Philosophy & Methodology

Problems and Possible Solutions
Five Underlying Beliefs of Communities Working Together

Problems and Possible Solutions

Groups, organizations, institutions and communities of all types have a common interest in improving how they function in order to more effectively meet the needs of their individual members. In their efforts to serve their membership, they face many barriers that must be overcome in order to be successful—often including a lack of understanding of the barriers themselves. CWT believes that some of the most important factors that create these barriers are:

• Inadequate understanding of the points of view of all who are involved
• Lack of a commonly understood and shared vision
• Inadequate involvement of members in decision making
• Inefficient use of the resources that are available
• Inability to think creatively about new ways to solve problems and work together

Problems such as these are difficult--and often impossible--to overcome unless specific actions are taken to change the ways that people interact and work together. Fortunately, there are numerous skills, insights and methodologies that can be used to transform organizational and community behavior. During the past couple of decades, many different people have developed effective dialogue and conflict resolution techniques that can help address the barriers mentioned above. All of these approaches have in common a belief that even small shifts in the way that people communicate and approach their problems can help create significant breakthroughs in how they work together.

Communities Working Together utilizes a variety of proven dialogue and conflict resolution methods to address and help solve the wide range of problems that groups, organizations and government agencies must confront. Depending on the situation, we may:

• Teach an organization how to use facilitated dialogue to work through a sensitive problem
• Intervene directly and conduct a mediation with all of the relevant parties in a dispute
• Conduct a workshop or a retreat that allows staff members to get beyond a conflict and begin to work together effectively
• Train facilitators so that an organization or community can made the effective use of dialogue a regular part of their work
• Design and help organize a large outreach project that engages an organization’s constituency or the general public in thoughtful deliberation and planning about what to do on a controversial issue.

In light of the problems that groups, organizations, and institutions face and our faith in the power of dialogue and conflict transformation, Communities Working Together has developed some underlying beliefs that give direction and guidance to our work.

Five Underlying Beliefs of Communities Working Together

1. We believe that people and institutions can move their functioning to a higher level by improving the quality of conversation they have about their collective concerns.
2. We believe that the best way to make good decisions about the direction of organizations and communities is to find credible and efficient mechanisms for soliciting the perspective/input of a wide cross-section of employees and/or citizens.
3. We believe that the vast majority of conflicts within organizations and communities are not caused by people who have bad intentions or even different goals. Rather, most conflicts emerge because people have somewhat differing (though not necessarily opposing) definitions of a problem and/or different visions of the best path to commonly held goals.
4. We believe that a common problem for organizations and particularly for communities is the prevailing conception of what constitutes a public meeting. We have found that people are all too often stuck in a model of public meetings in which hundreds may attend, but only a very small number voices are actually heard.
5. We believe that, by employing the technique of small group dialogue and conflict resolution, public meetings can a) engage more individuals in a deeper way, b) create a much greater sense of community, and c) elicit much more and better information that can be used in the decision-making process.