Wouldn't it be great if everyone in a city (or organization or nation) could call "time out" and visit with one another respectfully about the big issues, and creatively develop a unanimous position? The Wisdom Council is a new large system transformation process that promises something close to this. And wouldn't it be great if just a few citizens who were interested in promoting the public interest could set this process in motion? The Wisdom Council also promises this.
The Wisdom Council is a social invention designed to facilitate a leap forward in the quality of public conversation, hopefully to the point where all of us address the key issue together creatively and develop near-unanimous We the People perspectives. To achieve this magic the Wisdom Council relies on an ongoing series of randomly selected groups of citizens, who are "dynamically facilitated" to address pressing issues of their choice, to achieve unanimous perspectives, and to present these perspectives to the whole population. Then people talk informally until four months later, a new random group is selected. They determine new issues, and the cycle is repeated. This structural approach for involving and empowering all people in large systems, like cities, unions, corporations, government agencies or the nation is being tested ... and it works.
It opens the door to a form of democracy that we call "wise democracy," where citizens co-create solutions to our most intractable issues — like global warming, terrorism, poverty, money in politics, etc.— and where We the People provide commonsense leadership to government.
What does it look like?
Every fouir months or so twelve citizens of a city are randomly selected to meet for a short period, like a day and a half. This group meets with a "dynamic facilitator" to identify key issues, work on them creatively, and develop unanimous statements. These statements have symbolic authority as "Statements of the People.” Everyone is invited to hear the Statements and the Wisdom Council members describe their experience developing them. Then all people meet briefly to dialogue in small groups and report back their conclusions. In practice, we’ve found that most everyone supports both the Statements and the process. Experts and those with differing views are included in this larger public conversation and naturally highlighted.
The goal is two-fold: 1) to generate and implement new solutions to seemingly intractable issues; 2) to create a new process of collective thinking where everyone feels respected, involved and empowered. Each new Wisdom Council chooses its own issues and makes new Statements or modifies the previous ones. Over time successive Wisdom Councils evolve Statements of the People that most everyone supports. Action happens voluntarily by individuals or through the normal channels.
The Wisdom Council is different
The Wisdom Council is complementary to other methods, but fundamentally different.
1) It chooses the issues to address
2) It assures a “choice-creating” thinking process
3) It involves everyone, symbolically and actually
4) It reaches unanimous conclusions
5) It is ongoing