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Keep Connecting the Dots
Connected Citizens: The Power, Potential and Peril of Networks from Knight Foundation on Vimeo.
Thanks to the Knight Foundation and the Monitor Institute for this wonderful report, which helps to put networks more firmly on the social change map and in the minds of funders. Check out the full report here and/or listen to a webinar on the subject by clicking here.
Leave a commentSteps to an Ecology of Change
|Photo by chucklepix (Steve)|http://www.flickr.com/photos/42507736@N02/5094175658/in/photostream|
I love great writing, and for that reason always look forward to reading the newest issue of the Whole Thinking Journal from the Center for Whole Communities. The most recent issue can be found here, and features beautiful and thought-provoking pieces from my Whole Measures co-trainer Mistinguette Smith, former Ruckus Society Executive Director Adrienne Maree Brown, and CWC board member Tom Wessels, among many others.
I wanted to spend some time here reflecting on the Wessels article in particular, “Resilient Communities: An Ecological Perspective.” Tom Wessels is a natural historian, a professor at Antioch University, and a keen observer and student of the landscape of New England. He is also a proponent of understanding the dynamics of various kinds of complex systems, from eco-systems to organizations, as a pathway to knowing what constitutes more sustainable behavior. Read More
Leave a commentBin Laden and Networks
Photo by: Morningstar3
Osama Bin Laden is back on the headlines. We can find many lessons about networks in our struggle with this man and the ideology of terror that he came to represent. When talking about networks I often refer to The Starfish and the Spider, the excellent book by Brafman and Beckstrom that has now become a sort of Tea Party organizing manual. No matter what we think about Bin Laden, Al-Queda is more of a starfish, an organization that is “headless” while having many legs. On the other hand, the Government of the United States is most definitely a spider, an organization has one head controlling its many legs.
If Bin Laden had been a leader in the traditional sense Read More
Leave a commentAn Emerging Network
Photo By: CTRC
The following was originally written as a guest post to the Leadership Learning Community Blog
I’m currently engaged in a number of network building efforts, each different in scope and scale, all focused on leadership and collaboration. My work with the Barr Fellows is one such effort. I have been working closely with the 2009 cohort of fellows and will be working closely with the 2011 cohort. I am also working on the effort to integrate all four cohorts into a Barr Fellows Network; a leadership network that can significantly affect social change in Boston. Read More
Leave a commentCreating Forever
“Freeing yourself was one thing; claiming ownership of that freed self was another”.- Toni Morrison
The Will to Meaning
Viktor Frankl, Holocaust survivor, author of Man’s Search for Meaning . . .
Leave a comment
Taking Stakeholders Seriously
|Photo by Robert Higgins|http://www.flickr.com/photos/37893534@N07/4779016818|
“Stakeholder” is a big word in our practice at IISC. When it comes to our collaborative change work, we take stakeholder analysis very seriously, in certain situations spending a few days to complete this critical task. The aim is generally to surface the names of those groups and individuals who as a sum total will help to ensure that we have the system represented in the room. What this means is pushing people, at times, into uncomfortable places to consider typically unheard voices and those they have outright resisted inviting to the table but without whom they could not hope to make the kind of change to which they aspire.
Typically we engage in a conversation with our clients and partners that asks them identify, in the context of some given change effort, those whose stakes are defined in the following ways: Read More
Leave a commentLaughter, Joy and Friendship
Photo By: Eletrificado
The following blog post was authored by Meg Campbell for the Huffington Post. Meg is among the 2009 Class of Barr Fellows. A remarkable educuator, Meg’s understanding of human connection in spaces of learning and transformation is consonant with our approach here at the Interaction Institute for Social Change. Read More
Leave a commentExperiment with Empathy
We are wired for connection. You give us the internet and we turn it into the largest web of connections that has ever existed. Each of us has mirror neurons, “neurons that mirror the behavior of another, as though the observer were itself acting.” Empathy is our highest capacity – the vicarious experiencing of the feelings, thoughts, or attitudes of another. Our highest levels of development come with a heightened capacity to see and experience truth in other perspectives and at other levels. Read More
Leave a commentSi se puede…
“Un pueblo unido, jamas será vencido“….
Leave a commentMulti-Sensory Engagement
|Photo by scalespeeder|http://www.flickr.com/photos/scalespeeder/2652863086|
We are big believers here, at IISC, in pulling on all of the senses and our full selves to create engaging experiences that bring out the best that people individually and collectively have to offer for the sake of social change. Often meetings and convenings only scratch the surface of our many sensibilities, as if we were simply brains on sticks, without bodies, without hearts. Subsequently much is lost that we may not even be aware of. As Kare Anderson writes, “Even apparently small physical experiences make a big emotional and even learning difference.”
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