Structured dialogical design

17 thoughts on “Structured dialogical design”

1. I think one idea I would add, which (unless I have missed it) Yiannis didn’t cover, is that you can create root-cause analyses of problem statements, thus finding which problem, if addressed first, would make all the other problems easier to tackle. However, you can also analyse solution statements, so you can see which solution, if implemented first, would make all the other solutions easier to implement. I find this a useful distinction.

   Also, Yiannis mentioned this in passing (without using the technical term for it), but it could do with further emphasis: there is something called the “erroneous priorities effect”. When people come into a solutions analysis, they usually have beliefs about what the top priorities are. However, they have usually formed these beliefs in the absence of any systematic consideration of the relationships between different possible solutions. When people see where their initial priorities sit in relation to other people’s ideas (for instance, they might realise that their initial priority might be made easier to implement by acting on someone else’s priority first), they very often change their minds. This is evidence that systemic thinking changes priorities, and the amount of change can actually be quantified, which is useful for research purposes. The term “erroneous priorities effect” has been coined because, in normal policy and planning contexts without use of a systems thinking approach, most people’s priorities are actually erroneous, and it can be demonstrated through this kind of systems analysis.

   I also have ten questions for you, Yiannis:

   1. How many participants would you regard as the maximum for a face-to-face SDD?

   2. How many days would you set aside if you are going to do either a problems or solutions analysis all in one, multi-day workshop?

   3. Would you recommend doing both a problems and solutions analysis, or just choose one of them to focus on?

   4. How close are we now to an online variant of the process, so people can contribute in a larger distributed network?

   5. How do you deal with it when there are no clear levels, and the influences are all tangled up or circular (things in the ‘top’ level influencing things in the ‘bottom’ level as much as vice versa)?

   6. How do you deal with it when the root causes are listed as things like “capitalism”, which many people believe is the root cause of many societal ills, but no single group of people has the power to change on their own?

   7. Linked to the last question, do you ever see situations where people consciously decide “we can’t go there” in reaction to the lowest level being the requirement for a fundamental change that they are unwilling or feel unable to contemplate?

   8. What do you regard as the biggest barriers to take-up of the approach?

   9. How can we address those barriers, especially when organisations have intense workloads and many people distributed outside conventional office spaces?

   10. Linked to the last question, it seems to me that interest in this and other forms of systems thinking is growing massively, but at the same time it’s becoming more and more difficult to carve out sufficient time and space for dialogue in organisations and communities. When push comes to shove, do we need to advocate fundamental change in how organisations work (this strategy has been pursued before, but has never led to massive take-up beyond some useful experiments) or change the way we think about systems thinking so that intensive workshops are no longer the focus? Or can you see a way around this binary choice?

   Thanks for stimulating these thoughts and questions, Yiannis.

   Reply

   • Dear Gerald,

     Thank you for your critical and thorough reading, as well as for clarifying the erroneous priorities effect. Your 10 questions provide a valuable opportunity to further clarify several additional aspects.
     1. How many participants would you regard as the maximum for a face-to-face SDD?
     The optimal number of participants for a face-to-face Structured Democratic Dialogue (SDD) strikes a balance between two opposing needs. First, we require enough participants to ensure requisite variety, representing the diverse opinions and interests of all relevant stakeholders. However, as the number of participants grows, the time each person has to share their thoughts diminishes. This can lead to increased competition for speaking time or a decline in participant engagement. In my experience, twelve is usually the minimum and twenty-two to twenty-four is the maximum. If the number of available participants is around thirty-five to forty, one should consider implementing two parallel SDDs. When the number is only slightly over the ideal maximum, an acceptable solution is to introduce in-between breakout sessions where smaller groups can clarify and discuss the ideas.

     2. How many days would you set aside if you are going to do either a problems or solutions analysis all in one, multi-day workshop?
     From my experience, all successful applications involved two days for a single type of SDD workshop, typically called a Co-Laboratory to emphasize the collaborative nature of participants working together and making discoveries from the ground up using their own knowledge and experiences. For larger-scale interventions, five days are required: two days for each type of SDD (usually one for identifying obstacles and one for exploring actions to address those obstacles), and an additional day for drafting an action plan and forming working groups.

     3. Would you recommend doing both a problems and solutions analysis, or just choose one of them to focus on?
     There are typically three types of SDD Co-Labs: (a) Future Scenarios/Vision, (b) Barriers/Challenges Anticipation, and (c) Action Planning. Diedrich and Christakis (2021) proposed seven combinations of either one, two, or all three of these types, depending on the specific situation and the primary needs and resources of the client. Large, complex societal or socio-technical challenges usually require a long-range intervention . This process begins with constructing a strong shared vision, continues with identifying barriers that prevent achieving that vision, and concludes with exploring effective and efficient actions capable of removing those obstacles and helping approximate the envisioned ideal future. In most practical cases, however, sponsors prefer to focus on one or at most two types. An SDD focusing on barriers helps create root-cause analyses of problem statements, identifying which problem, if addressed first, would make all other problems easier to tackle. Alternatively, as mentioned above, processing solution statements helps determine which solution, if implemented first, would facilitate the implementation of all other solutions.

     4. How close are we now to an online variant of the process, so people can contribute in a larger distributed network?
     Despite enormous efforts over the past 15 years, creating a system where thousands of participants can contribute, discuss, express their preferences, and structure ideas to form influence trees using Interpretive Structural Modeling (ISM) remains somewhat distant. IdeaPrism is a mobile App designed to bridge this gap by allowing anyone to initiate an online SDD and invite a theoretically vast number of participants. In a dialogue, members are expected to respond to a Triggering Question (posed by the Dialogue Creator) in three formats: as single statements, accompanied by a few paragraphs of clarification (similar to the face-to-face equivalent), and optionally (but strongly encouraged) as 1-2 minute video clips. To ensure that all ideas are reviewed, Dialogue Members are expected to evaluate them. The Dialogue Creator selects evaluation criteria such as Likeness, Desirability, Impact, Likelihood, or Feasibility. Members can also ask structured questions to Idea Authors, using starters like “How do you …” or “Who are you suggesting should …”. Once the Dialogue Creator believes that Members have sufficiently deliberated on the meaning of each idea, they may invite all to a synchronous clustering event or offer the option to conduct the clustering stage individually and asynchronously. In the latter case, the individual clusters are compared, and pairwise similarity comparisons with significant differences are sent back to members requesting justification of their decision. Differences indicate areas where further conversation is needed. While our data has not yet been fully analyzed, this approach appears promising. The stage of Preference Voting can be easily conducted asynchronously through the App. For the ISM stage, a similar approach is used, either through a synchronous event or individual, asynchronous mapping. Cases of asynchronous mapping have been documented (Laouris, 2023 ). Individual asynchronous ISMs were used to amend and extend the Map and were not used as an alternative to the entire process. Challenges of implementing the Mapping stage wholly individually and asynchronously have been discussed (Laouris & Metcalf, 2023 ). The approach with which we are currently experimenting is analogous to that applied for clustering. The software identifies influence relations between pairs with opposing conclusions and requests the group to justify their decisions and re-vote.

     5. How do you deal with it when there are no clear levels, and the influences are all tangled up or circular (things in the ‘top’ level influencing things in the ‘bottom’ level as much as vice versa)?
     This is a very interesting question. In my experience of over 120 full-scale Structured Democratic Dialogues (SDDs), I have encountered this phenomenon only twice. In both instances, the facilitators had to intervene, explaining to the participants the need for further deliberation regarding the direction of influence, followed by another round of voting. The first instance occurred during one of the early SDD implementations in Cyprus in 1994, facilitated by John Warfield’s protégé, Benjamin Broome. The visionary statement #22 “Build a country where everybody’s needs are everybody’s concern” was generally considered achievable only after addressing many other issues. However, an eloquent participant managed to persuade the group into voting that if this vision were realized, then everything else would be easier to achieve. This misled the participants into a circular reasoning trap.
     The second instance occurred during a planetary dialogue aimed at analyzing factors that build, predict, and sustain peace. This dialogue initially involved over 200 participants and culminated in an SDD where 21 participants focused on 61 winning proposals, applying Interpretive Structural Modeling (ISM) to produce an influence tree. Similar to the previous case, the author of proposal #61, “Ending Existential Poverty,” argued that if we could somehow (magically) end existential poverty, everything else would follow. After serious and deep deliberations, the majority agreed that ending existential poverty could only be achieved after a society attains peace and reaches a high level of awareness and responsibility. In both cases, these interventions and additional deliberations helped untangle the circular influences, leading to a clearer understanding of the directional relationships between factors.

     6. How do you deal with it when the root causes are listed as things like “capitalism,” which some people believe is the root cause of many societal ills, but no single group of people has the power to change on their own?
     The discovery of a root cause that is not easily addressable is not uncommon. The quick answer to managing such a case is to “neglect” that specific factor and focus on others that also lie at the roots of the tree. In a recent extension of the SDD process, we have amended it by asking participants to evaluate the factors that made it to the tree for feasibility, impact, and likelihood of occurring without intervention. Cross-analysis of these multi-criteria with the structure of the map helps stakeholders design more efficient and effective action plans. For example, they can de-prioritize factors considered practically unfeasible in favor of others with sufficient impact and easier implementation. Additionally, factors already being addressed (possibly by others) can be de-prioritized from the group’s agenda. Nevertheless, it is important to remember that one of the strengths of SDD is its ability to inspire participants to come up with innovative ideas to address problems and barriers that might initially seem impossible to tackle.

     7. Linked to the last question, do you ever see situations where people consciously decide “we can’t go there” in reaction to the lowest level being the requirement for a fundamental change that they are unwilling or feel unable to contemplate?
     When interpreting the influence tree, one should not focus solely on the one or two factors at the very bottom, but rather examine the lower part of the tree more flexibly. Similar to a biological tree that extends roughly equally above and below ground, the SDD’s influence trees should be viewed with everything below the horizontal midpoint considered as “roots.” In this context, my answer to this question essentially aligns with the previous one.

     8. What do you regard as the biggest barriers to take-up of the approach?
     I wish I knew the definitive answer to this question, which might warrant conducting a mini SDD to identify and structure the barriers into an influence tree. Without fully exploring the possible influences between factors, I would suggest that three significant barriers are: (i) SDD is not yet widely known; (ii) SDD is perceived by many as being closely associated with a particular group and reflecting a specific line of thought; (iii) those responsible for selecting an expert and an approach to address an organizational challenge are sometimes hesitant to consider SDD due to a mistaken belief that the democratic process might highlight problems or solutions they do not approve of.

     9. How can we address those barriers, especially when organisations have intense workloads and many people distributed outside conventional office spaces?
     As more scientists and practitioners engage with SDD, its acceptance will increase, and the perception that it “belongs” to a single group of scientists will diminish. Making the SDD process hybrid, partly virtual, and asynchronous will also help address the intense workloads and geographical distribution of many associates. The most challenging barrier to address is the reluctance of top management to overcome their fears that the collective intelligence and wisdom of their stakeholders might lead to conclusions that threaten their authority or result in demands for changes or reforms not desired by the organization’s “owners.”

     10. Linked to the last question, it seems to me that interest in this and other forms of systems thinking is growing massively, but at the same time it’s becoming more and more difficult to carve out sufficient time and space for dialogue in organisations and communities. When push comes to shove, do we need to advocate fundamental change in how organisations work (this strategy has been pursued before, but has never led to massive take-up beyond some useful experiments) or change the way we think about systems thinking so that intensive workshops are no longer the focus? Or can you see a way around this binary choice?
     Advocating for a fundamental change in how organizations operate is a monumental task and likely beyond our immediate reach or scope. While it is true that the widespread adoption of systems thinking and the utilization of existing methodologies and tools have not yet been realized, there has been significant progress in understanding the need and benefits of such approaches. More experiments and notable case studies will further this progress. In my opinion, the solution lies in changing our perspective on systems thinking and its practical applications. While intensive workshops will continue to be necessary, we should also propose new models. The emergence of hybrid, entirely virtual, and primarily asynchronous models is a step in the right direction. Our team suggests a new dialogue model in which the three major types of SDD are conducted in parallel rather than sequentially, as part of a continuous process and not only when urgent issues arise. Diverse stakeholders should have constant and live communication channels with their respective organizations, allowing them to review and re-evaluate factors continuously, including updating their previously submitted preferences. Adding new or re-evaluating existing factors—whether they are descriptors for an ideal future vision, barriers, or proposed actions—requires adjustments to the clustering and, more importantly, the mapping stage. Successfully implementing such a model will provide organizations with dynamically updated structures concerning their vision, obstacles they face, and action options.

     Reply

2. Why do we want usually aim to reach consensus? I think that pushing people to reach consensus can mean we get the lowest common denominator. The alternative is to find multiple, and complementary goals. Interested to know what others think.

   Reply

   • Dear Dana,

     Your point is extremely important. You are absolutely right in saying that “pushing people to reach consensus can mean we get the lowest common denominator.” This is why we need methodologies that do NOT do that; they do not “push” people to reach an artificial consensus. The SDD is one of the few approaches that achieves this.

     The design of the SDD process begins with stages that aim to help participants: (1) develop a shared understanding of the issues at hand and the perspectives of each participant. This is not easy! (2) delve deeper into each person’s viewpoint. We do this by examining whether the contributions of different participants share common attributes. It is crucial to understand what we mean by “consensus.” We do NOT mean agreement on option A over option B. In SDD, consensus means agreement on HOW IDEAS SUPPORT OR INHIBIT each other. Participants do not have to compromise on the importance of their ideas. Instead, they explore and agree (to a very high degree; between 75-100%) on which ideas must be prioritized because they influence others.

     The best way to appreciate the process is by participating in an SDD or reading any of the articles or books mentioned in other comments here.

     Reply

3. Hi Yiannis,

   As always, thank you for your continued efforts to raise awareness of the power of SDD through real-world experiences. The dialogue field is a vast array of varied approaches intended for informing, inspiring, or mobilizing us. Many approaches are powerful for starting public thinking. Most, however, are much more cathartic than catalytic. Many dialogues devolve into comforting conversations, which in itself is not a bad thing. People need to be heard, as well as to listen to each other, if they wish to live in a democratic society. Sadly, however, too many of us have come to believe that this is no longer possible. Some of us can hope for little more than a watered down consensus for a plan which reflects the least common denominator among our varied lived perspectives. We tend to grow fatigued from lengthy campaigns of dialogue and deliberation. And we tend to find ourselves talking about we know much more than discovering what we do not yet know. SDD holds the power to break out of this echo chamber of familiar understandings and to avoid the watered-down understandings of negotiated consensus among competing positions.

   SDD can move us from conflicting positions and from vested interests into genuinely new understandings of our shared situations. New understandings based on our shared experiences in the world hold the power to open new approaches for moving forward together. Too few of us can appreciate the fact that SDD enables diversified groups with varied civic experiences to “rapidly” converge on coherent new understandings of highly complex situations. We cannot appreciate the power of SDD without opportunities to experience SDD. This is true because unlike all alternative dialogue approaches, even when using elements within the SDD process, fail to apply the systems approach needed to reveal root opportunities for working together in genuinely new ways. And, as you note, the SDD approach will only recharge its intended democratic strength when SDD is used in conjunction with complementary forms of catalytic civic communication. For all of these reasons, thank you, Yiannis for your efforts. If we are to truly transform the nature of our confrontational world, we must agree that we can — and must — transform the nature of our civic dalogue. SDD provides the long missing dialogic approach for enabling this transformation.

   Reply

   • Tom, I highly recommend your book with Aleco Christakis to those interested in learning more about the details of the process. In our workshops, which we refer to as co-laboratories, we use the term “the talking point” to explain to participants that meaningful deliberation can only occur after they have developed a sufficient understanding of each other’s contributions. True meaning and wisdom emerge as they begin to explore the relationships—such as similarity, priority, and influence—among their various ideas, which correspons to the interpretive structural modeling stage of the process.

     Flanagan, T. R., & Christakis, A. N. (2010). The talking point: Creating an environment for exploring complex meaning. IAP.

     Reply

     • Thank you, Yiannis. The 2nd edition of this book adds much of what we had initially thought unnecessary to include in the first edition. Tom

       Flanagan, T. R., & Christakis, A. N. (2021). The talking point: Creating an environment for exploring complex meaning. 2nd edition. IAP.

       https://www.infoagepub.com/products/The-Talking-Point-2nd-Ed

       Reply

4. The process described in the article is thorough and addresses a real need in society. Enabling citizens to engage in dialogue on subjects that impact them, and empathically interact on matters of contention is sadly lacking. Today, thanks to social media and Twitter (sorry X) sound bytes, we are distracted from reality, and we have neither the time nor the patience to listen to others. SDD addresses this. If only we could adapt SDD to provide an alternative and socially cohesive process that enables large numbers of citizens to better understand the world we live in and the root causes of the challenges we face.

   Reply

   • Thank you, Marcus, for your insightful comment. I completely agree that there is an urgent need for methodologies like Structured Democratic Dialogue (SDD), which facilitate a socially cohesive process that can engage large numbers of citizens. These methodologies enable participants to collectively understand their societal conditions, identify the root causes of their challenges, and importantly, design and commit to effective, consensual interventions. The SDD community has been diligently working toward this goal for at least the past decade. Indeed, this effort is summarized in two key publications.

     Laouris, Y., & Dye, K. (2024). Multi‐stakeholder structured dialogues: Five generations of evolution of dialogic design. Systems Research and Behavioral Science, 41(2), 368-389.
     Laouris, Y., & Metcalf, G. (2024). Assessing the viability of virtual structured democratic dialogue. Systems Research and Behavioral Science.

     Reply

     • Thanks, Yiannis

       We need a humanistic, compassionate approach to dialogue, involving citizens of differing backgrounds, experiences and beliefs, based on a combination of the principles of Martin Buber and David Bohm. Martin Buber believed in establishing intimate and genuine connections through dialogue, while David Bohm focused on exploring underlying patterns and structures within communication. From my understanding of the SDD process, it incorporates both. SDD must be developed as an alternative to profit-oriented social media platforms that thrive on disharmony, friction and fear.

       Reply

5. Thanks Yiannis for this succinct summary of the Structured Dialogical Design process as a way of practicing democracy to harness collective wisdom of a requisite variety of stakeholders so that shared ideas on priority actions to address challenges can ensue. I see you mention that this process takes time so that careful deliberations can take place which enable people to alter their initial preferences and their sense of priorities as they engage with other participants’ considerations of influences between forwarded ideas. As you mention (and as I am highlighting further) the democracy here is a matter of people engaging with others’ views on whether a particular idea as forwarded can be seen as significantly influencing another one (as a step by step process of defining connections between forwarded ideas together).

   The SDD approach as you explain it resonates with those who argue that democracy should not be guided by rhetoricists who perpetuate one-sided views and try to sweep people into accepting these and voting for these. This we can argue is a threat to genuine democracy – and is not in line with the notion of democracy as enabling people to take the time to slowly build up a collective intelligence . As you note, this idea of building up collective knowing as a route to valued ways of acting which serve a common good is what should be meant by “democracy”. This idea has been proffered by many scholars including by many Indigenous authors such as those invited by Aleco Christakis to the 2003 International Society for the Systems Sciences to express their systemic understandings (e.g., La Donna Harris, founder of Americans for Indian Opportunity) . But the current kinds of voting systems taking place in many national so-called democracies and ways of holding so-called debates between leaders who want to be voted in is anathema to this notion of democracy. It is urgent that SDD-type processes that encourage people to reinvent democracy (also in the digital age) can be put in place, given the superwicked problems currently facing us (and facing all that exists on the planet, with the voice of nature hardly being given attention as a prime stakeholder).

   Thanks for your references that you have supplied which offer a deeper understanding of SDD, so that readers can consider how it can be seen to offer a way out of our impasse in addressing urgent superwicked problems!

   Norma

   Reply

   • Thank you, Norma, for your insightful comment. You’ve succinctly captured the essence of the Structured Democratic Dialogue (SDD) process, highlighting its commitment and depth compared to typical workshop techniques. These often focus on training participants in structured interactions and creating enjoyable learning environments, particularly for younger audiences.

     The differences between SDD and other methods are profound, starting with participant selection. Unlike other processes that don’t adhere to strict participant selection criteria, SDD organizers must comply with Ashby’s law of requisite variety to drive tangible action. SDD not only builds consensus but also fosters commitment and momentum among participants to implement their collective discoveries.

     Another key distinction is how SDD deliberations encourage participants to reconsider their initial preferences and priorities, influenced by the diverse perspectives encountered. This process enhances democracy by fostering ‘collective knowing,’ guiding our actions based on shared values rather than the simplistic binary choices typical of many modern democratic systems, where individuals often select the lesser of two evils.

     Reply

     • Indeed as you say, Yiannis, the problem is the binary thinking which is so prevalent in today’s “democracies”, where people (and would-be leaders) are not prone to enacting processes of genuine dialogue towards generating a collective wisdom which is inclusive of all concerned stakeholders, including of course those most marginalized in the social and ecological fabric. This is why the principles and practices of SDD are so urgently needed in the current climate if we have any hope of together addressing superwicked problems. Your elucidation above of what is distinct about SDD is important in this context.

       Reply

6. @Keith many thanks for adding LS here and to me it appears a timely call to exchange experience in the field – to define the 80% in common to move fwd hopefully quicker to facilitate the conversations that matter. I will reach out to Yiannis and also Ray (Ison) in order to facilitate a conversation.

   Reply

7. Greetings Yiannis, as you know we enjoy participating in SDD dialogues. The community of practice which I facilitate with Indigenous and Non-indigenous academics, community practitioners and leaders makes use of a range of dialogical processes for exploring diversity and biodiversity. We co-create through metalogues that make sense of the content from engagement spanning reflective and less structured conversations to more structured dialogues. Together we strive to learn from one another, in order to redress Species Apartheid.

   Some of the ways we engage include, for example:
   • Self-reflection and Zoom group conversations to discuss face to face fieldwork
   • Open ended questioning about social, economic and environmental dimensions in terms of what I /we have / need, are willing/able to change, turning points for the better and worse and the barriers we face personally or at a group, institutional, neighbourhood, community or regional level and the material and non-material barriers we face. The questioning and the telling of stories enable us to explore our own lived experiences. Stories help to change the way we see the world and most importantly stories shape our world for better or worse, as the historian Noah Yuval Harari has stressed. Without active engagement in telling stories, we become the objects of design, rather than the designers as explained in detail in a forthcoming volume of mine. It is better to be the subject of a design than its object as Donna Haraway has stressed.
   • ‘If then’ scenarios that consider the consequences of decisions (are inspired by the work of Christakis) to create better pathways to wellbeing and by the work of Gerald Midgley on systemic boundary considerations, C. West Churchman and John P. Van Gigch on meta design.

   Recently we participated in a Structured Democratic Dialogue with colleagues across Africa and a second one with leaders in Indonesia and South Africa which you led with Marcus Hallside. We wove new stories out of our experiences, retaining our right to vote on our ideas.

   Many thanks and good wishes
   Janet McIntyre-Mills

   Reply

8. Thank you for researching and writing about structured dialogue design. I am a student of similar approaches for facing up to complex challenges. Now is the perfect time to offer practical methods to groups and communities working on BIG challenges. Bravo!

   Two dialogue protocols I use with clients regularly are: Discovery and Action Dialogue [ https://www.liberatingstructures.com/10-discovery-action-dialogue/ ] and Conversation Cafe [ https://www.liberatingstructures.com/17-conversation-cafe/ ]. They are quite simple (nearly expert-less), can be completed in less than 90 minutes, and focus more on sense making and shaping next steps than analysis.

   Some the steps you describe (e.g., idea generation, clarifying, clustering, prioritizing) are embedded within the dialogue protocol itself. Additionally, complementary methods in the Liberating Structures [ https://www.liberatingstructures.com/ls/ ] repertoire are used in tandem and repeatedly over time to generate adaptive responses. The types of challenges they address are ones in which the problems and solutions only become clear as they are explored. Causes and effects are circular, shifting, and entangled. Further, the challenges often call out for many different local solutions. A developmental and adaptive lens for evaluation is the best match.

   Happy to compare experience in the field. Again, thank you.

   Reply

   • Keith, thank you for sharing your dialogue protocols. Having worked at Future Worlds Center for over three decades and having implemented over a hundred social intervention programs, we have certainly utilized these and many other similar methods. Nearly all effective methods share common features, such as generating ideas on the issue at hand, discussing these ideas in either whole-group or small-group sessions, making selections through voting, grouping ideas into categories, choosing among alternatives, and creating groups to encourage action.

     The distinction with Structured Democratic Dialogue (SDD) lies in how each of these steps is executed in a very specific manner, determined through systematic experimentation. Additionally, SDD incorporates a phase that utilizes Interpretive Structural Modeling (developed by Warfield), enabling participants to examine how their individual ideas impact each other. This process ultimately leads to the gradual formation of an influence tree, which reflects their consensus as they all recognize the diagram as their “own.”

     The need for a scientific methodology to facilitate democratic dialogue was first recognized by systems thinkers in the Club of Rome (Özbekhan, 1970). The original methodology was developed by John Warfield and Alexander Christakis in the early 1970s, systematically refined first as Interactive Management (Warfield and Cardenas, 1994), and later as Structured Dialogic Design (Christakis & Bausch, 2006). Our team is credited with streamlining the process, fortifying the theoretical underpinnings, developing more user-friendly software, and conducting over 120 applications of this methodology worldwide (Laouris, 2023).

     I would be delighted to discuss our respective approaches, with a particular focus on how our intervention designs can encourage stakeholders to assume responsibility and implement agreed-upon actions to enhance their situations. More specifically, as the recently elected President of the International Society for the Systems Sciences, I have initiated a project encouraging developers and users of various systemic intervention methodologies to collaborate on joint publications. These publications aim to compare and contrast their approaches, identify complementarities, and clarify the conditions under which one methodology might be preferred over another.

     Christakis, A. N., & Bausch, K. C. (Eds.). (2006). How people harness their collective wisdom and power: To construct the future in co-laboratories of democracy. IAP.
     Laouris, Y. (2023). Structured Dialogical Design Frameworks for Addressing Complexity in Systems Engineering (Doctoral dissertation, University of Portsmouth).
     Özbekhan, H. (1970). The Predicament of Mankind https://www.futureworlds.eu/wiki/The_Predicament_of_Mankind
     Warfield, J. N., & Cárdenas, A. R. (1994). A handbook of interactive management. Ames: Iowa State University Press.

     Reply

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