Foreword

I no longer meet people who look forward to going to work meetings. Or public hearings. Or school board meetings. Or any session where decisions need to be made. We don't want to be at these meetings because we know exactly what will happen. People will either overparticipate or sit there bored. Those who talk will become progressively louder and more emotional. One or two people will monopolize the process and try to ramrod through their agenda, while everyone else gets angry at their tactics. We won't feel listened to; we won't believe that anyone understands our position. And nothing will get done—the problem that called us together, that each of us cares about, will not be resolved. If a decision gets made, it will not represent us, and our relationships will be more fractured at the meeting's end than when we started.

In the past few years, I've watched the disintegration of decision-making processes in organizations, communities, and families. I've observed how difficult it is for people to work together, how we no longer want to work together, and how frustrated we all are that no one seems capable of good decision making. How did we get into this sorry mess? When and why did it become so difficult to work together well? Was there ever a time when we left meetings feeling good about the quality of our decision making, when we enjoyed working together, when we looked forward to the next time we could think and dream together?

Don Maruska knows how to create positive, productive meetings and successful decisions in today's fractured and exhausted environment. His well-tested process makes it possible to reach high-quality decisions based on accessing everyone's good thinking and greatest hopes. He has found the means to bring out people's best qualities—their intelligence, their caring, their commitment. His ten-step process reaches back in time to another tradition—that of spiritual discernment—that precedes our current flawed methods. This process is more firmly rooted in a deep understanding of human motivation and the conditions that bring out our best qualities.

Several years ago, Marvin Weisbord, one of the wisest consultants I know, taught a great principle. After many years of working in organizations, he commented: "I used to ask 'What's wrong and how can we fix it?' Then I realized that the right question is 'What's possible and who cares?'" Marvin's comment changed my work in profound ways. I, like so many others, had been taught to ask "What's wrong? What's the problem?" The only process I knew was to flesh out the problem and to do that by asking a team of people to define the issues more fully. I would stand at a flip chart and write down everyone's comments. Soon the paper would be filled with depressing information. People would stare at the paper and sink into their seats, overwhelmed and exhausted by the dimensions of the problem.

Then we would enter into analysis. We would look for clusters of issues, themes, categories. After we lumped things together, we would prioritize them. Then we'd assign people or small groups to work on each priority. People would leave the meeting to go work on their part of the problem, often grateful just to get out of the room and stop breathing the depressing air of analysis. At the next meeting, people might have worked on their issue, or they might not have. But at this meeting, we only had energy for ending the torture. Any action would feel better than delving deeper into the problem. People wanted to get out of the room, and the easiest ticket out was to agree to do something, even if the action made no real sense.

I expect that you've participated in more than one of these problem-solving meetings. As much as we resent them, we haven't known how to change them, because we've been convinced that the only way to solve a problem is to analyze it to death. Yet Don has learned the same lesson as Weisbord. Ask: "What's possible?" Stay away from "What's wrong?" As Don advises, work from hope, not from fear. Think of yourself as an "agent of hope." Call people together to invoke their hopefulness, not their fear.

I'm not surprised that Don's approach has centuries-old roots. It's just in recent times that we've used purely analytic processes, where numbers are the only honored information. We've created nice, neat, linear processes, assembling data into columns and rows, describing step-by-step how plans will unfold, and reducing complex issues to simple formulas. We haven't noticed that these reductionist processes also reduce us. They exclude our greatest human capacities—our multiple intelligences, our feelings, our creativity. Yet it is only these capacities that make it possible to deal with life in all its complexity and fullness.

It takes visionaries like Don to liberate us from these deeply dissatisfying processes. His process isn't a new fad piled on top of existing ones. It is a restoration of what has worked through time for people everywhere. Don has opened an ancient door that we can step through to find the solutions we need, approaches developed by people who weren't living inside modern-day organizations. This book shows how to put these understandings into practice and how to overcome the obstacles in organizational life that stand in the way.

There are several elements to this ten-step process that I know to be true for all human beings, independent of culture or location.

The first element is that people need to be included in issues and decisions that affect them. Very few humans are content to have decisions made for them. Every time we go to a meeting, even when we know it will be a frustrating session, we're acting from this need. We need to be included.

Second, we never know who might have the information that will make a difference, that will provide the insights necessary to solve a problem. Everyone is an expert about something, and processes that make it possible for people to speak from their unique expertise always lead to more intelligent decisions.

Third, people need to feel respected. This is a fundamental human need, no matter how poor or oppressed or excluded we've been in our lives. Any process that truly welcomes people in and respects them for their experience will succeed.

Fourth, listening is the most powerful process we have available. As we listen to each other, we move closer together. Our relationships improve considerably. And people who feel listened to become good listeners. As we listen to each other, we learn how differently each of us experiences the world. Those different perceptions allow us to create a richer picture of what's going on. We move off of our narrow positions and become more sensitive to the complexity of life. We become better thinkers, and also better colleagues.

Fifth, people want to be together. We are happiest when we can work well together. It is antithetical to human nature to be alone—we are a species that has always worked in groups. Sometimes this is difficult to believe, especially at this time of broken relationships and demoralizing group processes. But the most fundamental aspect of being human is our capacity to love.

And finally, it is hope that calls us into our creativity. We love to feel that we can make a difference in our world—that by contributing our caring and our ideas, we will make something possible. We are by nature a meaning-seeking species, and we find meaning in hoping that we can make the world better for our children. We are intent on creating a future that is better than the present. This hope is not dependent on circumstances, but is a quality of the human spirit.

As you read this book and experiment with this process, I encourage you to see if what I've just described becomes true in your own experience. You're about to engage in a wonderful discovery of what it feels like for people to work together to find true solutions. Enjoy the discovery.

—Margaret J. Wheatley
Author of Leadership and the New Science, A Simpler Way, and Turning to One Another: Simple Conversations to Restore Hope