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The Art of Framing Powerful Questions: Conversational Leadership and the World Café

Pre and post Forum tours highlighting the best of Oman; its people, landscape and culture.

Bridging the Gulf: Learning across Organizations, Sectors, and Cultures

What do we mean by these words? Bridging is the act of transitioning or connecting places or time; in other words the coming together of different parts (a network). Gulf of course has two meanings; one is the geographical reference to a body of water, while our more important one is an abyss or wide chasm. Thus the forum is connecting multiple sections of the abysses that we may encounter

Learning is a process by which we acquire knowledge or skills. Learning begins with perceiving and continues through taking action and within SoL this certainly is a collective process. Across is traversing on or to the other side. Organizations are groups of people organized for some end or work; this includes the corporations who are a key part of SoL. Sectors are those different focuses of our work. Sectors may be profit, non-profit, governmental, non-governmental, education, or in SoL we often speak of consultants, researchers and organizations. Culture has many diverse definitions, such as; the totality of socially transmitted behavior patterns, arts, beliefs, institutions, and all other products of human work and thought, in other words culture what makes us a group and different from other groups.

By these words we mean that we are coming together to gain insight and understanding of others and what they are doing to overcome the challenges they face.

Why do we want to do this? There are three questions that are at the core of the Forum.

1. How can we promote inclusiveness and exchange in bridging growing cultural and social divides?
2. What is the role of the corporation in building sustainable, local solutions to problems of globalization?
3. How can we, as a SoL community, engage our collective intelligence to address today’s challenging issues?

The theme is timely. Cultural and economic divisions, both East/West and North/South, are expanding, drowning dialogue with denunciation, inquiry with stubbornness. The 3rd Global Forum will provide a special environment for the global SoL network to meet, reflect, and deepen connections for shared understanding and coordinated action.

The theme builds on key events in the development of the global SoL Community, including the Marblehead letter (2001), the 1st Global Forum in Espoo (2003), and the 2nd Global Forum in Vienna (2005). The Marblehead letter outlined a new agenda for reflection and dialogue, raising issues such as the social and economic divide, the system seeing itself, variety and inclusiveness, and the role of the corporation. The 1st Global Forum focused on inventing desired futures in a global society; what we want to become together. The 2nd Global Forum, built around the metaphor of a symphony, explored innovating through complexity, creating practical knowledge through collaboration, and building networks to support our actions. These threads of our global interdependency will be woven into the fabric of the 3rd Global Forum.

By convening the Global Forum we will

1. Expand our capacity to collaborate across cultures and sectors by creating new connections and deepening our sense of community
2. Improve our capacity for open reflection and cooperation in addressing our common challenges
3. Share our strengths, capabilities, and knowledge so that the endeavors of SoL and its members are recorded and made widely available

The Forum will create a unique learning experience by leveraging the specific strengths of the SoL community; the shared tools and methods of our practice, the quality of relationships among our members, our diversity, and our common interest in issues of deep importance.