How We Can Help

Bob and the team at NewStories have been working with communities and organizations in North America and around the world for many years.  Everywhere we encounter similar questions: Where should we focus, what are we supposed to be doing? How do we create communities where everyone feels they belong? What can we do about the increasing anxiety and fear around accelerating change?  How do we find agreements with different ideas and approaches.?

Expressed in different ways, almost everyone wants to figure out what’s really important now, how to get unstuck and create more flow.

We can help you explore your after now.  

We are available to help in many ways -- as facilitators and consultants, listeners and writers, coaches and planners.  We work with many different processes and models. Many are described in AfterNow; descriptions of some are available on the Complimentary Downloads page.

Our work is to help you find your after now.  We focus on what’s real and important right now and where to take a first step.  A form for this kind of work that we have been developing since 2010 are FutureSessions, an approach we helped bring to Japan from Europe and which we used extensively in Japan’s disaster area.  We are now introducing it in North America and other parts of the world.

After spending his entire career helping people and communities create the future they want, Bob spent 5+ years working in Japan’s disaster area after the March 11, 2011 earthquake, tsunami and radiation explosions.  He learned that people need help in listening to each other, building new relationships, honoring grief and trauma, and taking action together.

Let’s talk about how we might help your organizations in finding your way forward, to find your afternow.  Send an email to help@newstories.org, or just go ahead and schedule a time for an initial free consultation at https://bobstilger.as.me.  We’ll explore together.

FutureSessions

In Japan, one of the key ways this work of listening, learning and taking action took place was through decentralized but connected FutureSessions, which occurred week after week, year after year, in the disaster area and all over Japan. These sessions are described in Chapter 3 of AfterNow. An excerpt is available on the complimentary downloads page.

FutureSessions provide the social infrastructure to convene conversations and action planning processes. Sometimes communities create a single physical space for a FutureCenter in which sessions are held, but FutureSession can be offered anywhere at any time.

FutureSessions can be used to:

Convene Small Groups

Take Local Action

Connect Around Key Themes Across a Region

Heal Grief and Trauma

Take Breath & Chew Experience

Create New Stories

Click here to learn more about the types of FutureSessions.

Actions in a FutureSession

 

We work in many places, in a range of different contexts. We haven’t always called our work FutureSessions, but looking back over the last 17 years that’s what we’ve been doing.

We've used these approaches in many places...

Helping to develop Kufunda Learning Village as a resilient community, an oasis, as Zimbabwe has been in a cycle of decay.

Hosting learning journeys to Fukushima, helping people discover what’s possible when the old normal vanishes.

In the US, teaching in Masters and PhD Programs about leadership

Hosting conversations that matter across all of Japan, helping people discover what future they want to step towards.

In Nova Scotia, hosting intergenerational dialogues on Leaders as part of the Shambhala Authentic Leadership Institute.

In Mexico, convening people from learning centers around the world doing local work to build resilient communities.

On a Listening Tour with coal miners form Cabin Creek, West Virginia, about how to create a Culture of Health

Convening a FutureSession in High River, Alberta

Convening a FutureSession in High River, Alberta, two and a half years after the floods.

Helping America’s leaders on energy efficiency

Helping America’s leaders on energy efficiency listen and learn from each other.

Interested? Please be in touch.  Email Us, or just go ahead and schedule a call here