By Natalia Castaneda and Claire Reinelt

We recently had a call with some of the individuals who are partnering with us to develop the Leadership and Networks publication, which is part of the Leadership for a New Era Series. The participants included Gibran Rivera, Interaction Institute for Social Change; Eugene Kim, Blue Oxen Associates; Kendra Harris, East Caroline University; Grady McGonagill, McGonagill Associates; Diana Scearce, Monitor Institute; Patti Anklam, independent consultant, and the Leadership Learning Community team. This was a unique opportunity to engage such a diverse group of thought leaders in reflecting about the most crucial questions and ideas related to network leadership.

The group is using the following framework to guide the exploration of the intersection between leadership and networks: read more »

July’s Member Spotlight shines on Kim Ammann Howard, a long time collaborator and supporter of the Leadership Learning Community. In 2002, LLC was commissioned by The California Wellness Foundation to conduct an evaluation assessing the overall impact of the Leadership and Professional Development Program of their Violence Prevention Initiative. Kim played a key role on the Design Team and was one of the evaluators and collaborative writers of the in-depth report. She also was one of the collaborators, along with LLC, on the Packard-Gates evaluation of their Population Leadership Program. Kim and Claire Reinelt (LLC’s Research and Evaluation Director) collaborated to write a chapter, Evaluating Leadership Development for Social Change, which was published in the Handbook of Leadership Development Evaluation. We celebrate the spirit of collaboration Kim brings to her work and are pleased to have her listed as one of LLC’s affiliates.

 
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I’ve been inspired reading the Networked Nonprofit to reflect on the challenges facing the nonprofit sector and the crisis of leadership. The rise of the professional nonprofit organization has produced enormous social benefit over the past 40 years, yet the current leadership culture in many nonprofit organizations is neither viable nor desirable. Many nonprofit leaders are simply burned out from the constant pressure to raise money for their organizations and deliver more services on fewer and fewer dollars. The current system for funding and managing work that produces social benefit is exhausting and highly inefficient. Organizational leaders are isolated from one another, and have few pathways for more collective leadership. What will it take to change this leadership system?

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•     "6 Powerful Tips for Philanthropy Leaders" 
        Author:  Stanford Innovation Social Review                                                                    
        Date:  Spring 2010
        Source:  Stanford Innovation Social Review
        URL:   http://www.ssireview.org/philanthropytips
This article provides a brief summary  of each of the six tips and includes links to other articles in the Stanford Social Innovation Review for a more in-depth examination.  Examples of topics covered include being a catalyst for change and evaluating programs to create long-term strategies.   read more »

Over the past 50 years our thinking ab

Unfortunately, the media missed an important and impressive story about leadership in Oakland. Last week a jury in Los Angeles delivered an involuntary manslaughter verdict in the trial of Johannes Mehserle, a BART police officer on trial for shooting Oscar Grant, a young, African American, unarmed passenger who died on New Year’s Day. Many media outlets reported rioting in Oakland in response to the verdict. First, let’s set the record straight. Between 5PM and 9PM over 1000 people gathered peacefully in different locations around the city. After dark, 5 storefront windows were broken and Footlocker was looted. (An unreported aside, community members placed themselves in front of the store to stop the looting.) No one was hurt, 83 people were arrested, and most were young, white anarchists who did not live in Oakland. Hardly a riot, thanks to the preparation and leadership of youth organizations.
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What if we are capable of more, but our low expectations or limiting models of leadership hold us back? Over the past couple of years we have used an Investment Framework tool to understand the types of results or changes that leadership programs hope to achieve. We recently asked a group of funders to identify the results they were targeting (e.g. more financially sustainable organizations, an increased level of personal confidence) and place them in the matrix. Most of their answers fall under the following categories: individual and organization levels – the upper left hand corner of the matrix: read more »

Evidence-based practice (EBP) is commonly used to inform practice decisions in the fields of medicine, nursing, social work, child welfare, and criminal justice.

These fields have established standards of practice that guide decision-making about what treatments and protocols to use with individual patients, clients, and offenders to ensure the highest possible accountability for producing good results.

How is evidence-based practice being used in the field of leadership development?  read more »

• “The Two-Pronged Approach to Innovation Your Company Needs”

Author:  Inder Sidhu

Date:   June 4, 2010

Source:  Forbes.com

URL:  http://www.forbes.com/2010/06/04/innovation-cisco-disruptive-sustaining-...

Innovation:    An effective innovation strategy requires both a commitment to sustaining innovation and a commitment to disruptive innovation, according to Cisco’s Inder Sidhu in the Forbes article “The Two-Pronged Approach To Innovation Your Company Needs.”   Avoiding a tradeoff between sustaining innovation and disruptive innovation is a challenge that all companies face.  Fortune 500 companies, very mindful of their accountability to customers and shareholders, tend to invest fewer resources in disruptive innovation.  Start-ups, on the other hand, focus most of their resources on disruptive innovation.    The key to successful innovation is to consciously pursue both types, as the amplification of the combination is significant.