|Photo by Robert Nyman|http://www.flickr.com/photos/robertnyman/189668104|
On Wednesday, IISC hosted an impressive group of network building practitioners to discuss what we have collectively learned and have yet to discover about building networks for social change. Melinda and I tweeted ourselves silly with participants’ insights (which you can find by searching hashtag #NTWK). While there is still so much to sort through and have sink in, one of our small group break out sessions got me thinking about how we can preach the potential of networks without turning folk away. As we talked, some pieces began to fall into place in part with the help of the work of Chip and Dan Heath.
Today, IISC and friends will be spending the day digging into how to advance the use of networks for social change. We’ll post about it afterward – but if you want to check out the conversation as we go, follow #NTWK on twitter. See you there!
I want to thank Susan Wright of Wright Momentum for spurring on this post, which is in essence a response to a thoughtful dialogue we have had going for a few months. My thoughts here are further inspired by a training my colleague Melinda and I did at the historic Penn Center on St. Helena’s Island in South Carolina, a site where the first school was built in the US to educate freed slaves. It was also an important site for people to come together across racial lines to do strategy work during the Civil Rights movement. Melinda and I had the good fortune to spend three days with the amazing Gulf Coast Fellows, a diverse group of grassroots leaders from Louisiana, Alabama, Mississippi, and Texas. Our time with the Fellows affirmed for me the strategic direction IISC has recently adopted. Specifically, in considering the next three years (2010-2012), our IISC”s staff has collectively committed to concentrating more of our efforts around: (1) helping to build power and collaborative muscle at the grassroots, and (2) supporting social change work that bridges sectors and organizations (including building networks).
|Photo by Philip Bouchard|http://www.flickr.com/photos/pbouchard/2826560107/sizes/m/|
I just had the great fortune of spending seven days in Dakar, Senegal (and traveling back and forth to it). An amazing trip – and the two twenty hour travel days gave me time to really dig into the book “Connected: The Surprising Power of Our Social Networks and How They Shape Our Lives” by Nicholas A. Christakis and James H. Fowler.? I read it within the context of doing work in Senegal on a project that’s global in scope – and also thinking back to many of the other initiatives I’ve worked on.
I’d heard about Christakis and Fowler’s research a while ago – when they announced that things like obesity and love move through networks. Upon closer reading, I’m fascinated that there are, generally, three degrees of influence. That we are affected by our friends (one degree), by the friends of our friends (two degrees) and by the friends of their friends (three degrees). Beyond that, there’s not much that’s measurable. But at three degrees of influence, we are deeply influenced by a large number of people! And it’s who are in many ways local to us (though certainly that is changing). Read More
If you don’t have four minutes, make them! Here is one of the simplest explanations of the Cynefin framework and it is one of the most useful ways to understand the shift that we must make in the social sector. I start most of my client work by arguing that the problem we are facing in the sector is that our system has been developed to address complex problems as if they were complicated. For example, our urban public schools are trying to teach many kids who might be facing hunger, trauma, violence, lack of documentation and a myriad other social ills, but we are spending our time arguing about curricula and standardized tests.
|Photo by victoriapeckham|http://www.flickr.com/photos/victoriapeckham/164175205/|
In this post I take a look at the overlap and differences between three leadership approaches to which we here at IISC regularly turn in light of our bent towards social change and beliefs about the world in which we live.
Having just come off the holidays, when family members are likely to be gathered around as captive (and hopefully not tortured) audiences, we experience those stand-out moments of the highly anticipated and often dreaded….intergenerational conversation.
And if you’re like me, you realize that although these conversations on issues we care about are often hard, emotionally charged and possibly frustrating Read More
The photo above was sent to me by my father, who is also the photographer. In fact, he is also the sign maker. This statement currently sits by the roadside in front of my parents’ house in upstate New York. When I asked what sparked this action, he wrote:
The second lens through which the Interaction Institute for Social Change looks at collaboration is the lens of networks. I think about this as one of the most important interventions on the sector, the shift from an organization centric paradigm to a network paradigm. The good news is that this shift is already happening; the even better news is that this shift calls for stronger and deeper forms of collaboration.
In the recent Convergence report, LaPiana consulting identifies the fact that “networks enable work to be organized in new ways” as one of five converging trends that will redefine the social sector. It is important to understand that while there is a close relationship between new social technology and our capacity to work in networks, the shift to a network paradigm is not just a technological shift – it is a different way of organizing how we work together, a different paradigm for collaboration.
The Interaction Institute for Social Change is a vibrant place, a real learning community; we are always seeking to be on our learning edge. Our internal strategic process has led us to wonder how to define ourselves for this new era without necessarily losing our 16 years of experience and the power of our proven collaborative methodology. A couple of things have become even more clear through this process. It is clear to us, to our clients and partners in the work of social transformation that collaboration is what we do.
We might be working with a single organization or a group of organizations, we may be designing a learning event, a high level facilitation or a citywide change process, but whatever it is that we are doing – collaboration is at its core. We help people come together and work together.
Change is everywhere and at an ever increasing speed! In a recent post, Curtis highlights the trends that are shaping our sector and our society as a whole. In this provocative study, LaPiana invites us to become futurist and be attuned to what is unfolding now and what is yet to unfold. Let’s fathom what some of this may look like…
