Appreciative Inquiry is a positive change method for discovering what is healthy and working well and then building on those successes.  Rather than focus on what needs to be fixed, Appreciative Inquiry looks deeply into the root causes of success and generates possibilities and plans for bringing dreams to life.  Beginning with person-to-person conversations that encourage storytelling and focus on what each person values and desires, the process then expands to larger and larger groups that collectively decide what they want to create together into the future. Appreciative Inquiry is an ideal planning and management tool because it catalyzes a cascade of conversations about what has been most successful, most meaningful and most alive. 

Open Space Technology quickly enables diverse groups of people, as well as those who work together every day, to tap into the collective intelligence of the whole.  The principles, practices and self-organizing process honor and leverage each person's passion while calling forth a corresponding commitment to take responsibility for action.  In half-day to three-day Open Space gatherings, participants create and manage their own agenda of parallel working sessions around a central theme of strategic importance.  By the end of an Open Space Technology meeting, what was most important to the participants has been discussed and recorded, next steps have been identified and commitments for action have been made.

World Café gathers people at small tables to engage in conversations that matter.  This easy to use method for fostering collaborative dialogue, particularly in large groups, keeps people moving, thinking outside the box and building on one another's ideas as they rotate from table to table.   World Café is used to engage people, especially those who don't know one another, in authentic conversation to generate input, share knowledge and conduct in-depth exploration of key strategic challenges or opportunities in a very short period of time.

Polarity Management^TM is powerful tool that leverages the best of apparent opposites resulting in win-win solutions.  Many challenges are not problems that can be solved with either/or solutions.  Rather, they are dilemmas or polarities to be managed.  Polarity mapping provides a complete picture of the interdependent opposing forces that often create gridlock.  Working with the upsides of both poles, predictions can be made for the types of change that will result from any strategy. 

FACULTY

Christine Whitney Sanchez consults internationally with organizations and communities, building capacity for collaboration and helping them to achieve their most vibrant future in the ground of their past and current success.  She led the collaboration with over 100 colleagues to coordinate and facilitate the largest World Café in the world and largest Open Space Technology meeting in the USA at the 2005 Girl Scout National Convention.  www.christinewhitneysanchez.com.