Archive for Collaboration

Jan/24/12//Gibrán Rivera//Collaboration, Featured

Collective Leadership: Doing and Being

Last Tuesday, Curtis Ogden and I had the privilege of hosting an LLC webinar on collective leadership.  Much of what we did was point to observable patterns in ways of working together and how these tend to open up possibilities for shared leadership.  The metaphor of tilling the soil is most appropriate precisely because we have run up against the limitations of industrial implementation.  The appropriate response to increasing complexity is one that can get beyond linear causality and into a mindset of ecosystems.

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Jan/11/12//Curtis Ogden//Collaboration

Engage for Results . . .

. . . and much more! Melinda Weekes and I are currently partnering with the good people at Grantmakers for Effective Organizations to facilitate another offering of “Engage for Results,” a workshop that builds on our work together 5 years ago through the Change Agent Project. During this initial work convening grantmakers and nonprofits around the country, we heard loud and clear that addressing power dynamics and engaging in authentic relationships would be key to ensuring that grantmaking is more relevant and impactful with respect to the work of nonprofits and outcomes for communities. Read the rest of this entry »

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Dec/19/11//IISC//Collaboration

Fair Chance America

The following post is from Founding Board Chair, Thomas J. Rice.  It is a little longer than we  post, however, we hope that you will find it is rich in content and helps continue to challenge the way we think about various systems and movements.

Historian James Truslow Adams defined the American Dream when he coined the term at the depths of the Great Depression. What we seek is “a land in which life should be better and richer and fuller for everyone.” If there’s one thing we could all agree on, we have lost our way in this quest. And there’s no GPS to find our True North, or the way home.

Enter the Occupy Movement, a spontaneous cri de coeur from a millennial generation that feels betrayed and abandoned by the people and institutions they believed in. No American Dream for them. Their prospects are bleak, in no way better or richer or fuller than their parents. In spite of great effort and expense to move up and out, the millenniums are back in the nest, in serious debt from college  loans and working at some menial or dead end job with no health benefits.

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Nov/30/11//Curtis Ogden//Collaboration

Evergreen Collaboration

I have been very excited to hear about what is going on in Cleveland, not to mention how it is serving as a model and inspiration for other cities in this post-industrial age, including Springfield, Massachusetts and various communities in my native Michigan. What do you take and make of this? How might the efforts and aspirations of Evergreen inform your collaborations?

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Nov/16/11//Curtis Ogden//Collaboration

Community Pride and Flash Mobs

I’m feeling some Michigan pride, in the midst of some important work with the Council of Michigan Foundations and the ongoing economic struggles of my home state. And I’m even more impressed after seeing this video, which was produced by the community of Grand Rapids after it was named earlier this year as one of America’s cities in greatest decline by Newsweek magazine. A local visionary, artist, and rabble rouser pulled the community together to film this show of solidarity in ONE TAKE! There is a story here, about collaboration, about collective leadership, about what it takes to galvanize people. Check it out, and watch the whole thing if you can. It gets better and better.

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