Four Key Phases of Every Collective Impact Initiative
Framing collective impact through four phases is useful. Each phase builds on the one that preceded it but there are common challenges that backbone organizations encounter in this work
A community's expectations are a critical element to the success of our innovations
I've come to see that at the very heart of success there are just two interrelated and mutually dependent, elements: the need to change expectations or the "inner attitudes" in James' phrasing and the need to work differently, to innovate.
The Need to Work Differently
It is only in a "safe" place where folks, who have been doing the community's heavy lifting, are respected and see that clarity regarding the shared outcome is a full answer to their prayers for resources and tools aimed at moving the needle on the outcome they have dedicated their lives to.
Champions of Change Backbone Workshop
Looking for more collective impact resources - check out this great cache of resources that can be found on www.tamarackcommunity.ca.
Lesson from the Recent ASU/GSV Education Innovation Summit
I am constantly struck by how destructive blame is to the ability to achieve impact and how terribly hard it is to banish blame from our most basic human interactions.
A week of Collective Impact at the Airport
When was the last time you spent a week with 200 like minded people from across North America talking about how to change the world?
SWOT v. SOART
Whether it is a city, town, school, or district, what has surprised me most is that I have never had to talk a community down from too high an aspiration. I have never felt the need to pull back the reigns because a community was getting their expectations too far ahead of their potential grasp.
Role Clarity for Community Governance
Each Action Team decides how to implement structures, processes, and measures to achieve the outcomes, while Community Governance looks at how to organize resources, decision making, accountability, and community engagement to support the work of the Action Teams in a coherent fashion in order to optimize achieving...
Telling your Story Crisply and with Clarity in order to Compel Action
This six-sentence template is both appealing and supple. For it allows us to take advantage of the well-documented persuasive force of stories but within a framework that forces conciseness and discipline.
What value is creativity, is genius, without results?
In the search for the silver bullet or the next new thing, we fail to achieve the tangible for our children, the poor or the environment. The communities that do achieve great things: ACT.
If there is a source of "blame," it should be resoundly understood as our own diminished expectations of what is possible or worst what is permissable in a society as advanced as our own.
“For success in real estate, the one guideline is ‘location, location, location.’ For community solutions, it should be ‘outcome, outcome, outcome.’”
We tend to reinforce too many people for what they do and not for the results they achieve.
"Like the core of a planet, a clear, strong sense of purpose creates the gravitational pull that will bring people, effort, resources, and commitments to the process."
What we do collectively makes a difference - when we are connected.
Across Canada there is a movement of cities forming leadership roundtables focused on poverty reduction. This has been building over the last ten years. Isolated, they achieve change but connected, they become a social movement for collective impact.
"Want to" creates much more energy than "have to."
Impact needs to be embedded into the on-going community context -- not just grafted on as a transitory accomplishment.
Reflection on three days in Cincinnati
Do you know what happens when you bring together 75 backbone leaders together to talk about collective impact - synergy, energy and engagement.
