The holidays are here and the year is coming to an end. It is at this time that we wish to give you a IISC-heart-filled THANK YOU!! Thank you for connecting with IISC, for reading our blog and for passing it along. A hope of ours is to connect which you here on the blog and we are always eager to hear your feedback. So let us know what you’d like to see by commenting or utilizing the “Share” function on the right sidebar.
As for the Institute, we are taking a little break for the holidays and won’t be updating the blog from the 24th till the New Year. When we return, we’ll be incorporating some of your upgrades and even adding videos that we’ve made in the office.
If the snow finds you, stay warm, and if you are with the sun, feel free to push it north whenever you’d like. Happy holidays everyone!!
“What’s love got to do with it?” This is a question that gets raised with increasing frequency in our work at IISC. Recently, while training a group of health care reformers from around the state of Maine, I presented what we call our “Profile of a Collaborative Change Agent,” which outlines the core attributes of those who, in our experience, are able to maintain a win-win outlook even in the most trying of circumstances. Sitting conspicuously at the heart of the Profile (see below) is “the L word.” Nodding heads and knowing smiles, in Maine and elsewhere, are an indication of the growing willingness to seriously consider the role of love in social change work. Read More
Last week I started writing about the Interaction Institute for Social Change and our three lenses of collaboration. We are talking about the sort of collaboration that is needed if we are to address the evolutionary challenges that define this historical moment. We are talking about collaboration that catalyzes our collective wisdom and capacity to think new thoughts, the sort of collaboration that allows us to maximize our shared resources while inviting us to live ourselves into the world we are trying to build. This is why I call this the lens of democracy, because it is the lens through which we define the best possible ways of being-with. Read More
It is our tradition at IISC at the beginning of every year to send out one of our “classic” postcards to all of our constituents reflecting on the year past and the year to come as well as to announce our upcoming training schedule. As I was writing the introductory paragraph for this years’ I happened to stumble across what I had written last year. With the exception of last years’ reference to “renewed hope for reinvigorating civil society” (this was before the inauguration), I was struck by the similarities and the focus on the ultimate paradox. Read More
I’m reflecting on World AIDS Day.? The World Health Organization established World AIDS Day in 1988, and it’s been observed on December 1st ever since to raise awareness and focus attention on the global AIDS epidemic. In the early years, some museums would have “A Day Without Art,” shrouding artwork to demonstrate the impact of the epidemic.? And there were many other ways of observing – e.g., candlelight marches, displays of the NAMES Project AIDS Memorial Quilt, local awareness-raising or fundraising events around the globe. Read More
There is a dangerous and ultimately very confusing trend emerging in our sector. In the wake of the financial meltdown and its impact on funding, foundations and others are proposing organizational mergers and strategic alliances as a solution to the problem. The danger is that they are calling this “collaboration” and giving collaboration a really, really bad name!
For many years at IISC we have been trying to overcome what is often the very bad taste left in people’s mouths after some horrendous experience that they have had in a poorly executed and therefore failed collaboration. In many cases these were marriages forced by foundation funding or coalitions of individual organizations coming together but unable to detach from their own identities and agendas.
I am appreciative of Arthur reminding us that this age of connectivity significantly enhances our potential to be that critical yeast. He is very clear that the hard work of building authentic relationships is as important as ever – there are no short cuts in this work, but there are more powerful frames.
Recently I was asked for a quote about the messiness of collaboration. In response to the request, I noted that because at IISC we are “Collaboration R Us” we tend not to think about the messiness of collaboration (though we do view messiness as part of any emergent and creative process). Rather we focus on the elegant design and facilitation that will ensure success. The quote that I submitted is the following:
“Collaboration takes more than well-meaning people with good intentions coming together to determine a set of outcomes. Successful collaboration requires solid process design and skillful facilitation. This is what builds the scaffolding for multiple and diverse stakeholders to create a shared vision of impact, agreement on goals and strategies for achieving that impact and a plan for collective action. The process itself is what catalyzes the critical shift of mind and heart from believing that the right answers and expertise are held by a few to an understanding that it is the collective wisdom of the group that determines right action and greater impact.”
In this video, Geoffrey Canada of the Harlem Children’s Zone looks at the structural nature of racism in the US and speaks about what it will take to overcome the legacy of unequal opportunity. Instead of putting people into the prison system, he advocates for rebuilding community, getting people reengaged by bringing communities together to solve their own problems.
One of the core models of IISC’s practice (for both our training and consulting work) is something we call the R-P-R Triangle, which basically makes the case that success in collaborative efforts is a multi-dimensional affair, not solely defined by “results” (goal or task accomplished), but also by “process” (the way or spirit in which work is carried out) and “relationship” (the quality of the connections between the people engaged in the work). Our Executive Director, Marianne Hughes, has called this “the spine of collaboration,” suggesting that if we are not thinking in terms of all dimensions, we are not really serious about seeking win-win solutions with others. And indeed experience really proves that these dimensions are intimately linked and dependent upon one another when diverse stakeholders come together to realize a shared vision.
A twist was given to this triangle the other day when a Facilitative Leadership workshop participant said he was struggling, not because he did not find value in this notion of “multiple dimensions of success,” but because of his concern that even in this model, process and relationships might appear to be subservient, or the “so that,” to results. He went on to say that he is part of an organization/community in which relationships are really paramount. They are an end in and of themselves and in a way synonymous with results. How then, do we account for this in this model he wondered. Read More
Funders for LGBTQ Issues (an affinity group of foundations who fund LGBTQ issues) started a Racial Equity Initiative a few years ago, under the leadership of Karen Zelermyer and with the creative and smart expertise of Robert Espinoza. The initiative was started to improve the ways that LGBTQ grantmakers incorporate a racial equity lens into their internal processes and grantmaking. Rather than taking a single approach, they used a multi-faceted approach (which seems to be what’s necessary to REALLY change an organization’s direction), choosing to create a broader context for the work. The initiative started with an assessment of foundations supporting LGBTQ issues, looking at internal operations and seeing whether they were applying a racial justice lens to their grantmaking (the 2008 Report Card on Racial Equity). Funders then launched a grantmaking initiative – raising $1,000,000 to match with funding at eight queer community foundations to identify and support local people of color organizations (which sometimes required learning and shifting of strategies for some foundations distributing funds). And they convened a very successful Racial Equity Retreat of LGBTQ funders.
