Your description of the situation, Kim, immediately brought to mind the
circumstances which became the founding of search and future search
conference methods. Many years ago Fred Emery and Eric Trist did precisely
that kind of work in England and in the process began developing the model
now referred to as above.
I have been involved in several future search conferences as
co-facilitator and found it to be an excellent means of discovering common
ground and a unified vision that a whole community of people can accept
and build on. The key people in the field are Marvin Weisbord and Sandra
Janoff for the Future Search Conference model and Merrelyn Emery and Ron
Purser for the Search Conference model. The two models are largely similar
with certain design principles which are different and which might work
better depending on the details of your situation.
Marvin and Sandra can be contacted through Searchnet in Philadelphia, PA.,
a non-profit association for providing support and facilitation in the
model which they developed. They published a book last year titled,
_Future Search: An Action Guide to Finding Common Ground in Organizations
and Communities_ (Berrett-Koehler).
Merrelyn Emery is Australian, but does come to the US to do training each
summer in New Mexico. She and Ron have also published a book recently
titled, _The Search Conference_ I believe, from Jossey-Bass, which
describes their method and model quite well. I'm sure you could find a way
to contact Ron Purser through the publisher if no one else has an address
or phone number for him.
I would be happy to give you more information on my experience with the
future search model (I am not in a position to take on the project
directly) if you think that would be helpful. I have a 25 page report
which outlines the process and results of a series of six conferences
which we held at the college last year and I would be glad to send a copy
of it to you (or anyone else on the list) if you will provide me a snail
mail address.
My suggestion would be to try and contact Marvin and Sandra to see what
they could advise. They are very approachable and have an extensive group
of people they have trained all over the country and could possibly lead
you to help near where you are. (I'm sorry I don't have their phone number
here with me at the moment, but I can get it for you if you have trouble
reaching them by calling information in Philadelphia.)
Let me know if you need anything further at this point and good luck with
your task!
--Tobin Quereau Austin Community College quereau@austin.cc.tx.us
Learning-org -- An Internet Dialog on Learning Organizations For info: <rkarash@karash.com> -or- <http://world.std.com/~lo/>