Group items tagged

Corporation for Positive Change is a global network of master consultants, linked by a shared commitment to the principles and practices of Appreciative Inquiry and Positive Change. We are skilled designers and facilitators of high engagement, strength-based, large-scale change. We help with the human side of organizing, strategic change, and culture transformation in businesses, non-profits and NGO's, health care, education, government and religious organizations. We are team builders, helping with leadership, professional, and project teams to achieve their goals by clarifying their purpose and principles, strengthening stakeholder relations, and aligning strengths around performance outcomes.

Atlas of Care connects personal and professional scientific inquiry with community-based development theories and practices. We design experiences and practical tools that help people see, connect, and collectively inquire about their care (giving and receiving) activities in everyday life. Though care is central to our ability to thrive in our lives, it is often not seen or recognized. By learning how to see the invisible - visualizing care ecosystems and other aspects of living - people can be more intentional about how to build, strengthen, and expand the capacity of the various lived communities.

We are designers, strategists, and facilitators who help people come together and solve complex problems. We are passionate but patient, methodical yet creative-and your coaches, advisors, partners, and team members all at once.

"You can easily set up your students or colleagues to learn about climate solutions by experimenting with the En-ROADS simulation model. We've designed the En-ROADS Guided Assignment: Simulating Climate Futures (Word and PDF) to provide educators and anyone else with an exercise that can easily be shared with others. A shorter version of the assignment is also available (Word and PDF). This assignment can be given to individual students or groups. "

The Center for Applied Cultural Evolution was created to help communities guide their own social change efforts using integrated social science tools and frameworks. Our mission is to launch a series of Culture Design Labs around systemic challenges ranging from poverty and inequality to climate change and more.

The Center for Applied Cultural Evolution was created to help communities guide their own social change efforts using integrated social science tools and frameworks. Our mission is to launch a series of Culture Design Labs around systemic challenges ranging from poverty and inequality to climate change and more.

"For many years, the Workshop has facilitated the establishment of self-organized working groups. Topics covered vary from year to year. Most groups are mechanisms enabling people who share common interests to discuss their current research and benefit from each other's commentary and criticism. Some groups are focused around a particular research question and have resulted in a published paper, a research design, a research proposal or some other joint product. "

Sticky studio is a real-time collaborative mapping tool designed to help your team flush out concepts fast and easily.

We build tools to get cities on the path to better technology, help citizens get the responsive government they should expect, and scale up small discussions to city-wide change. We are an impartial, informed guide to civic technology, incorporating technology, transportation and city planning, an open-source approach, and the standards knowledge necessary to deliver valuable tools to our clients.

It's easy to confuse the merely complicated with the genuinely complex. Managers need to know the difference: If you manage a complex organization as if it were just a complicated one, you'll make serious, expensive mistakes.

If you are a systems thinker, you might sometimes feel you are going a little crazy. We still live in command-and-control land and our assumptions haven't caught up to the realities of the world. If you have begun to act and talk like a systems thinker, you may be treated a little like the court jester. Actually, I'd say it was closer to the boy who declared the emperor wasn't wearing any clothes. Nonetheless, this is what it's like being a systems thinker. You see and say things that others think are a little crazy. Alternatively, people hear your words, but you realise after a while that they are processing them with an analytical mindset and so misunderstand the whole thrust of thinking systemically. We are all prisoners of our own flat-earthisms, after all. So you are either side-lined because your ideas seem a little far-fetched ("If there is no hierarchy, how do you control people????") or what they think they understand is not what you intended.

The mission of SA2020 is to catalyze the entire San Antonio community into passionate, focused, and sustained action to achieve the shared goals that will transform San Antonio into a world-class city by the year 2020 in eleven key vision areas. SA2020 acts as a steward, connecting San Antonio citizens to opportunities that contribute to their aspirations for their city.

The Election Toolkit is a place where any election official can find communication tools that are recommended and tested by other election officials. Each tool includes information about why to use it, as well as step-by-step instructions on how to best use each tool.

Two threads run through the story of how I came to develop the field of system dynamics. First, everything I have ever done has converged on system dynamics. Second, at many critical moments, when opportunity knocked, I was willing to walk through the open door to what was on the other side.

Art works to improve the lives of America's citizens in many ways. Communities across our nation are engaging design and leveraging the arts to create livable, sustainable neighborhoods with enhanced quality of life, increased creative activity, distinct identities, a sense of place, and vibrant local economies that capitalize on existing local assets. The NEA defines these efforts as Creative Placemaking:

Serve.gov is designed to help Americans create and find opportunities to serve their communities and our nation.

Californians know that the time to fix our state's economy is now. People from every region are standing up and demanding change. We must create real and intelligent remedies that will attract capital, generate jobs and encourage sustainable communities all over California.

What is the World Urban Forum? The Forum has become the preeminent conference on all things urban. It brings together government ministers, mayors, diplomats, grassroots women's organizations, youth and slum dwellers groups, planners, engineers and architects, academics, and the private sector as partners working for better cities.

Smart Growth America advocates for people who want to live and work in great neighborhoods. We believe smart growth solutions support businesses and jobs, provide more options for how people get around and make it more affordable to live near work and the grocery store. Our coalition works with communities to fight sprawl and save money. We are making America's neighborhoods great together.

Our Philosophy & Guiding Principles Social systems work as they do because of how we work - how we think and interact. Our habitual ways of thinking and acting typically lead to change efforts shaped by mechanical problem solving and unproductive competition, often among otherwise well-intentioned interveners. In effect, we try to control complex processes that cannot be controlled, and in so doing miss the real opportunities for deeper and more long-lasting change. By contrast, natural systems demonstrate harmony, balance, integration, and ongoing evolution. The new knowledge we see emerging in the world shapes organic processes of change that result in social systems that are more resilient, sustainable, and adaptive. These "integral" learning and change processes knit "inner" and "outer" change, and are both deeply personal and inherently collective.