Facilitator’s Guide to Participatory Decision-Making
by Sam Kaner with Lenny Lind, Catherine Toldi, Sarah Fisk and Duane Berger
What people have said about this book.
In cross functional environments where diverse prospectives are intentionally brought together to produce high-quality thinking, a highly skilled facilitator can add great value, and Sam Kaner is one of the best.
The Facilitator’s Guide provides a full set of models and tools to enable an organization to reap the benefits of a well facilitated, participatory decision-making process. Having seen Sam’s methods in action, I can attest to their power and effectiveness.
Pierre Omidyar
Founder and Chairman,
eBay and Omidyar Network
NCDD has long listed the Facilitator’s Guide as one of the best-of-the-best resources for practitioners, and the field of public engagement has been deeply influenced by this seminal book. The tools and concepts it presents are foundational for any group process facilitator, and I highly recommend adding the new edition to your bookshelf!
Sandy Heierbacher
Co-founder and Director,
National Coalition for Dialogue and Deliberation
This book is an outstanding resource for tackling complex community and business challenges. We’ve used it both at the City of Denver and at the State of Colorado. I keep a copy on my desk for easy reference.
Roxane White
Chief of Staff,
Governor John Hickenlooper,
State Capitol, Denver, CO
In my opinion, Facilitator’s Guide to Participatory Decision-Making is the best book on collaboration ever written. I say this as someone who has been a CEO or executive director for more than 20 years.
During that time I have worked with countless facilitators and organization development consultants. For depth of impact and overall effectiveness, Sam Kaner and his colleagues are top-of-the-line.
This book is loaded with the tools and guiding principles that make Sam’s work so compelling.
Diane Flannery
Founding CEO,
Juma Ventures,
Director,
Global Center for Children and Families, UCLA
A wonderful book, and Sarah Fisk is an amazing facilitator.
As Board President I’ve learned so many skills for putting participatory values into practice. I’m looking forward to our Board continuing to benefit from Sarah’s consultation. The Facilitator’s Guide ought to be a resource to public service organizations everywhere.
Deane Marchbein
President,
Board of Directors,
Medecins Sans Frontieres,
(Doctors Without Borders)
Hooray for the Facilitator’s Guide. It explains principles, practices, and processes with cogent clarity, and each diagram conveys a complex idea almost instantly.
Joanna Macy
Author,
World as Lover, World as Self,
and many other books
At Stanford University I convene an annual conference attended by hundreds of non-profit leaders. Sam Kaner’s keynote presentations, based on material from this book, are consistently top-rated and likely to inspire significant organizational change.
Regina Starr Ridley
Publishing Director,
Stanford Social Innovation Review
Our organization was founded to bring diverse partners together to work collaboratively to find solutions to difficult social problems.
We know how immensely challenging it is to facilitate dialogue among multiple stakeholders. This amazing book is a comprehensive guide for meeting that challenge. I’ve worked with a myriad of consultants during the past 24 years, and Sam Kaner’s approach is vastly superior for bringing about lasting system change.
Kriss Deiglmeier
CEO,
Tides Network
We were fortunate to work with Sam on a number of projects, from the Elders to the B Team and many more working with Richard Branson and a collection of leaders.
Sam is one of the best facilitators we’ve seen. He is able to bring together a diverse group of characters and masterfully guide them on a journey to help them open themselves towards a common understanding and solid outcomes.
Facilitator’s Guide is a great insight into his unique skill set and wonderful leadership.
Jean Oelwang
CEO,
Virgin Unite/Group Partner
It was a revelation to find the Facilitator’s Guide and realize someone had written down demonstrably the way our organization was already working organically.
Kaner and Fisk are masters of their craft. Working with them and using this book has allowed us to put a translatable, trainable framework around what we do. This has had a large impact and has helped us build our own capacity.
I highly recommend this book and working with Sam and Sarah.
Harley K. Dubois
Founder,
Burning Man Project
Sam Kaner is one of the world’s leading experts on collaboration. His grasp of the challenges and dilemmas of collaboration is superb, as are his models and methods for facilitating complex processes. The second edition of this widely-used book reflects his accumulated wisdom and teachings.
Clearly written and wonderfully illustrated, this book makes difficult issues understandable and provides sound, practical guidance.
Sandy Schuman PhD
Founding Editor,
Group Facilitation: A Research and Applications Journal
Editor,
Creating a Culture of Collaboration,
Working with Sam Kaner has been one of the most useful and rewarding experiences of my years as a manager and leader. He brings precision, clarity, imagination, good humor and a humane touch to the challenges we who aspire to guide organizations face.
Using the tools and skills he describes in this book, Sam shaped 40 independent-minded and strong-willed faculty into a thoughtful, engaged and strategically-oriented group. If you can’t have Sam in person, I strongly recommend keeping a copy of Facilitator’s Guide on hand.
Edward Wasserman
Dean,
Graduate School of Journalism,
University of California, Berkeley
Marshall Medical Center is community based, and we have always valued a culture of participation. We frequently make inclusive decisions allowing buy-in to difficult actions we need to take as an organization. Using Facilitator’s Guide to Participatory Decision-Making and working with Sarah Fisk has helped us to maintain and even increase participation while still making timely decisions.
Rather than simply relying on Sarah, who is a true genius at facilitation, this book has allowed us to build our own capacity. We’ve learned how to convene multiple stakeholder teams, plan effectively, and make more sustainable decisions, thus maintaining our collaborative values as we grow to serve a wider community. I highly recommend this book.
James Whipple
CEO,
Marshall Medical Center,
El Dorado County, California
Sam Kaner’s book is at once very thoughtful and reflective on the theory and dynamics of human process and at the same time full of practical ideas on how to make it work. That combination sets Sam’s work apart and was a key reason he was able to help create the Collaborative Leaders Network – a community problem solving initiative in Hawaii. Sam still contributes to our work, challenging us to make our problem-solving more and more effective.
Robbie Alm
President,
Collaborative Leaders Network,
Hawaii
Facilitator’s Guide takes the mystery and fear out of facilitating groups and provides useful tools for anyone working with groups. The materials are clear. The graphics are first rate. And complex issues are developed logically and with great care.
Thomas Broitman
Managing Director,
Executive Education,
PricewaterhouseCoopers, LLP
What a practical, sensible guide for helping groups work together in a realistic way! The graphics help you visualize how to manage many common – and puzzling – aspects of group behavior.
Marvin Weisbord
Author,
Productive Workplaces,
Co-author with Sandra Janov,
Discovering Common Ground and Future Search
As a leader of a firm involved with the governance and strategic oversight of multi-billion dollar organizations and portfolios, we find the principles and techniques in this book incredibly valuable in advancing the thinking of executive teams and boards. It has a direct effect on the impact our organizations have. Leaders and managers of any organization can benefit from the wisdom and pragmatic advice which this book delivers so effectively.
Mike Mohr
Founder and CEO,
Comprehensive Financial Management LLC
This book is a must for anyone working with a team! It is loaded with new information, which will make your team facilitation and decision-making even better. It highlights key concepts underlying group process that are rarely defined in such a clear manner. And, at the same time, it provides easy-to-follow facilitation techniques to ensure group participation and convergence around decisions and ideas. This is a book that rarely stays on my shelf – I’m too busy using it as a reference. Truly a golden nugget in the vast pool of facilitation knowledge!
Tammy Adams
Author,
Facilitating the Project Lifecycle
Every once in a long while a special individual comes along who helps others build their vision, skills and know-how to change the world around them. Sam Kaner helped me to do that at the Harwood Institute. Now, his guide can help you: read it, use it and make a real difference. Through this book, each of us can unleash our innate potential to find a more productive, inclusive and authentic path forward.
Rich Harwood
Founder and President,
The Harwood Institute
I am a longtime client and colleague of Community At Work. They are extraordinarily talented at facilitating effective teams and teaching others to do the same. Their consulting approach creates lasting solutions by promoting organizational health through collaborative working relationships.
Facilitator’s Guide reveals and explains many of their most compelling methods and practices.
Ed Pierce
Founder and CEO,
Leadership Quality Inc.
The Facilitator’s Guide has been an incomparable resource for designing and leading more effective social architecture to get work done across diverse teams, functions and regions in my complex organization. The lessons and guidance I’ve taken from it have been nothing short of transformative for both my practice and my career.
D. Wade Shows
Director of Learning and Organizational Effectiveness,
Kaiser Permanente
The brilliant and innovative tools in this book have had a profound effect on the way we in the Playfair organization run our meetings. Many of the Playfair facilitators who have been trained in the models presented here have achieved fabulous results with their clients, helping their interactions come alive with fun, originality and innovation. Highly recommended!
Matt Weinstein
Founder,
Playfair Inc.,
Author,
Managing To Have Fun,
and many other books
Sam Kaner and his team have helped me create a culture of collaboration in science. This is no easy task! Twenty-five years ago I started with nothing. Now my organization has the potential to make a large impact by discovering causes of the most devastating diseases that affect children.
Sam’s superb skills in strategic thinking and group facilitation, and his deep expertise in organization design and systems change have been essential for our success.
In Facilitator’s Guide to Participatory Decision-Making, Sam and his team translate their own learnings from many different kinds of work environments into concrete techniques that will benefit business, government and non-profits alike.
John Harris MD
Founder and CEO,
California Birth Defects Monitoring Program,
California Department of Health Services
Facilitator’s Guide gives readers tools and insights to enable effective participatory action and the potential to achieve strong principled results and positive social change.
Michael Doyle
Author,
How to Make Meetings Work
The Facilitator’s Guide to Participatory Decision-Making proved enormously helpful to our academic department. We all needed to learn more about facilitating open discussion, working with diverse groups, and reaching sustainable agreements. Now we have the tools we need to achieve these goals.
Laura Straus PhD
Chair,
Education Department,
University of Montana Western