Testimonials

“The World Café is a simple, brilliant, beautiful process that enables large groups of people to build collective knowledge about the issues that are important to them. Juanita Brown and the World Café Community are giving the world a gift: the means for quality, effective conversations about important issues, during one of the most divisive times in our history.”
~Sandy Heierbacher
Director, National Coalition for Dialogue & Deliberation (NCDD)

“In the decade of dilemmas ahead, we need more conversations that matter and fewer speeches that don’t. We need more questions that matter and fewer answers that don’t. We need to learn in new (and sometimes very old) ways. The World Cafe is an immediate and practical resource for that learning.”
~ Dr. Bob Johansen Distinguished Fellow Institute for the Future Palo Alto, CA USA

“What is missing in the crisis of our current age is a social technology to access the collective wisdom of diverse and distributed communities. The World Café is an innovative social technology that embodies the principles and practices of a new type of collective conversation that can access this wisdom. It is a must read and a must practice for all advanced practitioners and researchers of social transformation and organizational change.”
~ Dr. Claus Otto Scharmer, Senior Lecturer, MIT Sloan School of Management, co-author: Presence: Human Purpose and the Field of the Future.

“The prevailing wisdom is that talk is cheap and that it’s a poor, timid substitute for action. The World Café calls us to our innate predisposition to come together in reflective discussion. It appeals to the wisdom that every person possesses. It celebrates the generosity of spirit that resides in all of us and it demonstrates that conversation is action, because it is the wellspring from which relationships and trust are generated and informed decisions grow.”
~ Thomas F. Beech, President and CEO Emeritus, Fetzer Institute

“World Café conversations are the most reliable way I have yet encountered for all of us to tap into collective creating…I have been repeatedly struck by the ease of beginning a World Café-style dialogue–how readily people shift into heartfelt and engaging conversation. I have been struck also by the power and impact of many World Café conversations. I can think of very few processes to thinking together that work equally well in executive retreats, annual corporate budget and planning meetings, one thousand person conferences and community gatherings.”
~ Peter Senge, Senior Lecturer, MIT Sloan School of Management, Founding Chair, Society for Organizational Learning.

“The challenge of leadership in these times of breathtaking speed and exhausting complexity is to find creative ways to embrace the future. World Café dialogues provide us the opportunity to do just that.”
~ Paul Borawski, (now retired) Executive Director and Chief Strategic Officer, American Society for Quality

“The invention of the World Café approach to constructive conversation is a tremendous step forward. If it can be applied widely, there is a good chance that this world will be a much happier and productive place.”
~ Napier Collyns, co-founder, Global Business Network

“The World Café is a practical, robust, and resilient approach for engaging with complex but important questions –creating outcomes that are seen as having deep legitimacy and therefore are more likely to be acted upon.”
~ Martin Fischer, Senior Leadership Advisor, British National Health Service

“If you are asking yourself: “What might I do to promote breakthrough thinking? – The World Café approach provides the essential ingredients. It’s practical, engaging and applicable anywhere in the world.”
~ Marjorie Parker, Co-founder, Norwegian Center for Leadership Development and author of Creating Shared Vision

“The future performance of our organizations is directly related to the quality of conversations that happen there. The World Café gives us proven ingredients to cook up conversations that count.”
~ Eric Vogt, President, International Corporate Learning Association (InterClass)

“The World Café has been a key format in our international Systems Thinking Conferences. It is an amazingly effective way to overcome the barriers that separate us and release our collective wisdom in the service of more informed, more creative action.”
~ Ginny Wiley, Former President, Pegasus Communications