Process Arts For Better Policy
From Wise Nano
Chris asked me to put something i wrote on the Bay Area Futurists' mailing list here. I've been writing and re-writing this endlessly, and finally just decided to post it as is,hoping to fill in the gaps later. --User:John Abbe
Definitely include:
The Change Handbook: Group Methods for Shaping the Future, edited by Tom Devane and Peggy Holman (a new edition is coming soon)
Maybe also:
Randy Schutt's handouts on consensus are excellent. Sadly, he no longer offers training himself. http://www.vernalproject.org/RPapers.shtml#CoopDecMaking
Another good book: Facilitator's Guide To Participatory Decision-making: by Sam Kaner, et al
There are many synergistic practices, and a general attitude of experimentation in process, which collectively i often refer to as Process Arts http://del.icio.us/tag/processarts. They generally enable better decisions by including more people/perspectives. Different people will find different practices more hopeful to start with, but they all can support each other. I have concerns about any term for this field, but ran across Process Arts (coined fairly recently by Brandon WilliamsCraig) and decided it was good enough to go wth for now at least.
In this article i will briefly mention two categories, then focus on a third - group practices extracting excellent decisions from groups of individuals who aren't necessarily deeply wise, highly intelligent, or expert on the topic at hand.
Personal development
Workshops, studying, introspection, meditation, open conversation, etc. can improve the decision-making qualities of individuals and the groups they are part of by increasing our intelligence (or at least knowledge) and wisdom (i.e. equanimity, listening, compassion, persistence without blame, etc.).
Story / paradigm shift
There is a huge role for reframing news and history in a way that more accurately portrays the costs of hierarchy and polarization, and the benefits of genuinely seeking to include everyone. One example is news reporting on the current situation in Iraq almost completely ignoring that it is a lingering cost of the polarization of the Cold War. Another is the lack of stories about the huge dialogue movement (see below). When such stories are published, they typically focus on one region or project, and fail to portray the substantial social and political ramifications.
Story in fiction and myth are relevant as well; a disturbingly large fraction such stories revolve around what Walter Wink calls the Myth of Redemptive Violence - there's a problem, you identify the bad guy, you make them pay (often with their life) and therefore everything turns out good. This is so deeply embedded in most of us that telling stories another way can seem difficult and unsatisfying. In the real world "getting the bad guy" almost always leads to further strife and misery.
Creative practices that really include everyone
The aspect of this i'm going to focus on is the large number of existing creative inclusive practices and programs. People are applying them in many domains - genuinely engaging everyone present, including as best as possible perspectives not present, connecting people to one another's humanity so that they are in deliberative dialogue rather than debate, etc.
Organization Development and other consultants have been spreading this sort of thing in organizations for many years now. See http://www.mithya.com/learning/dialoguecase.html and the Organization Development Network http://www.odnetwork.org/ [this section needs much fleshing out]
A few closely government-related examples:
Citizen Technology Panels http://www.co-intelligence.org/P-DanishTechPanels.html are used by the legislature in Denmark when they face thorny technological issues.
In the province of British Columbia in Canada, an assembly of 160 randomly selected citizens studied and discussed innovative voting systems (for 10 months) and made recommendations which will be voted on by the people in 2005. http://www.citizensassembly.bc.ca/ The premier of Ontario has recently decided to follow the same process http://www.premier.gov.on.ca/english/news/ElectoralReform111804.asp
This Citizen's Summit influences the Washington D.C. annual budget http://www.americaspeaks.org/projects/citizensummit.html .
A recent nanotech bill in U.S. Congress had a provision requiring some creative public input. [need more on this] See http://www.loka.org/articles/community_workshop_091104.htm and http://crnano.typepad.com/crnblog/2004/07/cant_fool_the_p.html
There are also projects that are not connected to government. A few examples: Let's Talk America http://www.letstalkamerica.org , the September Project http://www.theseptemberproject.org , the Study Circles Resource Center http://www.studycircles.org/ .
I have learned about most of these government-related examples from Tom Atlee of the Co-Intelligence Institute http://co-intelligence.org/. You can e-mail him to get on his mailing list.
Another resource is the National Coalition for Dialogue and Deliberation. The news feed http://thataway.org/news/ is inspiring. We also host a conference every other year http://thataway.org/conference/2004/, and a wiki http://wiki-thataway.org/ with pages on many participatory practices.
I have focused on off-line group process arts here, as i imagine that most readers are familiar with wikis, weblogs, newsgroups etc., I would include such technologies, and the learnings that geeks have drawn from experience with them, as part of the broad field of Process Arts.
These movements (Process Arts in general, and Dialogue and Deliberation) are surprisingly immense to those who have not been following them (and even to those of us who have), i'm just calling attention to them and calling for their further expansion. There are many effective individual and group practices, and able practitioners, and more are constantly in development.
