Principles-Guided CoCreation

Do you and your community dream of change, but find that your goals always seem out of reach because of power imbalances, limits on resources, opinionated personalities, or system-level issues?

Born from two established methodologies and decades of experience in community transformation, Principles-Guided CoCreation (PGCC) is a guiding framework for values-driven change that brings new stories to life.

What is Principles-Guided CoCreation?

At its core, PGCC ensures that shared values guide collaborative steps toward transformation. PGCC flows through four phases, which support people in continuous reflection on, adaptation of, and alignment with the shared principles they’ve agreed to use together.

Phase 1: Listening, Connecting & Nourishing (Building a relational foundation) In this phase people connect by listening – offering stories, building authentic relationships, and nourishing these connections with curiosity, support. and respect for the diversity of community perspectives.

Phase 2: CoCreating & Naming (“What?”) Participants focus on collaboratively designing and implementing practices to observe and reflect on shared experiences, while also identifying and naming desired patterns and values that serve as the foundation for a shared set of guiding principles.

Phase 3: Aligning & Re-Patterning (“So what?”) Participants reflect on how well shared principles are being realized in the system. They use feedback to Re-Pattern by aligning their actions with guiding principles to create new patterns, adapt existing ones, or let go of those that no longer serve. They monitor changes to ensure the system is moving toward making valued outcomes a reality.

Phase 4: Re-Structuring & Illuminating (“Now what?”) From the realignments and adaptations in Phase 3, the group distills the larger changes that need to be made to the system so that the new pattern can sustain movement toward the desired vision. By sharing and illuminating insights, the group fosters learning within their own context and inspire others to adapt these patterns in their own environments.

Note: While the four phases are described as steps, they often are used in loops. Groups may move between phases as needed to address emerging system needs.

Why PGCC?

PGCC helps communities overcome challenges by using principles to help keep the focus on values held in common, creating a new path forward that’s rooted in deep aspirations shared by all. By using shared principles, diverse participants can act in coherence without needing to debate every issue, making it possible to create the patterns that can help everyone say “Yes!” to the new story that was out of reach before.

Examples of PGCC in Action

A Group of Young Leaders Taking Action for Peace

For the past three years, Sera has been teaching classes on peacebuilding at her school. and her students are eager to expand peacebuilding into other areas of the curriculum. However, the other teachers feel they don’t have time to add any additional material to the already-packed schedule. Sera’s students involved the whole school in agreeing to a set of school-wide principles that reflect their values of “Take Action for Peace” and “Understand Collective Responsibility.” This student-led initiative putting their shared values into action is now guiding slow to-change teachers to learn more about peacebuilding and weave its dimensions more broadly into the existing curriculum to reflect students’ wishes.

A Small Nonprofit Organization Looking Ahead After 25 Years

The Oak Leaf is a small community nonprofit organization celebrating its 25-year anniversary in a community that has changed a great deal since its founding. Board members invested significant time in meeting with people and listening to what the community now values, and how that has changed. Acting on the newly-adopted Principle of “Connect Everyone,” the organization chose a new director who could foster bilingualism and promote activities in Spanish, a language many newer community members speak. “Help People Feel at Home Here” is one of the principles they’ll be interpreting for decades as the community continues to connect and change. The Oak Leaf will use its principles to stay focused on understanding how to function as a warm hearth drawing people together for a vibrant local life.

A Foundation Trying to Make a Difference that Makes a Difference

As a global philanthropic foundation with a commitment to bring about racial equity through education, Possibillions decided to focus on working within a single nation’s educational system. After a decade of high-value grantmaking activity, they reoriented their strategy to focus on supporting systemic change by strengthening roots at the local level. Focusing on the shared value of racial equity, the foundation agreed to the principle “Let communities lead.” New partnerships with diverse collaborating organizations outside education have become possible, and innovative insights are emerging that are making a meaningful difference toward greater racial equity in peoples’ lives and within the system’s structure.