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Wise Democracy

A Strategy to Involve Citizens, Overcome Partisanship, and Solve Impossible Public Issues

by Jim Rough

INTRODUCTION

Communities and their governments face big, messy, impossible-seeming public issues including inadequate resources for public goods, taxing inequities, terrorism, a declining education system, increasing citizen frustration, and a failing environment. More and more these days, governmental leaders are blocked from addressing these issues in any real way because the public conversation is a partisan battleground.

Consider the ideal conversation of “Wise Democracy”—where all citizens work together with government, face the difficult problems collaboratively, understand the deep systemic nature of the issues, and create a clear mandate that everyone can get behind. If we could somehow structure this kind of public conversation, many seemingly impossible issues would go away. Plus, there would be radical new solutions, adequate funds, changes to the structure of the system, and people willing to help one another in a collective effort.

Practical experience tells us this ideal is impossible. Consider these recent high profile attempts to transcend partisanship in the United States:

• President Barack Obama entered the Presidency with a strong mandate for change. His aim was to enact major health care revisions in a bipartisan way using facilitative leadership. Result: The public conversation, especially on health care reform, became even more partisan.
• The citizen initiative process in California, theoretically a pure form of citizen involvement, has restricted legislators from enacting change and brought state government to its knees. Result: Special Interests and partisan battling dominate the process more than ever. There is an annual budget crisis accompanied by draconian cuts in basic services. The public is increasingly frustrated and California bonds are rated at near “junk” status.
• Seattle Times columnist Danny Westneat describes the efforts of citizen involvement in his city: “We debated the monorail for ten years, deliberated the viaduct for nine, and discussed the 520 bridge for eight. Actual action so far: naught, nothing, and none.” Fortunately, however, there are new social inventions that make the Wise Democracy ideal far more achievable with minimal risk and cost.

AN EXAMPLE

In Bregenz, Austria, on Lake Constance in the heart of Europe, there are often bitter battles over each new public development project. The mayor was concerned about a new project scheduled for the center of the city, near the lake. This time, however, Dr. Manfred Hellrigl, the Director of the Department of Future Related Issues in the state of Vorarlberg, proposed holding a Creative Insight Council (CIC) and the mayor agreed.

Twelve citizens were randomly selected from the voter registration roles as a microcosm of the city, symbolizing all citizens of Bregenz. They met for two days. They listened to a description of the existing project proposal along with a range of different views about it. The group was facilitated using Dynamic Facilitation (DF) to address the issue in a creative way. The group had a breakthrough: They realized that this project offered a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for the city to link itself more closely to the lake. They suggested shifting the center of gravity to the second floor of the project instead of the first, by building a wide bridge over the railroad tracks rather than the underground tunnel that had originally been planned. Plus, to further connect the citizens with the lake front, they suggested adding a sweeping set of steps on the side toward the lake. Adopting this new emphasis, linking the city to the lake, would be better for citizens and save money for the developers.

First, the CIC presented their unanimous perspective to the investors, architects, city planners and mayor. All were surprised by the depth of the group’s thinking and pleased with the result. The principal investor who had been working on the project for two years said, “We had been looking at the trees and had not seen the forest.”

A few weeks later the CIC, speaking as a symbolic “voice of the common good,” presented their insight and the story of how they arrived at it to a community gathering with a large media presence. One at a time, each CIC member spoke about the Council’s findings and how enjoyable and rewarding the CIC experience had been. Also at this meeting the investors, mayor, and architects expressed their support. The audience listened to the presentations and then, using the World Cafe model for large group meetings, they talked about this new idea in small groups. The entire audience was inspired and enthusiastic about the outcome. Sponsored by government, this process helped the city bypass the usual partisan argument. It facilitated a new public conversation that was a creative quest for what’s best. This same CIC process could be used to address the impossible-seeming issues mentioned earlier.

It provides a way to overcome the usual partisan conversation in Congress, for instance, by creating a clear mandate from the people. It provides a way to bust through Constitutional roadblocks, and make necessary systemic changes that the people support.

WISE DEMOCRACY

To envisage how Wise Democracy might come into being imagine a device that when activated, sets up an energy field of listening and creative thinking. Any person in this field finds him or herself performing at a very high quality, interested in different viewpoints and seeking breakthrough answers that bridge those differences. Regardless of partisan beliefs, cultural backgrounds, or level of education each person feels fully heard and accepted by the group. This frees him or her to become curious, creative and collaborative. Breakthroughs and shifts occur naturally.

If you could buy one of these devices you might set it up in your house for your family, or in your organization for meetings. Or, governments might buy big versions that work for the whole city or the whole country. Just from turning on this device, there would be less partisan wrangling, more spirit of community, more trust in government, more sense of fairness, more citizen involvement, increased knowledge and empowerment, and better collective decisions.

Actually, in our society we already have this device in operation. But the dial has been set to facilitate a different field, one where we are all competitive, partisan, and self-interested. The public conversation is structured to be a political battle where collective decisions are viewed through the question, “How will it affect our bottom line?” Ordinary citizen involvement strategies operate within that larger field. The Wise Democracy approach is a deep systems adjustment to affect the overall field of thinking.

It involves four social innovations:

#1 - Choice-creating

Choice-creating is the quality of thinking that our device seeks to facilitate. This quality should be at the core of democracy. It is where people face big issues creatively and collaboratively, and seek answers that work for everyone. Choice-creating is like dialogue because it is a heartfelt creative process except it leads to unanimous solution strategies. It is like deliberation because it reaches conclusions, but different because it relies on creativity more than judgment to reach those conclusions. Choice-creating is what happens in a crisis, when everyone “gets it” that they have to face the crisis and work together. Empowering shifts and insights arise as people accomplish more than they thought was possible.

Since most people do not experience choice-creating regularly, they think of it as a fleeting and random spirit that happens only occasionally. They don’t imagine that it could be reliably evoked. But it can through Dynamic Facilitation.

#2 - Dynamic Facilitation (DF)

DF is the device we talked about earlier. It establishes the creative field where people face difficult issues, think at the level of choice-creating and create win/win solutions. A dynamic facilitator (DF’er) encourages people to select issues they care about, regardless of how impossible they may seem, and to speak from the heart. He or she welcomes divergent viewpoints and protects each participant from judgment.

The DF’er asks simple questions, such as, “If you were in charge what would you do?” This kind of question is designed to draw out what each person is really thinking or feeling. She uses reflections to protect each person from judgment, clarify his thinking, and to help everyone understand and appreciate each contribution. Using four charts — Data, Solutions, Concerns and Problem-Statements —the value of each comment is brought forward, and the group tracks its progress. Participants enjoy this kind of meeting, finding it to be close in spirit to a natural conversation, except with exciting progress as the result. Since randomly selected participants speak only for themselves, with enough time they are able to put aside partisan positions and seek win/win answers. (See www.DynamicFacilitation.com)

#3 - The Creative Insight Council (CIC)

The CIC was illustrated earlier. Just as Dynamic Facilitation establishes a field of choice-creating in a small group, the CIC extends that field of thinking to a large population. It begins with a difficult, impossible-seeming issue that needs addressing. Twelve people are selected randomly from voter registration roles to meet for a few days to address the selected issue. The group hears from experts and stakeholders, meets in the spirit of choice-creating, discovers new possibilities, and presents its unanimous conclusions to the community. With complex issues, a series of two or three CICs can be used. This way the larger community can become more involved and affect the public conversation more deeply. Each new CIC takes the issue forward another step.

#4 - The Wisdom Council Process (WCP)

The Wisdom Council Process is similar to a CIC but ongoing. Every four months twelve citizens are randomly selected for a few days to engage in a creative exploration on issues of their choice. Each Council arrives at a shared outcome, which they present back to the community in large gatherings, like a “state of union” address. This ongoing process establishes the new public conversation and a new public entity: “We the People””— all of us together.

We figure out what we want and provide responsible leadership to our system, which is currently in charge of both itself and us. In practice the conclusions of Wisdom Councils and Creative Insight Councils are thoughtful and innovative. At their presentations most everyone who hears the results supports them.

Also at these presentations, each Council tells its story. The Council members talk about the awkward place they started, facing some issue they didn’t think they could address. They talk about insights along the way, and their excitement as they became clear on what the real problem is, what we really want, and how best to achieve it. It’s a heroic story that all of us are involved in together. (See www.WiseDemocracy.org)

The usual methods of citizen involvement are arrayed on a spectrum from 1) informing citizens, to 2) finding out what they think, to 3) considering their ideas, to 4) partnering with them, to 5) turning over decision-making to the public. This sounds like the whole picture, but it doesn’t include the Wise Democracy ideal that we seek. Using the four tools of Wise Democracy facilitates the emergence of a clear, thoughtful, inclusive and powerful voice of “We the People.” To the extent that this voice of all-of-us-together emerges, we can change our system to provide more of what we want in ways that currently seem impossible.

These Wise Democracy tools were developed in the United States, but they have found a foothold internationally. In Victoria, British Columbia, for example, a citizens group has been experimenting with the WCP for a number of years. (See www. WiseDemocracyVictoria.org) In the State of Vorarlberg, Austria, different city governments have been working with the CIC and the WCP to stimulate citizen involvement and address important public issues.

PART II

A SUGGESTED STRATEGY

Below is a suggested three-pronged strategy for how government might proceed.

#1- Government uses CICs to address the BIG issues

When facing a difficult, ill-defined, complex, conflicted, or seemingly impossible issue, government now has a way out. It can convene a short series of Creative Insight Councils on the issue. Government can ask for guidance from the citizens, describing the situation: “We don’t have enough money to provide the services we think you want, but we don’t want to raise taxes!” Or ask a question: “What are your priorities about the environment?” The concept is simple: Gather twelve randomly selected citizens to meet over a few days on the issue. Being dynamically facilitated they will have shifts of insight and understanding and present a clear perspective of the public interest. Usually, they will reframe the problem in anew way and suggest some kind of solution strategy. When others hear the results, the story of how the results were developed, and the personal statements of CIC members, they resonate with the conclusions and support them. The desire is to structure things so that as many people as possible will hear the results.

#2 - Government (or a Citizen Group) builds Dynamic Facilitation capability in the community

Another starting place is to convene a four or five-day seminar aimed at developing Dynamic Facilitation skills and enthusiasm for Wise Democracy among citizens, consultants and government employees. This builds the overall capability throughout the system and establishes a core of people who understand the process, are excited about it, and who are skilled in taking it forward. It also improves the quality of life for individuals and makes meetings more effective.

#3 – Working with government a citizen group establishes the Wisdom Council Process (WCP)

Wise Democracy is an ongoing process. It doesn’t work to have just one high-trust public conversation using a CIC, where the normal conversation reverts to a power struggle. This can cause hurt feelings and a sense of betrayal, and undermine the spirit of trust. The Wisdom Council Process is designed to transform the public conversation permanently, involve evermore people, and facilitate the emergence of “We the People.”

Ideally, the WCP should be chartered into existence by “the people” through a vote, a citizens initiative, or constitutional amendment. But in practice, government or even a nongovernmental committee can just start the process by committing to a series of Wisdom Councils.

Along the way particular Wisdom Councils, which represent a voice of the people, unanimously say, “Hey, this is a great process. We need to keep it going.” In this way, the WCP charters itself into legitimacy.

CHOOSING WISE DEMOCRACY

Elected officials often respond to this out-of-the-box approach not with excitement but with concern that this process really won’t work to transform the public conversation; that the effort to involve citizens will take extra time, cost more money, or will threaten a loss of status, control, or authority; or that the citizen voice will be critical of them, ask for more resources, advocate poor proposals (as often happens with citizens initiatives), or just state the obvious. The opposite is true.

Can twelve people really transform the public conversation?

This Wise Democracy strategy isn’t twelve people. It’s all of us. It’s an ongoing series of groups of twelve who are the field-generating device. Key to understanding how this process resonates with the public conversation lies in experiencing and understanding choice-creating. This is not the usual form of citizen involvement where the leaders talk and only the “usual people” react. Nor is it even a deliberative process, where a random selection of people is presented with a problem and a set of options, and where they deliberate and vote hoping that elected officials will pay attention.

Instead, Wisdom Councils and Creative Insight Councils address a problem we all care about and determine a unanimous perspective. This is not the kind of unanimity that a jury reaches, where all consent to one position, like not guilty or not guilty. Nor is it a consensus where each person compromises what he or she really wants. Instead, this is a unanimous perspective where each person is excited. It’s what happens when people determine a win/win breakthrough, a result that all create and support.

Elected officials might respond with legislative change, but the primary point of these Councils is to spark a new kind of public conversation. So, after the Council presents comes the question, “What is your reaction to this symbolic statement of the public interest?.” If you or I disagree with what one Council presents—remember, few do—others are curious to know why.

The Council is gone but we find ourselves in a larger conversation wanting to share our perspective with people who are interested in listening. All of us are seeking to bridge the differences. In a few months when the next random Council gathers, they build on what the last Council did, and on the response of the community.

What’s the risk in this approach? … Not much. This process basically involves a random selection of people who meet for a short period of time, give a speech, and then disband. The Councils have no coercive authority. They “merely” express a view of “the common good.” The only power this group has is to the extent that you, I, and everyone else resonate with their perspectives.

How does action happen?

Through the usual means. Only now, elected officials, government agencies and community groups carry forward with a clear public mandate for intelligent action. After a CIC presentation there can be a “responders meeting” where different government agencies and nonprofit organizations meet to publicly coordinate a response to the voice of “the people.”

How much does it cost?

The immediate costs for implementing a CIC are small. There are fees for the dynamic facilitator, travel costs for participants, and maybe a stipend for their participation, In addition there is the need to organize the community gatherings, and a web presence for extending the conversation to all (video, web, media, etc.).

The primary cost is to not choose this approach. Most existing public battles are a waste of money and human resources. They spread distrust among citizens and government, keep us all in denial about the real problems, hold back the creative potential of citizens, and assure that special interests will triumph over the general interest.

Do we know this works?

Through experiments in different settings we know that randomly selected, diverse people can come together, creatively tackle impossible-seeming issues, and generate thoughtful unanimous perspectives. We also know that those who hear the report of these groups generally support the answers and the process. And we know, at least within organizations, that this conversation spreads into the larger population, improving the spirit of community and generating new individual and group actions. We need more experience in public settings, where the whole community is paying attention to the presentation of the Councils. Then we can see the extent to which this process transforms the public conversation and exerts systemic leadership.

CONCLUSION

It’s common today for people to look at the big problems we face today in society and feel disempowered. But with these new Wise Democracy tools, a new door of possibility has opened. This approach has immense benefit potential and minuscule risk. These ideas are common-sensical. The people have big problems. Government solutions are blocked. If the crisis gets bad enough and everyone knows it, of people will pull together to solve the issues. Why wait? This is a way to help the people come together now in the same choice-creating spirit, and start facing these issues. Then We the People can provide clear intelligent direction about what we want and how to get there. Here’s a way to shift to a system of Wise Democracy.

Special thanks to John Falchi for facilitating this article for us.