Limicelia · Our Approach
Most consulting addresses the surface. We start at the root and work upward. What keeps repeating isn't the problem — it's the structure underneath it.
01 / How we work
Every engagement begins with a genuine conversation about what's happening — not a needs assessment, not a sales call. The work finds its shape from there. Depending on what the situation calls for, we might be working inside an organization, building something between organizations, or developing the people doing the work. Often all three at once.
Surface
"We need a strategic plan." "We need a retreat." "We need better governance."
The requests that bring people to our door. Always a valid entry point.
Patterns
Decisions that don't stick. Meetings that drain instead of build. The same conflicts recurring. Good people leaving quietly.
Structure
Who has voice and who doesn't. How information flows. What gets rewarded versus what gets said. Whose experience counts as data.
Root
The gap between espoused values and lived practice. Power arrangements no one names. The stories the system tells about itself.
02 / How we hold the work
Every engagement follows the same arc: we listen from the frontline up before we speak with leadership. We name what we find honestly — what's working and what the structure is producing that no one wants to name. We stay through the co-design and the rebuilding, not just the diagnosis. The goal is always to leave capacity, not dependency.
The stewards' own practice — contemplative, relational, across years of working inside organizations at moments of genuine difficulty — is not incidental to this. It is what makes accompaniment possible. You cannot guide someone through territory you have not traversed.
The six-phase arc
We operate as a nonprofit practice. Consulting revenue funds gift-based community offerings that carry no fee. We price on a sliding scale based on what an organization can sustain. Fees are discussed after we understand what the situation calls for — say early if budget is a real constraint.
03 / Lineage
These are the methodologies, practices, and lineages that inform how we work. Not as a credential list — as an honest account of where our thinking comes from and the communities of practice we're in relationship with.
A living network of practices for hosting conversations that matter — including World Café, Open Space Technology, and Circle Practice. artofhosting.org
Socius (Latin: companion) + kratia (Greek: rule) — governance by those in relationship with each other. Developed by Gerard Endenburg in the Netherlands in the 1970s, drawing from cybernetics, systems theory, and Quaker process.
A role and a practice: nurturing learning and connection across the boundaries of a landscape. Etienne and Beverly Wenger-Trayner. systemsconvening.net
Transcontextual information about the interrelationships that integrate a complex system. International Bateson Institute / Nora Bateson. warmdatalab.net
Deep Democracy
Arnold Mindell's process work — attending to the voices at the margins of a system, the ones not speaking in the meeting but shaping everything. The work is with what a group is avoiding, not only with what it is saying.
Popular Education
Paulo Freire and the tradition of learning that starts from people's own experience and context. The knowledge is already in the room. The work is creating conditions for it to become usable.
Wisdom & contemplative traditions
Across many lineages — including Vedic, somatic, and contemplative practice traditions — the quality of a guide's attention is not incidental to the work. It is the work. The stewards' own ongoing practice is how this finds its way into every engagement.
Tell us what's happening. We'll tell you honestly whether it's something we can help with.
Begin a conversationTheme