November 4, 2024
Over the past few months, three different networks IISC is helping to support have reached what we recognize is an opportunity to jump to the next level of engagement and “productivity.” I want to be clear that this latter term is not meant to be a “churn for churn’s sake” kind of productivity, but is rather about supporting wide-spread activity at the “local level” to create significant change.
These three networks have been around for anywhere from four to seven years, all having navigated the challenges of COVID and other turbulence. All three have been characterized by a core group of champions who are passionate about both the issue they are focused on and the power of broader community in question. These steadfast advovates have served as the glue amidst what has felt like fracturing forces. And now there is an emergence of new energy and interest, in part because of steady weaving activity, and also more opportunities for in-person gathering as well as a sense that they have made it through a real test of their staying power.
In our role as network consultants and coaches, we are given the opportunity to reflect back to these collaborative efforts what we see as critical capacities needed for the road ahead, including how to harness this growing enthusiasm and interest. What is coming up across these three networks is the importance of dedicated investment in core “network leadership” functions, including the following:
(1) Keeping the loop of communication going between and amongst the core and periphery of the network, including creating ways for people to find and stay in touch with one another (using tools such as Slack, list serves, and private LinkedIn groups).
(2) Crafting materials and curating resources to “feed” those most engaged in the network (who can then share these “nutrients” with others), including stories of progress and learning that can be fed back to the network.
(3) Managing and making accessible other information that is crucial to supporting network members and network activity (via network maps, searchable member/participant databases, etc.).
(4) Strengthening collaborative capacity amongst those who would like to be facilitators, process designers, network weavers, and group coordinators/project managers. Some examples of what we provide through IISC include Facilitative Leadership and Network Weaving trainings.
(5) Convening people at key moments, virtually and in-person, in care-fully designed and facilitated ways, to keep connections warm and momentum going.
Getting more funders and other supporters to understand the importance of these functions is key not only to these networks being successful, but we would argue it is fundamental to reweaving the social, cultural, and institutional fabric of our communities and country. See more here in the post “Weave Back Better: Investing in Network Weaving as Part of Core Infrastructure.”
September 13, 2016
Think like a network, act like a node.
At IISC, we continue to emphasize that networks, not organizations, are the unit of social change. Part of the reason for this is that networks at their best are able to leverage what are known as “network effects.” These effects, as described by Madeleine Taylor and Peter Plastrik, include the following:
Rapid Growth and Diffusion
Through its myriad nodes and links, as well as the ongoing addition of participants and new pathways, a dense and intricate network can expand quickly and broadly. This can be critical for spreading information and other resources and mobilizing actors in ways that organizations simply cannot achieve.
Small World Reach
As a network adds connections, between and beyond organizations, and those connections in turn add their own connections, the overall reach of the network can easily shrink geographic and other forms of distance and separation. The subsequent ability of participants to discover and work with one another across expanses and barriers means that new partnerships and ideological convergences can happen, leading to greater efficiency, shared intelligence, and innovation.
Resilience
Provided a network (including a community or social movement) is not overly centralized and dependent upon a limited number of larger hubs (holding most of the connections to other nodes), it can stand up to certain pressures, including the loss of some of its nodes and links as it reorganizes around disruptions or bottlenecks. Furthermore, redundancy of and overlapping functions and knowledge enhance a network’s ability to absorb shocks without collapsing.
Adaptive Capacity
To the extent that it is intricately connected, diversely composed, with free flowing information, not to mention nimble/able to self-organize, a network can respond quickly to environmental shifts, assembling a variety of capacities/responses and disassembling them as needed.
Systemic Change
Though implied above, it is important to note that in a network it is not just the number and pattern of links that matter, but the quality and depth of the connections and what these can facilitate in terms of what flows through the various channels. Furthermore, it matters who is connected to whom, and what resources flow between these actors. As patterns of connection shift and strengthen and flows of resources are enhanced in different ways to different parts of a network, this can add up to systemic change.
“Systems change when new networks supplant the old.”
-June Holley
Behaviors to Leverage Network Effects
All this said, what can network participants do alone and/or together to maximize network effects? Here is a list of 20 helpful behaviors/practices (with recognition of the thought leadership of the likes of June Holley, Harold Jarche, john powell, Sally Goerner, Gibran Rivera, Beth Tener, Cynthia Parker, Robin Chase and others) to which I heartily invite additions:
- Weave connections and close triangles – create intricacy in the network
- Create connections across boundaries/dimensions of difference – invite and create diversity in the network
- Promote and pay attention to equity throughout the network (racial equity impact assessments are an example of a helpful tool on this front)
- Be aware of how implicit bias impacts your thinking and actions in the network; practice de-biasing strategies
- Think, learn and work out loud
- Keep information and other resources flowing/don’t hoard
- Articulate your own needs and share them with others
- Think about others’ needs and how you might help to meet them
- Make ongoing generous offers to others – services, information, connections
- Help connect needs and offers throughout the network
- Stay curious and ask questions; inquire of others to draw out common values, explicit and tacit knowledge, other assets
- Listen, listen, listen – for values, needs, assets, patterns/themes
- Identify and share underutilized assets/excess capacity
- Promote others’ and their work
- Express authentic appreciation of others
- Share credit
- Create and use platforms (in-person convening and virtual sites) that allow people to find one another, create new connections, match interests and needs/offers and needs, and share information freely
- Curate information/data to make it more accessible, attractive and digestible
- Support and practice self-organization
- Celebrate small and large successes/key developments all along the way
February 24, 2016
“Network entrepreneurs are keenly aware that they are few among many working across the larger system, and in this way they embody a special type of … leader[ship].”
– Jane Wei-Skillern, David Ehrlichman, & David Sawyer
Image from Taro Taylor – https://www.flickr.com/photos/tjt195/30916171
The concept of leadership has been undergoing an evolution. In this “network age” there appears to be both an expanding appreciation that leadership has always been about more than the singular heroic individual, and that going forward, leadership really must be much more of a shared endeavor.
In our collaborative consulting work at IISC, leadership (or what we often call Facilitative Leadership) is about “holding the whole,” thinking expansively about the state of a given complex system (community, economy, ecosystem, etc.) and paying attention to what will be required to ensure resiliency and/or change for more equitable and sustainable benefit. In these situations, the traditional top-down images of leadership fall far short.
Network leadership is at best a dynamic, diverse, more decentralized and multi-dimensional phenomenon. Many of those with whom we partner at IISC understand this implicitly, and we have found it important to help them be more explicit about this by clearly delineating the roles that leadership can embody in a collaborative/networked change endeavor. Read More
January 2, 2014
For those who read this blog on a somewhat regular basis, you know that we at IISC find and experience great promise in embracing network approaches to (and as) social change. So what happens when we truly see ourselves as and in networks; that is, appreciating how we are inextricably embodied through and embedded in interconnected flows of energy, material goods, ideas, intentions, etc.?
Ten thoughts, in no particular order, nor meant to be exhaustive: Read More
December 11, 2013
I’ve spent time the past week reading through Networks that Work, a handy and concise resource for developing organizational networks, written by Paul Vandeventer, President and CEO of Community Partners, and Myrna Mandell, Ph.D. The book lays out some very helpful pointers for more formally constructed networks. I have highlighted 10 points below that resonate with our experiences at IISC around supporting organizational networks for social change. My comments and extensions are in italics: Read More
December 4, 2013
“Ultimately if we are to avoid failure in the most critical work of this century, the deepest reaches of our beings must be brought to bear in honestly reevaluating and shifting the most basic structures of our society.”
– john a. powell
The following is a textual recapturing of a Pecha Kucha-like presentation that I gave at an ARNOVA Pre-Conference Session in Hartford, CT two weeks ago. This was part of a 3-hour interactive conversation, co-designed and facilitated with Dr. Angela Frusciante of the William Caspar Graustein Memorial Fund, focusing on the power of networks for learning and social change, primarily with academic researchers and philanthropists.
At the Interaction Institute for Social Change, we are in agreement with Professor john a. powell when he points to the need to consider and make fundamental structural changes in our country and communities for the causes of greater social justice and sustainability. Read More
November 17, 2011
|Photo by birgerking|http://www.flickr.com/photos/birgerking/4731898939|
I’ve really appreciated recent conversations with my colleagues Melinda Weekes and Gibran Rivera about how the use of on-line technologies is not just about the technology, but the new possibilities that they reveal for interaction and creation in both in person and virtual spheres. I’ve been impressed by stories about and personal experiences of some of the social media tools out there that show how they are able to help us supplement, extend, and innovate around collaboration for social impact. And I’m enjoying playing with some of these in my various client engagements. Here are a few tools for new possibilities, and I’m eager to hear what experiences you have had with them, as well as other ones not mentioned here, that have helped you realize the greater potential of collaboration and collective intelligence. Thanks to Matthew Dryhurst at Craigslist Foundation and the Working Wikily team for a number of these leads! Read More
