Why Blog?

Another blogger I admire, Chris Corrigan, just wrote a blog called How to Blog stating his intention of trying to “single handedly trying to lift a near dead art form up from a seven year slumber.” He noted that a lot of people stopped blogging around 2015. Chris, I appreciate your impulse and will lend… Read more

Time to Rethink Brainstorming

Brainstorming is a classic method for getting a group to generate ideas. A topic is suggested, people speak up with their ideas and suggestions, and someone writes them down. The technique is so commonly used and assumed to work, I was surprised to learn that research shows this technique is actually not that effective. Keith… Read more

Wearing Two Hats

One of the challenges to collaborative cross-sector work is that people show up to it oriented to advancing their organizational agenda and aren’t used to focusing on the broader community or systemic agenda. Particularly in the early stages of developing a collaborative initiative, we find it helpful to point out the need to focus on… Read more

Mending the Community Cup

For years in conversations in organizations, within advocacy groups, and social change initiatives, I have heard variations of these themes: “We know we have to move beyond top-down approaches – how do we get more bottom up input and ideas?” “How do we get more diverse voices to the table? We need the input of… Read more

Expanding the Benefits of Networked Work

What began as exasperation with dysfunctional organizations and boring meetings became a quest to discover what is possible with collaborative, networked work. My discovery process has led me to see that collaborative learning is what we can put at the center of how we work. We need a way to see how our individual work connects with larger… Read more