A participative planning method that searches for common ground in strategic planning.  Originally developed by Fred Emery and Eric Trist in the early-1960s, the process enables communities, institutions, and organizations to identify, plan, and implement their most desired future (Bunker & Alban, 1997).  The objective is to be proactive toward environmental change.  Therefore, environmental scanning is a critical part of the process.  This is accomplished by surfacing the organization’s past through the group’s collective memory.  Significant organizational changes in the past five to seven years are recorded on flip charts.  With parity of voice the total community brainstorms characteristics in the current system that should be dropped or created to improve the system.  Small groups work in parallel on key elements of the organization’s future system. The groups then reports out and all data is integrated.  People select the strategies they would like to work on and form self-managing teams to develop action plans.  Finally, commitments are made to maintain the self-managing structure (Bunker & Alban, 1992; Holman et al., 2007).

This method creates a preferred future with system-wide action planning involving an entire organization in fast and far-reaching change.  The process creates buy-in, commitment to, and ownership of the change effort.  Broad, whole picture views are used to form the basis of information everyone accesses to plan and implement changes. Jacobs (1997) uses the term “real time” to refer to simultaneous planning and implementation of individual, group, and organization-wide changes. The term also emphasizes the importance of current reality as a main driver throughout the process.  Jacobs evokes complexity when he advocates a whole systems approach to systemic problems through the organizations interconnections:  “real current issues and all their accompanying messy interconnections are the basis of the work” (p. 21).   The approach grew out of Kathleen Dannemiller’s work in large group interventions (Bunker & Alban, 1997; Holman et al., 2007; Jacobs, 1997).

The summit is an application of Appreciative Inquiry (AI) that has evolved through the collaboration of people taking the best of large-group process and integrating AI.  Recognized experts David Cooperrider and Dianne Whitney, are prolific practitioners of this methodology.  The approach focuses attention on expanding an organization’s capacity for positive change through inquiry into its positive core (strengths, gifts and life-giving forces).  It involves the practice of asking questions that strengthen a system’s capacity to apprehend, anticipate, and heighten positive potential.  The summit is an application and theory of “whole-system, strength based inquiry.” The method is designed to progress through the Appreciative Inquiry 4-D process of Discovery, Dream, Design, and Destiny.  The participants’ list is by design diverse and inclusive of all the organization’s stakeholders: employees, customers, suppliers, and community members (Cooperrider & Whitney, 2000; Holman et al., 2007).

From the Institute of Cultural Affairs (headquartered in Chicago), The ICA Strategic Planning Process allows people to categorize, prioritize, and organize their own data, so everyone is involved.  The methodology is a whole-systems approach that includes all stakeholders. This large group intervention is conducted over a period of five to seven days with the actual time depending on the groups needs. The participants stay with the material over a period of time, forcing them to look deeper and avoiding the “quick fix” mentality. The group experiences several days of intensive visioning, searching for contradictions, and offering solutions.  Participants begin to see possibilities and to take responsibility or ownership for the outcome of the process (Bunker & Alban, 1997).

The World Café: Based on conversational process, the World Café is a simple methodology that can evoke and make visible the collective intelligence of any group, increasing people’s capacity for effective action in pursuit of common aims.  As a living network pattern the methodology provides a lived experience of participating in a dynamic network of conversations that continually coevolve as questions that matter with family, friends, colleagues, and community are explored.  In a World Café conversation four or five participants gather at one table to discuss ideas around a topic for 20 to 30 minutes.  When the time is up they are invited to change tables carrying with them their key ideas.  One person is designated to remain at the table to share ideas from the previous group(s).  After three or more rounds the group comes together to “harvest” the dialogue in an all group report-out session (Holman et al., 2007; Brown & Issacs, 2005; Brown; Tan & Brown, 2005).