The World Cafe: Shaping Our Futures Through Conversations That Matter
by Juanita Brown, David Isaacs, World Cafe Community

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Book Reviews of The World Cafe: Shaping Our Futures Through Conversations That Matter

Book Review: An engaging guide to optimising your group's intelligence
Summary: 5 Stars

And this book shows that it requires but a few simple processes to surface this. Starting with planning for diversity and inclusion, and providing a safe environment where everyone has a voice. Add a relevant contexts, some juicy questions and its hard to stop the flow of fresh thinking. Ring a bell? Its not for nothing that caf?'s of the past have fomented cultural revolutions.

The bare bones of this process is available via their website at http://www.theworldcafe.com/. However, I found the book immediately inviting and a joy to own. Time and again I read something and find myself staring into space as new pieces of the jigsaw fall together, like this quote from Fran Peavey in their section on "the art and architecture of powerful questions" p91. "Questions can be like a lever you use to pry open the stuck lid on a paint can.... If we have just a short lever, we can only just crack open the lid on the can. But if we have a longer lever, or a more dynamic question we can open that can up much wider and really stir things up". And the book gives enough examples of long levered questions to fire you up to start generating plenty of your own.

So once everyone is sitting around friendly little caf? tables in groups of four, using coloured pens for drawing and mindmapping on paper tablecloths, well it just takes those "long levered" questions to open the floodgates of communication. Then at the signal, everyone moves to another table, with one person staying to welcome and host their table. Everyone contributes a report on the conversation they've been having and the cross pollination begins. And then together, the group draws out themes and extends on each other's insights. And by the time everyone moves a third time, either to a new table or back to their original table, common themes have started to emerge. These are drawn together into a group "tablecloth" and wholeness emerges.

For me, this book speaks to my heart and mind using stories, drawings, explanations and questions to describe and illustrate how to host conversations that are "coherent without control". The process is being used by governments and companies around the world, and I will do my best to have my organisation join them as soon as possible.

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