The World Café – Shaping Our Futures through Conversations that Matter

Citation

Pagliarini, R. (2006), "The World Café – Shaping Our Futures through Conversations that Matter", Journal of Organizational Change Management, Vol. 19 No. 2, pp. 266-268. https://doi.org/10.1108/09534810610648951

The café. Hearing the words café brings to mind the notion of intimacy, serenity and contentment. Often film makers will use the café setting to convey meaningful conversation is to occur. In addition, open any travel magazine and note the several pictures depicting people enjoying conversations at an outdoor café. There is no denying that there is something magical about a café setting that immediately transforms its guests into a peaceful awareness which provides a perfect atmosphere for engaging in conversations that matter.

Regardless of the topic of an interpersonal interaction, it all comes down to communication. In situations where success is celebrated, a reflection of the contributing factors will reveal that outstanding levels of communication were at the heart of the experience. The same holds true for situations resulting in failure or disappointment where the contributing factor is considered to be the lack of effective communication. The World Café – Shaping Our Futures through Conversations that Matter, by Juanita Brown and David Isaacs, presents an exciting and refreshing depiction of the power of effective and open communication. Reading only the first few pages, I began to understand World Café concept and I began to recognize ways that I could use the techniques associated with engaging in the café style of communication and dialogue.

I offer the following as a method of exploring the writing of Brown and Isaacs. For a number of years, the maritime component of a large transportation corporation has been experiencing significant difficulties in reinventing itself to stay vibrant and competitive with other entities encompassing the American maritime industry. The CEO of this maritime component has been unsuccessful in working with his executive team to get them to develop new and innovative ideas to move the company forward. The CEO utilized the standard executive format. At each executive meeting he simply restated the same question again and again – asking the executive team to think of new and innovative products and services to reenergize the component department. What motivation technique must be employed to challenge the executives to think creatively? What techniques will allow the executives to begin to engage in knowledge sharing and meaning conversations based on a discussion of questions that matter? As I continued to read The World Café, I immediately began to recognize answers to the questions discussed above. I also begin to appreciate how powerful the use of the café format would be in motivating the maritime executive team in their quest for developing a revitalized product and service delivery strategy.

The World Café offers readers a unique structure, one that facilitates their education and appreciation for the café experience. The authors begin the book with an excellent brief story of how The World Café was created and some of the essential components embody the café experience. The authors then offer an in‐depth discussion of the seven core principles, one chapter for each principle, that guide The World Café experience. The principles are:

1. 1.

   set the context;

2. 2.

   create a hospitable space;

3. 3.

   explore questions that matter;

4. 4.

   encourage everyone's contribution;

5. 5.

   cross‐pollinate and connect diverse perspectives;

6. 6.

   listen together for patterns, insights, and deeper questions; and

7. 7.

   harvest and share collective discoveries.

The authors begin each chapter with an introductory story which provides for a unique and refreshing aspect to the book's structure. The stories allow the reader share in the writers' real life experiences as a foundation to begin the readers' reflection of the experience. This provides a great opportunity for the reader to begin to make meaning from the message of the chapter. The Café's seven principles are then discussed each in a chapter of their own. The following chapters serve as a comprehensive reference guide discussing offering the reader extremely valuable tips on how to create the actual café setting to providing information regarding formulation of questions that matter.

The authors tell us up front that the following two questions are at the heart of our survival as a human community: how can we enhance our capacity to talk and think more deeply together about critical issues facing our communities, our organizations, our nations, and our planet? And how can we address the mutual intelligence and wisdom we need to create innovative paths forward?

Brown and Isaac begin their discussion of information sharing with the simple notion of creating the nurturing environment of an intimate Café setting in which individuals immediately sense a difference in their surroundings. A difference that allows them to become more relaxed and therefore more open to discover the possibilities that are held in the ideas and stories that are told by others. The Café setting presents the foundation for a deeper level of listening by participants and as I read these stories I could not help but think of the dramatic change that would occur if a Café approach was used by the CEO of the maritime company to unleash the creative power of the executives.

Brown in sharing her reflections after her first Café experience asks the following questions: “Was there something about the café itself as an archetype – a familiar cultural form around The world – that evoke the immediate intimacy and collective engagement that we experienced? Did the positive association that most people make with cafes support the natural emergence of easy and authentic conversation that had happened, despite the lack of formal guidelines or dialogue training among the participants?” (p. 16). As I reviewed the passages that I had previously highlighted in the book, I realized that the above noted questions captured the essence of the concept of The World Café approach. Although constructing the café setting is an important aspect, Brown reminds readers that the art of communication is equally as critical to sharing knowledge and collectively working toward a common goal. The café sets the stage for meaningful conversations to emerge. In making the point that conversations and communications are vital to working together, Brown suggests that: “Conversation is the core process by which we humans think and coordinate our actions together. The living process of conversations 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” (p. 19).

Today, it appears that we have moved away from using stories as a method of communicating information that matters. Contributing factors may be the that we are restricted by time due complexities of today's world The World Café experience creates the time and the setting to tell those stories that engage the human community in conversations that matter. Although not directly discussed, the reader should get a sense that after the café setting creates, through meaningful conversations, a sense of participant bonding which contributes to a deeper level of café dialogue. In their book, Toward a Caring Society, Oliner and Oliner (1995), tell the story of Russell Baker, an American journalist, growing up in Belleville, New Jersey. Baker remembers:

Often waking deep in the night, I heard them down in the kitchen talking, talking, talking. Sitting around the table, under the unshaded light bulb, they talked the night away, reheating the coffee, then making new coffee, then reheating the pot again, and talking, talking, talking. Baker's kitchen, as he describes it, had little merit of its own, and its austerity highlighted its real purpose. The hub of family talk, it had provided a functional setting for family intimates to act out their relationships. The nightly conversations affirmed their connection to one another. Ordinary and predictable, the talk warmed Baker, rooting him in a sense of dependable continuity and ongoing family connection (p. 10).

Just as Baker's experience of his childhood kitchen, so does the café experience provide for a functional setting for café inmates to act out their relationships surrounding questions that matter. Brown and Isaac use the power of story telling to share World Café experiences in an effort to depict the successes of those who engaged in café style settings. In his book, Making Stories: A Practical Guide for Organizational Leaders and Human Resources Specialists, Terrence Gargiulo (2002) states that “every story or experience is a wealth of knowledge waiting to be tapped” (p. 80). Brown's commitment to The World Café does not slight the art of facilitation and other techniques used to engage people in meaningful conversations and discussions. In fact, the ability to successfully host a World Café requires identical skills of a successful facilitator. The difference being the setting in which the dialogue is held.