collaboration

Presenter: Kimberly Haskins and Stefan Lanfer of the Barr Foundation
Topic: First Relationships, Then Results: A New Paradigm for Leadership Development
Date: Tuesday, May 21, 2013 | 1:00 PM - 2:00 PM PDT

On Collective Leadership... read more »

• Curtis Ogden highlights four key concepts underlying the roots of the Interaction Institute's approach to collective leadership: epistemology, cosmology, ontology, technology.  Epistemology is that it’s not just about what we know, but how we know it – intuitively, intellectually, analytically. Cosmology is looking to the complex living systems and networks as the complicated reality we all live in. Ontology is the idea that each of us is evolving and capable of both learning and unlearning. Finally, technology/methodology is the idea of looking to the practices that create the best conditions for collective leadership. 
• Stowe Boyd discusses concepts from a Sara Horowitz’s talk on mutualism and creates a “mutualist manifesto”.  At the heart of the manifesto is finding common cause and growing mutual associations locally and globally, associations such as coops, unions, and policy organizations. Boyd thinks that associations supporting one another, governance by members, seeking benefits not profits, and cooperating in resource allocation will all make great headway towards directing change in a systemically chaotic world.

On Civic Engagement... read more »

• Volunteering and high levels of civic engagement have helped certain communities weather unemployment with greater ease. The National Conference on Citizenship has created a report based off of U.S. Census Bureau and the Department of Labor Statistics. Working with neighbors in one’s community resulted in a decrease of .256% unemployment. The report calls on community and business leaders to foster a local discussion in their community on civic engagement.
• This follows a new study where social change was found to be a priority for Americans. Walden University and Harris Interactive conducted a survey of 2,100 people and found that 85% believe that their individual actions can effect social change and more than 50% plan to engage in creating social change in the future.

On Network Weaving…

A recent webinar talked of the role of networks in creating scale. Nonprofits have been quicker than enterprises in their understanding of their emerging role as facilitator. Social network analysis has been key in letting organizers see their network more clearly, and will hopefully help them answer key questions such as what are the relationships like and how easy is it to break in to a network.

On Collaboration and Technology…

Data is one of the new platforms for change. Philanthropy 2173 gives four examples of data making a difference, including a Web page that crowdsources data on Japanese radiation and a site that matches analysts with nonprofits to unlock what the nonprofits already know. 

Data, sharing information and collaboration often come together to effect change. In the new Project HealthDesign from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, patients are encouraged to share more day-to-day information in order to facilitate better diagnoses.

Information by itself may not be enough. The Communications Network blog talks about Tina Rosenberg’s concepts of peer pressure. Though the word often has negative connotations, valuable information can be gleaned from the idea that it’s not just the information that will bring about change, it’s the information coming from the right source.

Facilitating cooperation is also about perspective, positivity, play, and preference, as explained in The P's of Regenerativity. Curtis Odgen explains how these important concepts help us to understand the system behind whatever form of collaboration you are participating in.

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News Brief 03/31/11

This week's newbrief focuses on giving some examples of organizations, programs, and articles that demonstrate the power of leadership and networks. read more »

• Spark is an organization that seeks to build a community of young, global citizens who are invested in changing patterns of inequality that impact women throughout the world. Its strategy, which focuses on community building, education, advocacy, and grant-making, is to identify and fundraise for outstanding women's organizations around the world. It is now striving to create a global network of philanthropists dedicated to supporting women who are inciting change in their communities.

On Business and Creating Shared Value...  read more »

• Groupon, a multibillion dollar company that offers highly discounted goods and services to its users, has roots in social entrepreneurship.  The CEO, Andrew Mason, began Groupon around the same time that he started The Point – an initiative based on the concept that people will take social action if a certain number of people also agree to take the same social action.  The two projects have now combined into what Mason terms G-Team. In Mason’s words, “Every G-Team campaign connects you with enough people to achieve something awesome that you couldn’t have done alone.” 
• Despite its efforts to engage in corporate responsibility practices, business has been under fire in recent years because it is believed to be prospering at the expense of the broader community.  According to Michael E. Porter and Mark R. Kramer of Harvard Business Review, the way to resolve this is not to embark on more corporate responsibility ventures, but instead to create “shared value.”  The authors write that shared value, which is defined as creating economic value while also creating societal value by addressing community needs and challenges, "is not social responsibility, philanthropy, or even sustainability, but a new way to achieve economic success.”
• A new finding by StaffShare states that a business’s staff retention “improves when skills are shared,” meaning that redundancies can be reduced if a “shared talent pool is developed” and employers learn and share the talents of their employees.

On Race and Unity… read more »

• Using the “No Wedding No Womb” program as an example, Mikhail Lyubansky makes the argument that racial injustices need to be addressed at a systematic or structural level rather than at an individual level.  NWNW is a program that encourages black women not to have children out of wedlock.  It does not promote abstinence necessarily, but instead relies on statistics to show that children are much more likely to succeed when they have “physical, financial, and emotional protection,” which they are more likely to have if their parents are married than if they are not (or than if they are being raised by a single parent).  Lyubansky argues that the message of the program is positive, but it addresses the wrong issues.  Rather than focusing our efforts on helping black women to make the best of the current (unfair) situation, we should be focusing on changing the system to resolve current inequalities.
• In South Dakota, 2010 has been dubbed by many as the “year of unity.”  The purpose of the year of unity is to acknowledge and appreciate the contributions American Indians have brought to the state and, ultimately, to get their land returned to them.  In a blog post on Race-Talk, Tim Giago writes about the necessity of bringing unity to South Dakota and also recaps some of the major gains in the past 20 years regarding ending racial injustices.
  

● “Ethics in Social Network Analysis”
    Author:  Eva Schiffer
    Date:  October 13, 2010
    Source:  Net-Map blog
    URL:  http://netmap.ifpriblog.org/2010/10/13/ethics-in-social-network-analysis/
Social Network Analysis:  Traditional surveys ensure that the respondents remain anonymous, as each respondent is simply meant to be representative of a particular demographic.  However, in using network tools to facilitate change,  the identity of each individual becomes key. This brings up an ethical issue involving social network analysis – should the respondents have it made very clear to them exactly how their answers will be analyzed?  The answer, for Eva Schiffer, is “yes.”  And not only is it the ethical thing to do, to provide full disclosure of the analysis methods, it is actually “one of the strengths of network mapping”; it allows interviewees to “reflect on the complete picture and see if that’s what they actually wanted to say.” 

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•      "Social Analytics Meet Community Engagement" 
        Author:  Allison Fine                                                                    
        Date:  July 26,2010
        Source:  A. Fine Blog
        URL:  http://bit.ly/cZ51Dy 

Allison Fine looks at how all the social media activity related to social causes translates into the actual on-the-ground activity necessary for social change.  She explores the question:  “What, if anything, does all of the clicking, blogging, and “friending” add up to in the end?”.  This topic, the one of how to both translate online exchanges into offline actions and measure the results (the connection between online activity and veritable social change), engenders a discussion, which, as Fine describes is in its “infancy.”   read more »