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
In my current work with the Cancer Free Economy Network, I have the opportunity to partner with a very skilled team of consultants, including Joe Hsueh from Second Muse. Joe’s core offering to this initiative is system mapping and helping people to hold systemic complexity. The short video above, taken by another team member, Eugene Kim, features some of Joe’s thinking about what it takes to gain “strategic clarity” when striving to evolve a complex system.
One of the many things I appreciate about Joe is his holistic approach to system mapping which renders it much less mechanistic than I’ve seen from other practitioners. In fact, as this great article in The Guardian about Joe and his work illustrates, he comes from a very deep, some might call it spiritual, place. As the article quotes him, “Systems mapping, system modeling – all these scientific tools and methods – these are not ends in themselves. For me, they are tools for us to create a space where we open our minds, open our hearts and open our will.” In this sense, the (system) map is not the territory in more ways than one.
This post is the third in a three part series exploring the question, “Can collaboration be learned?” Part 1 and Part 2 appeared the last couple of days. This is an edited email exchange between Alison Gold of Living Cities, Chris Thompson of The Fund for our Economic Future, and myself. When we last left off, Alison had posed a series of questions about identifying and cultivating the will to collaborate.
On January 27, 2014 12:33 PM, Curtis Ogden wrote:
Alison, I really like your questions and feel like they would be great to take to a wider audience. I will say that I am profoundly influenced by Carol Sanford’s mentoring in all of this, and the belief that personal development is key to evolving our will, moving from a more self-centered perspective to “other” perspective, to understanding the symbiotic nature of different levels of systems. Read More
The following is the first installment of an email exchange among Chris Thompson of the Fund for our Economic Future, Alison Gold of Living Cities, and me that was initiated given our shared interest in and practice around supporting cross-sectoral multi-stakeholder collaboration. I had the pleasure of sitting on a panel with Alison at the Community Foundations Conference in San Diego last fall, and of meeting Chris through Alison, though initially through the Next City story on network building for economic development in Northeast Ohio. To date, this has gotten us to core questions around what it takes to cultivate collective will for collaboration. We invite you to join the conversation.
On Jan 5, 2014, at 1:39 PM, Chris Thompson wrote:
Based on my Twitter feed I suspect more people than ever have this as their New Year’s Resolution: “I will collaborate more.” The oracle himself, Thomas Friedman, sang its praises in this morning’s Times. Read More
“When I let go of what I am, I become what I might be.”
– Lao Tzu
Recently overheard:
“Yes, sure it’s great that that community is taking a network approach. But we don’t have anything like the resources they have here.”
“No, I didn’t follow up on my commitments to the team. I acknowledge that. I’m just an “in the moment” kind of person. When I’m with the team, I’m with them. When I’m not, I’m not.”
“No, we haven’t met yet. Someone should take responsibility for getting us organized.”Read More
This beautiful video speaks to the importance of will, community, and creativity to transform an otherwise unused asset into a new engine for local economic vitality. In the words of catalyst Greg Cox, “This is an evolution. . . . You come up with an idea. The human animal reacts with fear almost all the time. And you go, ‘Ah, it can’t happen. It’s Rutland. It’s not going to happen here. It’s been too difficult. We just don’t have the capacity.’ This is the way the story is. We looked at the outcome we wanted and we’re trying to rewrite the story.”
