A few weeks ago, in the small talk before a meeting started, I was talking with a woman about our respective work. In reference to my work as a facilitator she said, “ugh, I couldn’t stand all those meetings!” I understand her reaction, particularly if you are used to the rather boring and tedious way… Read more
Blog
Building a Shared Understanding of How Systems Work
I’ve just returned from the kick-off gathering of a collective impact initiative with the United Way of Greater New Bedford. A series of three community gatherings for input (as described in this blog) and other meetings with stakeholders led us to focus of how can we help families thrive, with a focus in one neighborhood. We… Read more
Collective Impact at a Community Scale: United Way of Greater New Bedford
United Way organizations around the country are reinventing the role they play in their communities from their traditional role of fundraising for social service agencies through workplace campaigns. As this paper, Charting a Course for Change describes, United Ways are serving as a community convener, engaging local partners (e.g., residents, businesses, local government, social service… Read more
Hold the Vision, Dad, Hold the Vision
I’m pleased to share this guest blog post from John Tener, my dad, who has been an inspiration to me in his persistence in working for positive social change over decades. “Tommy” Menino, 20 year-long mayor of Boston, died a month ago… He was eulogized and buried on November 3, the day before the election. … Read more
Art of the Start: Strategic Questions to Build Focus and Engagement
As I write this, I am on my way to a gathering of practitioners who work on networks approaches for large-scale social change, sponsored by the Garfield Foundation. We’ll be discussing the “art of the start” – how to navigate the early stages of an initiative. This is timely, as lately I have seen some… Read more
Join us at the Better Together Summit, October 24th in Maine
We are excited to be working with the New England Environmental Education Alliance and the Maine Environmental Education Association to facilitate a Better Together Innovation Lab. This interactive day will be held at Pineland Farms, in New Gloucester, Maine, a 5,000-acre working farm and business and learning campus. Creating healthy, resilient, sustainable communities requires all of… Read more
Seeing Systems and Getting to the Roots – Lessons from Ferguson
In the stream of tragedies and controversies that come through the media, certain stories seem to “get to me” and I have to follow them further. The death of Michael Brown in Ferguson, the response on the streets, and the response to the response on the streets, was one of those stories. The national and… Read more
Building Interaction and Networking into a Traditional Conference Format
Most of us know well the traditional conference format of a speaker or panel at the front of the room, rows of chairs, speakers offering prepared remarks with Powerpoint slides, followed by some Q&A with the audience. Interest is growing in ways to organize conferences that enable more interaction, connections, and learning among the participants. As… Read more
Open Sourcing Social Change
Most philanthropic work for social change is focused on investing grants in organizations as the unit of getting work done. The challenge is that for many issues and places, multiple foundations and/or government are investing in organizations pursuing disconnected initiatives, leading to silos that don’t talk to each other and competing organizations working in the… Read more
Crafting a Value-Add Strategy for a Network or Collective Impact Initiative
Several clients recently have asked us to help with strategic planning. The more I have worked with networks and cross-sector initiatives, I have seen the limits of the traditional way of thinking about strategy. Typically, a strategy will be for one organization to look out at the world, assess “strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats” and… Read more