Tag Archive: process
May 7, 2013
Photo provided by Alex Pelayo. Check out the rest of his amazing portfolio here!
This post is Part III in a series on Strategic Planning and Emergence.
Your vision is not your strategy. Neither is your plan. Your benchmarks are not your strategy, nor your complicated grids. Your hedgehog or your very audacious goals are not your strategy either. Your predictions of what the future will look like, no matter how organized and well researched, are definitely not your strategy.
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April 25, 2013
Hope you enjoy this article as much as we did! It’s a great illustration of the kinds of connections we need to make between movements–in this case immigrant rights and environmental sustainability–to stand a chance of seeing the kinds of transformation we’re seeking.
Philip Radford of Greenpeace and Bill McKibben of 350.org recently joined the growing crowd of people calling for comprehensive immigration reform and a pathway to citizenship.
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April 1, 2013
Being part of the design and facilitation team for the Barr Fellows Network has been some of the most rewarding work I get to do. It is rewarding because it is beautiful and because it works. I have witnessed lives change, approaches to leadership transformed. And I am getting to witness the effect of this work upon the city that I love. I hope you have the 90 seconds it will take for you to enjoy this video. You can read the original post here.
March 27, 2013
|Photo by TREEAID|http://www.flickr.com/photos/53871588@N05/5726759624|
This post is not exactly about an insurance policy, at least not in the traditional sense. Picking up on the metaphor of last week’s piece on “Network Gardening,” today we bring focus to how we can protect the early growth of networks for social change. Protect them from what? The temptation to jump to action too quickly, leapfrogging the “problem conversation,” the tendency to want to institutionalize everything (what a friend calls “incorporation fever”), naysayers, exclusionist practices, and the heavy hitters who are used to getting their way. Read More
March 26, 2013
In the early days, when “normal” people first started using the web, we saw websites that looked just like our pamphlets. We used the new technology to do the same thing we always did – until we dared to experiment.
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March 19, 2013
When we talk about networks we tend to think scale, we think viral. But networks are also about community. Networks can thrive in that mysterious place where the most local intersects with the global.
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March 5, 2013
The following post was rebloged from our friend Adrienne Maree. We hope you enjoy it as much as we did!
If you are a frequent reader you know of my love and admiration for Adrienne Maree Brown. She is the one who introduced me to the work of Octavia Butler. Art, science fiction, futurism – these are powerful exploratory fields. Here Adrienne begins to capture what Octavia teaches us about emergence, and since we have been on the topic lately, I thought it important to share her post.
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February 18, 2013
Our colleague Bill Traynor describes essential inputs and outcomes of network organizing. See what you think!
In a recent presentation to the Ways and Means Staff of The Community Builders, we discussed the primary inputs and resulting added value that the Network Organizing practice can bring to a service environment. This slide captures the essence of this.
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February 12, 2013
The following comments was posted by Gibran as a response to Curtis Ogden‘s Collective Impact and Emergence blog post. In it we are challenged to think beyond our institutions and think about how to truly impact the communities we work with.
This is excellent Curtis. It brings me back to one of our most important inquiries – how do you nurture the conditions for emergence? With this inquiry, we are not just saying that emergence happens; we are saying that our best approach is to nurture it. It is a significant shift from a more top-down technical approach.
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February 11, 2013
Twelve year old Adora Svitak called for mutual respect and reciprocal learning between adults and kids. Her TED bio calls her a “child prodigy” but I think that exceptionalizes her talents and perspective and implies that she is very unlike her peers. I think she models a poise and wisdom that is all around us if we just look for it.
Here’s a little taste of her talk.
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February 8, 2013
The following post has been reblogged from our amazing friends at Seth’s Blog. We hope you like it as much as we did!
Improvement comes with many costs.
It costs time and money to make something better. It’s risky, as well, because trying to make something better might make it worse. Perhaps making it better for the masses makes it worse for the people who already like it. And risk brings fear, because that means someone is going to be held responsible, and so the lizard brain wants out.
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February 8, 2013
The following post has been reblogged from our amazing friends at Seth’s Blog. We hope you like it as much as we did!
Improvement comes with many costs.
It costs time and money to make something better. It’s risky, as well, because trying to make something better might make it worse. Perhaps making it better for the masses makes it worse for the people who already like it. And risk brings fear, because that means someone is going to be held responsible, and so the lizard brain wants out.
Read More