Best Practices and Insights for Facilitating Creativity, Alignment & Organizational Results

The Grove’s Laurie Durnell facilitated a multi-stakeholder process with all of the public-land management agencies for Mt. Tamalpais. The resulting collaborative will sustain the well-being of the mountain on which Laurie grew up.

Seeds for a multi-agency collaboration were planted back in 2003 when The Grove facilitated a watershed visioning process for Muir Woods. This culminated in a March 21 signing ceremony that launched the Tamalpais Lands Collaborative. (1)

Located just north of...

The Unity Council was born in challenging times. In the 1960s, a freeway cut through the heart of Oakland and, as in many American cities, the result was an era of urban decline and poverty. During this time, the civil rights movement was gaining strength.

Latino activists from several organizations joined forces in 1964 to form The Unity Council, with the purpose of having a stronger, collective voice for their unrepresented community.

A Mural Project Is Born

With the organization ne...

On October 7, 2013, David Sibbet was a featured speaker at the National Organization Development Network (ODN) Conference in San Jose, California, where he received ODN’s Lifetime Achievement Award. The following article is adapted from his conference presentation and his remarks at the awards ceremony.

I was invited by several ODN colleagues to share with you some of the shaping influences underlying my work and The Grove Consultants International’s methods. It’s an honor to receive this aw...

Safe, nurturing environments and excellent instruction have been found to result in higher academic achievement and better preparation for college, career and community life. (1) Based upon these findings, Oakland Unified School District (Oakland Unified) is working a seven-year plan to transform the educational experience of its students using Social and Emotional Learning principles.

Roots of a Social and Emotional Learning Journey Map

Over the course of a year The Grove provided ong...

The Grove has worked with Family, Schools and Community Partnerships (FSCP), part of the Oakland Unified School District, to envision the department’s journey over the next five years and think about possible concrete steps to strengthen its work.

FSCP, the Oakland public school system’s largest department, addresses all non-academic support for students and families, partnering with external community agencies as needed. The department’s goal is to create full-service schools with a seamless s...

Recently The Grove’s Rachel Smith graphically supported an online event that addressed the complexities of higher education in a digital age. Using a tablet, illustration software and web-conferencing technologies, Rachel created visual notes during each of the gathering’s three featured online events.

The event was hosted by EDUCAUSE, a networking and resource hub for IT professionals working in higher education. The three-day online Sprint featured an interactive mix of webinars, summary arti...

Greg Voisen poses a question to David Sibbet during a .

Question: You mentioned that visual listening is at the heart of every meeting. What do you mean by visual listening? I’ve heard of all kinds of listening – compassionate listening, listening from the heart – but what is visual listening?

David Sibbet: Visual listening is showing people how you are listening to them by drawing what you’re hearing as you listen.

If you think about the traditional graphic design field, most of it i...

Agile visual planning empowers both individual leadership and group creativity—a formula for good results for organizations that employ it.

The concept of agile planning is inspired by agile software development, a method of providing versions that are “just good enough” to engage a user base—then iterating through ever more complete and polished releases that reflect real user experience.

To get going, propose a concept, a direction, or a generative idea; then head in that direction. You...

Is your team working together effectively? Gain new insight into your co-located or distributed team, and identify areas for improvement, with the Team Performance Online Survey.

Watch the webinar >

We’ve just posted the recording of our recent webinar (5/14/13) about The Grove’s online survey tool for teams. Laurie Durnell, director of consulting, and Rachel Smith, director of digital facilitation services, walk through the tool from the perspectives of both a team member and a survey ad...