Public Process Innovations for Moving Large and Diverse Communities to Shared Vision and Action

Collaborative San Francisco and the Neighborhood Assemblies Network (NAN)

New approaches to public participation are helping communities around the world avoid conflict and work together effectively. New “large group” methods enable highly-diverse stakeholder and demographic sectors to collaborate together in large groups involving up to thousands of people.

“Large group” methods and the Neighborhood Assemblies Network
Many large-group methods are recognized under specific names, such as World Café, Open Space Technology, Future Search, Whole Scale Change, Appreciative Inquiry, etc.. Working with the principles that underlie these processes and drawing from many different large-group methodologies, NAN works with communities to devise custom-tailored process designs to meet their needs.

What makes these new collaboration processes different?
The new processes are designed to create “collective intelligence” in public processes by legitimizing all affected and relevant voices. This applies from the very first steps of the process.

  1. Full inclusion. The crowd looks different because multi-stakeholder planning teams are created to assure participation from all sectors. The process doesn’t start until all relevant voices are involved. People from all demographic categories and stakeholder groups are present and talk face to face as peers.
  2. Scalability. The new processes are capable of accommodating dozens, hundreds, even thousands of participants without reducing the quality or effectiveness of the dialogue, and without limiting individual participation. Having more people involved becomes an asset rather than a liability.
  3. Open systems approach. Instead of isolated planning efforts, all effected parties, parties that can affect the outcome and parties that have experience, knowledge or information for each issue are included in a way that builds relationship and coordination between issues.
  4. Participative design. The traditional distinction between the people on stage and the audience is eliminated. No one gives up power or authority, yet everyone has an equal place at the table. People work in distributed, self-managing small groups that work in parallel and report to the whole at intervals. The group as a whole then makes meaning of the work of these small groups. Everyone is involved in getting the work done, raising the degree, breadth and quality of collectively generated understanding.

Unlike traditional meetings that deplete energy and exhaust patience, the new techniques excite and energize, because people are given the chance to talk and act effectively. The processes are relatively simple and inexpensive to implement. People learn that truly collaborative processes are smarter, more productive and more efficient than hierarchies and top-down decision structures. And, with the growing diversity of our communities, reliance on old methods that assume shared perspectives is no longer sufficient.

What outcomes can be expected?
In these new approaches, people are invited to be uncompromising, so that every voice is legitimated from the start as an important element of the whole all are building together. From this basis, communities can build a shared vision that grows from and connects all perspectives, a vision that everyone can support. Government, business and communities can become allies instead of adversaries. Each stage ends up with a focus on what action the group will take to implement the common ground they have discovered.

These approaches reduce “time to effectiveness.” More time spent up front on inclusion and participation means speedier implementation and fewer headaches and obstacles down the road. And nothing creates success like success.

For more information, see http://www.communityassemblies.org or contact NAN co-directors: Kenoli Oleari, (510) 601-8217, kenoli@sfnan.org; Marc Tognotti, (415) 824-1854, marc@sfnan.org.