“We cannot live for ourselves alone. Our lives are connected by a thousand invisible threads, and along those sympathetic fibers, our actions run as causes and return to us as results.”
– Herman Melville
2017-2018 NLI cohort members engage in a team building exercise focused on the dimensions of collaborative success.
Last week I worked with the Backbone Team of Food Solutions New England to launch the second cohort of the Network Leadership Institute (NLI) at Ohana Camp in Fairlee, Vermont. This initiative has grown out of FSNE’s commitment to cultivating both thought leadership and network leadership“to support the emergence and viability of a New England food system that is a driver of healthy food for all, racial equity, sustainable farming and fishing, and thriving communities.” Another impetus for the NLI was a year spent doing system mapping and analysis that revealed four leverage areas for advancing a just, sustainable and democratically-owned and operated regional food system, including cultivating and connecting leadership (see image below). Read More
What if the goods of today became the resources of tomorrow?
Regular readers of this blog know that I am particularly interested in living systems and networks and how they can inform how we approach our change work so that it is more in synch with how life works. This video is very much in alignment with my interests and ongoing inquiry, and while focused primarily on the economy and production, IMHO it has implications for all areas of focus for social change. Some of the provocative questions it raises include the following: Read More
At IISC we like to define the success of collaborative change efforts in multi-dimensional ways. In particular, we make reference to results, process, and relationship elements. Results are what we typically think of as the “measurable” outcomes of a change undertaking – policy change, livable wage, job creation, healthier communities, etc. Process has everything to do with the how of the work – how we approach our change efforts, the steps we take, how work is shared and by whom, and with what spirit. Relationship is about both the quality of interpersonal connections as well as how people relate to the work itself. From what one might call an “old school” mindset, there is an assumption that process and relationship are only important insofar as they help to achieve results. Read More
|Photo by Paul Downey|http://www.flickr.com/photos/psd/3003392453|
In the past few weeks, I have heard some interesting and divergent comments about networks as they relate to social change. In one case, someone in philanthropy declared that the “network experiment” was over and it was “back to funding individual organizations.” In another case, I heard tremendous enthusiasm expressed relating to the “paramount importance of building trust and relationships” for change to happen. To the first – “No!” To the second – “Yes, and . . .”. We are still in the midst to waking up to the reality and potential of networks in our lives, present company very much included. Here is some of what we are seeing and hearing with respect to where network approaches and tools, at their best and very much with our intention, can take us. Read More
For the past few decades, the Interaction Institute for Social Change and Interaction Associates have worked to develop the collaborative capacity of individuals, organizations, and communities with the conviction that this holds the promise of greater effectiveness with respect to shared missions and goals. We have long upheld and witnessed the importance of bringing more minds and hands together for the purposes of creating insight, understanding, alignment, agreement, strategy, and shared ownership. Lately, I have been trying to specifically clarify the value all of this has to offer the unsustainable relationship we have with our planet.
