Heidi:  Hi, this is Heidi Burgess, and I'm with Beyond Intractability. And I'm here today with Susan Carpenter, who is an old friend of mine. I shouldn't say you're old, but we've known each other for a long time. We worked together in Boulder, Colorado in the early 1980s. And I was reflecting on the fact that the organization that we worked with, that I was at for about two years, had three names in that time. I think we started as Rocky Mountain Center on the Environment, and we went to ROMCOE, and then we went to Accord Associates, if I'm remembering right. But it was a community conflict management, mostly environmental conflict management firm. And we were involved in a number of really large-scale environmental conflict processes there at the time.

And then after that, Susan went on to do something fairly similar in Washington, DC, as I remember, founding the Program on Community Problem Solving. Then you went out to California, which is where you now are. And Susan is now retired, but is still doing a lot of consulting. She's working with the Ohio State Divided Communities Project that we've highlighted here on BI before, and a number of other conflict management initiatives.

About a year ago, I was getting involved in something called the Inter-Movement Impact Project (IMIP), that was concerned, like Guy and I are, about the growing polarization around the country, and trying to figure out what folks could do about that, particularly what conflict resolution writ large could do about that. A lot of the people in IMIP came to the conclusion that it was better to work that problem at the local level than the federal level. So they began talking about what could be done at the local level. And the conversations just struck me as really relevant to the kind of work that we were doing back in the '80s. So I called Susan. We had a wonderful chat for about an hour or an hour and a half.  And the whole time, I was saying to myself, "Oh, I wish I would have recorded this." So I let some time go, by because I didn't want to come right back to Susan and say, "Let's do the same thing over again." But I got the guts up about a year later, and I did that. And I'm delighted that she said yes. I have no idea whether we're going to have the same conversation again or not, but it's going to be a good one anyway. So you were pretty new in the field, I think I was newer, when we were back at Accord, but you've been doing this for a long time now. If you were to give advice to somebody who is just starting out in this field, what lessons do you think you've learned over time that are really worth sharing?

Susan: Are you thinking about being a how do you get into it and be a professional, or how do you...

Heidi: No, I'm thinking about what you do if a community invites you in — let's start with that scenario — what do you do? Then there's also the question of, "Do you ever invite yourself in?" We'll talk about that in a bit. Let's assume for a minute, a community says to you, "We've got a lot of conflicts, a lot of polarization. People are at each other's throats. Nothing's getting done," which, of course, is true all over the place. What do you think about? How would you talk to them, or approach that problem?

Susan: Well, that's really interesting, Heidi, because I think the things that we did back then are still relevant to today. And I think one of the great lessons was that people need ownership of the process as well as the outcome. And today, I see people hiring consultants to come in and help with some of these polarizing issues. But one of the lessons I've learned is that communities have to be willing to commit the time to engage. And anyone who's helping them has to also commit time to the upfront assessment and process design part of it before they even convene people. And by that, I mean anyone who wants to help, and it doesn't have to be somebody from the outside.  I think as I reflect back on my years of experience, I'm seeing more and more people internally in communities, whether it's somebody from public sector, an appointed or elected official, or a nonprofit or business community taking leadership to try to address some issues.

But you have to go and really do a careful job of identifying and defining what the issue is, who the stakeholders are, and who are the parties that are affected. Talk to them about the issue so that you can see it before you get engaged in any kind of process. What are different people's perceptions of the problem? Defining the problem using the proper terms.  I was at a meeting today where people were talking about all the diversity, equity, and inclusion programs and how you can't use the term "diversity." So, they're using, I think, "culture," because people can deal with "culture" but not "diversity." This is just in my town. In other cases, they'll define the problem differently. You need to spend time upfront before you engage people in problem-solving, to look at how people see it, how they would be comfortable coming together, and who should be involved, and what the process steps should be. Then I think you have a good chance of making some progress.

But one of the traps is for people to come in, convene the leaders without recognizing, or looking at people who are directly affected by the problem, who may not have any voice. And I think we're so stretched today and placed in silos. People are reluctant to even gather in a place where people of the opposition might be. And I think today, as much, if not more than before, the whole concept of ground rules and explaining what you're doing, and why you're doing it is essential to getting people involved.

And then once you get that kind of buy-in, maybe having some co-sponsors, people from different groups sponsoring it can be helpful. So, it gives legitimacy and a comfort level to people to go in. I think there's just so much to think about. In our last conversation, had talked about all the changes in the field. When you and I were there in the early days, we were just pulling stuff out of hats. There wasn't a field back then. We were creating it. Especially if you want to look at the mediation field. I remember my first professional society meeting was 95% labor management mediators and 5% other. Well, now there are 20 different sectors. They're all doing different things. And within each sector, there are multiple sub practices. So not only do we have growth in the field of mediation, but also, if you look at the different programs, when we started, there weren't package processes. And now,  I have a book with at least 60 different processes you can insert into a community to address problems. And some of those will be popular. They'll be the fashion du jour, such as "World Cafes" in a community or to do Future Search or Open Space Technology or all these different things that people become familiar with as ways of bringing people together to address some issue that may be contentious or has the potential for becoming real contentious. I could go on...

Heidi:  Let me back up a bit because I came up with a couple of questions when you were talking about getting people to define the problem as they see it. And I found myself thinking that now--and it seems to me this is worse now than it was then, but now, it seems, people define the problem as "the other." We're so polarized that they tend to lose track of the issue. The issue becomes the MAGA folks or the progressives. And the problem is pretty much they exist. And if the problem is that the other exists, it's going to be very hard to get on the same page about what the problem is, except I guess the language is both you exist, and we agree on that.  But that doesn't get us very far.

Susan: Well, in the absence of having more constructive processes, it's very easy to be shouting out at the other side. And we live in our silos and it's very comfortable being in those silos. I think what takes people out is being able to take on something that both sides care about. And it depends on your community. I live in Southern California. Homelessness is a big issue here.  And both sides agree it's a problem, and both sides want to find solutions. Our mayor has created a task force with people from both sides to try to address that. And that way, they get to know each other better through the process of looking at the history of homelessness, what the current problems are, what the options are, what they'd like to see happen. And they begin to break down those stereotypes of the other. And I think it doesn't matter whether it's homelessness or youth issues or open space, or affordable housing, you can just go through a whole litany of community issues that you're going to find in any town. And if you can have the leadership of some group, again, it could be public sector, private sector, nonprofit, or in some cases, it's our religious communities, bringing people together from different voices, political persuasions, to try to address those issues in a constructive way, then I think we can go a long way toward breaking down some of the finger-pointing.

Heidi: One of the complaints that we've heard quite a bit is that it's hard to get conservatives involved in these processes because they see mediation itself or consensus building as being a progressive approach to problems. Is that something you ever had to deal with?

Susan: I've never had it framed that way. I've just had people say, "I'm worried about this because of the funder," if it's a federal agency or a government entity funding it. And often it is today. Or a local government  has the resources to do something like this. They don't want government-funded something. It makes them nervous. I've had actually people on both sides, environmental and industry say, "I don't want to do consensus because I'm afraid I will have to compromise my values." And I'm afraid I'm going to have to give in because once I start liking these people, then I may have to accommodate. I don't want to have to do that.

Heidi: So how do you respond to that?

Susan:  What I usually do is sit down with individuals, from either a conservative or environmental group and talk about what the consequences of not sitting down are, both negative and positive. What might they get out of this by participating that could be useful to them.  And really, it's an opportunity to educate them about your needs so that they're not as insensitive as they might come across in public because they've never sat down with your side. And that has worked. I've been able to get people to the table.

Now, sometimes there are individuals who represent a group who are not ever going to be constructive in a consensus process. And most people know who those people are in a community. They'll say, (I'm just pulling a name out of a hat.) "George is never going to want to listen, and he's just going to frustrate people, and he has such a bad reputation." But his good friend Peter, (I'm just pulling that name out too) shares exactly the same views, has a good standing in the community, has actually been able to talk to folks. And I think if you could get Peter, he not only will be willing to participate, but might be able to get George to follow along. And he will keep George informed and kind of drag him along into this. So that has worked as an option. But I think that's really an important consideration, because often you'll put these together and you'll miss an important constituency group. And you don't want people firing cannons into this process.

I also think having studied process, consensus building has been around since the founding of the country.  It's been around long before that. This is not something novel or hippie. It just happens to be a process that allows all voices to be heard. And then you can frame that way. Is that something you're uncomfortable with? You can make them look rather foolish. Well, not foolish, but when you think about it, it's very rational that there is this forum where all the voices can be heard, and you can have a chance to really explain to people why you're concerned about something. And they have to listen to you. "Are you comfortable doing that? Would you be willing to do that?" And explained in that way,  it does make sense. It is rational. And most of them are willing to participate because of that.

And then you also have to explain how it's a very controlled process. Some people might be afraid to come in because they've had bad experiences in the past. Or maybe because they've seen people do  loud name calling in public meetings. They don't want to be exposed to that. Nobody wants to be exposed to that. And then you can explain the protocols you might be using, whether it's ground rules, some sort of charter, something that lays out how we are expecting people to behave and what particular behaviors will be acceptable and not acceptable. So that's really critical.

Heidi: And the thing that you said that I thought was really smart is emphasizing that they will have to listen to you more than you will have to listen to them. Because I can hear the comeback in my head, which is, "Well, I've heard them a hundred of times. I know what they think. I don't need to listen to them." But everybody wants to be listened to, because we all feel like we're not listened to. We feel like we're being ignored. So, if you spin it that way, you're much more likely to get agreement, I think. So that's really smart.

Can you think of other lessons, other guidelines? Let's assume we've gotten people to the table. We've got to get a good group. We think it's representative. How do you design a process that's going to bring people together?

Susan: Well, I think I have used two different types of processes that I like. One is the more conventional one that people are maybe more familiar with, which is your problem-solving process. You get people together. You understand the history. It has to be done around a specific problem that everyone would like to address. Then you look at the history of this problem in your community, what the current situation is, and then what some options for addressing it might be.

Heidi: So, let's talk about history for a second. Have you ever been in situations where the history is disputed, when there's two or more different versions of the history?

Susan: I can't think of anything offhand. People will color it differently or say there are different effects. Usually, in a history, we bring in some historian, a community historian who has some credibility, either because they have done some writing on this topic, or they're knowledgeable about it. Most communities have a historical society, and that's often old guard folk that conservatives may be more comfortable with.  And they explain some of the history about, for instance, housing in the community. Often, it's just data that you're pulling from for instance, the housing department, or it could be the state database showing what has happened to either the cost of housing, the availability of housing, the quality, the type, etc.

And you then overlay some other trends in the community — what it was like 50 years ago, and then go by decades, over some of the changes, so people get grounded in the context. And then you look at a snapshot of today where we are, and then talk about what some options might be. And at that point, the processes diverge. Sometimes you'll  say, "Well, one thing might be to find out how other communities in similar situations have addressed it successfully." And you go outside the community to look at either national resources or local resources. There are lots of public entities and nonprofits that have done some really good work on how to solve some of these issues. And they may have case studies, and you might bring in a couple of people to talk about things. It might be an adjacent community that's dealt with it or somebody in your region where it doesn't take much to bring them in. They can talk about a case or how they are approaching it. They may be just a year or two ahead of you in terms of managing some particular issue. And then people brainstorm some things they'd like to do, start working on things that they feel would be both appropriate for their community, affordable, manageable.  They establish some criteria and then try to reach some agreements. That's one approach.

The other approach is doing a visioning process. I've been doing a lot of that in both large-scale and then some community-based projects where you say, "Okay, here's where we are now. Let's talk about what we would like to see it look like in 10 years or 20 years," whatever they're comfortable with.  Usually, it's in 10 years, what would you like to see this community look like if we were able to solve it  to everyone's satisfaction here? And hopefully, at this point in the process, they're hooked.  They've gotten to know each other a little bit. They'll even sit next to somebody who's been "an enemy," and they start talking about what they'd like to see. You can do all sorts of things at this point. It can be a verbal process  — just listing of ideas. Or I might ask them— I've done this with some very high-ranking officials — to draw a picture of what they would like the community to look like, maybe with regard to housing  — I'm just using that as one of a myriad of issues. If the housing problem were solved in their community and then share their picture of what that looks like.

What that does is twofold. First, it reduces people to second grade level.

Heidi: Ha ha! I was thinking, "Oh, my gosh. I wouldn't want you to ask me that!"

Susan: And that's what's so much fun about it, because they say, "I can't draw and I don't know what to do." It levels the playing field. And the reason that's important is that you've sometimes brought in people from local neighborhood councils who aren't articulate like the lawyers or some of the public officials. But when they have to draw a picture, everyone is at an equal disability, and it breaks the ice. Sometimes I've asked people to  draw a picture of what they'd like to see happening. You might include some things like who would be involved and they can draw either geographically or just represent what it would look like in other ways.

And you might sometimes ask them, out of that drawing, to list one or two goals that you'd like to see the community have. Then they share that, and there are so many "ahas." It just becomes remarkable. You post their drawing, the person gets up, they describe it. There's another person scribing, who's taking down notes of all the different ideas. And what comes out of it is that the visions become so similar. There's so much overlap. And there's this aha! You realize you're on the same page, and then you start saying, "Okay, what have you learned?  What are your observations here? "Oh, we have so much we could work on. There's so much we have in common." It provides the energy then to start working out a plan of what they can do, short-term, long-term. So that's been very powerful in local communities.  I've done this on city charter revisions or some of these crazier things. Some strategic planning, as well as on specific issues of land use. What do we do with a 25-acre parcel in the middle of our town that everyone wants to see different things done with it? The lawyers are fighting each other. There are just so many applications for that [the visioning process].

,And that's what excites me, because people really get interested and they see the aha, and then they're able to get over their conflict.

Heidi: That's wonderful. I don't ever remember you doing a drawing the picture thing when we were together. Maybe that came later, but that's really interesting. Any other things that you can think of that you would want to teach a newbie?

Susan: I think the power of relationship is so important. You really have to invest time, talking to individuals, to get a picture yourself, educate yourself about the dynamics in the community for yourself. Know the history, what the sensitivities are. One of the questions I used to ask is, "What should I not be asking?"  It sounds funny, but are there some things that I should not be bringing up.

Heidi: Because they are going to get people too riled up?

Susan: There was a time I worked in Northern California on a number of conflicts, like watershed and timber harvesting. And I remember going into one county and I asked several people, are there topics we should not be addressing? That I should be aware that I should not bring up. And I'll never forget this one. I got told, "Never ask them what they do for a living." Okay. They were all into marijuana farming at a time when it wasn't legal. And it was very distinguished people that were letting people grow plants. And there were places in the forest, on federal land that were used to grow marijuana. It was just one of those things.  You just didn't want to get into that conversation. So they said, "Don't ever ask somebody what they do for a living," because some of the people are supporting themselves by growing. And so we did our wonderful watershed management. We did timber harvest conflicts. We did all this stuff, and I never asked people what they did. But these would be often citizen groups. And, ordinarily, one of the things you want to know what people do, right?  It's just interesting when they're often a volunteer on a citizen environmental committee. So that's why you ask what are the sensitivities?

Another useful thing, find out what has worked and what hasn't, what experience they have with conflict resolution programs or problem solving.  Because, often they have a bad story. They've had some bad experience. They may have a good experience. Have you had any good experiences? You can find out what made it work. In some cases, I'll find that they did have something that met on a regular basis, and they always had food, and that brought people together. Well, you know that's something you might incorporate into whatever you're designing.

Or there are things in the process where you'll find out about timing, that there are certain times of the year that are or aren't good. In Southern California, they are festival times. There are times for the Hispanic festivals, there are times for our Black communities festivals, there are times for Asian festivals. And we don't want to do anything during one of those weekends or you just want to check to make sure the calendar is available, if it is something that's going to be representative of a community. Because then they would be torn as to whether they could participate in this problem-solving process if it's a weekend or something that might involve a month when there time is going to be occupied with other events. Some of the processes are longstanding.

One of the issues I don't know, Heidi, if you've gotten into this, there's the whole issue whether you compensate people for participating in these efforts. That didn't used to be a problem or a challenge. I mean, it was a problem, but it wasn't something that people were addressing much. Now that is something you might be careful about, be sensitive to who can participate, who can't, and what might they need to participate. Because often, some of the most vocal people in these communities are holding two jobs  or they can only come in the evenings. And that's when a lot of  people who do this for a living do not want to come. So, you have to negotiate a lot of that when you're in the town.

And things like venues. I used to think, "Oh, somebody will give us a place." But boy, in certain towns, venues take on their own significance. If it's a chamber, some people will think, "Oh, they're being very generous," but other people think it's too far for me to go, or I'd rather have it on more neutral turf, depending on who's causing the problem.  And other people will say, "That's great. They've got the best air conditioning in town. We'd love to go." But that's why I think as mediator or facilitators, we just have to be so careful about asking all these questions.

And I think this brings up the whole thing of what do we call ourselves? We're really process experts, we're adding, hopefully, a value-added of some process knowledge. And there are some people who don't want mediators, but they'll take a facilitator. I can wear that hat! Or they don't want to be facilitated, but they want some assistance running a meeting. Okay, I can help them run a meeting. Or I can help them reach agreements. What would you like to call me? And they'll come up with other terms. You just have to go with where they are because they had a bad experience with a mediator before.

And sometimes you just maybe want to explain. There was a period when a lot of community mediation was more cookie-cutter,  Because so many people were volunteer mediators, they followed a very prescribed process. And then people didn't like a mediation because it didn't allow any flexibility. So they would say, "We don't want that." I think those days are gone, but occasionally, that will come up. Don't be surprised now by the sophistication of some of the participants in process. And that has been something that's been coming over time. A lot of your federal agencies, state agencies, and local community people have been trained in conflict resolution and some forms of public engagement. And they may have really good advice for you. They may want to co-facilitate with you. And again, you just have to see whether this is appropriate or not. This is a challenging question. I think you and I could write a book on this one!

Heidi: Yeah. I don't want to cut off your flow, if you want to keep going. But I've got a couple of questions...When you were talking about whether to compensate people for their participation, I was thinking, "No, when I was doing that, I hadn't run into that." But what we did run into.. we did something that was called the Water Roundtable, which was a proposal for a large dam  that business wanted., but the Environmental Protection Agency didn't want it because it was going to bring growth, which, they thought, was going to make Denver's air pollution worse. And the environmentalists didn't want it. And the environmentalists who were participating in this roundtable felt very outgunned because the Denver Water Board had tons of money. So they were able to come in with all this data and all these experts.  And these poor environmentalists, one was from EDF and one was from National Wildlife Federation.  But they were completely outgunned. So I remember that you somehow managed to dig up some money so that they could pay for some expertise too. So that sort of leveled the playing field a little bit. And I would imagine that's still a problem.

Susan: Yes!

Heidi: Environmental groups are still going to be outgunned by the big companies and the government sometimes. So it seems like that's another balancing act that you have to do.

Susan: Well, that was just a wonderful illustration of how these processes work. There were at least 40 different participants representing different stakeholder groups. And there were at least I think it was 17 environmental groups that had an interest in this particular conflict all around the city of Denver, but for a variety of reasons only two participated. And you're right. It was the Environmental Defense Fund and  Bob Golten with the National Wildlife Federation. And they were really interested in the data part of it, because we negotiated away from should we build the dam or not, to the question of "what's the best way to provide water to Denver by the year 2020?" This was in the early '80s. A long time out. At that point, like 40 years out, a lot of it was just number crunching, trying to figure out acre feet of water and what they would need and population projections. And yes, we were able to get some resources for them so they could do some of that number crunching. And then this is what's interesting in these large-scale processes. We created a data mediation internal process, so that not the lawyers, but the engineers from the Denver Water Board could work with the engineers from the environmental groups and they could compare some of their data, not the sources of it, but they could look at their projections and actually mediate toward a center figure. I remember one group had a very high number of acre feet and one very low, and we negotiated to a center number of what our goal was to provide for the next 40 years. So that, yes, was a real interesting part of that process.

Heidi: I've forgotten about that. And back in the day, maybe after that because I hadn't forgotten at that time, I wrote a couple of papers on data mediation. And it strikes me that that's something that kind of sunk. That's not a term that I've heard since. Am I wrong?

Susan: Well, I just don't think... I'm trying to think of big cases. I've done some pretty large cases, but the people now, like in California, are sharing their data more. And they have consulting firms. They have a lot of big consulting firms, and they're sharing more data because they need to. California has mandated collaboration on the watersheds and now on the groundwater. So all of this is not kept in secret the way it was before. And people have access. I think this is done at the table more than we were able to do back then.

Heidi: Okay. So it's not needed as much anymore. That's good to know.

Susan: But I'm not as familiar. There probably are some instances where it would be appropriate.

Heidi: Another thing that strikes me as interesting to talk about is the role of neutrality of the facilitator.  I don't know whether you were following our blog early on, but we got into a dispute with Bernie Mayer, who I know you also know. Bernie wrote this book that he called The Neutrality Trap, where he asserted that being a neutral was a trap and that you needed to stand up for justice.  And that can mean not being neutral. And we were holding firm for the neutral position. And I'm thinking about how this relates to what we've been talking about, though I know, it sounds like it's wandering. But I've been working with Bill Froehlich with the Divided Community Project, and we're doing interviews with Community Relations Service mediators and conciliators who deal with racial conflicts.  And one of the issues, especially early on (we're doing a reprise of a project that we did 20, 25 years ago), where we interviewed a bunch of real old-time racial mediators who talked about how they would train the minority groups and give them all sorts of some financial assistance, sort of like you did with the environmental groups in the Water Roundtable). And then there sometimes were charges that giving training is being biased. And CRS explained, well, actually, it's not being biased because it's just trying to get them up to a level that's on par with you so that you can have a good negotiation.  That usually worked for CRS. But the whole question of neutrality —and what's the role of the facilitator vis-a-vis the parties that might be, for whatever reason, considered the underdogs?

Susan: Well, it's a very complex issue, right? And it's been around for a long time. My take on that is I come in with a lot of values on the substantive issues, but my role is to not assert those. My role is to be a champion for process that allows everyone an equal voice in this process. And again, that goes back to prep. Talking to people, asking what would it take for you to be comfortable participating in this?

Heidi: That's an important question.

Susan: Yep. What would it take for you to be comfortable participating? And sometimes if you can have it in our neighborhood, I can participate. And you know just simple things like not having it at City Hall. I did a Community Block Grant negotiation in my town about how certain money would be spent. And these are resources going to low-income communities. And some of them had not ever been to City Hall in my town. They wanted the meetings in the local community centers in their neighborhood.

It was a real interesting negotiation because some of the people who would be recipients, who would be delivering services to the community, did not even want to go into the community to talk about their services. This is where the mediator has a lot of power. Because when we went and talked to the community leaders — and we were talking in three different neighborhoods in my town, which is a town of about 300,000 people —  it's fairly good size. They were consistent about wanting to have these meetings to talk about how the resources would be spent in their town and in the evening. And we held strongly that this is what we were going to do. We were going to accommodate to the local community that needed the resources that was the underdog. And that was our way of empowering them. They didn't need money thrown at them, but they wanted people to actually come to their community, see the problem, and not be suitcase consultants or just people at town hall who seldom went into those neighborhoods. And it worked really well. We had like 200 people who  would show up in the evening and had all kinds of good ideas. And the city was  blown away by the participation.

That's what a mediator can do. And then we negotiated what would be appropriate for each community with a smaller group of local people and the appropriate city personnel.

So, I think one has to be very careful. I used to get the question of, "How can we trust you? How do we know you are neutral?" And all of those things. And I used to have a line that said, "You shouldn't trust me. Don't trust me." I love that. I said, "I just want you to watch what I'm doing. And if you feel there's any suggestion of my not being neutral, let me know if I come across not being fair."

But your question about how do you deal with the discrepancy in power —you're talking about power here, and perception of power. And sometimes I would end up talking to people about power because they would assume money is power. But there are so many other forms of power, too, that can be employed in these cases. Body count is power. If a community group can get a lot of people out, you know they'll listen. So it's trying to create a process where all these voices are heard, and they have the ability to not only say their piece, but gather information that's appropriate for their side or find solutions that would address their issues.

Heidi: Now, on all these processes that you've run over the years, how do they relate to the formal decision-making process? I know that Guy was involved in one here in Boulder that was regarding open space, where they got folks together, a big group of folks, once a month for two or three years, and people worked out a whole plan on the management of open space.  It got turned over to Open Space. By and large, none of it was followed. So he got pretty annoyed about that. I'm sure the other participants who had put so much time and effort into this were very annoyed about that. So it makes him certainly very reluctant to do things with the city again because he figures, "Why should I put in that much time if what we're doing is ignored?"

Susan: Yeah. There are so many examples of that. I think you have to negotiate upfront with the community. One of the questions you ask is, what's going to happen to the results? I mean, what is our long-term goal? Is this something that needs a city stamp of approval for implementation? If they're going to be part of implementing, they've got to be part of the process. The problem that I've run into is you can have a change in government. For instance, the mayor's out. You've got new city planner, and that's not on their agenda. But I think you need to have city engagement or a commitment to implement. Sometimes the city will say, "We want to be neutral. We're going to turn it over to you, and we agree to implement whatever you'll say." You need that in writing from the city so that they can do that.

 Now, they might say, "We're going to monitor this all along," and it has to conform to not only city regulations, but state and national rules — all that stuff. You have to keep that in mind. I did a statewide consensus building thing once. And even when this was on wilderness designation, and it was slightly different. We said, "If we could reach agreement statewide, would the congressional delegation be willing to support it?" We went to each congressional delegate.  It was five House people and the two Senators. All of them agreed to do it. And then we reached the agreement and one of the people, for political reasons, decided to kill it. And that was just a political decision to respond to constituents. I mean, those things happen. You get sabotaged, but you try everything possible not to have that happen by asking who i will be involved in the implementation if we reach an agreement? Sometimes it's a combination of city and county. And sometimes it requires some state or federal coordination if it's about water, or air on the environmental side. And sometimes it's a HUD process, or other federal agencies involved in whatever topic you're talking about in the community — maybe the Department of Education. 

Heidi: So if you can get them involved in the process all along, they'll be more bought in? 

Susan: Bought in and sometimes it's just touching base with them. Telling  them: "This is where we are. Do you have any issues with this? Do you see any problems? Is there anything you'd like to contribute, ideas you'd like to offer?" Even if they're not at the table, so they're coming along with you, and it's not something you just  present to them at the end.

Heidi: Have you seen changes in the willingness of people to do this sort of thing over the 40 years that you've been at it? Maybe more than 40 years that you've been at it?

Susan: Yeah. Definitely, I think it is because people are familiar with this now. I mean, before,  Heidi, you remember the days when they didn't know the difference between mediation and meditation?

Heidi: Right!

Susan: It was just this weird thing, and you had to explain everything, and they didn't know what the process looked like, and you couldn't give all these examples. Well, now, — I'm thinking about California, where they mandate collaboration on all the watersheds and they have all these consensus councils on this and that. And it's a fairly familiar process. And people are familiar with the steps in the process. And a lot of agencies have people who will just do this — It's part of their training. They go out and do it with whomever the stakeholders are. So you don't even need a third-party neutral. People are comfortable enough with it.

Now, you know that's one thing we do have, is what you referred to earlier, this political polarization that is keeping people apart— but that's more on the political level. You know, they're shooting rifles, just cannonballs at each other — high-level assaults. But when you get down to the actual problems and the needs, everyone recognizes that these are needs.

So  I think the challenge now is that the consensus processes take time. They take resources. And most communities are so stretched for money today. There's a shortage of time. Local administrators, it doesn't matter what department, have so many mandates for things they have to do and problems they're facing that putting together a consensus thing, whatever it looks like, a problem-solving venture, is a challenge. And I think I see in the future more need for ongoing things like you're talking about open space, maybe an Open Space Council that is both for prevention, looking at issues that might come up and what can they do about it, and for addressing problems that do arise that are more institutionalized, like we have our human relations commissions. Almost every city has that. We need more on different topics, I think, on some of these hot-button topics today.

Heidi: And I'll add in the notion that you talked about earlier about visioning. I always told my students that you can't get where you're going if you don't know where it is. And I think one of the big problems, looking at our polarization nationally, but it also plays out locally, I think, very few people have an image of what the United States should look like in 10 or 20 or 30 years that isn't continuing this crazy fight that we're in now.

Susan: Exactly.

Heidi:  I used to do a version of Elise Boulding's Visioning Exercise that she did years ago, trying to get people to visualize a world without nuclear weapons. Yeah, well, that one didn't come off either. But trying to get people to visualize what would the United States look like if we weren't polarized. And it's really hard because nobody has an image of what we'd look like. But I think if we did, it would be a heck of a lot easier to start working towards it.

Susan: Oh, Heidi, I just have to reinforce this. This is where my energy is going now — in this visioning area. Because I think that is exactly what we need to be doing in our communities. And it can be framed as what do we want for our community? It has to be normative. What do we want our communities to look like or our community to look like in 10 years? Just generally. And get people talking about it. Because they do have good ideas about what they want it to look like. And instead of being trapped in this morass of conflict and unending problems, if you can start with where you want to be, after you understand — you have to understand what the problems are, because there are a lot of people who are very naive about the issues, especially if you have all these multicultural or just different elements in your community. But once you understand what the issues are, we need to look at "where do we want to be? What do we want our community to look like?" And then work back from that. It's very powerful because it energizes, it gets over the polarization, motivates people. And the same thing at the national level.

And Elise, God bless her soul, right? She translated from Dutch. What was it called? The Image of the Future by the Dutch futurist Polak who went back in history and looked at all the major civilizations and found a corresponding correlation between societies that had a negative view of their future or no positive vision were in decline. And those that could articulate a positive vision were healthy societies. And we don't have one now.  So, I think it's real incumbent upon us as a society nationally and locally to start creating those.

Heidi: And my experience is, when you do that, very often, people find out that their visions are much more similar than they expected them to be.

Susan: Exactly.!

Heidi:  You expect them to say, "I want this, and you want that," and they're as far away as you can imagine. But that's not usually the case.

Susan: I remember working in a very small town in rural Utah on wilderness designation in their community. And we had a workshop. This was a year-long project or something. We  had a workshop for local people to come and talk about what they would like to see wilderness look like in the future. They were so polarized because they had the bumper stickers, you know no wilderness, blah, blah, blah, blah.  And then the environmentalists were pro wilderness. I had them draw pictures again. This was 200 people, but in groups of 10, and there are lots of ways you can make this happen. The big ah-ha was that everyone wanted the lands preserved. Nobody wanted development. They didn't want oil and gas. They didn't want roads through it. And once they realized that they wanted wilderness with a small "w "rather than a big "W," what it came down to was who would manage it and how the lands would be handled. And it was very easy then to start talking about the Bureau of Land Management land. They said, "Well, what would happen if we had some local committees set up a local advisory committee that would advise us on how we could use this land in your county?" "Oh, we'd love that. That would be terrific." It was just an amazing breakthrough. And I've done the same thing on timbering where people were so opposed to timbering because they were afraid of what would happen. You got them together and talked about what they'd like to see this land look like. Well, we still want it in timber, but we want to be the ones employed to replant.  But nobody gave them a venue for talking about that.  They assumed people from the outside would be brought in to replant the land once it had been clear-cut.

We have to figure out ways to do that, to create visioning where they can see their similarities. People do that for their community. What do you call it? Not land use, but their strategic planning in communities where you have all the different sectors. It's amazing how similar the visions are. So, yeah, that's the big ah-ha! And then the rest is working out the details.

Heidi: So, what have I forgotten to ask?

Susan: Oh, I don't know. We could talk forever. It's so much fun. I'm not sure. I mean, you were saying things that have you know stayed the same and things that have changed. And I do think there's so much more awareness of these tools and more comfort in using them. But I think you don't want to be a dilettante because you can cause problems. And I think getting somebody who is familiar with these processes is important. There are a lot more people who use one strategy, kind of cookie-cutter Appreciative Inquiry or this thing or that thing, and they're uncomfortable going outside the box of one thing they've learned.

I think you and I had the advantage of just putting this together.

Heidi: We were making it up as we went.

Susan: We were making it up. And I'm a pirate. I'm always pulling things in from one group or trying to take advantage, learn from somebody's experience and apply that to something else. But I think there's never been a more important time for people to start employing these tools in their community. And I think out of this has come my interest in collaborative leadership, training people to be collaborative as leaders in their community.

 I've worked with many organizations training their folks to employ these tools as community leaders. And I think that's the future, too, so they feel comfortable using these tools. They might bring in a facilitator, but they know they can recognize good process from bad process, and they might be using it on their own.

Heidi: That's great!

Susan: Yeah.

Heidi: There certainly is just tons more of this going on now than there was back in the day. And many, many more people are trained in it and there are degree programs in it. We got funded early on by the Hewlett Foundation. Their intent was to create the field of conflict resolution. And we were very upset when they pulled out of the field, having declared success. They said, "Yes, we have created a field.  We're done. Bye." That hurt a lot of us a lot, but they were right. They did create a field.

Susan: Yep

Heidi: And it has survived the departure of Hewlett. And there's a lot of exciting stuff going on. And the interesting thing for me with this Inter Movement Impact Project is that there are lots more people getting involved in this than call themselves mediators or facilitators.

Susan: Yes!

Heidi: So there are  allied fields, but we're all interested in doing the same sorts of things, and we're all interested in helping communities solve problems because everybody recognizes that community problem solving is both important and very difficult these days. And maybe it's always been very difficult.  I know when I talk about polarization, there are plenty of people who say to me, "We've always been polarized. There's nothing different now." Well.

Susan: We didn't have social media. I think that's the big difference. We had bumper stickers, Heidi.

Heidi: Yeah. Well, there's still bumper stickers. But I see social media as a tremendous accelerant of bad things. And I suppose there are a few good things. We have a newsletter on Substack.  We wouldn't reach nearly as many people if it weren't for Substack, But still, everything else is more challenging, I think, because of it. That's true. Well, I just want to thank you again so much! This was fun. You have so much wisdom, and I hope that you can continue to help people. And this video, I hope, will help people think about some things that they haven't thought about before. So thank you very much!

Suisan: My pleasure. What a treat for me! Good luck with all your work, too. Because we need everything you're doing here today.

Heidi: Well, thank you much. I, too, am retired. This is now a retirement hobby for me, but it's a fun hobby. And I like to think it's an important one, so, anyway, thank you much!