One of my favorite quotes is, “Are we as human beings so immersed in conversation that, like fish inwater, conversation is our medium for survival and we just can’t see it?” It’s from the book, The World Café, by Juanita Brown with David Isaacs. It calls us to notice that conversation and communication are a lot more important than we think they are. Perhaps that is because so many of our conversations seem to be about disagreement and are often, a waste of time. There is nothing like an election to make us think that everything comes from an, us-versus-them mentality. But what if we realized that unless we figure out how to have meaningful conversations nothing is going to get done? What if we decided that we need different results from our conversations– or perhaps we will not thrive or even survive?
I think we DO know this, but just don’t know how to do things differently. Since we don’t seem to naturally know how to have conversations that are a ‘medium for our survival’, what about using a system that supports our ability to have conversations that matter? I think it is possible for us to learn a new way and believe that new results are possible. In this blog, I am going to be giving you ideas about how to design a Communication Web for your community. It’s about really focusing in on the importance of a good old-fashioned conversation, recognizing that we each have to take on more responsibility, use more communication tools, be willing to set an intentional context for our conversations, and be open to talk, think, listen and act together. Perhaps it is the only way we can learn to figure things out for ourselves, instead of waiting for; the government, the mayor, the president, the principle, …”someone else”, to do it for us.
It IS possible for us to have meaningful conversations so that we make the changes we need, together, as a community? I believe it is! I would love to hear of a great example of a ‘new conversation’. Have you done a World Café in your community? What was your experience? What have you tried and what worked, or didn’t? Let’s talk about it!