better is possible. collabyrinth cultivates space for change-makers to dream, develop, problem-solve, and practice the better they want to see in the world.

our work is wholly about the good you are seeking to accomplish. we bring to bear the skills of DESIGN, FACILITATION, STRATEGY, and ADVISORY to catalyze your change-making. we are particularly drawn to projects that strengthen equity and community, enable learning and liberation, promote social justice and spirituality, and take time to understand the interactions between these societal goods. our unique form of alchemy turns ideas into reality, feelings into commitments, and words into actions.

get to the better you seek faster and with the assurance that when you arrive you’ll be ready to handle whatever you encounter. gain the strategy to turn your well-meaning into a well-doing that makes room for more and more stakeholders.  receive the advisory support (coaching, insight and resilience) you need to consistently show up as the courageous leader you want to be. our design services and tools will help you build the “muscle memory” for seeking equity, community, or whatever your desired outcomes may be in any interaction.  our collaborative [re]design sessions, forums, and projects will help your community risk across differences to try on new stories and scripts (better ways of thinking and doing), solve problems, and create new possibilities.

not only is better possible, it can begin right now!

 

people

melvin bray and leslie w. bray are the principal consultants for collabyrinth. they are both incredibly skilled at helping cohorts get where they are trying to go. they bring to bear a unique designer, advisor, facilitator, and strategist skill-set that is indispensable in almost any innovative endeavor—particularly those that involve learning and problem-solving, community and equity.

learn more about leslie or melvin.

depending upon the nature, size, and complexity of a client’s project, additional team members are assembled as needed from a community of designers/facilitators who practice the same applied philosophy.

 

distinction

we say collabyrinth can help you find your way to better. “better” is the descriptor of the outcome most change-makers seek, no matter their field.

we use various models and processes to help chart the path to better, depending on the particulars of a client’s situation. our most general process/model can be found above: dream, develop, problem-solve, practice. a more specialized version we use in our 12-step work traverses the same general terrain: critical analysis, self-awareness, cultural competence, better practices. sometimes we get even simpler dividing the work into two halves: truth & transformation or learning & problem-solving. regardless of the model, two things we’ve observed over time is that (1) the process of getting to better outcomes takes longer than most anticipate, and (2) most people settle for outcomes far short of better.

this puzzled us for the longest time, until we came across some brain science that we believe explains it. apparently, the brain gives us a similar dopamine hit for thoroughly analyzing a problem—the first part of all our models/processes—that it does for doing something about it (here’s a few articles: a, b, and c). in so doing, the brain can satiate us into thinking that we’ve accomplished something impactful by simply thinking, talking, or feeling better about it—even if we never do anything better about it.

collabyrinth‘s work is more than triage: the goal isn’t just to stop the bleeding, it is to put you on the path to recovery. what distinguishes us is that we won’t lose sight of who you say you want to be, where you say you want to go, the material outcomes you say you want to improve for those previously overlooked. we are committed to helping you DO better, not just think, talk, and feel better. are you?

 

methodologies

stated most directly, collabyrinth supports personal, structural, and cultural—i.e., systems—change. in order to do so, we felt we needed ways of working that were so outside the norm that they couldn’t help but produce uncommon results.

at our founding, our primary approach was design-based collaborative problem-solving, using a justice-focused variation on a methodology known in corporate circles since the 1980s as DesignShop^®. over the last decade, we have adopted, adapted, created additional useful methodologies—including Transformative Community Conferencing, Relational Culture Practice & Somatics, and our own UnLearn InEquity (whose engagement can be self-guided or guided) as well as intentional living, cultivating community, and narrative change—all of which inform our suite of services.

the DesignShop^® methodology with which we started is a collaborative use of indivisible processes, tools, environment and time that produces breakthrough problem-solving for participants on a consistent basis. based on the time-tested work of matt taylor, gail taylor, rob evans, and their many protegés, full design forums take place over 3-4 whole days and require facilitation teams of three or more working working with stakeholders to create solutions to problems. we call our design forums Collabyratories.

the Transformative Community Conferencing methodology is a narrative and systems approach to group conflict transformation. it differs from what is commonly described as conflict mediation or conflict resolution in that it acknowledges and corrects for the power imbalances that promote conflict in the first place. the facilitative process is similar to our standard Collabyratory, except it is narrative-based, inviting participants to imagine together “a vision of a shared future.”

Relational Culture Practice is a generative somatics-informed and trauma-informed capacity-building effort to proactively embed relational values and practices into organizational culture. the practice of relational values actively transforms the dominant culture of disconnection, desensitization, isolation, and exclusion with connection, resilience, interdependence, and inclusive collaboration. in so doing, practitioners become aligned with the life-protective principles of human social ecology–that is, the conviction that we are inextricably bound to one another and to the environments we choose to create together.

we approach any engagement with the same appreciative inquiry and collaborative focus that has inspired our work from the beginning.