World Café with a Recovery Center

By Barbara Belknap

In late March 2006, I was called to a non-profit addiction recovery center with a retreat scheduled for the next week. The two-day retreat had been scheduled months before by the past director, but there was no agenda. One of the counselors had been given my name as a possible facilitator. I met with him, the administrative person and a nurse. The new director was unavailable that day. The three staff members ran through a litany of changes the organization was going through. Then I met with "Jane" the director, who had worked there five years as a counselor. Jane conceded that if the time for the retreat hadn't already been carved out of everyone's schedule, she doubted it would happen. Everyone was stretched to the limit and she was working long hours to get up to speed on her new job and deal with all the changes.

I told her that I use the World Café style of communication for all kinds of groups and asked her what she'd like to see at the end of the retreat. While she started out with "everyone rowing in the same direction", we ended up with some very pragmatic goals. Jane said everyone needed to agree on the rules for their clients and they needed to clarify their philosophy of treatment. We only had time for one more meeting before the retreat and she decided that we'd take time at the very beginning to come up with the questions.

This became more of an open process than the kind of Café gatherings I've been doing. We had what Toke Muller calls "the groan zone" where we worked on what they really needed to function well. The director set aside the morale and communication issues to focus on the core functions. This was a wise move on her part because the staff needed to agree on the basics to function together. The questions they came up with were: What are our rules and what is the rationale behind them? What is our philosophy of treatment? and, How can our mission statement reflect our philosophy of treatment?

On the first day, the director brought in copies of the handbook. On the second morning, one staff member brought in the suggestion sheet from the clients. Another brought in twelve copies of the current schedule. They knew exactly what tools they needed. At the end of the retreat, they had a new handbook of rules that they all agreed they would enforce. They had a new schedule for every 30 minutes for every day of the week, which in essence was their philosophy of treatment. They had new telephone rules for clients. They had a new mission statement they all felt reflected their philosophy as an organization. They also came up with a way to interrupt each other when they needed an immediate answer: a knock on the door and a "I have a client question." Since I wasn't the expert and they were, I helped them through the conversations, wrote their main ideas on a large erase board, and asked clarifying questions.

They were all very passionate about helping the clients get healthy and go back to their families. I believe they learned to speak up with each other when they had needs. Since they rarely saw each all at one time, I hope they formed some bonds and recognized their commonalities.

What I learned from this was to be totally flexible and to change the process when needed by the boss and the group. My goals were to help the new director as much as possible, to end up with the products she wanted, build teamwork with humor and by paying attention to who needed a chance to talk, and use their limited time to the best advantage. At the end of the retreat, there was a sense of relief that they had actually come up with the revised documents - something they'd needed to do for a long time. There was hope that their work lives would be less stressful and that their clients would get the best treatment possible.

 

Barbara Belknap is a consultant and World Café host living in Alaska.