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Collaborative Thinking is a Social Change Tool


This is another in a series of posts devoted to concepts that David Castro introduces in his book Genership 1.0 Beyond Leadership, Toward Liberating the Creative Soul. Strategic thinking is the subject this time. While the practice of strategic thinking is well known, the standard approach to it can be improved.

A new way of thinking collaboratively thinking about the future promises improved results from strategic planning sessions. CoThinking is Castro's term for that new way of thinking. To quote Castro, CoThinking is a process whereby “We engage with others in reflective dialogue our desired future, our present circumstances, and the possibilities for strategic action.”

Instead of trying to predict the future, concentrate on what future to create and how that work might be accomplished. Whether two people are talking about maybe starting a nonprofit, or a long-established development organization is ready to expand into new territories, thinking about the future is a necessity. Strategic thinking is a necessity, as are the tools for doing effective creative thinking.

Planning tools such as SWOT analysis or Delphi polling can be valuable sometimes. Often, social entrepreneurs can rely on their knowledge of what is changing at the time and what is reasonably likely to happen in the near future. Is now really a good time to start building village-scale power plants in rural Cameroon? Knowing the social environment in Cameroon should make the question an easy one.

Predicting the future might be useful, but creating a detailed map of what to do and how to do it, is more important. This is what CoThinking is for.


In the Genership model of doing things, there is no one way to envision the future. Castro refers to the journey metaphor here. Getting from where your nonprofit is to where you want to it to be is NOT like a journey. There is no organizational planning equivalent of MapQuest. Individuals should focus on creative efforts to find ways of reaching a desired destination.

CoThinking provides a method for planning in that “create-it-yourself” mold. To that end, CoThinking uses three “domains of thinking”:

  1. Think about the desired future – Here is where the ability to articulate a SMART goal, that the team agrees on will be crucial. What does the group want the future to look like? How many projects serving how many people by what date?
  2. Think about reality in light of that desired future – Scan the group's experience and knowledge of the current social environment, and discuss the group's assessments of same. What resources does the group still need to acquire? Information and skills count as resources too.
  3. Engage in practical planning, execution and evaluation of a certain action – Plan interim objectives and action steps, evaluation criteria, and first steps then take action.

CoThinking is not that difficult to understand, but some effort is required. Read Genership 1.0, Chapter 3 in particular, to find out why CoThinking is a good idea and how exactly it works.

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