Bay Area as “Future Center”

If bad news were flames, we’d all agree that with the recent economic news we’ve been going through a fire season—the worst kind of fire season. Most of us are in the process of scrambling to respond. Can our organizations adapt to survive? How will we survive? One thing I know from 30 years of organizational consulting is that crisis is truly opportunity. Until people have to change they don’t. Well we all have to now, and we will. The question is to what and how?

As our leadership team addressed these questions in a recent 2009 planning retreat, we realized the Bay Area is uniquely equipped to meet the challenge head-on and The Grove’s role at its heart in these times became more clear.

Our Director of Strategic Development, Kara Nichols, has taken several trips to Europe to work with a budding network of people who are running what are called “Future Centers.” They began at Skandia and with the knowledge management work of Leif Edvinsson. Many of these centers are now sponsored by governments, who want to support innovative thinking in environments that stimulate creativity, systems thinking, and collaboration.

Kara came to The Grove because she believed that we were essentially operating as a Future Center in The Presidio and have the keys to making this kind of organization thrive. Critical among them are group facilitation techniques and tools for visualization and collaboration. We also have deep roots in experiential education design. Based on her 20+ years of work experience around the world and her own exploration of the Future Center concept, Kara has been steering us over the past two years to put a few remaining pieces in place. So we had a very exciting discussion at the retreat about what it would mean to embrace this concept and help people see what The Grove is doing through a new lens.

Somewhere in this discussion I gained a new level of insight about what The Grove could be in our current context. What if we could get the network of organizations in our immediate vicinity to see that we don’t have to work alone, but are collectively one of the most hopeful and creative sets of organizations and venues on the planet when it comes to future thinking, innovation, and the critically important and multi-faceted work on sustainability.

I realized that not only are these resources nearby, but they are all already clients and/or collaborators of The Grove. We know their staffs and work in their venues regularly. I know they will be facing the same challenges every other organization is facing. Why couldn’t we catalyze our whole constellation as a Future Center and orchestrate expeditions in understanding and insight at levels not yet tried for leadership teams and organizations?

Together we could scale to any size, and move at any level of depth, depending on what clients need and want. We could begin to draw in organizations that could help us all collectively with our projects as we help them with theirs.

Not only are these venues available for excursions, expertise, and even locations for workshops, but The Grove is also hub to a network of innovators, graphic facilitators, groupware experts, musicians, designers, and modelers of all sorts who are eager to make themselves available to collaborate on Future Center projects. Why have we been thinking inside the box of our own organization? Our future is right here already.

Maybe many are coming to this kind of realization is what the change is all about. Its fire is igniting our imagination and intention. What a tremendous opportunity to finally BE the change we have been waiting for!

These exciting plans are being putting in place from our Presidio base, and they are feeding the fires both at The Grove and among our collaborators to meet the challenges of the coming year with a robust enthusiasm - collectively.