IntelliSynthesis

What is IntelliSynthesis?

IntelliSynthesis® is the logic and intelligence all around us, within us, and in others—often hidden by posturing, positioning, or politicizing. This practical intelligence flows when people set out to explore and advance their mutual benefit, unencumbered by narrow self-interest.

IntelliSynthesis is also an inquiry-based process for applying this intelligence, whether thinking alone or with others. Working individually, you can use it to think through a problem by asking yourself thoughtful questions and synthesizing your own responses. Working collectively, it applies this intelligence to issues or opportunities that benefit from broader input—by asking thoughtful questions of a group, then synthesizing their responses into solutions, next steps, or new questions. When everyone affected by a problem participates in creating solutions, breakthrough intelligence emerges that no individual or narrow group could generate alone.

This method has proven effective in countless engagements across our work—from developing a forest-to-market strategy in New Mexico that revitalizes forests and communities, to assisting Nevada stakeholders in creating the most comprehensive, holistic state freight transportation plan in the country.

IntelliSynthesis applies to realtime or asyncronous discussions, in-person or online.

Why is IntelliSynthesis needed?

We've engaged with over 11,000 stakeholders across North America's industrial systems, communities, and government. What we've observed consistently: bright individuals advocating narrow approaches, motivated by competitive advantage or fear of losing it, collectively producing suboptimal results—including for themselves.

Three patterns prevent breakthrough solutions:

Institutional barriers: Legal and regulatory structures shaped by competition prevent the collaboration that delivers results.

Distance instead of dialogue: Government, industry, and citizens interact through commissions, hearings, studies, and reports—while real results come from dialogue, agreements, commitments, and action plans.

Wasteful design: Meetings that invite stakeholders at large to attend general-subject discussions exhaust participants and communities.

The issue isn't lack of intelligence, expertise, or desire to solve problems. What's scarce are forums and methods that develop solutions without being derailed by excessive competition, mistrust, and vested interests.

IntelliSynthesis is available to everyone willing to look beyond personal interests to achieve shared benefits. It requires including all stakeholder perspectives within a system—not just the powerful or convenient ones. When you involve everyone impacted by a problem or opportunity, you establish approaches that are implemented and effective.

This isn't naïve optimism. It's essential: we can't ensure safety for ourselves and future generations without fundamentally shifting how we approach problems and opportunities.

Core Principles

IntelliSynthesis operates from these fundamental orientations:

Create from the future, not the past. A critical shift occurs when participants move beyond data and pessimism from the past to create from the future. When you turn your vision forward, free of predetermined conclusions, you become present and open. Collective intelligence emerges. New possibilities, solutions, and opportunities appear that weren't accessible when everyone was defending positions shaped by yesterday's constraints.

Every contribution matters. The real opportunity in dialogue is to discover together what no one knew alone—and this requires capturing what's expressed. Almost every word someone says contains value. Write it down. Draw out the reserved and humble voices and capture their contributions alongside the confident ones. New connections, understandings, and ideas appear when dialogue reveals a wide view of what's present.

Intelligence through alignment. Higher intelligence emerges when people align their thinking with interests beyond their own. IntelliSynthesis in business, industry, or governance grows stronger as it incorporates local community interests—and stronger still when it extends to the long-term well-being of all humanity and the natural world. The more you include, the smarter everyone becomes.

The Inclusion Paradox

Here's what we've learned that runs counter to conventional wisdom: including all individual perspectives and concerns doesn't make consensus more difficult—it makes progress easier and faster. The more stakeholders and perspectives you identify and involve, the greater the return from each person's investment of time. Whole-system solutions arise that no individual or narrow group could have conceived.

The cost of ignoring this principle reveals itself in unexpected ways. A middle school demolished a beloved playground to build a classroom addition without consulting the students who had played there since they were five. The outdoor stage where they held performances, the walkway with family acknowledgments carved into bricks—all gone. A 12-year-old later explained that these meaningful elements could have been preserved, transferred, or repurposed if anyone had asked. How much community connection was lost by failing to include those who knew the space best? How much heart and soul could have been preserved by spending an hour listening to the students who used that space every day?

Stakeholders rarely begin with shared interests. But through IntelliSynthesis, the most effective solutions emerge by weaving everyone's needs, concerns, and opportunities into genuinely common ground. In the middle school example, including students wouldn't have slowed the building project—it would have created a better design that preserved community meaning while meeting institutional needs. This is the inclusion paradox in action: more voices, better solutions, faster implementation.

How to Use IntelliSynthesis

Start with Questions

The foundation of IntelliSynthesis rests on a simple but powerful insight: the way you frame a discussion determines the thinking it generates. Conducting meetings using an agenda written as phrases, or "topics" leads to competing opinions, complaints, and debates about known problems. Structuring dialogues around thoughtfully crafted complete questions immediately transforms problems into challenges to be solved. Instead of 'Environmental Impacts' as a topic, ask: "What are all the possible positive impacts of industrial activity that we want to optimize by generating as few negative costs?" Agenda items stated as phrases orient discussions toward the past and what is already known. Questions open pathways to breakthrough thinking.

Before convening stakeholders, you generally gather and review relevant existing materials—such as reports, financial statements, studies, and news articles—not only to find potential answers but also to identify gaps, shortcomings, and questions. What is missing from previous approaches? What perspectives were not included? What assumptions went unexamined? What questions were never asked?

Based on this review, draft the initial dialogue agenda as a series of questions, not topic phrases. This may seem like a small change, but it makes a big difference in practice. Most of us are trained to organize meetings around topics like "Budget Review," "Stakeholder Engagement," and "Timeline Discussion." IntelliSynthesis requires turning each of these topics into actual questions: "What funding amount enables the outcomes we're committed to achieving?" "Which stakeholders must participate for this work to succeed?" "What timeline and steps allow for genuine collaboration rather than rushing to predictable dead ends?" Notice how each question opens possibility.

The Art of Question Design

The questions themselves matter enormously. A yes/no question shuts down further thinking; an open question encourages exploration. "Should we expand rail service to rural communities?" leads to a yes or no debate. "How might expanding rail service transform economic opportunities in rural communities?" promotes collective thinking.

Questions should follow a logical order. Some questions need to be answered first so you can effectively address later ones. You might need to understand current conditions before imagining future options or clarify goals before discussing methods.

The Dialogue Unfolds

When stakeholders gather in real time, whether on Zoom or in person, something different happens with IntelliSynthesis than in typical meetings. Instead of presentations followed by discussion, or worse, back-and-forth debate among the loudest voices, the facilitator displays the inquiry-based dialogue agenda on screen and invites participants to speak to the questions.

Here's where the magic happens: the facilitator captures almost every word in real time, visible to everyone. Not summary notes or paraphrased minutes, but the actual substance of what people say, typed directly into the document under the relevant question. IntelliSynthesis allows groups to think together. Collective intelligence is revealed and agreed upon in real-time as discussions unfold. This does several things simultaneously.

First, it slows the conversation down. The facilitator often needs to interrupt speakers—not to silence them, but to ensure their thinking is accurately captured. "Hold on, let me make sure I have this right..." This interruption is respectful, not disruptive. It signals that every contribution matters enough to be recorded precisely.

Second, it transforms the nature of participation. When people see their words appearing on screen in real time, they think more carefully about what they're saying. The stream-of-consciousness that characterizes typical meetings—people talking quickly, hoping someone catches the key points—gives way to more intentional articulation.

Third, it enables collective intelligence gathering. Someone makes a point, it gets captured, and the next speaker can build on it directly because everyone can see it. Ideas connect and synthesize in ways that verbal back-and-forth alone rarely achieves.

Fourth, participants' reflections get captured as additional questions rather than rushing to premature answers. Someone might say, "Before we can answer that, we'd need to understand..." The facilitator converts that into a new question and adds it to the agenda. The dialogue document grows organically, guided by the group's emerging collective intelligence.

Meeting notes, therefore, rather than reading as the disjointed record of the cacophony of typical discussions, become the clear, substantive record of collective thinking. This method turns standard meeting minutes into an inspiring, coherent record of the group's thinking, decisions, and action plans.

This dialogue and facilitation approach is applied to OnTrackNorthAmerica IntelliConferences, which occur as rounds of questions, primarily conducted asyncronously as an extended online call-and-response.

Between Sessions: Synthesis and Refinement

After each dialogue session, the important work of synthesis begins. The facilitator reviews the document, editing for clarity, sometimes reordering questions based on logical flow that emerged during discussion, consolidating similar points, and identifying where consensus is forming and where genuine differences remain.

This edited document serves as the foundation for the next round of dialogue. It is not a vague snapshot of the meeting; it is a dynamic, clear record of collective thinking that even non-attendees can use to understand exactly what was discussed. Participants can review it between sessions, add written reflections, and identify what should be explored next.

For complex initiatives, this process might unfold over weeks or months, with multiple rounds of dialogue—some synchronous (live meetings), some asynchronous (participants contributing on their own schedules). The key is that everyone remains engaged with the same evolving document and questions, building collective intelligence round by round.

Truth-Telling and Whole Systems Thinking

Throughout this process, the facilitation team creates space for what typically doesn't get said. Environmental realities like water shortages or pollution impacts. Financial instability. The acknowledgment that past approaches created current problems.

This requires establishing safety—that every perspective is useful and that critique of past decisions isn't an attack on the people who made them. When a 12-year-old can say, "There's always money for buildings, not books or teacher salaries," and that observation gets captured and engaged rather than dismissed, you know IntelliSynthesis is working.

The facilitator helps the group take the dialogue beyond political concerns, multi-agency unworkability, or vested-interest domination. IntelliSynthesis works when participants let go of these constraints and think about whole systems and a new future. When groups think and speak beyond traditional silos and fears, breakthrough solutions appear.

From Dialogue to Action

Eventually, the dialogue document evolves from questions into answers, from exploration into commitments, from collective thinking into action plans. This happens organically. The document that began as a series of questions becomes a comprehensive record of what the group collectively understands, what they've agreed to, and what each stakeholder commits to doing, and when.

This action planning document is the solution set agreed upon by all stakeholders. It functions simultaneously as the meeting record, the strategic plan, the implementation guide, and the accountability framework.

What Makes This Work

IntelliSynthesis naturally creates what it needs to succeed. Someone steps forward to convene and facilitate—drawn by the opportunity to create genuine collaborative space. Participants engage beyond narrow self-interest because the process makes mutual and community benefit tangible and achievable. The discipline of capturing thinking in an organized manner emerges from experiencing how this practice honors contributions and builds collective intelligence. Patience with emergence develops as participants discover that solutions synthesized from diverse perspectives serve everyone better than forced predetermined outcomes.

Trust builds through the process itself. Participants experience being truly heard, see their perspectives captured and valued, and watch the group synthesize diverse views into integrated solutions. This lived experience creates trust both in the process and among participants, as a natural outcome.

The time investment pays immediate dividends. While initial dialogue takes longer than quick decisions by small groups, those quick decisions typically fail, face resistance, require endless revision, and ultimately consume far more time than this collaborative process. IntelliSynthesis accesses intelligence that no individual or narrow group could generate alone by involving everyone impacted by a problem or opportunity. The solutions last because all stakeholders create and implement them together—they're invested in success because they built it.

This is IntelliSynthesis in practice.