … that there are two parallel societies within the city. The immigrant population, especially the Turkish people, lives separately. Sometimes they don’t even learn to speak German. Then the Wisdom Council began mulling how to bridge this gap. They recognized this as a hidden, vital issue needing the attention of the whole community.

In this case, the Wisdom Council process was not chartered into existence through a vote of the citizens. So when they present their results in a community gathering, not all citizens will hear the message. But some will, and increasing numbers will be paying attention to each future Wisdom Council. In four months or so, when a new Wisdom Council is selected, that group might pick up the same topic and take it another step. Or, city government might convene a CIC on this topic, to help the citizens take charge of this issue.

By itself the Creative Insight Council offers a giant leap forward for government. In conjunction with the Wisdom Council process, it’s possible to structure an ongoing, whole-system, creative public conversation, where wise and thoughtful perspectives result. This offers the prospect of a different kind of democracy, with all of us involved and with all-of-us-together ultimately in charge. We call it a “Wise Democracy.

Sum

Our society is encountering a rising number of crises. To address them all of us must become involved. But it’s difficult to imagine being involved when the forms of citizen participation are so limited. However, three social inventions— Dynamic Facilitation, the Creative Insight Council and the Wisdom Council —make it possible for government to achieve a whole new level of citizen involvement. They make it enjoyable and productive for ordinary citizens with different views to come together to work on the biggest issues we face collectively.

A simple safe first step promising immediate benefits might be for government to convene a Creative Insight Council on a difficult topic in the community. As elected officials and community leaders recognize the benefits of this approach, their trust in the capabilities of “the people” will rise. Then it becomes easier for a citizen group or government to make the choice-creating conversation ongoing using the Wisdom Council process.

In this approach there is no coercion of any kind and no identifiable risk. There is simply a new conversation in place about the big issues, where people are listening to one another and being creative together.

FIVE KEY MESSAGES

1. This article suggests a new way to enlist the intelligence and creative capability of citizens to solve difficult issues.
2. This process starts when government faces a difficult issue and convenes a Creative Insight Council to address it.
3. The next step is when this new public conversation is set up to be ongoing through the Wisdom Council process.
4. Both of these new social inventions work because of the heartfelt, creative quality of conversation, “choice-creating.”
5. Dynamic Facilitation is used to assure choice-creating within both processes.

RESOURCES

1. The Center for Wise Democracy helps governments and citizen groups employ these new social innovations.
2. www.DynamicFacilitation.com In particular see the article “Dynamic Facilitation and the Magic of Self-organizing Change”.

Tags: choice_creating, civic_engagement, creative_insight_council, dynamic_facilitation, public_participation, wisdom_council, wise_democracy

This entry was posted on Friday, May 8th, 2009 at 9:58 am and is filed under Articles, Choice-Creating, Civic Engagement, Democracy, Dynamic Facilitation, Uncategorized, We the People, Wisdom Council. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.