Zermatt Summit Graphic Definitions 2012

A better way of working.

Collaborative Workshops& ScribingSummary

21-23 June 2012


Woven into the agenda of the Third Zermatt Summit were two 2½-hour collaborative workshops. While participants had many opportunities to meet one another and socialize, the chance to spend time in intense di-scussion on the Common Good created a unique op-portunity to learn from one another and dig deeper than keynotes and roundtables alone would permit.

The first workshop began with a large-group game called Win As Much As You Can. In small clusters, participants adopted different competitive stra-tegies depending on their understanding of who was competing with whom – were contestants individuals, one- or two-person teams, seven-person clusters, or the entire participant group. After playing several rounds, we discussed how our collaborative behaviour – indeed our very identity – changes when we feel the stakes are high. The question we were left was “Who is the You?” which is to say, how particular or universal is the ‘common’ in the expression ‘Common Good’?

We were each given a model of an empty remote-control and asked to identify what powers – magic or practical – we would attribute to it to bring about the Common Good. Different teams worked on different time frames, ranging from hours to months to years to eternity. We then mixed teams to see what coherence we could find between the emerging

definitions of the Common Good as we worked at multiple time frames. In both cases – the large game of Win As Much As You Can as well as the exercise with remote controls, we brought playfulness to our discussions

and thereby discovered important insights about our own understanding of the common good and our role in bringing it about.

On the second day of the summit, we shifted our focus from a temporal look at the Common Good to one of scale; i.e., we broke into new teams to explore how the conception of the Common Good changes as we shift our focus from the individual to the family, the company, the state, and the world. We debated where along that conti-nuum we might have the most immediate impact and how to extend that impact across all ‘scales’ of our mo-del. Then, after a clustering exercise through which we formed new teams based on the affinities we identified among our areas of ambition and insight, we discussed how to refine our emerging definitions of the Common Good into shared aspirations for the world we want to

create. These final teams then refined our shared aspirations into actions and shared commitments when we return home and for the future.

The JourneyZermatt Summit 2012


Panel DiscussionGlobal Governance for the Universal Common Good


Collaborative WorkshopScaling the Common Good


Collaborative WorkshopDebrief


Panel DiscussionIs there a Common Good?


Keynote AddressHow to move from the current crisis to a stable economy?


Panel DiscussionTurning conventional leadership upside-down


Panel DiscussionMulti-stakeholder dialogue for the Common Good of Society


Keynote AddressSustainagility: innovation to save the world


Keynote AddressAlain Berset


In order to foster tangible change, we need allies. When we go back home, we need confidence that we are all facing in the same direction. We already have some toold, such as the Manifesto. But we need to go further by having more practical ideas and values, indeed a shared architecture for driving change.

Collaboration WorkshopTeam Architecture


We want to start at an individual level and little by little it will spread.

Collaboration WorkshopTeam Care


Empathy is what permits us to understand each other. to further empathy, we want to set an example ourselves by respecting other’s points of view and to educate our children to be empathetic.

Collaboration WorkshopTeam Empathy


Love has three dimensions: brain, heart and soul. Happiness and pleasure of company are the deepest human aspirations. We each commit to live and to share what we’ve learned here at Zermatt, to keep the Zermatt spirit alive, and to find simplicity and fun with our family and friends.

Collaboration WorkshopTeam Love


We investigated the words that brought us together: Purpose, Faith, Courage, Passion, Positivity, and Spirituality. Our approach is to use these as tools to climb up out of the mess we are in, emerging at the top, above our differences, above the challenges of daily life. As an example of turning these aspirations into actions, we can push our companies towards a higher level of transparency. Another idea would be to publicize acts of individual courage on the sides of buses, setting examples for others to follow.

Collaboration WorkshopTeam Meet at the top


We were a very diverse group and yet we share important values. The headings in our diagram – humility, intuition, playing together and the rest – are the spaces where action can happen. The white spaces are equally important as they represent the life that is all around us.

Collaboration WorkshopTeam Outlook


We should, as a first step, look after our friends, after each other. Each of us should choose another and look after him or her throughout the year. And if we are too numerous and don’t really know each other? As a first step, we should try to keep in touch. Jo will collect email addresses and start the ball rolling. Though we know that we need to be together in one place, staying in contact will be a good first step towards collective action.

Collaboration WorkshopTeam Philia


We have investigated the necessary value changes to further the common good. Selfishness and laxity need to be fought by a new form of education: children should be educated to become citizens of the word and show respect to the elderly, especially in the family context. Our children will become responsible ambassadors of a sustainable and fair society.

Collaboration WorkshopTeam Respect


This is the time for transformation, for moving from our individualistic society to a more interdependent community. At the individual level, we encourage a reflective lifestyle and spiritual attitude, where saying ‘thank you’, taking risks and overcoming fear should help us contribute to this transformation. Technology might provide some tools for helping us scale up from these individual behaviours to society at large.

Collaboration WorkshopTeam Responsibility


We took Maslow’s hierarchy of needs as our starting point. We are looking for meaning in life and for self-actualization. We recognize, however, that this is a privilege and that the majority of humanity is struggling to meet more basic needs. Our focus is on education, focusing on youth , on Boards, on CEOs.

Collaboration WorkshopTeam Simpact


Keynote AddressInspiring leadership and innovative entrepreneurship


Panel DiscussionTransforming Management Education


Panel DiscussionNext steps towards the Common Good


Group Photo