| The World Cafe: Shaping Our Futures Through Conversations That Matter | 
 enlarge | Authors: Ph.d Juanita Brown, David Isaacs, The World Cafe Community
Publisher: Berrett-Koehler
Category: Book
List Price: £11.99
Buy New: £6.44
You Save: £5.55 (46%)
New (29) Used (7) from £6.44
Avg. Customer Rating:  2 reviews
Sales Rank: 35442
Media: Paperback
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 300
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1
Dimensions (in): 9.1 x 7.2 x 0.8
ISBN: 1576752585
Dewey Decimal Number: 302.346
EAN: 9781576752586
ASIN: 1576752585
Publication Date: May 1, 2005
Availability: Usually dispatched within 1-2 business days
Condition: BRAND NEW - ***Delivery usually * 3 - 4 * working days - From Aphrohead of SOUTHPORT, Lancs, UK *** . Priority Airmail used Worldwide on International orders. Thanks from all at Aphrohead.
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| Customer Reviews:
 Good Talk December 27, 2005
13 out of 14 found this review helpful
Authors David Isaacs and Juanita Brown came up with the idea for the World Café when they tried to rescue a meeting in their home that was threatening to turn into a disaster. Leaders from the Skandia Corporation were supposed to have a discussion on their northern California home’s beautiful patio. Unfortunately, it was pouring. Brown and Isaacs had to squeeze 24 Swedes into their living room. They hastily covered small TV tables with sheets of newsprint anchored with small flower vases. Soon, the place looked like a coffee shop. The delighted guests began conversing immediately, eventually moving among the small groups to hear what others had to say. Thus, the World Café movement was born. Isaacs and Brown include many stories about ways that organizations have used World Café conversations. They provide lists, drawings and discussion questions. Brown’s commentary on process and principles weaves all this together. She makes grand claims for this approach, believing that conversation is the wave of the future and the best way for people to learn and change. Jargon alert: the authors truly adore New Age gobbledygook. One example suffices: "Optimum learning and development occur in systems in which there is a rich web of interactions, along with an environment of novelty where new opportunities and spaces of possibility can be explored." Despite such warm-hearted mush, we recommend this book to managers who are willing to experiment with an innovative meeting format that lets them synthesize experts’ ideas with the experiences of their own people.
 An engaging guide to optimising your group's intelligence May 31, 2005
27 out of 27 found this review helpful
Well, we've long intuited that there is greater intelligence in groups than in individuals and in recent times research has confirmed this to be so. 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 cafe'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 cafe 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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