“Words are how we think, stories are how we link.”
– Christina Baldwin
Last week I had the privilege of facilitating a two-day Network Learning Lab for a remarkable group of conservation leaders and network weavers. I co-designed the session with Olivia Millard and Amanda Wrona of The Nature Conservancy (and at the instigation of Lynn Decker of the Fire Adapted Communities Learning Network) to connect and strengthen the capacity of those working at the intersection of ecosystem health and human/community development while building networks at local, state, regional, national and global levels. Our design was informed by input given by the participating network weavers themselves about their core challenges and learning objectives, while leaving room for the unexpected – enough spaciousness for the network magic of emergence to happen.
As with other network leadership institutes that we at IISC have had a hand in designing and facilitating, the experience last week had as its foundation plenty of opportunities for the cohort to authentically connect, to get to know one another on both professional and personal levels. And as with both leadership development sessions and ongoing network development initiatives that we support, we turned to storytelling as a way to create bonds and understanding. This included time for the participants to tell brief stories about their networks, doing so in 5 minute informal bursts sprinkled throughout the two days (which could also have been done as Pecha Kucha or Ignite presentations). The intent was to create a bit more understanding of what might make each network unique in its aspirations, attributes and accomplishments and to whet people’s appetites for further conversation at breaks, meals and into the evening.
“There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you.”
– Maya Angelou
We also set up a couple of exercises within the first hour of the lab for people to hear more about one another’s paths to the work they currently do, not by ticking off their resumes, but by telling stories about what happened to and moved them to be where they are now. Time and again, when I facilitate this kind of exercise, it shifts the tone of the gathering in the direction of greater openness and trust. And as we touched on in our debrief of those exercises, inviting that kind of storytelling into our work can send a signal about what is validated with respect to forms of knowing, expression and parts of ourselves to bring to the table. Along these lines, we also drew from poetry and other forms of creative expression, including a stanza from a favorite William Stafford piece, “A Ritual to Read to Each Other” which, to me, gets at the heart of network building … Read More
We were heartened to see and hear the many conversations about racial equity during the main conference proceedings, and noted good and challenging questions and exploration about the fit between the Collective Impact model, such as it has been formally presented and understood, and community organizing and power building work. These conversations continued in some form or fashion during our session. Read More
In an article in Fast Company, entitled “The Secrets of Generation Flux,” Robert Safian writes that in these uncertain times, there is no single recipe for success. Safian profiles a number of leaders who have been relatively successful at riding the waves in different ways, and notes that they are all relatively comfortable with chaos, trying a variety of approaches, and to a certain degree letting go of control. This resonates with our experiences at IISC helping people to design multi-stakeholder networks for social change. For example, even in a common field (food systems) and geography (New England) we witness different forms emerge that suit themselves to different contexts, and at the same time there are certain commonalities underlying all of them.
The three networks with which we’ve worked that I want to profile here exhibit varying degrees of formality, coordination, and structure. All are driven by a core set of individuals who are passionate about strengthening local food systems to create greater access and sustainable development in the face of growing inequality and climate destabilization. They vary from being more production/economic growth oriented to being more access/justice oriented, though all see the issues of local production and equitable access as being fundamentally linked and necessary considerations in the work.
Vermont Farm to Plate Network
The Farm to Plate (F2P) Initiative, was approved at the end of the 2009 Vermont legislative session and directed by the Vermont Sustainable Jobs Fund, in consultation with the Sustainable Agriculture Council and other stakeholders. Its initial charge was to develop a 10-year strategic plan to strengthen Vermont’s food system. This was done over a 2-year period with input from hundreds of stakeholders from around the state. The Farm to Plate Network officially launched in 2011, borrowing heavily from the structure of the RE-AMP Network in the Midwest, an effort to address climate change.
The structure was fairly well defined in advance, given F2P’s mandate from state government to double production and the clear need for coordination around the Network’s robust strategic plan and 25 goals. It currently features standing Working Groups (WG) organized around associated pieces of the strategic plan with flexibility to add and adjust. Working Groups may form any number of Task Forces (TF) in order to implement various strategies and high impact action projects, at the ground level. Pre-existing multi-stakeholder groups may serve as logical TFs within a given Working Group. TFs meet as needed and are created and disbanded as needed. In addition there are Cross-Cutting Teams (CCT) focused on topics such as Food Access, Policy, and Research and Funding.
It is at the WG and CCT level where most of the “action” happens, taken from a 15,000 foot view to help coordinate and fill gaps on the ground. A Steering Committee comprised of members of the Working Groups and others “holds the whole” from more of a 30,000 perspective, trying to maintain as broad a view of the food system as possible. There are a few paid staff who support the Network through weaving, communications, coordination and the like. The Network has also launched a “Food System Atlas” showcasing stories, videos, job listings, news, events, resources, the Strategic Plan and organizations that are strengthening Vermont’s food system.
Rhode Island Food Policy Council
The story of the Rhode Island Food Policy Council revolves largely around the Southside Community Land Trust, an urban land trust that has been an agent for community food security, providing land, education, tools, and support for people to grow food for themselves in greater Providence. SCLT applied for and received funding from a few local foundations to facilitate the collaborative efforts of a multi-stakeholder Design Committee to develop a vision and mission for the future RI Food Policy Council (RIFPC) and determine the Council’s structure, membership and by-laws.
Unlike the process in Vermont, the Design Committee refrained from engaging in a full-fledged strategic plan and instead enlisted the services of Karp Resources to conduct a comprehensive Community Food Assessment of Rhode Island to provide a baseline description of the state’s food system and identify priorities for the RIFPC and other stakeholders working to increase community food security. The decision was also made to formally remain separate from any state entity, while building connections to the Agricultural Partnership and recently formed Interagency Food and Nutrition Policy Advisory Council.
With an eye towards inclusiveness and nimbleness, the Design Committee created a structure that now features, five Work Groups focused on the core visionary goals of the RIFPC: Access, Economy, Environment, Health, and Production. These Work Groups were launched in a very open public meeting, with people essentially voting with their passions, and they have continued to welcome newcomers. No formally established goals or strategies were handed over to the Work Groups, so as to let them find their own footing and interests under the overarching visionary goals. The core elected group of Council members has as part of its role to provide support and high level guidance to these Work Groups. Part-time paid staff support exists for a network coordinator and communications expert, both of whom help to maintain an evolving website.
The Council is trying to balance the need for more of a centralized function around advocating in a timely way for policies impacting the food system, with an ongoing openness and fluidity to its public meetings and Work Group activity. A key feature of its public engagement is a series of ongoing community meals and discussions about the food system.
Connecticut Food System Alliance
The Connecticut Food System Alliance was created by food system advocates from around the state coming together from time to time to discuss and share information. Gradually, desire grew to have more than just an annual gathering. With limited funding, a core “design team” came together to think about how to create more grassroots momentum that would complement the Governor’s Council for Agricultural Development, which is spear-headed by the Commissioner of Agriculture and is broader in scope than food systems and security. Over the past couple of years, this design team has pulled together a number of large and diverse convenings of people from around the state to get to know one another, to “close triangles”, share insights and talk about how to create more significant and shared value. This has taken the form of an “alignment network,” uniting under what is now a shared vision and guiding values, and connected by a listserv.
Through the use of Open Space participants in CFSA have identified key areas of inquiry and action they want to pursue. Examples include a pilot project tackling food insecurity in one town to strengthening farm-to-institution efforts to growing and diversifying network membership, to exploring the root causes of what ails the food system. Volunteer facilitators have stepped up to lead “sub-networks” and the volunteer design team has morphed into a larger Steering Committee to provide support to these teams and organize future gatherings. The Steering Committee has initiated a program for giving mini-grants (maximum $1000) for the purpose of network-building among Connecticut’s food system stakeholders.
The entire process of CFSA to date has been very emergent, aptly described by Adrienne Maree Brown’s words in a blog post:
“Emergence is the way complex systems and patterns arise out of a multiplicity of relatively simple interactions. Rather than laying out big strategic plans for our work, many of us have been coming together in community, in authentic relationships, and seeing what emerges from our conversations, visions and needs.”
Common Ground
None of this is to say that any of these approaches is more “right” than the other. Each has its benefits and challenges, and each fits its particular circumstances. All are open to changing as context demands. From one perspective we might see the VT Farm to Plate Network as the most formal and structured with the CT Food System Alliance as the most fluid and emergent, and the RI Food Policy Council as lying somewhere in-between. The differences are important to note, as are some of the likely underlying contributing factors such as funding, location, partnerships, tangibility or simplicity of outcomes, diversity of stakeholders, and the existing eco-system of actors and initiatives in the system.
At the same time it is also important to note that underlying all of these network forms is an important network ethic, or way of thinking, that I would summarize in the following way:
There is an awareness that to the extent that there is a network “center” it is about being in service of and helping to connect the whole, as well as bring in the “periphery;” there is an emphasis on contribution and creating value over deferring to credentials and the usual suspects; people lead with a spirit of openness; and there is an overall effort towards growing the pie, not just carving it up into smaller pieces.
And there is certainly a developmental trajectory to engaging in net work, as evidenced in these and all network initiatives we’ve supported, such that trust-building, transparency, and generosity are always works in progress. This is what forms the intangible and enriching ground of these and other forms that will hopefully help create real and necessary change.
How focusing on diversity, flow and structure in human networks can be a foundation for great change.
Over the past couple of years, we at IISC have partnered with a few different social change initiatives that have engaged in system mapping to both align diverse stakeholders and surface leverage points for collective intervention. In looking back at these different mapping processes, it is striking the similarities of the areas of focus that have been identified, despite the variety of issues being addressed (food system fragility to educational disparities to public and environmental health). Across these efforts, common areas of leverage have surfaced around:
Changing the dominant narrative.
Each effort has recognized that there is a dominant story that supports the existing system’s legitimacy. This has profound impact on what different players see as being possible. It is noteworthy that the narrative shifts each has called for are in the direction of more expansive and equitable definitions of health and development.
Changing information flows/making information more transparent and accessible.
Communcation is the lifeblood of social systems, and each of these initiatives has recognized that power gets bound up in who has timely access to and also who shapes critical information, as well as what kind of information is valued.
Creating more equitable access to and determination of resources.
From financial to social to living and material capital, each of these initiatives has also recognized that inequitable distribution of resources has contributed to social disparities and overall systemic vulnerability. Another significant factor is who gets to say what is deemed to be valuable in the first place.
This leverage area flows as a matter of course from the two above. Systemic sickness and brittleness is evident in the fact that fewer people and power brokers are shaping systemic opportunities and outcomes, and often for their own benefit. Each of these efforts see more distributed decision-making and implementation as key to justice, sustainability and true prosperity.
Working with government to change incentives and supports in favor of healthier and more equitable opportunities and outcomes.
Each initiative recognizes the important role of government in changing policies and procedures in the direction of more just and sustainable means and ends.
It’s interesting and perhaps not accidental that these leverage areas align with what the late system thinker Donella Meadows identified as some of the deeper leverage points to affect change in any complex human system –
the mindset (story) out of which the system arises;
the power to add, change, evolve, or self-organize system structure;
the rules of the system; and
the structure of information flows.
To get at any of these leverage areas clearly requires considerable clout – a network of diverse actors. And from our perspective at IISC, that network is not simply a means to an end.
Viewed in a certain way, and in consideration of the leverage areas mentioned above, intentionally developing human networks can be an important end in and of itself.
Part of the new story emerging across these various change efforts referenced above is a focus on what Sally J. Goerner calls “dynamic evolution,” which transcends the picture of a world built on competition, supremacy and selfishness. Through their multi-disciplinary study of energy network sciences (ENS), Goerner and her research colleagues point to an understanding of societal health as predicated upon more intricate human and organizational networks. Importantly, to deliver multiple goods in sustainable fashion, these networks must be characterized by:
social diversity
distributed empowerment and intelligence
widely circulating information and effective communication
synergistic exchanges of resources (or “capital”) of many kind
In other words, given unhealthy biases toward “efficiency,” streamlining, monoculture, concentration of resources and systemic brittleness, Goerner and colleagues see more robust network connections, flow and variety as being fundamental to social change and long-term resilience.
Taking this one step further, the Capital Institute (to whom Sally Goerner is Scientific Advisor) has created a list of 10 indicators for systemic healthwith direct ties to human network development (see their paper “Regenerative Development: The Art and Science of Creating Durably Vibrant Human Networks“). These give more specific guidance as to what systemic change initiatives might pay attention to as signs that they are on the right track.
Measures of Flow
Robust cross-scale circulation: Assesses how rapidly and well a variety of resources reach all parts of the social body.
Regenerative return flows: Assesses how much money and other resources the system recycles into building and maintaining its internal capacities, including human capital.
Reliable inputs: Assesses how much risk and uncertainty there is for critical resources upon which the system depends.
Healthy outflows: Assesses how much damage the system’s outflows do externally.
Measures of Human Factors
Degree of mutualism: Assesses the ratio of win-win vs win-lose relationships within the network.
Constructive vs exploitative: Assesses the level of value adding and capacity building activities vs. draining or “gradient degrading” (extractive) ones.
Adaptability (place in the adaptive cycle – see image above): Assesses the system’s readiness for change and its place in a classical S-curve cycle of development (related to degrees of diversity and formalized organization).
Measures of Structure
Number and diversity of roles: Assesses both the diversity and number of players perspectives in different activities critical to system functioning.
Distribution of resources: Assesses where resources, including money, go.
Balance of efficiency & resilience: Assesses the balance between levels of diversity and flexibility (resilience) and streamlining of throughput (efficiency).
I am curious to hear reactions and experiences with applying this kind of a network lens to system change efforts, and as a new member of the Research Alliance for Regenerative Economics, I look forward to sharing additional insights from energy network sciences.
A couple of weeks ago I joined a panel of presenters on a webinar hosted by Johns Hopkins’ Center for a Livable Future focused on collective impact and network building for food policy councils. Other panelists included Ellen Kahler from Vermont Farm to Plate Network, Jennifer Obadia from Health Care Without Harm, and Whitney Fields from Indianapolis Food Council. My role was to provide an overview of collective impact, giving credit to FSG and the Collective Impact Forum for codifying and advancing research and practice in this arena, as well as network building principles as applied to collaborative efforts to realize more local, just and sustainable food production, distribution and access. Read More
“Our success is built on partnership, sharing success and sharing credit.”
– Sec. Chuck Ross
“The mojo is in the motto.” With these words, Secretary of Agriculture Chuck Ross opened the doors and conversation on the fourth annual Vermont Farm to Plate Network convening last Thursday in Killington. Each of the past four years Secretary Ross has brought some critical words of encouragement and motivation to this fall convening, and by invoking the state motto – “Freedom and Unity” – at this year’s opening he seemed to hit the right chords at a critical moment in the evolution of the network.
In 2011, Farm to Plate launched to great excitement and some anxiety as it positioned itself as a cross-sector collaborative network to carry out a strategic plan to double local food production in Vermont in 10 years time, contributing to job and economic growth as well as food access in a state that sees high rates of poverty. Since then, as both Ellen Kahler of the Vermont Sustainable Jobs Fund (the backbone organization for Farm to Plate) observed and remarked through a plenary retrospective, it has managed to find its collaborative footing and grow significantly in numbers (more than 300 organizations strong). And importantly, it has seen real results in terms of direct, indirect and induced job growth resulting in 9,000 new jobs in the agricultural and food sector in Vermont. Furthermore, success is evident in individual members using network goals to inform and align their organizational goals. Read More
Every now and then we get the question about what is the best way to structure a social change network, to which the most frequent response is, “It depends.” Case in point, in a past post, I offered examples of three different network forms growing out of the same region (New England) in a similar field (food systems). These forms that have evolved in three states have largely depended upon the initial framing question for the change effort (how to tackle food insecurity vs. how to grow the agricultural economy vs. how to achieve food justice), contextual factors (political dynamics, what already exists, who is engaged), and resources (not just funding, but certainly funding) available. And since the writing of that post, each has evolved, more or less significantly, in line with new challenges and opportunities. Some of the take-aways from this align with the lessons of moving from a more mechanistic to a regenerative outlook –
A number of readings I’ve come across lately reference the important consideration of organizational structure and how it encourages or discourages collaboration. In a post from last week, I highlighted the book Reinventing Organizations by Frederic Laloux, which focuses on “evolutionary (Teal) organizations” that embrace an ethic of self-organization to facilitate more purpose-driven, holistic and responsible engagement on the part of organizational members. In order to encourage self-organization and intrinsic motivation, these entities adopt less formally hierarchical and fixed-role structures in favor of fluidity and networked leadership. According to Laloux, this brings more timeliness and relevance to the inner workings and responsiveness of these organizations. Read More
Every now and then we get the question about what is the best way to structure a social change network, to which the most frequent response is, “It depends.” Case in point, in a past post, I offered examples of three different network forms growing out of the same region (New England) in a similar field (food systems). These forms that have evolved in three states have largely depended upon the initial framing question for the change effort (how to tackle food insecurity vs. how to grow the agricultural economy vs. how to achieve food justice), contextual factors (political dynamics, what already exists, who is engaged), and resources (not just funding, but certainly funding) available. And since the writing of that post, each has evolved, more or less significantly, in line with new challenges and opportunities. Some of the take-aways from this align with the lessons of moving from a more mechanistic to a regenerative outlook –
Process can sometimes get a bum rap in our work, as in: “I’m not a process person. I’m action-oriented.” This attitude can become a source of considerable frustration, and yet, I get it. Some people are tired of what seems like endless talk that gets them no where. And yet to translate this kind of seemingly circular conversation (what Chris Thompson has referred to as co-blaboration) as “process,” as opposed to action, does a disservice to what is essential to the work of social change. No, I’m not talking (only) about talking. I’m talking about how it is precisely at the level of process that we can make truly profound change. Read More
Our friends at Third Sector New England (TSNE) have released an informative report about learning networks. From 2004 to 2012, TSNE and clusters of nonprofit organizations joined in a grant program designed to further social change through building relationships and sharing insights that enabled them to better work together to achieve common goals. The resource, entitled “Funding Learning Networks for Community Impact,” includes interesting explorations of the stages in the development of learning networks and the roles and functions that are key success drivers for nonprofit networks. There are also wonderful and resonant quotes throughout from participants of the Capacity Building Fund (CBF) about the power of and key contributors to effective networks, and I wanted to share a dozen that really jumped out, while strongly suggesting you consult the entire report: Read More
Yesterday, Carole Martin and I took the Tillotson Fund Community Practitioners Network on a site visit/retreat to Lawrence CommunityWorks, to see first hand what a network approach to community and economic development looks like. There is much to be said about what LCW has done, learned, and is looking to do going forward, and some of this has already been captured in case studies and articles. Here I want to focus on one important lesson that staff and residents have learned over the past 15 years or so when it comes to taking a network approach. This lesson falls under the caution – “Avoid a Fetish for Structural Forms.” Read More
