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Book Review

The World Cafe - Shaping Our Futures Through Conversations That Matter
By Juanita Brown with David Isaacs

The World Cafe reintroduces us to a world we have forgotten.  A world that constantly surprises us with the wisdom that exists not in any one of us but in all of us.  And a world where we learn that the wisdom we need to solve our problems is available when we talk together. 

“Required reading for anyone who cares about a better tomorrow, The World Café offers tools that can convert analysis into profound change and provides a structure for connecting people that is pure genius.” 

- Peter Block, author of Stewardship and The Answer to How is Yes

  

“As the new business landscape continues to emerge, and new forms 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

The World Café is a flexible, easy-to-use process for fostering collaborative dialogue, sharing mutual knowledge, and discovering new opportunities for action.  Based on living systems thinking, this innovative approach creates dynamic networks of conversation that can catalyze an organization’s or community’s own collective intelligence around its most important questions. 

The World Café process strengthens both personal relationships and people’s capacity to shape the future together.  According to Margaret Wheatley, author of Leadership and the New Science, the World Café reawakens two fundamental beliefs about human life:

  1. We humans want to talk together about things that matter to us.  In fact, this is what gives satisfaction and meaning to life.

  2. As we talk together, we are able to access a greater wisdom that is found only in the collective.

These two beliefs are brought to life in the Café process which has the following characteristics:

   - Everyone is a Contributor
   - Diversity is Essential
   - Everyone is Invited to Participate
   - People Actually Listen and Engage
   - Physical Movement Facilitates Shifts in Awareness and Understanding
   - Good Questions Lead to New Insights
   - Energy is a Catalyst for Change

Conversation is the core process by which humans think and coordinate our actions together.  The living process of conversation lies at the heart of collective learning and co-evolution in human affairs.  Conversation is our human way of creating and sustaining - or transforming - the realities in which we live.

“Café conversations are the most reliable way I have yet encountered for all of us to tap into collective creating.  I have been repeatedly struck by the ease of beginning a World Café-style dialogue - how readily people shift into heartfelt and engaging conversations.  I can think of very few processes for thinking together that work equally well in executive retreats, annual corporate budget and planning meetings, one-thousand-person conferences, and community gatherings.” 

- From the Afterword by Peter Senge, senior lecturer at MIT, founding chair of the Society for Organizational Learning, and author of the highly acclaimed book The Fifth Discipline