Imagine that you've entered a community hall to find it filled with small round or square cafe tables around which cluster groups of four or five people. A hubbub of voices permeates the room, punctuated by bursts of laughter. At each table people lean forward, eyes riveted on the current speaker or on the paper tablecloth as they scribble notes or pictures with colored markers. At one table a young woman speaks seriously, describing her dream of a school where children are connected to their community through growing food, visiting family farms, and eating healthy, whole food lunches. "Kids'll want to learn where food comes from, what makes it good for us, and what doesn't!" At another table a gray-haired man with a warm smile explains that in his vision 75% of the food eaten by people in the county will be grown locally. "What we need is a complete transformation of how we think about food production and distribution," another person comments, writing the word in large blocky letters on the tablecloth.

This was the scene on the night of January 31st, 2003, as 40 people dialogued to envision a community-oriented food system for San Luis Obispo County. Before the lively conversation began, a small group of us, core organizers who had been exploring for a year the possibility of a food system project, had introduced ourselves. Each of us told how we became personally interested in creating a partnership of people from the production, processing, distribution, consumption, and recycling segments of the food system. Our motivations were diverse: a father who was a gourmet chef, a concern for grandchildren eating junkfood school lunches, community garden experience, or participation in a cooperative farm. I had lived in traditional farming communities where two-thirds of the younger generation were lost to farming, and spent years spearheading various types of cooperative efforts among many groups. We all hoped to see more connection between ongoing community projects, more coordination of effort, more concern for the producing, preparing, and eating of healthy local food, and we were keen to see what kinds of visions others might have.

To this end we had sought out people we considered might be major stakeholders in a county food system, as well as those who would be indirectly influenced by how it operated. We invited people engaged in agriculture from the position of producers, educators, processors and distributors. Some also represented environmental groups, non-profits, schools, colleges or the university, businesses, food services, health service providers, the media, and science and technology. Folks of all ages, all levels of education, parents and single people responded to our invitations to gather and dialogue, to explore our individual visions.

I'd agreed to facilitate the group conversation, and I desperately hoped that through such explorations a group vision of an ideal food system would emerge. Our ultimate aim was to create the beginnings of a community-wide coalition that could work toward goals inspired by the vision, or a refined version of it.

WHY CREATE A GROUP VISION BEFORE A PROJECT BEGINS?

In any group, there are always some who feel uncomfortable talking about the vision of an ideal system. They may this is "unrealistic," or a "waste of time." However, we knew that to make a project successful, there have to be clear intentions. And that means knowing what really matters to us, bringing this into conscious awareness, and sharing this with others. In addition to setting an intention, we had several other practical reasons for beginning our project by developing a shared vision rather than immediately jumping into specific goals.

First, we needed to ask "goals and objectives for WHAT?" Peter Senge, of the Center for Organizational Learning at MIT, points out that the most successful organizations are ones that have a structure in which real learning can take place. He suggests, that three elements are needed for this structure: Guiding Ideas, Innovation in Infrastructure, and Theories, Methods and Tools (The Fifth Discipline Fieldbook, 1994). Without all three, any group of people seeking to work together will collapse. Guiding Ideas are those which embody vision, values, and purpose. Starting with a values-oriented, shared vision sets the context for everything else to follow. Once the vision is developed, a clear statement of purpose for the group can be made.

Allan Savory's Holistic Management framework for group decision-making, also requires beginning with a common vision that is a reflection of the group's values. In his work among many businesses, particularly agricultural ones, he discovered that progress often came to a standstill over production goals, and that "such conflicts could only be resolved by finding a common vision, in terms of quality of life, from which to proceed". Moving ahead to goals and objectives is pointless if you haven't come to understand where you all want go.

Second, without clear, mutual visions we are likely to follow unconscious Guiding Ideas that may be quite harmful. For example, "Do whatever it takes to win personally.," and "Food producers, especially family farmers, are at the bottom of the food industry ladder." As with toxicity in our ecological environment, such ideas can pollute a project and become self-reinforcing.

Finally, the very process of coming up with a vision together builds community by creating a situation where people hoping to work together can speak from their hearts about what is of real significance to them, and be heard. This will pay off later in trust, understanding, and patiently hearing each other out when differences arise.

In the past I have worked with several non-profits and educational institutions where the stage of developing a shared vision was skipped, or given lip-service through wording a meaningless "mission statement." The result was hidden agendas, misunderstandings, and lack of unity when it came to making decisions. It was painful to see people, all of whom were supposedly committed to cooperation, unable to move forward into concerted action.

This time I was committed to facilitating a collective sense of what was important and why, based on those values we held in common. Like the figurehead on a ship, our shared values could become a guiding symbol for how we should behave while getting to where we want to go. Our shared vision would cause a creative tension between what we wanted and current reality, stimulating us to invent innovative change. The process of helping to bring forth such values and vision from a group was intensely challenging, but very exciting to me.

THE PROCESS OF BUILDING SHARED VISION

To be able to share our hidden wishes and dreams with others takes a context of safety that fosters courage and trust. We needed to structure our gathering so that people felt comfortable and willing to speak freely with others. Participants need to listen carefully to each other, with respect and interest. As a facilitator, I must remember to listen rather than direct. I need to help channel beginning ideas to fruition.

I realize that it takes several sessions before a shared vision is fully articulated. Still, in less than two hours, our gathering pulled together some major elements of a shared vision. I believe a great deal of this success was due to our choice of a Cafe Dialogue method for our conversation. Our adaptation drew mainly from Juanita Brown's and David Isaac's "World Cafe" conversation process (see sidebox for reference to this and other useful methods for group conversations). There are three main elements to this method.

First, we created hospitable space for our guests by choosing Tierra Nueva CoHousing in Oceano as our venue. It not only has an atmosphere of cooperation and community, but also a kitchen for offering fresh local foods. In addition, the Common Room's small, cafe-like tables and pictures on the walls create a sense of being where conversing is natural. We added many vases of organic flowers, wall charts on food systems and handwritten questions to jumpstart the visioning process. Music on a farm theme enlivened a brief icebreaker where people met one another. Butcher paper covered all the tables, and colored marker pens were provided for doodling ideas. We dressed informally, and each guest was met and welcomed personally.

Second, our group spent considerable time discovering and shaping questions that matter for our guests. We wanted to foster exploration, rather than focusing on issues, problems, or "how to's," and we wanted to encour a ge a personal perspective. Third, we tried to connect diverse people and ideas to discuss questions with a number of others. We did this by moving people between tables for different questions, leaving one person remaining as "host" each time to summarize for newcomers what had been discussed earlier at that table.

Fourth, we practiced listening together for themes, patterns, and insights that could be woven into a shared vision during a "conversation of the whole" following the small group dialogues.

During the entire process the atmosphere was serious but not solemn, engaged yet spiked with humor. A group of wise and wonderful people were having the time of their lives speaking from the heart about the world they would like to see happen. Electric with excited exploration, the dialogue culminated with people calling out discoveries and insights from their small group conversations, while a graphic artist recorded them on a large paper mural. Now the shared vision took place before all our eyes, and we saw what we had in common. Individuals guided the artist or corrected his interpretations. Two facilitators made sure everyone who wanted to speak was heard.

Spontaneous wordplays and double entendres began arising: Sustainable agriculture was no longer an "alternative method." Instead, "We are the Main Stream" flowing forward to confront conventional economic and educational systems through a "new pair of dimes." Top-down education (depicted by pouring information into an empty head), was contrasted with "RE-education" developing out of community involvement, a local economy, cooperation between many partners, and two-way communication. Our core values for restructuring the economy and the government would come from the heart, rather than being poured into our "empty" heads by others. People would learn through observation. We would know that change starts with each of us, that we must be an example. We would build trust inour neighborhoods, and operate from "power to and from the people."

Long after the structured dialogue was over, our guests stayed on to share food and more ideas. People wandered up to watch the artist giving final touches to the graphic representation of our vision, and suggested things to be added. Connections were made for the future, and participation sheets were filled out with commitments to serve on the Steering Committee for the project, and as Resource Base or Task Force support. All of us who had worked for a year and dreamed of this gathering, felt fulfilled. The vision will need to be refined, and will continue to evolve, we know. Still, the exciting feelings and ideas generated that night will create a foundation for future efforts toward making our vision a reality.