programs that helped consumers think in more ecologically advanced terms. Each group looks at and identifies that long-
range future that they most want to create. It is a very exciting phase. And then we can go into a typical conference mode in the afternoon, with workshops, breakout groups, panels, and keynote speakers.
Day Three: Design This is the Design Phase, where overnight the steering committee, who had designed the summit (see “Committee Work” on p. 65), lift out — from all the dreams collected from the tables, notes, and presentations of people’s images of the future — the most positive, valued, and dynamic images of what people wanted to work toward. And then they look for common ground. They list the con- crete ideas, and maybe anywhere between a dozen to 25 opportunity areas start emerging. At Sustainable Cleveland, after the Dream
Phase, you could see that there were real opportu- nity areas: offshore wind energy, taking local fore- closed lands and turning those into urban farms, creating green urban spaces, creating renewable energy power for automobiles and city vehicles. In this case, we came up with about 20 concrete areas that some creative group could start designing. We use design-thinking tools like rapid prototyping, so that the groups come out of their design work with more than just words on a piece of paper, more like an action plan. One group came up with the business-plan design and the five stages to establish offshore wind energy — where they would develop a northeast Ohio wind-energy cor- poration that would go after government grants, and so on. At this stage, they actually prototype and build
models or storyboards of those initiatives. We are learning a lot from design firms and design think- ers — people like architects — on how important it is to create a tangible representation of the opportunity area. What happens is that gives a tremendous momentum then for coming out of a summit with enough concreteness that the odds of following up go way up. So the people in Cleveland, coming together to
design this Green City on a Blue Lake — one group designed kind of the constitution for that. Or the dairy industry, one group designed the constitu- tion, the principles, behind a sustainable dairy.
These folks felt very much like the early designers of our country in the sense that they knew that they were collaborating on something that would have reverberations for decades, perhaps centuries. We have not had a lot of experience in harness-
ing the universe of strengths in a whole industry or a whole association or a whole city. That’s what this Appreciative Inquiry approach allows, because it is so positive, so focused on assets and solutions. It allows for the very best in human beings to come out quickly. And it allows for large groups to come to closure with collective-action opportunities that are in many cases truly aston- ishing. It really speeds up the progress that whole industries or associations can take. In the final stage in the summit, the Deploy-
ment Stage or Destiny Phase, groups are invited to continue working on their collective action area and also are invited to think of who else needs to be involved and where else these innovative projects could partner with coming out of the summit. For example, one person from each of the groups becomes part of a council that guides this forward. And so, if you have 20 working groups, you have then 20 people on this leadership council whose job it is to really help nurture the synergies between the groups, help speed the flow of success stories and innovations, and to help the groups remove obstacles. And very often what emerges is the recommendation that we should do this again next year or every other year to keep the momen- tum flowing. People want more out of their conferences and
conventions now. They do not want just some good networking. They want action and they want to be part of something bigger than themselves. There’s tremendous opportunity for asso-
ciations and industries to be able to help propel whole industries or whole associations forward. As human beings, our sense of purpose goes up when we are given these collective-action opportunities to have legacy impact.
. Michelle Russell is editor in chief of Convene. +
› Learn more about the joint conference of the Council on Michigan Foundations and the Michigan Nonprofit Association at cmfmna2012.org.