DESIGNING A NEW DIRECTION FOR SUICIDE PREVENTION
Our Summit is about our vision of the future, not someone else’s vision, but our collective vision. A shared vision is not an idea or a specific goal, but rather a force in people’s hearts. At its simplest level, a shared vision is the answer to the question “What do we want to create — together?”
Vision animates, inspires, and it transforms purpose into action. Indeed, if you can dream and design it, not just alone but together, you can do it.
Our summit’s task is clear. We are coming together to design a compelling vision and to set it into motion:
Designing a New Direction for Suicide Prevention
- Dr. Daniel Reidenberg, SAVE
APPRECIATIVE INQUIRY ("AI") SUMMIT
”to appreciate” means to value and is the AI process taken to understand those things worth valuing. To inquire means to study, to ask questions, to search. AI is, therefore, a collaborative search to identify and understand the system’s strengths and greatest opportunities, and people’s aspirations.
WHOLE SYSTEM
The WHOLE SYSTEM participates — people and groups that care about and have a stake in the future of this initiative. AI wants to connect the omnipresence of strengths — the universe of strengths in the system — and this requires a configuration of the whole.
SELF MANAGE & INQUIRE
Participants SELF-MANAGE their work and use Design INQUIRY — not a deficit-based method as the main tool. That means more discovery and joint designing than speechmaking and pre-determined outcomes.
TASK FOCUSED
an AI summit is not simply an educational event or a conference. We are here to build a vision and plan of action that creates a new vision for the future and delivers on the Summit objectives, propelling forward strategies, priorities, and initiatives.
COMMON GROUND
COMMON GROUND, rather than “conflict management,” is the frame of reference. That means honoring our differences and then discovering areas for action where we have common-ground images for the future we want to help create.
HISTORICAL & GLOBAL
Future scenarios are put into HISTORICAL and GLOBAL perspective. That means thinking globally together before acting locally. This enhances shared understanding and greater commitment to act. It also increases the range of potential actions.
COMMITMENT
...to action ensures that, because the “whole system” is involved, it is easier to make more rapid designs (prototypes) and deliver on promises to act in ways that everyone can support and help make happen. As co-designers, we brainstorm and build things that we want to help create in partnership with others and as a whole
APPRECIATIVE INQUIRY CYCLE
DISCOVER
to illuminate “the positive core” of the current landscape. Identify what’s working and existing strengths - all of the past, present, and future assets, qualities, and strategic strengths — and to do a continuity analysis: “What are those things we should keep, honor and leverage — even as we change, grow, and reinvent ourselves in a world of frantically accelerating change?
DREAM
to imaginatively create ideal scenarios of the future, as we seek to help build a world of “full spectrum flourishing”, where all people can thrive, and nature can restore, renew, and replenish. What kinds of leaps has our history prepared us for, and what kind of future is wanting to be born in relation to the call of our time?
DESIGN
to ideate and design rapid prototypes — a set of real initiatives and strategic priorities — that will help propel our common visions into reality. As we create ideal and desired scenarios of the future, we will discover “opportunity areas” that can be turned into action. Some of these will be initiatives and designs already existing that we want to honor, embolden, and accelerate. Some will involve a radical innovation agenda and blue ocean thinking and cause us to question our moonshot capacities. Some will be small but carry a big impact. Others will be bolder, braver, bigger, and longer-term creating future-fitness. What we are building and want is a portfolio effect. Like waves combining, we want to build the momentum for the kind of change that our hearts and minds know is possible.
DEPLOY
set in motion a focused portfolio of self-organizing initiatives (with assigned metrics) to actively network us across the community of stakeholders and to strategically partner in ways that will help us achieve the Summit outcomes.
THE DIFFERENCE MAKER
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