networks

By Claire Reinelt, Natalia Castaneda

Looking to increase your reach and influence in the social media space? Social Network Analysis (SNA), a research methodology that focuses on “mapping and measuring relationships and flows between people, groups, organizations, computers, URLs, and other connected information/knowledge entities,” (Orgnet.com) may be the answer. We recently partnered with the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation to explore how to effectively apply social network analysis to public health online communications strategies, how communications networks operate in Twitter and the blogosphere, and how to identify strategic and influential connections that can be nurtured over time to extend the reach of public health messaging. This was an innovative project that produced detailed and insightful information about how to use SNA to strategize communications campaigns, and we wanted to share some of these insights with the community – including specific recommendations for identifying key messages, influencers, and engagement strategies.

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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.

Presenters: Kim Ammann Howard (BTW information change), Melanie Moore (See Change), Claire Reinelt (Leadership Learning Community)

Date: Wednesday, February 15 11:00-12:00 Noon PDT (2:00-3:00PM EDT)

In recent years, leadership funders have begun experimenting widely with how to move beyond investments in programs and organizations to funding the formation and development of networks in order to catalyze greater collective impact. Drawing on the experiences and examples of three leadership and network evaluators, this session will explore the following questions.

• What are the promises and perils of investing in network formation? What evaluation questions are important to ask?
• What are critical practices for supporting and nurturing the emergence and development of networks? How can evaluation inform the development and support of networks over time?
• What are promising practices for evaluating network behavior and network effects in the early stages of network formation?

This session will provide useful advice about how to fund, support, and evaluate network potential and sustainability in the earliest phases of network formation.

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Peggy Holman shared some insightful reflections as a catalyst at OccupyCafe, a virtual world cafe space envisioning the future of the Occupy movement (check out her powerpoint slides on the vital conversations page).  She talked about the pattern of how change happens and she reflected on what leadership looks like in a movement for change.

All change starts with the disruption of a social system -- a disruption from coherence -- where things worked the way we thought they should, according to assumptions, principles and rules we all knew and understood.    read more »

On a recent Saturday afternoon, I spent four hours with people from many walks of life at the Occupy Boston Summit in the heart of Chinatown about 15 minutes from Dewey Square, the site of Occupy Boston.  Over three hundred people were in a school cafeteria, an overflow room, and on livestreaming to have a conversation for four hours about where the “occupy” movement in Boston goes from here.  

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.

As part of the Leadership for a New Era project, we are exploring programs and initiatives that are developing the leadership of networks, communities and regions and accomplishing significant results with fewer resources.  In the following weeks we will present short summaries of some of the examples we have reviewed:

ELIAS, which stands for Emerging Leaders Innovate Across Sectors, is a global innovation and learning community that focuses on regional platforms for facilitating multi-stakeholder innovation across entire systems. Coming together around specific thematic and geographic concerns, key players across the sectors of government, business, and civil society embark on a shared sensing and innovation journey in order to deepen their understanding of their current systems and to discover and prototype new ideas and collaborative opportunities that could take the system forward on the best possible path.

ELIAS was co-created by the Presencing Institute, the MIT CoLab, and the MIT Leadership Center, in Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA. It has more than a dozen global partner institutions in business, government, and civil society, and it has sponsored multi sector change initiatives in both the global South and the global North.

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A year ago, Education Pioneers made the courageous decision to depart from our conventional alumni engagement strategy to an innovative network strategy.  Our new direction employs tactics that build relationships amongst our alumni rather than to our institution.  This reorientation required us to challenge our assumptions about how we develop education leaders capable of transforming education in the 21^st century.

Our fellows hail from the country’s most selective business, education, policy, and law graduate programs that have turned leadership development into a rich social science, but have also built their programs around the navigation of traditional hierarchies and the common scenarios of an institution.  In order to build a professional network of leaders that work across agencies, Education Pioneers is revamping our curriculum to include components that teach emerging leaders how to turn to one another to accelerate change in the field.

As Education Pioneers’ director of network strategy, I reviewed academic literature and boiled the salient findings down to five network leadership competencies that we’re weaving into our curricula at Education Pioneers. 

Read on for a look at practices that you can use to advance your career and deepen your impact as a professional.

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