World Café – what is it, and how could you use it in your workplace?
- Vicky Lord
- Jul 24, 2019
- 3 min read
Updated: Aug 22, 2019
Affective communication is vital in any organisation or community. But too often it’s a case of one way messaging with little engagement from the intended audience, and we are left wondering why our desired outcome or action was underwhelming.
World Café is a communication tool that might help in your organisation. It does away with hierarchy and linear communication. It removes formality and structure. It provides a collegial framework for discussing issues that really matter. It’s a simple, inexpensive and effective way to create collaborative dialogue and shared vision.
The basic premise with World Café, is small group conversations in a relax setting, that begin with open questions. Regardless of whether you have 12 or 120+ participants, the World Café method allows individuals to contribute in a meaningful way and for the ideas of all to be captured as part of a collective intelligence on a shared visual space in the centre of each table. Participants rotate to new group conversations several times, sharing and building on insights before collective discoveries are harvested, distilled and shared with the wider group.
You could say that the World Café concept was discovered by accident. In 1995 a group of international people arranged to meet in California, to discuss intellectual property. Their meeting was planned to take place outdoors, but poor weather that wasn’t forecast meant a last minute change of location. The event organizers improvised by creating a hospitable space in the host ́s living room, where groups of four held conversations around small tables (much like a café), with white paper as tablecloths and pens for doodling and noting down ideas. After about 20 minutes the participants moved to different tables for further discussion, sharing insights from previous tables and building on their common understanding with fresh ideas.
At the conclusion of the event, the event organisers acknowledged the success and attributed the magic created in the middle of the tables mostly to these factors:
A safe, comfortable environment. Personable.
Loose structure, with permission to play, be open and try new ideas with each other. Possibility.
Small group size to facilitate listening and sharing of ideas. Talking with each other, not at each other. Connection.
Rotation of participants to accommodate different personality types and allow for a web of understanding to form. Co-evolutionary.
When we take part in conversations and share stories, we are able to connect with others at a deeper level than many everyday interactions allow in the workplace or in our networks. Whilst the subject we are discussing may be based in science, economics, education, politics or technology, in a café style conversation we each bring to the table diverse perspectives, cultural understanding, identity, values and knowledge not found in textbooks. We will find both conventional and unconventional wisdom is contributed, creativity stimulated and a cross-pollination of ideas that broadens perspectives.
When we ask open questions, we can elicit dialogue and encourage exploration of subjects that really matter with fewer constraints. From this comes fresh thinking, insightful challenges to status quo paradigms and innovative exploration that might have otherwise been hidden from view or remained below the surface.
With conversation there is connection as well as collective knowledge and wisdom.
World Café is a meeting format that allows you to focus on what really matters. The onus doesn’t sit with one person or a leadership group, because everyone has the opportunity to contribute their thinking and to speak their mind. The cross-pollination of ideas, linking and connecting of concepts and shared insights that come from these small group discussions can be truly valuable to your organisation.
Do you want to improve communication for your company? Do you have a project, campaign or a need for organisation change that requires idea generation? You may find these links helpful so you can explore the World Café concept further:
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