Hi, all,

I am in the final editing process of finishing the book Wayne started, Getting to the Bottom of ToP:  The Foundations of ToP Methods.

In an introduction of the Consensus Workshop Method, Wayne had a paragraph that went:

"One of Mathews’ firm beliefs was that the role of the church is to act out its faith in the world. The workshop method was, perhaps, the clearest step into the world in that it provided a practical way for any group in any context to examine a situation and form practical responses. The story goes that one of the first uses of the method was in the West Side of Chicago community development project called 5th City with a group of youth in and on the edges of criminal gangs."

This is where his story ends.  A couple of people editing the book asked “What is the rest of the story?”

Unfortunately, I don’t know what Wayne would have said, and I don’t know the rest of that particular story.  


I’m thinking to replace that story with a story that I know about, but I need to check the specifics. 

This is what I currently have to replace Wayne’s sentence: 

"One of the first uses of the method was in the West Side of Chicago community development project called 5th City.  A group of community leaders and ICA staff met to articulate the problems in the community.  They started brainstorming problems until three huge blackboards were filled with hundreds of different problems.  The group was overwhelmed and in despair.  Someone said, “Let’s try to cluster similar problems together to see if we can see some patterns that will reveal some root problems.  The clustering revealed about 20 root issues, and the group began to have a hope that perhaps they could address them.”

Can anyone finish Wayne’s story, confirm my story and the details of it, or give me another succinct story of the earliest use of the brainstorming/clustering/naming process?

With gratitude,
Jo Nelson



--
Jo Nelson, CPF, CTF  <jnelson@ica-associates.ca>
Certified Professional Facilitator and ICA Certified ToP™ Facilitator
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