ABCD Conflict Consensus Debate

That Asset Based Community Development or ABCD is not neoliberalism has been both questioned and argued not to be true. The difference this makes and clarifying differences between asset based approaches and ABCD has been explored. Even so, there is still a basis for a debate between proponents of ABCD, with MacLeod of the University of Glasgow and Emejulu the University of Edinburgh, authors of the study authors of the study 'Neoliberalism with a Community Face’ who argue that, "The application of ABCD generates tensions within an existing Scottish social democratic framework for community development.” This post will focus primarily on the positions taken by the authors followed by ABCD oriented reflections.

In considering the theme of democracy, these two contrasting positions emerging from the study reflect the contrasting approaches of conflict and consensus based models of community development which the authors assert inform contrasting approaches to democracy. 

It is doubtful though that there is any disagreement that the state of institutional welfare systems in both the US and the UK tend be hierarchical, bureaucratic and inimical to meaningful democratic participation by marginalized groups. The debate is over how effectively both approaches interact with such systems. Each in their own particular way, see institutional government as a troublesome necessity. 

The concept that identifying and seeking to develop the strengths, skills and knowledge of individuals and community groups, helping people to become more confident to critically analyze and dissent from the prevailing views and representations of themselves and the problems they experience could be seen fitting both approaches.

One community development worker, Gill, identified an asset based approach as resonating very strongly with her own understanding of her professional role: 

"What our job is, is to support these “live” assets [sic] to become aware of what their rights are as a community and as a group and what power they have...It’s about us supporting them to become a voice, a big voice, one big voice out of the whole community.”

There is a potential, recognized by more strategic-level professionals, that an asset based approach, which we will assume includes ABCD despite already having cited the differences in previous posts, might offer a sense of ownership and control in changing the power relationships over social welfare services. 

Karen, a study participant, thought that asset-based approaches could, “Allow people to engage round the table in a more equal basis”.  This, however, would be negotiations not community collaboration.

For some community development practitioners, ABCD, from a more positive perspective by the authors, is seen as a way to roll back the state, challenging what is seen as welfare dependency and promoting community empowerment in social welfare service planning and provision. In other words, it can be made a confrontational tool which is not an explicit purpose of ABCD.

In this view of asset based approaches, many participants spoke of building networks and connections both within communities and across different sections of society, including the public, private and third sectors. This again takes the focus to outside of the community but are there times when the focus of the community needs to be outside of the community?

Some practitioners, according to the authors, may be able to use an assets agenda as part of a discussion of community activism, to provide a constructive contribution to on-going debates about the nature and purpose of democracy in Scotland. The problem for proponents of ABCD, as stated before, this still tends to take the locus of control off of the community itself.

So while the authors do consider the possibility that ABCD could perhaps be used as a means to spark discussions about making the welfare state more open and democratic, for them though ABCD asks some of the right questions it still provides the wrong answer. ABCD proponents are likely to respond that the wrong questions are being asked of the wrong people who are giving the wrong answers.

What the authors doubt is that an ABCD approach provides an adequate  ability for practitioners and community groups to articulate their views about structural problems and build solidarity at the grassroots, again arguably to serve as part of a conflict model of community development.

An ABCD approach emphasizes the need to release a community’s own internal ‘untapped’ assets.  The authors argue that this could end up increasing inequalities between different communities by potentially advantaging communities already influential and cohesive, with one study participant, Sue, commenting, "You can end up making the gaps wider if the investment goes to the people who are able to ask with more clarity for what they want and need."

Sarah, another study participant, raised the idea of unintended consequences resulting from using ABCD.

For an asset based approach to work the community you’re working in must already be quite a strong community...That there are structures in place, that there’s already cohesion within a community and people know what their issues are and what their priorities are and that they are engaging with that. But there is the negative side that lots of people don’t want to engage and lots of people are facing particular challenges in their lives that going along to a community meeting is the last thing that they need to deal with. So there is the potential that some form of inequality could be increased. There needs to be a lot more work done to look at whether that is going to be the case.

The ABCD focus on the “positive”; relentless in the eyes of the authors, could actually marginalize any needed critical analyses of structural inequalities, undermining collective oppositional action to address these problems.

Although asset based approaches may offer the potential of working with community groups as equal partners, achieving such a shift in power, and the involved challenges of sharing power and changing established ways of working, is seen as a far more complex, long-term process.

The extent then to which taking an asset approach, and even extending that to an Asset Based Community Development approach, can help tackle deep-rooted inequalities is seen as questionable, or as the authors cite:

“community assets can only have a mitigating effect on the structural and social determinants of ill-health and inequality - poor housing, low wages, lack of jobs”  Foot and Hopkins 2010

The issues of structural inequalities that are seen as being absent in ABCD theory and practice were also of concern to study participant Kate, a senior policy manager in the third sector:

“When I hear people talking about asset based development I don’t hear them referring to, “Of course poverty has dragged these people down for the last twenty years” or, “the real problem here is unemployment”. I hear a completely different discourse from them.”

How the concept of ABCD should be redefined and applied in practice to address Kate’s concerns, for the authors then, would involve expanding the discussion of assets to include greater concern for deeper and more pervasive structural and material inequalities. The extent then to which motivations behind a desire for change in power are due to current interest in asset based approaches, whether authentic or politically manipulative is, as the authors say, open for debate.

Study participant Judi’s statement, "We know that people are motivated by problems, that’s what galvanizes them and I think for a long time people from an asset based approach perspective would see that as a deficit approach, you’d then be stigmatising people with needs and problems”, illustrates both sides of the debate, identifying and articulating that shared ‘problems’ or ‘needs’ can help shock communities into building solidarity and motivate people to take action but also raising issues of concern to proponents of ABCD of adopting a deficit model by beginning with what is wrong with people rather than strong. 

ABCD proponents have to win this debate with Judi and other practitioners in mind, recognizing both sides of her concerns, and clarifying for her where there is confusion about what is ABCD. Still, this does not preclude following the author's call to draw on, "...philosophical and activist traditions that help us to think and learn collectively about the nature of social problems and which also give us the practical tools to take collective action for social justice.”

Pathways to Healthy Communities

The following comes from a presentation on, “Developing a Systems Thinking Perspective of a National Deliberation Project on Healthcare Costs” as part of the “How Can We Reduce Costs and Still Get the Care We Need?” Kumu project which was featured in the last blog post, “Using Deliberation and Systems Thinking to Address Healthcare Costs”. They are the three concluding statements arrived at after the completion of a systematic inquiry into the NIFI forum on healthcare costs.

1. We should not approach issues of Healthcare Costs in terms of "Cost Savings". Instead, we should approach it in terms of "Reinvesting and getting a Better Return”.
2. We should endeavor to bring Healthcare concerns, both health, and costs, closer to community-based approaches. The positive aspect of such an approach is that there are already numerous efforts going on. These need to be prioritized to a far greater degree. (and made to have a Collective Impact)
3. Community-based efforts should focus first on health then find cost-efficient means of implementing programs, not the other way around. 

The salient point for this post is, “The positive aspect of such an approach is that there are already numerous efforts going on. These need to be prioritized to a far greater degree.” This means moving our attention away from the deliberative process of deciding issues of healthcare costs to creating and implementing programs in a community based on those decisions.

This then would be a part of a process of creating what will be called Healthy Communities (wiki-tag). Below are several new websites recently added to the New Community Paradigms Wiki, all of which have some focus on health and community.

Healthy Communities involves building Healthy Cities (wiki-page) as well as focusing on Community Design (wiki-page), Geographic Based (wiki-page) community change agencies, and rethinking our Streets (wiki-page).

Healthy Cities approaches working toward community health from a variety of different perspectives and levels. Some are more functional and could be applied in a variety of settings, like a toolbox. This particular Community Tool Box | Table of Contents is a service of the Work Group for Community Health and Development at the University of Kansas.

“The Community Tool Box is a free, online resource for those working to build healthier communities and bring about social change. Our mission is to promote community health and development by connecting people, ideas, and resources.”
Others like the Gallup-Healthways Well-Being Index provide important health data.

“The Gallup-Healthways Well-Being Index® is the first-ever daily assessment of U.S. residents' health and well-being. By interviewing at least 1,000 U.S. adults every day, the Well-Being Index provides real-time measurement and insights needed to improve health, increase productivity, and lower healthcare costs. Public and private sector leaders use data on life evaluation, physical health, emotional health, healthy behavior, work environment, and basic access to develop and prioritize strategies to help their communities thrive and grow. Journalists, academics, and medical experts benefit from this unprecedented resource of health statistics and behavioral economic data to inform their research and reporting.”

Another similar site is Rankings | County Health Rankings & Roadmaps, sponsored by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, which "allows you to Look up your county’s Rankings, learn about their methods, and download the data you need."

An example at a local city level of a community focusing on health is Davidson Design for Life.

“Davidson Design for Life (DD4L) is an initiative of the Town of Davidson to foster healthy community design through the use of health impact assessments (HIA), public participation, and collaborative efforts in Davidson, the Charlotte-Mecklenburg region, and North Carolina.”
Even though a small community of 11,750 people (2013) with Davidson College nearby with 1,920 students, the site provides information on Health Impact Assessment: What is it?, for the surrounding region and information on HIA in the US.

At a state level for Minnesotans is Alliance for Healthy Homes and Communities.

“All Minnesotans should have the opportunity to make choices that allow them to live a long, healthy life, regardless of their income, education, or ethnic background. Everyone wants good health to be productive at work and to succeed in school and to have affordable medical and housing costs. To make this opportunity a choice for all Minnesotans, we all have to do our part in creating and maintaining healthy homes and communities. Every person and every organization have a role to play, small or large.”
Closer to home is LA2050 - Shaping the future of Los Angeles, which involves though a major city with a population of over 3.8 million and a focus that expands beyond healthcare concerns to other areas, so it has been placed under Geographic Based community change agencies.

“LA2050 is a community-owned mechanism to create a shared vision of success for Los Angeles in 2050 and to track progress toward that vision.”
At a state level is The California Endowment which is also involved in the Creating Health Collaborative and in the related Stanford Social Innovation Review presentation on “Organizing Communities to Create Health”.

"The California Endowment was established in 1996 as a result of Blue Cross of California's creation of its for-profit subsidiary, WellPoint Health Networks. Since then, we've invested in health broadly, from strengthening the safety net for families struggling with poverty to diversifying the health care workforce. The lessons learned from early investments were the genesis for Health Happens Here and the 10-year, $1 billion Building Healthy Communities plan, in which residents in 14 places are working to transform their neighborhoods."

The sites cited above involve data and organizations. There is also a need to consider at a more foundational physical level in the promotion of health through design, which is what the Center for Active Design does.

“The Center for Active Design is a nonprofit resource for design professionals, policymakers, real estate developers and community advocates, committed to promoting and expanding the Active Design Guidelines published by New York City in 2010. We maintain a multi-disciplinary perspective in the translation of health research into design solutions that amplify the role of architecture and urban planning in improving public health and well-being.”

"Rethinking the Automobile", a project created to raise awareness around the negative impact of the automobile on our world by livable streets advocate Mark Gorton no longer seems to exist. The presentation, associated with the site, still exists on Vimeo. 

Elsewhere, from a more creating health perspective, is the StreetFilms video Carmaggeddon Averted as Broadway Comes to Life, in which "Mark Gorton takes us on a tour of Broadway's car-free squares and boulevard-style blocks, where conditions have improved dramatically for pedestrians, cyclists, and, yes, delivery truck drivers," putting forward the counterintuitive truth that taking away space for cars improves traffic and makes the city safer and more enjoyable for everyone on foot, based on established theories like traffic shrinkage and Braess's paradox that help to explain why this happens.

These are not the only websites in the NCP wiki related to health or healthcare, in fact, most can be related, at least indirectly. They are the most recent and have not been featured previously.

Laying out a few possible pathways to creating Healthy Communities does not lay out the entire required journey. Moving from the primarily deliberative process to actual implementation of programs still, means overcoming any fundamental differences in perspectives or mindsets within the community (which will exist even if everyone is familiar and adept at systems thinking) and crossing the Knowing-Doing Gap by Jeffrey Pfeffer and Robert I Sutton as discussed in previous posts. There is still lots more work to do but this does make it all the more possible. 

New Community Paradigms and More Belated Good Intentions

CommunityMatters, cited in the previous blog post, has also hosted a number of other organizations that are of interest to NCP but despite ‘good intentions’ have never been featured in either the blog or wiki up to this point. These newly found resources have now been placed under a variety of different NCP wiki-pages.

The greatest number of additions were under Governance through Community. The concept of Slow Democracy took the longest to be incorporated though it is arguably a necessary addition for New Community Paradigms to be viable, recognizing the difference between government administration and democratic governance.

"It describes how citizens around the country are breathing new life into their communities. Large institutions, centralized governments, and top-down thinking are no longer society’s drivers. New decision-making techniques are ensuring that local communities—and the citizens who live there—are uniquely suited to meet today’s challenges. In Slow Democracy, readers learn the stories of residents who gain community control of water systems and local forests, parents who find creative solutions to divisive and seemingly irreconcilable school-redistricting issues, and a host of other citizen-led actions that are reinvigorating local democracy and decision making."
Other new additions ranged from highly localized such as the Right Question Institute - A Catalyst for Microdemocracy.

“The robustness of the Right Question Strategy is demonstrated in how it is used to address such a wide range of challenges in so many communities around the country and the world and what happens when the RQ Strategy is taught to people who have never had the opportunity to learn to ask their own questions and focus on key decisions that affect them.”
Governance through Community is also home for Resident Learning Exchange featuring Resident-Centered Community Building:

“In June 2012, forty-one leaders of community building efforts came together to share strategies and discuss lessons they have learned about how to improve conditions in disadvantaged communities. While gatherings like these happen regularly, this one was unusual; it was designed by and for community residents.”
Other examples are much broader based.

The Center for Communication and Civic Engagement,

“The center is located in the Department of Communication at the University of Washington, and co-sponsored by the Department of Political Science is dedicated to understanding communication processes and media technologies that facilitate positive citizen involvement in politics and social life through original research, new educational programs, policy recommendations, and Web-based citizen resources.”
The Journal of Public Deliberation | Public Deliberation

“(The) International Journal for Public Participation (2007 - 2010) merged with the Journal for Public Deliberation as a joint venture between DDC and IAP2 in November 2010. In announcing the joint venture in November 2010, IAP2 President Desley Renton said, ‘this initiative builds on the foundations of both journals and will extend the discourse in the field with readers benefiting from firsthand experience of public participation practitioners’.”
Newly placed under Community Places, the NCP wiki home for Project for Public Spaces (PPS), is the National Consortium for Creative Placemaking and its related blog, created to build capacity for sustainable and cost-effective creative placemaking, a new way of making communities more livable and prosperous through the arts. By going beyond public art and performing arts centers it is making them better places for not only the arts, it is making places better for everyone.

“Creative placemaking starts with building effective partnerships. Our approach to creative placemaking is based on six key elements: Building diverse and productive partnerships in communities and with local leadership to implement ideas. Enhancing quality of life for more people in communities Increasing economic opportunity for more stakeholders in communities Building healthier climates for creativity and cultural expression Engaging existing assets (both physical and human) as much as possible Promoting the best and distinct qualities of a place Our work is guided by the teachings of reflective practice, double-loop learning, asset-based community development, fifth level leadership, arts-based community development, communicative practice, environmental justice, and other current and cutting-edge philosophies of practice.”

There is a connection through the wiki-focus page, Community Design to Greater Places | The Community for Urban Design, a crowdsourced “How-To” manual for creating great communities – cities, suburbs and rural areas.

“Think of a Pinterest or Houzz for community design. WHAT IS COMMUNITY DESIGN? Community design is about people, the places we live, and the spaces we share. Community design is also about how we come together and make decisions that affect our communities and neighbors: from crossroads in the country to homeowners’ associations in the suburbs to new apartments in the city.”

There is also now a shared related wiki-page for Community Places and Community Design through Community Arts.

Under Innovation in Governance has been placed the Harvard - ASH Center for Democratic Governance and Innovation and their Project on Social Innovation which provide a virtual knowledge hub for social innovation in cities and municipalities.

“Its purpose is to provide a practical platform for sharing the stories and lessons of exciting innovators from the nonprofit, philanthropic and public sectors. The Project on Social Innovation accomplishes this purpose through an innovator's toolkit, relevant news updates, profiles of best practices, regular blogging, and links to other online resources. The site is an initiative of the Ash Center for Democratic Governance and Innovation at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government.”

Change Management and Processes is a newly created wiki-bridge page connecting Systems Thinking Applications and Organizational, Online and Technology Base  Community Change Agencies. These are the tools, processes, community algorithms that can be used by any community change agency, ranging from the organizational to the personal.

The Change Management Toolbook - Home

"Welcome to the Change Management Toolbook! This site has been around since 1997, and we remain focused on the founding vision of offering really useful and free change management content to our web visitors. This is the fourth (and we believe the best!) major revision of the website - it's a lot simpler and much prettier, and we think you will find that it is easier and quicker to get to the information you want. The changes are not limited to the "look and feel" - we've added some really good additional content, and we look forward to ongoing high-quality contributions by our growing global network of contributors."
The Process Arts site is “a living story of the process arts”.

"Processes can relate to the individual (such as meditation), interpersonal dynamics (for example Nonviolent Communication), group processes (e.g. Open Space, World Cafe, unconference and wiki), on up to very large scale systems, such as economic, legal and political structures (e.g. Threebles, Restorative Circles, or Citizen Deliberative Councils). Even more than a list of particular processes though, the process arts are about an awareness that however we are doing something, that is simply one particular way, and we can and often do experiment with doing it any number of other ways."
Finally, New America is an organization which asserts that it is dedicated to the renewal of American politics, prosperity, and purpose in the Digital Age.

“We carry out our mission as a nonprofit civic enterprise: an intellectual venture capital fund, think tank, technology laboratory, public forum, and media platform. Our hallmarks are big ideas, impartial analysis, pragmatic policy solutions, technological innovation, next generation politics, and creative engagement with broad audiences.”

Returning to Fulfill Good Intentions with Community Change Agencies

An original intention of New Community Paradigms was providing resources for community change and building upon that change. New arenas were discovered and explored. Resources were found and placed in the New Community Paradigms wiki with the idea that others could use the resources as they saw fit.

That is still the intention, however, a large part of this journey has been involved in learning new perspectives that required going extensively and deeply into them to attain a fuller understanding. Systems Thinking is the primary example, Design Thinking is another and Collective Impact being the most recent.

The new ideas being generated were changing the landscape fueling the perspective that paradigm level changes are in need of being sought within communities. The ‘good’ intention though to feature the discovered resources in future blog posts putting them into some context that could prove helpful has not been realized.

Some of the newly discovered resources have played a major role in forming new pathways. The Harwood Institute, introduced in CommunityMatters knows Harwood and Harwood knows what Matters for the Communities to Change was prominently featured in the Collective Impact series as a community change agency. Not every community though is ready to take on a Collective Impact effort, needing to work on other aspects to reach that level.

A number of other Community Change Agencies have also been discovered. These types of resources have been divided into two types, Organizational, Online and Technology Based and Geographic Based. The later, Geographic Based is admittedly lacking, especially local examples, as far more effort up to this point has been expended upon learning new perspectives and underlying systems. An advantage of Organizational, Online and Technology Based change agencies is that they can often be more readily transferred and applied to other communities. Harwood belongs in the Organizational, Online and Technology Based but an on-the-ground foundation is still seen as important in creating New Community Paradigms.

CommunityMatters was also cited as having hosted conference calls with a number of organizations featured in this effort, such as Project for Public Spaces, NCDD (National Coalition for Dialogue and Deliberation), Strong Towns, Everyday Democracy, Deliberative Democracy Consortium, and the Harwood Institute. It also has its own Facebook page.

CommunityMatters Facebook

“CommunityMatters® aims to equip cities, towns and all community members to strengthen their places and inspire change. This group champions the notion that people have the power to solve their community's problems and shape its future. The alliance facilitates connections, provides education and infuses inspiration at the local level.”

Some of the new resources listed in Organizational, Online and Technology Based wiki-page have never been mentioned in any blog post.

The Community Change Agency Orton Family Foundation coined the term “Heart & Soul Community Planning,” describing an approach for engaging citizens in land use planning as a pathway to vibrant, enduring communities.

“Our approach helps diverse citizens identify and enhance a town’s most valued attributes: those special places, characteristics and customs that residents treasure and that connect them to one another. If lost, these attributes would be widely missed and alter the character of the town.”

Another group similar to CommunityMatters is Community Builders, a project of the Sonoran Institute, which aims to help local leaders build successful communities in the American West and that has also provided a number of informative webinars, at no cost, in the past.

One, PlaceSpeak, is a location-based consultation utility helping to bridge between governance and place by transforming the way people interact with local decision-makers. It has its own Facebook app page.

Other featured organizations focus more on process, emphasizing collaboration even more than place. IOTC Hub Institute of the Commons, which is a USA based organization with a global outreach can help in finding common ground and innovating together by helping large, multi-stakeholder groups discover agreement and unite to accomplish shared goals. An essential undertaking in endeavoring to implement a Collective Impact effort.

Some like Innovation in Collaboration don't even originate in this country. They still provide excellent examples of what could be possible here. Often times it seems that we must look outside the United States to find some of the most viable ideas for supporting democracy and the empowerment of communities.

The Interaction Institute for Social Change, headquartered in Ireland, has had global outreach but with local impact including many in the United States. Good ideas should not require visas.

Future Search Network is a collaboration of hundreds of dedicated volunteers worldwide providing Future Search conferences as a public service.

"We serve communities, NGO's, and other non-profits for whatever people can afford. Our mission is to help communities everywhere become more open, supportive, equitable and sustainable. We also work with for-profit organizations who share these values, charging standard fees. We are a cross-cultural network, speaking many languages. Our members live in Africa, Asia, Australia, Europe, and North and South America."

The last of the ‘newer’ Community Change Agencies to be featured is the Intersector Project, a non-profit organization that seeks to empower practitioners in the business, government, and non-profit sectors to collaborate to solve problems that cannot be solved by one sector alone. A good definition for Collective Impact. They conduct research in intersector collaboration and convey findings to leaders in every sector to help them design and implement their own effective collaborative initiatives.

There are no doubt numerous similar organizations out there. The point though is that they are out there. Those looking to make meaningful changes in their community do not have to work alone. Even advice over the phone can be of tremendous assistance. Not every community, as the Harwood Institute points out, is in a position to make transformations at a Collective Impact level. There are though others with the same struggles who have tried ideas that have worked. It can be simply a matter of discovering them and reaching out.

Thinking about Deep Systems Change through Collective Impact

This post will be the first on the Kumu mapping of the fifth and final module of the Living Cities’ online Collective Impact course. There is a wiki-page with relevant links, Kumu maps, and blog posts concerned with this Collective Impact experiment and exploration.

The focus here is placed on the sector map Collective Impact as Tool for Systems Change, revealing a bias towards a hard system thinking approach to systemic changes dealing with the deeper levels of the systems thinking iceberg model and which purposely avoids beginning by attempting to alter people’s personal prejudices.

First, a reminder that you don’t have to open each map link on this page. Collective Impact as Tool for Systems Change is organized as explained in the Sector Map section of Navigation. 

Some of the elements populating the Collective Impact as Tool for Systems Change sector map have been featured in previous modules, suggesting that they could provide a deeper infrastructure and relate to other components across a Collective Impact approach. One, How Living Cities Thinks About Systems Change (map) has been added as a result of digging deeper into the material provided by Living Cities. Other elements unique to Module 5 are Connected Problems Require Collaborative Solutions (map), Backbone Organization or Function? (map), The Working Cities Challenge (map), Cross-Sector Partnerships (map), Diagnose the Adaptive Challenge (map), Disaggregated Data by Race (map) and Evidence-Based Decision Making (map). All of which together support the central theme of What Makes Collective Impact a Powerful tool for Systems Change? (map) introduced in Module 3 Kumu map.

Absorbing the source information provided by the Living Cities’ online Collective Impact course is essential, Greater familiarity with the various Kumu maps and the different relationships between the elements, as set by Living Cities, will then begin to reveal deeper connections and other possible relationships, especially if working in a group setting with different people having varying affinity with different elements, making individual contributions to a unique group perspective.

Going deeper into the elements of the map, How Living Cities Thinks About Systems Change explains how, “Too often, leaders attempt to apply programmatic, technical fixes to complex, interconnected systems level problems.” Ben Hecht President & CEO of Living Cities writes that Connected Problems Require Collaborative Solutions. It is, as has been stated before, a matter of transforming our mindset.

“The difference between what we do and what we are capable of doing would suffice to solve most of the world’s problems. The starting point is to see things differently from the current, dominant worldview which in so many ways is no longer relevant to the situation in which we find ourselves.” – HRH The Prince of Wales

We are learning by trying different approaches on the ground, seeing how institutions and individuals respond across sectors and measuring results. Deploying an existing or starting a new nonprofit or government institution or even business as a lead or czar institution won’t work though for these challenges because one, trends in funding for these efforts over the past few decades provide only restricted funds with little to no indirect costs, making it virtually impossible for any single entity to play the ‘connecter’ role alone in most places. Most organizations of any type will have neither the bandwidth nor the breadth of relationships and visibility across issues and sectors for it. Just as important, is the need for distributed leadership across institutions, starting with the individuals who lead those institutions.

Finally, institutions tend to stay in their own lane with funding, incentives and history invariably encouraging such behavior. Interconnectedness only happens when there is an intentionality to do it and the endurance to stick with it over time. The natural order can only be overcome and behaviors truly changed only when some institution or person is charged with getting up every day and connecting the dots. Strive Together (map) calls this function the ‘backbone’ of these efforts with funders specifically paying for it.

StriveTogether defines the difference between a Backbone Organization or Function? When working with an array of different communities looking to navigate the often contentious discussions around where the larger coalition should end up, they came to the conclusion that what is likely needed is a “backbone function” not a “backbone organization.” Not simply a matter of semantics, but a completely different way to approaching the staffing of collective impact work. Instead of a central power center controlling a traditional hierarchical paradigm, it is the sharing roles that, “Need to be taken on so as to connect the dots instead of recreating the wheel.”

The Working Cities Challenge (map) is one such initiative, advancing collaborative leadership in Massachusetts smaller cities and to support ambitious work to improve the lives of low-income people in those cities, in which Living Cities is participating.

There are other substantial shifts in mindset required to determine How to Achieve Big, Hairy, Audacious Goals (map) that paradoxically both take longer than the standard election cycle but also require some sense of urgency, hopefully, instilled by the effort itself but still nonetheless requiring leadership. This type of leadership is often more at home in the business world. Those having an entrepreneurial spirit that can be applied to the social sector need to be, as Jim Collins would say:

"Interested in the sheer exhilarating pain of the journey. You’re not going to have that immediate gratification of accomplishment. You are going to be immersed in it and working and suffering toward it for a long time--the way artists suffer. You have to enjoy that sense of extended discomfort. It’s the quest, it’s the training, it’s the growth, it’s pushing yourself. You really get off on that. If you think standing at the top of the cliff is where the joy is, you don’t understand it. The real joy is in all the pain and growth and suffering and creativity required long before you get to the summit."

Such an undertaking would require tremendous support from the community and could quickly be derailed by a few politicians seeking to hoard their own power.

Perhaps the greatest mind-shift is that adaptive challenges are difficult to diagnose (map) and implement because their solutions require people to change their ways; involving human complexity meaning the problems themselves cannot be abstracted from the people who are part of the problem scenario itself, and then to determine what to conserve from past practices, what to discard from past practices, while inventing new ways that build from the best of the past.

This approach is based on Evidence-Based Decision Making (map) involving the making, capturing, sharing, and application of data and experiential evidence to ensure that funding streams and efforts are achieving the desired results. This in turn requires feedback or in the case of Collective Impact 3 Fabulous Flavors of Feedback Culture (map) involving a feedback culture and feedback loops, requiring to my mind both an understanding of the feedback loops that make up the system being influenced and collecting the information that is needed to know whether or not you are on track. Culminating with the creation of a data infrastructure, that gets the right information when needed through cross-sector partnerships building on the feedback culture and feedback loops, keeping them informed and creating change that can last regardless of administration turnovers.

It is with such a foundation that one can then begin using methodologies such as Disaggregated Data by Race (map) to help bring about transformational change with a renewed focus on addressing racial disparities, learning key lessons about the importance of using data to develop a baseline for identifying outcomes and continuous improvement, not as a tool to penalize leaders or point fingers at specific sources of the problem without fear that a commitment to transparency to the community could be interpreted as targeting students of color as the problem. This approach informs the StriveTogether Theory of Action in supporting children and youth from cradle to career.

The Live Cities Integration Initiative (map) involves testing three strategies believed to be central to catalyzing lasting, transformative change that benefits low-income people: collective impact (map), public sector innovation (map) and capital innovation (map), also added to the Kumu map. However, what remains essential and foundational is the need to involve the community in the Collective Impact effort (map).

Working with communities to advance racial equity and eliminate disparities (map) is, according to the Kumu map, the center of its own sector map and will be addressed in the near future but first, we will next look to 4 Insights Collective Impact and Community Engagement and Racial Equity.

Feedback Loops Keep Collective Impact Impacting

In a recent Google Plus comment on the last NCP post, online colleague Daniel Bassill asked, “Do you know of any college that is using your articles and maps in an extended learning process? There's quite a bit of information, particularly if one visits the articles linked to in each node on the map.” The quick answer is no (it was a kind but undeserved compliment). He went on to make the valid point that, “A casual visitor might be overwhelmed and not stick around long enough to begin to understand the big picture the maps represent.” , in a vein similar to Ryan Mohr’s comment on the Collective Impact and Kumu Relational Mapping - Creating New Ways of Seeing Our Community post. We can look to start following some of Ryan Mohr’s advice addressed in the last post though it will still be more exploration than presentation. What should be kept in mind is that Collective Impact, systems thinking and design thinking all involve a different way of looking at the world. Kumu maps give us a different way of looking at those different ways of looking at the world.

The first thing that should be noted about the Kumu Module 3 Feedback map is that there aren’t any persistent feedback loops in the systems thinking sense of the term. There could be a repeat reading of connected articles and if article A helped one to understand article B and then article B in turn helped to better understand article A, and repeated as needed, that could be considered a feedback loop but it would likely be completed fairly quickly.

This is mentioned early on because the end of the last post promised to look at a topic particularly relevant to systems thinking — feedback loops. The information on feedback as it relates to Collective Impact can be found within the articles and other resources contained in the elements making up the Feedback map. Hopefully, it does not need to be mentioned that one has to actually read the associated material and not depend upon the still developing summaries provided in the narrative sections of a Kumu map. An attempt will be made to establish feedback relationships as defined by systems thinking as well.

The Kumu Module 3 Feedback map is organized on a branching or tree model. Certain elements serve as nodes, connecting and branching out to other element nodes. Admittedly, when presented at a single viewing, it can be daunting as was discussed in the last post.

Going first into the main narrative section of the Feedback map and mousing over to highlight and then clicking on the "Week 3 Feedback Loops Purpose" text takes one to the Week 3 Kumu loop which is in actuality a selected portion of the larger map focused on related content. Clicking on Week 3 Selected Map in the narrative section will focus only on that specific portion of the map. Week 3: Creating Community Feedback Loops to Fast Track Change is the central element node, with associated url, of the section map.

The resulting map is now far simpler. In addition to the main article on community feedback loops there are according to the legend in the bottom left corner, two blog posts, two reports and one journal article supporting the main article.

This is the same information provided by the Living Cities course except, rather than branches to other element nodes, with Living Cities the additional information is within the primary article, one, two or more layers behind links to other articles and resources. These relationships become more apparent with the maps. The original Living Cities' Week 3 related articles are the territory. We want to study the stones making up the road but we also want to know where the road can lead us or choose different paths. We will still need to expand into more complex maps if we wish to cross more difficult territory.

Once a section map is selected the focus remains even if returning to the Module 3 map by specifically clicking a relevant link or clicking on the background of the map area. One can go to the narrative of the section map and in this case click on 'Week 3 Clear' to clear the specific focus and then 'Back to Module 3' to return to the full Module 3 map. One can also return to the Module 3 map, with the selected focus maintained and add other selected focused map sections.

The journey through the extensive material can then be made easier by jumping directly to other selected specific map sections within the Feedback map. The next section map is 3 Flavors Feedback. Clicking on 3 Flavors Feedback Selected Map again focuses on the specific portion of the map. The central element node 3 Fabulous Flavors of Feedback Culture is not directly connected to the Week 3 section of the map but does connect through elements related to other section maps. Again, this section map is fairly simple consisting of three blog posts, including the initial one, a news release on a County PFS program, a news article on How to Achieve Big, Hairy, Audacious Goals, and the organization StriveTogether, introduced in Module 1 and cited in the central blog post.

The next section map to visit, Is Pay for Success CI?, which again can be focused on. It is directly connected to Week 3: Creating Community Feedback Loops to Fast Track Change. There are more element nodes within this section of the map because this section of the map extends out another degree or, if this was the Living Cities course, another layer of linked articles. The element nodes include the Week, the type of Work undertaken by Living Cities in this arena, five blog posts, a news article, two different organizations, one financial and one an outcomes-driven organization, and a report on the joint work undertaken by these organizations.

The next map section is 4 Keep It Real Community Impact Insights, repeating the step to focus then to the similarly named central element node takes us to the related Living Cities blog post. It is again separated by a degree or layer from the originating Week 3 section of the map. The element nodes associated with this section of the map include two blog posts, including the preceding post Is Pay for Success Collective Impact?, a set of resources on decision makers and do-ers, a news article, an organization and two books. If the Module 3 map were drawn vertically as with the systems thinking iceberg model then this section map would be at the lower levels providing a foundation for the rest of the map.

The final selected map section is Creating Feedback Loops. This is the busiest of the section maps with twenty directly related element nodes, seven blog posts, two from previous map sections, three related but different types of organizations, the resources from one of the organizations, a FSG resource with associated webinar and finally a connection to the previous Week 2 Amplifying the Voices of Community Members in Collective Impact.

Feedback within systems does not stop, however, once the interviews or reports are finished. There also exists feedback loops within the systems that we are attempting to impact and within the systems we devise as means of impact, necessitating again, feedback from those being served. Feedback is also an important component of the personal stories defining those making up the client audience. These feedback loops change each node making up the loop and can change further with sequential loops with multiple nodes and loops capable of raising emergent transitions throughout an entire system.

Feedback loops have to be considered in establishing optimal levels of service. Ideally, city budgets endeavor to reach optimal levels of expenditures to fund the programs which are beneficial to the community. In an example from Getting Deep into ST - Systems Thinking Certification they may fund road improvements to increase the capacity of the streets to allow an optimal number of vehicles. (The community question is what is that optimal number?) These three properties, budget, roads and cars can interact together in a variety of different ways. Built roads in a community can be increased but not easily and not indefinitely. Traffic, particularly if it originates outside of the community, could increase exponentially overtaxing the community’s circulation system. The community could try to find some means of balancing these conflicting influences but its actions might feedback in unintended ways.

As was pointed out in Direct Democracy and System Thinking Map - Some Potholes on the Journey, there are also limitations to our models or devised systems. In terms of a working reality, our maps or systems often assume only smooth sailing. In truth, any system could break down at each stage of the process and feedback to debilitate the entire system. It should also be appreciated that not only can something go wrong at each step of the actual process, necessitating a thorough review and response, but that each step can be important in its own right and is not merely a stepping stone to a final outcome. Feedback loops, especially those separated significantly by distance, time or aggregation, are a major source for unintended consequences.

Finally, as was pointed out in Exploring with the Dialogue, Deliberation and Systemic Transformation Community to Discover New Possibilities Part 3 of 3, it is the synthesis of the different ways of understanding systems that can lead us to the elements of storytelling helping to define complexity in a manner similar to what makes a great story. The elements in determining in what way a problem is complex are also the elements of an engaging story and feedback can be a meaningful part of that story.


1. Many interacting “agents”

2. Individuals and processes influence each other in feedback loops

3. Reactions may be affected by current and past circumstances

4. Influenced by the external environment

5. Events have multiple causes and multiple effects

6. Large events can have small effects and small events can have large effects

7. Events emerge in surprising ways, spontaneously in the absence of a “controller”

8. Events display a complicated mix of ordered and disordered behaviour

9. It is an emotional Issue


Stories can help make our complex world more coherent.

CommunityMatters knows Harwood and Harwood knows what Matters for the Communities to Change

This blog post is going to take a closer look at the recently updated Organizational, Online and Technology Based Community Change Agencies wiki-bridge. Wiki-bridge pages address topics that cross over more than one area of concern. Change agent organizations for communities and change agent efforts by communities were seen as involving Governance and Place respectively.

Yet, despite the focus of this blog being paradigm changes by communities, little has been done directly on these pages dealing with any community change strategies. New means of community governance, different ways of looking at the local economy, inquiries into complexity, design thinking, systems thinking and democratic directed disruptive design have helped frame the issues but not anything on the actual means of change or the available resources that would help bring it about. How do you go about transforming something that has been in existence for decades, if not centuries and that is such a fundamental part of the fabric of our lives? Why is it that so often when we do try, we fail?

There has though been interaction outside of these pages with activity among different LinkedIn groups and the accumulation of a number of different organizations, the later of which have now been added to the Community Change Agencies Organizational, Online and Technology Based wiki-page. 

One of particular interest is the Harwood Institute introduced to members of the NCDD Linkedin Group by Sandy Heierbacher, the Director of the National Coalition for Dialogue & Deliberation (NCDD) to through a webinar that NCDD (wiki-page) hosted.

The webinar provides an overview of the Harwood Institute’s key framework for assisting in exploring the means and accelerating efforts to engage the community by ‘turning outwards’.

The approach Harwood Institute has developed in helping cities, organizations, and individuals speaks to the stages a community must go through before it is ready to be empowered based on community conversations, constant innovation, and nationwide research and is built on public aspirations to get things done for the common good.

The Harwood Institute's approach to change and community building is dependent upon "community rhythms" as President and Founder Rich Harwood explains in this video. 


A report (pdf) on the approach, Community Rhythms, Five Stages of Community Life, is available through NCDD.

Communities have rhythms to them that we must come to understand so that our approaches, programs and initiatives — and the building of public capital — work with those rhythms, take advantage of them, even accelerate them. This 1999 report from the Harwood Institute describes five stages of community life: The Waiting Place, Impasse, Catalytic, Growth, and Sustain and Renew. 

                                                                                                        Sandy Heierbacher 

The Waiting Place

In the Waiting Place, people in the community often hold a deep sense that things are not working right but cannot quite put their finger on exactly what it is or what to do about it; it is a kind of “felt unknown.” The situation has not reached an impasse, a breakpoint, at which people say, “enough is enough!”

Impasse

Here a community hits rock bottom. When you visit such a community, you can hear people saying such things as, “it can’t go on like this anymore,” or “enough is enough!” While in the Waiting Place there is a sense of simply “waiting”... in Impasse there is a noticeable sense of urgency in people’s voices. Things have crystallized for people and the need for action is clear. Often people are afraid that they are losing their future; they are tired of “waiting.”

Catalytic

During this stage, a small group of people and organizations emerge to take risks and experiment in ways that challenge existing norms of how the community works. In addition, people within their community begin to discover that they share common aspirations for their community and that they can, in small ways, start to make a difference.

Growth

Over the course of this stage, Centers of Strength will be expanding; networks growing and spreading; a sense of common purpose and direction taking deep root. People within the community now see clear and unmistakable signs of how the community is moving forward and can see and feel and experience much greater leadership at all levels of the community — from the official level, to neighborhoods, within civic organizations and non-profits.

Sustain and Renew

A community in the Sustain and Renew stage must find ways to bring along new Centers of Strength, new leaders and a new cadre of citizens to be the spark plugs. Without them, the community will stagnate and possibly enter a new stage of decline.

This is in contrast to “The Organization-First Approach” more likely to be adopted by intermediary civic organizations, including city halls, that by pulling inward toward their own organizational structure raise the danger of allowing programs and professionalization to crowd out the community. The report was developed by the Harwood Institute for the Kettering Foundation (which is featured in the Governance through Community wiki-page). The report, among a number of other key reports and books, is also available here.

The Harwood Institute also makes available for download a simple set of tools called “Harwood in a Half Hour” that can be used in working with a community to start to help shift the approach to community building. The LinkedIn Harwood Public Innovators Resource Group provides an opportunity for like minded individuals to share tips, tools and information on turning outward, all to help motivated individuals become Public Innovators.

The Harwood Institute has worked in economically distressed and struggling communities such as Newark, Detroit, and Flint, Michigan. They have enhanced their relevance and impact in the communities they serve by creating a group of “Beacon Communities” to develop a critical mass of public innovators and partnering with influential organizations like United Way Worldwide, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, and the American Library Association.

Last year, Rich Harwood, facilitated a series of meetings in the grieving city of Newtown, Connecticut to help decide what to do with Sandy Hook Elementary School, the site of the horrific mass murder of children and school personnel the previous December. The philosophy which guided the work in Newtown and brought about an emotional, yet harmonious, decision was based on a guiding principle, found in Rich Harwood’s latest book The Work of Hope, that fixing our politics shouldn’t be our top priority.  According to Rich Harwood, “The central task in our society is to restore belief in ourselves and one another that we can get things done, together.”

Another private organization taking a similar bottom-up, inside out approach to community building from perhaps a more technical perspective with its own take on Social Ecology through The Science of Community is the JKA Group, which also has its own LinkedIn group, Social Ecology: The Science of Community.  The concept of Social Ecology meshes with concepts introduced earlier in Seeing Economy and Community as Ecosystem Another Way of Shifting the Paradigm concerning rebuilding local economies,  So how do we start building Wise Economies?  Economies = Communities = Ecosystems.

Finally, at least for this post, is CommunityMatters, also with its own LinkedIn group has hosted a number of conference calls of interest to this effort.  One of the primary objectives of this effort was to gather resources to assist in the creation of new community paradigms and CommunityMatters offers a treasure chest full. More will be done on CommunityMatters in the future in exploring the partnerships they have formed, many of which are already featured in the New Community Paradigms wiki such as Project for Public Spaces, NCDD (National Coalition for Dialogue & Deliberation), Strong Towns, AmericaSpeaks, Everyday Democracy, Deliberative Democracy Consortium, and the Harwood Institute, other relevant organizations agencies such as Connecting Communities Learning Exchange, Orton Family Foundation, Grassroots Grantmakers, New America Foundation, The National Consortium for Creative Placemaking, Heart & Soul Community Planning, The Center for Communication and Civic Engagement, Harvard - ASH Center for Democratic Governance and Innovation and their Project on Social Innovation will also be explored and added in future posts.