Facilitation & Event Design
Fragmented Bureaucracies or Integrated Policy Coordination?
NPR’s Living on Earth show recently ran an interview with David Suzuki, author of “The Legacy: An Elder’s Vision for Our Sustainable Future,” where he shared a moving story illustrating the interdependence of the temperate rainforest ecosystem. He contrasted that to how compartmentalized our government agency approaches are to “managing” our forests. Coincidentally, the same day I heard this interview, I was reading a wonderful new book by Carol Sanford called The Responsible Business, where she offered a case study of how one good strategic question helped a room of government agency people who were responsible for overseeing that type of ecosystem to see their work in a more 
integrated way. First the rainforest story:
Suzuki described how in the thin strip of land from Alaska to California between the Pacific Ocean and the coastal mountain range, salmon are born in the rivers and go out to sea. In the ocean they accumulate nitrogen and then swim back up the rivers to spawn. Bears, wolves and eagles eat the salmon and their scat, which is deposited all over the forest, serving as a fertilizer. But that is only the beginning; as Suzuki goes on to explain:
Cross-Fertilizing Conversations
This interview recently appeared in New Hampshire Business for Social Responsibility's (NHBSR) newsletter:
Today we're talking to Beth Tener, a NHBSR member and Principal of New Directions Collaborative who will be facilitating the interactive dialogue in the afternoon of this year's conference. Beth has over 20 years of experience in the field of socially-responsible business and sustainability and was previously the Executive Director of Sustainable Step New England.
Q: You'll be helping facilitate a World Café process at this year's spring conference. What can NHBSR members anticipate?
A: If you've ever had the experience of attending a conference and found that the most energizing parts were the informal hallway conversations over coffee, you'll enjoy this conference. In a World Café, instead of a speakers and an audience, all the participants engage in small group conversations about questions that matter to your business and career. You get to have some great conversations, hear interesting stories from many people in a short time and come away with new ideas.
In a sense, this process builds on the lunchtime discussion circles at previous NHBSR conferences. Participants rated them positively and asked for more time for these conversations.
