The following are some processes used to engage the full system (the entire 'ecosystem,' if you will of an organization, business or community and the environment in which it operates) for large scale change:

The tables below are adapted from The Change Handbook: Group Methods for Shaping the Future

Reprinted with permission of the publisher. Copyright ©1999 by Peggy Holman and Tom Devane Berrett-Koehler Publishers, Inc., San Francisco, CA. All rights reserved. 1-800-929-2929 You can order a copy of this book at a slight discount off the retail price at: http://www.openspaceworld.org/wiki/wiki/wiki.cgi?BooksAndVideos

Perhaps you also know of other processes (Conversation Café comes to mind) for working with groups for large scale change. Not tools like software or a product to enable the processes, and not a process which can only be done by a specific consultant or consulting company, but methods that have or are developing a multifaceted support base - with books, web sites, practitioner associations, training as well as consulting practices.

If so, feel free to contact me and I can perhaps research and add them to a future version of this list.

Please include an electronic link to a website which can offer hopefully more than one consultant's services -- a way to find a useful general description of the method and ideally, detailed information on the process, links to a community of practice, and resources and tools for the method.

The grids below have been filled out by the orginators of each method.

Here are the criteria which were used by Peggy Holman and Tom Devane, co-authors of The Change Handbook (above) for selecting processes to highlight in their book:

Each method has:

• A process for involving people in a meaningful way;
• A process to discover and create shared assumptions;
• An underlying research base;

[see Historical Context, below -
and/or: community research --
has the method been evaluated and practiced
with feedback and adjustments for use in
different cultures, time spans, and settings?]

• Been practiced for at least five years to establish a track record;
• A systemic approach to change; and
• Considerable leverage, that is, achieves dramatic results with a moderate amount of people's time and other resources.

"We reached into multiple disciplines to find proven methods that met these criteria. While many have their roots in organization development, others bring rich traditions from community development, total quality, social science, system dynamics, the wisdom of indigenous cultures and studies of intelligence, creativity, and the arts. Practitioners from these different disciplines have independently determined the value of employing the six criteria in their approaches. This has exciting implications for change practitioners because it offers fresh, compatible approaches. Indeed, we hope a by-product of this book is that practitioners from these diverse disciplines learn and build on each other's work."

"As we looked for diversity, we also searched for methods that have built a multifaceted support base - with books, web sites, practitioner associations, training as well as consulting practices. We wanted to provide you both a reference tool and the information to tap the most in-depth knowledge available. Several approaches have an extensive practitioner base with easy access to people and information. A few are just reaching the time when their creator is ready to teach others what they do. Where we felt the method brought something distinct, if it had at least some tools for self-study, we included it."