We are building a movement for living collective wisdom
to rebuild trust, strengthen community, and sustain profound results.
Join us!
Welcome!
We are so glad you are here.
So much of the world's current reality is unprecedented, and the scale of our collective challenges overwhelming. We need to find new ways, and remember ancient ones, of being and acting together.
Over the past several decades, John Ott and Rose Pinard, co-founders of the Center for Collective Wisdom® (C4CW), have helped communities and systems learn how to more reliably access collective wisdom, and avoid the arising of collective folly, in support of their highest aspirations.
We are working now to build a movement for living collective wisdom in support of rebuilding trust, strengthening community, and sustaining profound results. If you find inspiration as you explore these pages, join us!
Living Collective Wisdom®
The results we long for, and that animate the work of our partners, require large-scale change, and ongoing processes of consciously evolving our systems and communities, the larger culture, and ourselves.
Our co-founders John Ott, JD, and Rose Pinard, PhD, have developed a comprehensive trauma and resiliency-informed framework—called Living Collective Wisdom®—to help us and our partners embody new ways of learning, leading, and evolving together in support of profound results.
This framework works simultaneously across four dimensions of change: the individual interior and exterior dimensions of change, and the group interior and exterior dimensions of change. It is about improving strategy and strengthening leadership and culture. It helps practitioners deepen their capacity for deep listening, both to themselves and others, and their ability to honor highly divergent views in support of developing deeper understanding of, and breakthrough solutions to, complex and seemingly intractable issues.
Profound Results
C4CW supports individuals and teams, and organizations, systems, and communities, dedicated to achieving and sustaining profound results. We use the phrase profound results to evoke the scale of aspiration and depth of longing that animate our work and the work of our partners.
Some of the results our partners are holding themselves accountable for include: ensuring all children enter kindergarten healthy and ready to succeed; ending chronic homelessness; ensuring every student graduates high school with a path, a plan, and a purpose; and promoting healing, resiliency, and wellbeing for all community members.
A Commitment to Equity, Healing, and Inclusion
An essential aspect of Living Collective Wisdom® is learning how to address the wounds of the past that may be preventing us—as individuals, as groups, as large change efforts—from fully realizing our highest aspirations and achieving the results we are committed to.
There are many sources of collective trauma and unhealed wounds that may be undercutting our change efforts. And, in the culture of this country, all of us know that we suffer from a profound legacy and current reality of inequities and polarization. Any result that matters requires that we learn how to live a commitment to equity, healing, and inclusion. Living Collective Wisdom® helps us do just that—intentionally, systematically, and sustainably.
Our Offerings
C4CW currently offers Immersions, Intensives, 1:1 Ally Sessions, and Academies to help our partners embody Living Collective Wisdom® in their work in the world. If you are interested in learning more about our offerings, please contact us.
Immersions
Immersions are highly interactive online experiences for individuals and teams to begin to learn and apply Living Collective Wisdom to their change efforts. You can learn more about these offerings here.
Intensives
Intensives help leaders, teams, and consultants learn how to help others embody Living Collective Wisdom®. Specifically, participants learn how to lead Immersions, facilitate 1:1 Ally Sessions, and/or design and facilitate Wisdom Dialogues® focused on achieving breakthrough solutions. Participation in an Immersion is a prerequisite. You can learn more about Intensives here.
1:1 Ally Sessions
During or following an Immersion, participants can sign up for a series of 1:1 Ally Sessions to deepen their capacity to embody and apply the concepts, commitments, and practices of Living Collective Wisdom®. 1:1 Ally Sessions are also an integral component of Intensives.
These 1:1 sessions are led by C4CW allies who have deep experience with applying Living Collective Wisdom® in their own lives, and in helping other do the same. You can learn more about these offerings here.
Academies
Academies are custom-designed, typically multi-year processes that enable communities, systems, and cohorts of organizations to integrate Living Collective Wisdom® throughout their change efforts. These trauma and resiliency-informed processes unfold through four iterative phases: assessing, readying, embodying, and integrating. You can learn more about Academies here.
Coming soon
In the coming months, we will begin offering videos and online courses teaching the fundamentals of Living Collective Wisdom®
And in 2025 we will begin convening people from around the world who are committed to living collective wisdom to share best practices, deepen learning and meaningful dialogue, and strengthen a larger movement.
