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A New Leadership Mindset for Scaling Social Change

This is a draft of the framing piece for the Leadership for a New Era (LNE) collaborative research initiative.  This piece is currently being collectively developed by a variety of LNE partners.

Current Leadership Thinking

Over the past 50 years our thinking about leadership, whether in communities or board rooms, has been heavily influenced by heroic models of leadership. We traditionally think of leadership as the skills, qualities and behavior of an individual who exerts influence over others to take action or achieves a goal using their position and authority. read more »

Collaborating to Develop Community Focused Health Leadership

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In March 2007, the Leadership Learning community (LLC) held a Health Leadership Learning Circle retreat near Napa, California. The retreat gathered 30 health leadership development funders, practitioners, and evaluators to share resources, tools, information and successful approaches to supporting, developing and connecting health leadership. Ginny Oehler and Tracy Patterson were both at the retreat. read more »

Weekly News Alert: Networks, Collaboration and Information Sharing

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On Networks... read more »

  • Networks accumulate power based on their breadth of reach in every direction, inciting complexity and fluidity.  It is difficult, sometimes, to look at a network and wonder if it is not a “random field of chaos,” but while networks do not play by the rules (they can’t because they are cumulative and self-organizing) there are laws that networks abide by.  Networkweaving blog looks at the four key components of networks and devises formulas for how to achieve each of these.  The four components are: luck, innovation, influence and network growth.

Shared Leadership Case Study: DataCenter

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In October 2009, at a Leadership Learning Community (LLC) Bay Area Circle, Miho Kim and Celia Davis of the DataCenter shared their learning about the “Shared Leadership” model adopted by the Center in 2006.  The two hour meeting was very well-attended, raising many questions, which as a result of the time constraints went unanswered.  The high level of interest and participation in the topic appears to reflect the degree to which many in the nonprofit sector are beginning to explore different models and ways of working together.  Miho Kim generously agreed to a follow up conversation with me to flesh out some of the questions raised at the convening (this piece is a synthesis of our interview and the Bay Area circle convening). read more »

Weekly News Alert: Nonprofit Collaboration, Communication and "Ecosystem Thinking"

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Top Trends:

On Nonprofit Collaboration...

  • The objection to nonprofit collaboration has always been that “we’re all competing for a limited pool of resources.”  This is true, Debra Askanase of the Community Organizer 2.0 blog states, but it is also true that cooperation makes that pool larger; collaboration brings in more traffic, clients and funding sources which benefits nonprofits and their causes.  We are in a new world in which coopetition (cooperative competition) is becoming the norm.
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Weekly News Alert: Evaluation, Innovation and Women in the Workplace

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On Evaluation... read more »

  • Donors looking to make donations to non-profit organizations have recently been encouraged to look at program evaluation in order to measure the organization’s impact rather than looking at financial ratios.  However, PhilanTopic publishes a post explaining that while it is true that program evaluation is important, financial evaluation is important as well.  An organization’s financial stability, its ability to service any debt it has and how much money it has raised in excess of expenses can be learned from financial evaluation; all of these should be important factors for donors when deciding which organization they would like to donate to.

Rethinking Leadership Networks of Program Graduates

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Over the years we have talked a lot about leadership program networks. In leadership program evaluations we often hear from program participants that relationships formed with others in the program are one of the most valuable and enduring parts of their experience. We have heard stories about these relationships fostering collaborations, providing an ongoing source of consultation and advice and as an information resource exchange network. It’s no wonder that leadership programs are eager to leverage the impact of these relationships by building sustainable networks of program graduates.

The network buzz over the last several years has inspired leadership programs to imagine new possibilities for vibrant networks of their program graduates. The good news is that we have an opportunity to learn from a growing field of network organizing strategies. The bad news is that this field of work does not support conventional thinking and approaches to building alumni networks. read more »

On Collective Leadership: From People Who Are Doing It.

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It’s important to learn about collective leadership from people who are doing it.  Over a year ago the Leadership Learning Community held a two day Learning Lab, “Learning about Collective Leadership” with 30 community activists who were part of the Kellogg Fellows for Community Change.  The KFCC program focused on building collective leadership capacity within communities. The group came from rural and urban regions all over the US.  We have attached the summary of work done by this group that describes lessons and questions that emerged over the two days and demonstrates the ways in which many of the tips that we have shared over the past several months were put to use to stimulate a high level of collective learning. read more »

Key Learnings from Open Conversations on Leadership, Networks and Race

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Over the last couple of weeks we have been hosting a series of meetings – both face-to-face and online – to engage leadership programs, funders and researchers with the Leadership for a New Era work, a collaborative research initiative focused on promoting a leadership model that is more inclusive, networked and collective. As we collectively discussed ideas and questions around Leadership and Race and Leadership and Networks with over 50 participants, a couple of trends and areas of interest came up. Here are some of the more interesting ideas we discussed: read more »

Leadership in the Social Sector: Why We Need Change

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Inclusive, networked, and collective approaches to leadership are vital for the development of the social sector, for its power to influence public will and public policy, and for the personal survival of leaders in the sector.

 

At present, the social sector leadership system privileges the exercise of leadership within organizations. An assumption exists that organizations are the most efficient and accountable way to deliver services and advocate for change. read more »