Collective Impact Organizations and the Systems Thinking Iceberg

The previous blog post dealt with the last sector map of the final module of the Living Cities online Collective Impact course through the NCP Living Cities Collective Impact Kumu Project. This doesn’t mean that the process of exploration is anywhere near being done though. Only the surface of Collective Impact as a topic has been touched, including the ongoing work being done by Living Cities. Even the Collective Impact course itself has only been scratched making a good argument against the limit of a five week window though as Living Cities itself said:

This e-course is not intended to be the final word on community engagement in collective impact. Rather, it is a starting place for the conversation. We offer these curated resources as an introductory scan of the literature and a way for your collective impact initiative to begin developing strategies for partnering with community members more deeply.

This then brings up questions again about the relationship created between the Kumu maps graphically illustrating pathways of the territory of the Living Cities Collective Impact course. To what extent are these pathways accurate, realistic and true? The Kumu maps endeavor to follow the narrative trail told by the articles making up the course. There are a few additions and substitutions but the Collective Impact course as constructed by Living Cities is the primary source for the Kumu maps. 

The Kumu maps then are a diagramed form of change agency or community transformation process but can they provide meaningful information beyond the story structure? How meaningful from a systems perspective is the relationship between elements comprising the Kumu maps as defined or set by the Living Cities narrative? Are there important differences between those resources labeled additional and those more prominently featured?  

This NCP exploration could have taken a number of different pathways and this Kumu project is being designed to allow others to choose their own paths of exploration. The same must then be allowed for other narrative versions yet one should expect some logical, rational network of concepts to be created.

These questions become more apparent with the Kumu maps providing a perspective from a higher altitude of the original narrative. They become more important when moving beyond the Kumu Module and Sector maps to the creation of new maps designed to provide new insights. 

One such set of maps is the newly created Collective Impact Organizations. Three organizations which were chosen from among the five modules making up the course, the Harwood Institute, StriveTogether and the Our Work initiatives of Living Cities. Each organization's relationship with the overall Collective Impact endeavor was revealed using all of the relevant Kumu mapped relationships of the Living Cities defined narrative.

Each organization though has a different relationship with the overall Collective Impact endeavor which means how it will be mapped will also be different. There is beyond each organization’s individual relationship a still greater systems relationship suggested among the three organizations mirroring the previously cited systems thinking iceberg model, in this instance from the Northwest Institute, which is composed of five levels of thinking going from Events at the surface and proceeding deeper to Pattern, Structure and Mental Model. It should be noted that the iceberg model can be meaningfully applied in both directions.

All of the cited organizations manifest at the Event Level.

The event level is the level at which we typically perceive the world—for instance, waking up one morning to find we have caught a cold. While problems observed at the event level can often be addressed with a simple readjustment, the iceberg model pushes us not to assume that every issue can be solved by simply treating the symptom or adjusting at the event level. 

None of the organizations are excluded from any of the other levels but each organization seems to naturally fit a certain level better based on the structure of their particular map.

Living Cities, particularly through its Integration Initiative, which on the Living Cities Our Work map appears as the central Our Work element, is seen working at the Pattern Level.

If we look just below the event level, we often notice patterns. Similar events have been taking place over time — we may have been catching more colds when we haven’t been resting enough. Observing patterns allows us to forecast and forestall events.

One could also notice better health from eating healthier. A Pattern Level can be seen as being necessary for Living Cities to coordinate the ten different initiatives through the different but interrelated campaigns it is undertaking. The Living Cities Our Work elements are connected and deeply integrated into a larger overall structure.

StrivingTogether can seen as working at the Structure Level.  

Below the pattern level lies the structure level. When we ask, “What is causing the pattern we are observing?” the answer is usually some kind of structure. 

In this particular case relevant structures can include:

1. Organizations — like corporations, governments, and schools.

2. Policies — like laws, regulations, and tax structures.

3. Ritual — habitual behaviors so ingrained that they are not conscious.

The organization StrivingTogether can be seen as being directly connected with the central theme elements of a variety of sector maps taken from the different module maps. It is involved in a wide variety of aspects making up the Collective Impact endeavor. It is related to a question of how with the Recapturing Spirit of Engagement Sector Map of Module 1. The related Feedback Culture Sector Map would be particularly important in discovering and establishing the improved patterns the Living Cities works to embed in initiatives mentioned above.

The Harwood Institute is seen as working at a Mental Model Level.

Mental models are the attitudes, beliefs, morals, expectations, and values that allow structures to continue functioning as they are. These are the beliefs that we often learn subconsciously from our society or family and are likely unaware of. 

When the various elements related to the Harwood Institute are collected from the different module maps, the resulting Harwood Institute organization map has the sense of being more self-contained, defined by its own philosophies, processes and products. 

The Harwood Institute organization map is not integrated with the other sector and module maps to the degree as are the organization StrivingTogether map and the Living Cities Our Work map as the type of relationship is not maintained moving to the next degree. 

(The following map links were reached by first pressing ctrl and selecting the appropriate “As part of” link in the narrative section) It plays a significant role as a sector map in Module 1. It is related to other elements of the Collective Impact endeavor by informing them and providing, especially through its Community Rhythms Toolkit , a why as in Why Involve Community Members from Module 1. 

It is, however, only one of four approaches seen as being needed to work with community and is one of seven organizations working through four different initiatives to directly amplify community voices which for these on-the-ground efforts is seen as being at a bridge between Module 1 and Module 2.

It is seen as being part of a potential Design for Community Engagement which is created through the juncture of the Harwood Institute  & Collective Impact Sector Map and Continuum of Engagement Goals Sector Map by Its about Community and especially Designing Public Participation Processes found under Additional Resources.  This could then be developed further with the Designing Public Participation Processes Map and Public Participation Designed for Entrenched Incumbents Map. What can then be asked now is the importance of the IAP2 and Tamarack Promise as part of a mental model in developing a continuum of community engagement in a community-based Collective Impact effort?  

Exploring Collective Impact - Community Matters - A Lot

The last blog post, Beginning an Exploration of Collective Impact, began as the title implies, an exploration of the Living Cities' free 5-week e-course on Collective Impact initiatives, and the forum around which they are organized, for including and working with members of the community. This post continues using the Kumu map Living Cities Collective Impact for navigation, expanding on and clarifying that exploration and discovering different ways that it can be connected with what has previously been documented on these pages in discovering New Community Paradigms. 

We can venture back to Week 1: Why Involve Community Members in Collective Impact and the related Living Cities blog post, Why Involve Community in Collective Impact At All?, which leads back to what was discussed in the previous post. Before extending further though we can take another couple of excursions off the directed path, this time to look more closely into the Community Rhythms Toolkit of the Harwood Institute. The Harwood Institute has been featured on these pages before in CommunityMatters knows Harwood and Harwood knows what Matters for the Communities to Change, which is included in the Organizational, Online and Technology Based part of Community Change Agencies wiki-bridge page.

Perhaps more salient information is available in the articles provided by the course, such as found at Roundtable on Community Engagement and Collective Impact, here as related the Stanford Social Innovation Review article. Of particular interest is the quote from the article by Paul Born, president and cofounder of the Tamarack Institute:

In the early days of a collective impact approach, we often find that one of two mistakes is made. One is that we gather only the grasstops. That is, we think somehow it’s about shifting power. So we bring the powerful players into the room. The other mistake, almost as common, is that we don’t engage any of the power players because we’re afraid that it will be perceived as a grasstops initiative.

As Richard Harwood, founder and president of the Harwood Institute for Public Innovation, observed:

We say we want to put community in collective impact, but we don’t do it. That may be because we are afraid, we don’t want to lose control, or we don’t want to create certain risks, but there are two results. One is that we increase the likelihood that our collective impact will not succeed because there won’t be true community ownership and we won’t be able to mobilize the energies and the public will of our large communities. The other is that we will miss an opportunity.

The Harwood Institute establishes a set of prerequisite conditions through the concept of Community Rhythms: The Five Stages of Community Life, explained here  as a guest blog post, and in more detail through the Harwood Institute Report, Putting Community into Collective Impact. 

We can also take a closer look at the Problem with Community Outreach, through the related Collective Impact Forum blog post, expanded to include the other three posts making up the series Collective Impact in Neighborhood Revitalization. 

Going back then to the Kumu map that displays the tension of choice between Produces Desired Goods and Necessary Functions, as an outcome of institutional government activities, and the challenges in endeavoring to attain a democratic ideal of keeping Citizens at the Heart of the political process, it could be argued that instead of focusing on the establishment of deliberative democracy with citizens at the heart of the process being the goal, that as a third party, non-governmental entity, Living Cities is focusing on necessary production of goods and functions of the community as the goal and is asserting that the involvement of the community is not only beneficial but essential in achieving that goal. The question is how and by what means involved? Our current systems of institutional government over communities, particularly by those seen as being entrenched, often fail in this aspect.

New Community Paradigms has constantly argued for a greater reliance upon direct democratic deliberation in community governance, particularly through the post Of, For, By the People and now Through the People - Community Governance Revisited.

One specific tool of community engagement cited in the IAP2 Public Participation Spectrum is the concept of Deliberative Polling®. The concept of Deliberative Polling® was developed by the Center for Deliberative Democracy  at Stanford University and was featured in the blog post Using Online Communities to encourage Direct Democracy for On-The-Ground Communities as one of this blog’s first explorations of Deliberative Democracy. This was incorporated, along with similar efforts, into the  People’s Governance in California wiki-page. Entrenched government institutions invariably fail with this aspect as well.

New Community Paradigms is seeking empowerment of community members from the bottom up through deliberative democracy, scaffolded by systems thinking, and other means.  Concerns were therefore expressed regarding the concepts of Increasing Levels of Engagement, between grassroots and grass tops, defined by Living Cities as contrasted with that of Tamarack and the IAP2, as something seemed to be lost in translation. This was mitigated to some extent though through the insights of Max Hardy’s article “How Not to Use the IAP2 Spectrum in Engagement” and the Tamarack report,“Our Growing Understanding of Community Engagement.  

New Community Paradigms or NCP also does not envision ever attaining 100% empowerment, engagement or even participation by all community members. This was acknowledged in the blog post, From Community Attachment to Community Empowerment which discussed the potential relationship created by incorporating the concept of Community Attachment into Sherry Arnstein’s Ladder (as defined here by the Citizens Handbook), a recognized basis for the IAP2 Public Participation Spectrum. NCP borrowed the term Community Attachment from the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation and Gallup ‘Soul of a Community’ project.

“The fact that people are not showing up to community meetings does not mean that they are not attached to their community. This also means that the actions of any form of community governance, whether through the status quo of city council government or the establishment of direct democratic deliberation through New Community Paradigms, is usually not the primary reason why people are attached to their community.” 

This raises, through a related blog post, another connection of the six degrees of separation type through Della Rucker, Principal of the Wise Economy Workshop. The New Community Paradigms connection in this case was through Looking for Non-Experts to Create New Community Innovations then Make sure They are Disruptive. Della Rucker, more importantly is also EngagingCities’ Managing Editor and had interviewed Ben Hecht, President and CEO of Living Cities, in July of 2013, on civic tech's potential impact on low income populations in the blog post, Transforming Community Systems Through Partners and Tech: Living Cities charts the way forward | EngagingCities.

The NCP blog post before this one also asserted that similarities existed between the Living Cities’ approach and some examples of systems thinking approaches that were featured in System Thinking - Concrete Wants vs Complex Realities as part of the Systems Thinking Certification process. It has to be admitted though that the similarities were seen only from this side and raising them so soon likely goes against the basic rules on how to break the first rule of systems thinking. There isn’t any explicit mention of systems thinking resources until the last module. That resource is the article “Leverage Points: Places to Intervene in a System,” by Donella Meadows which described a hierarchical structure of interventions to alter the way systems work. As pointed out in the Donella Meadows Institute post, Coming Back to Our Systems Roots, which tells of a move or return to “System Dynamics in Policy Design and Analysis”:

We live in a world of remarkable, adaptable, complex systems. They are inside of us and all around us, from the tiny system of a single cell to the vast systems of the world’s oceans and our global communications networks.

The problem with complex systems, though, is that it turns out we human beings are not much good at recognizing, understanding, or communicating them.

A connecting question then between these two perspectives may provide a better answer on How Can We Recapture the Spirit of Community Engagement that Built America?, which can then be expanded as being at the heart of the work making up the Living Cities' efforts.

NCP + VSI = A Potential Path for Meaningful Community Change

In recent posts, the need and development of Virtual Systemic Inquiry or VSI as a means of collaborative team effort has been made through participation in the STW/STiA Systems Thinking Certification course in developing Systems Thinking as a potential resource as part of a Community's Management and Technology.

The goal now is to extend the concept into a larger community context developing a flexible system that incorporates a broader-based Community VSI approach (Kumu map) integrating the concerns of on-the-ground, community-based groups and the community-at-large and begins the process of establishing new community paradigms.

The VSI concept has similarities to a program featured back in 2009 through a blog supporting the Millennium Development Goals. The ICCO, an interchurch organization for development cooperation working towards a world without poverty and injustice that allows people to live in dignity and well-being, had developed a similarly structured platform. The ICCO Alliance, its partners and sponsors were focusing on the ground efforts in aid relief, seeking to extend their reach and effectiveness by using Web 2.0 tools, do-gooders looking for help from the computer geeks. The result then was a platform named ComPart (Communications Partnership), since then they have opted for their own internal Portal with the needed features built in.

Back then this approach was in line with the more academic ideas behind concepts on the Integration of Collaborative Information Systems in Web 2.0 (pdf), but from a pragmatic field operative perspective, it was a matter of needing to communicate and collaborate with other aid organizations separated by continents. The inclusion of a VSI approach maintains the virtual component and adds a systemic inquiry component, potentially providing greater leverage for addressing wicked challenges. The expansion into a community setting puts the process into the hands of those most affected and closest to the problems.

Community-based VSI would promote extended engagement by the community to address seemingly intractable problems. As discussed in “Still Looking for Non-Experts to Create New Community Innovations? Look outside City Hall", the ‘public’ or ‘community’ is not an extension of city hall or the studio audience for city council meetings. The public or the community is more properly classified under civil society which can be understood, as can community paradigms, as a set of community relations. This makes it a complex system as opposed to a more complicated one that could be successfully manipulated through management by a few at city hall.

The direction suggested by Della Rucker was to more fully utilize the community's resources. Della believes that “(We) have an enormous supply of non-experts who can, approach challenges with a clean lens, bringing together diverse experiences, knowledge and opportunities. We call them the Public. They know stuff. They’ve done stuff. ” This requires expanding beyond the usual cadre of public sector professionals and finding new avenues for people-powered innovation through the inclusion of whom Charles Leadbeater calls pro-amateurs into a process of Enabling Generative Interactions and Integrating Interactions as discussed in the last blog post.

There is a need then to connect to the community but at a deeper level. A metaphor that has been applied is endowing communities with a soul, undoubtedly a more abstract concept not captured by most standard government metrics. “Finding the soul of your community and the reason to create your own community paradigms”, one of the earlier posts for this blog, had not only a poetic perspective but an economic basis with a positive impact on the community.

It does not require top-down complicated oriented leadership from city hall to attach people to their community as was demonstrated by the study's focus on Long Beach, California which reflected that neither the economy nor the perception of local leadership was a key driver in attaching its residents to their community. Good economics and finance are essential to the sustainability of a city but they are not the soul of the community and do not make up all of that community's wealth. The objective then is to be more adept at capturing the community's insight, wisdom and wealth assisted through community-based VSI which could be a means of establishing new community paradigms.

As might be expected from the preambles of the New Community Paradigms wiki and blog, the establishment of such a New Community Paradigms VSI team would be designed to have access to online resources and advocacy communities, using those resources to write new rules for their community that are chosen directly by the community itself rather than imposed by entrenched institutions. The reality is that such a team has not as of yet come into existence. This effort started off as a set of conceptual inquiries examining a series of 'why not' propositions, basically subsumed under the question, "Why not a different form of community governance?" and so far has remained conceptual.

The proposed NCP/VSI team could be seen as an internally based community Virtual Systemic Inquiry team, made up of a certain number of diverse community members, who could be expanded upon to collaboratively incorporate others both inside and outside the community.

Community members could be part of the local NCP/VSI team and be connected to other local community groups, be working with outside advocacy organizations, having connections with or as an expert, either professional or pro-amateur, with an outside Virtual System Inquiry team serving as go-betweens between the outside VSI team and their own Community-Based NCP/VSI team (Kumu map).

These groups could also work with both a Systems Thinking Facilitator and with community government staff. The use of systems thinking with community governance would be a transformational process so the utilization of someone or some organization help guide that process until participants are more comfortable is seen as important. City staff would still be seen as responsible for assisting in realizing the goals established through community sponsored studies or strategic plans.

Another alternative means of integrated community interaction and establishing a framework for deliberative and participatory democracy was suggested by the World Future Society in an article Building and Connecting Communities, in their Futurist magazine, was a "Mobile Networked Governance for the Creative Molecular Economy, to serve as an avenue through which community building ideas, originating from the community”.

The blog post, The Problem with the Future is Getting There and It will need Disruptive Innovation, raised some philosophical issues with the overall article. Disagreement with an unstated or unexamined assumption that we will be able to passively transition from a materialistic economy into a transformational society as a matter of inevitable evolution rather than purposeful decisions and disagreement with putting the community into a passive role, either implicitly or indirectly by omission. New community paradigms does not presume to merely develop citizens into a “Future Forward Workforce” as if they were a passive commodity. Any redefinition of economic development through community building will have to involve the community, not as passive recipients but as active creators.

Predicting the future is hazardous enough, but claiming the future will be delivered gift-wrapped with a bow, no assembly needed or that it is a foregone conclusion, merely accept the new world order, calls for looking for alternatives to use in the creation of new paradigms for our communities. Systems thinking is one possible resource as systems thinking's primary purpose is to enhance understanding and connection, not prediction.

A process of Community Based Virtual Systemic Inquiry could be potentially seen as a catalyst for a community-based system of deliberative and participatory democracy facilitated by systems thinking. This will be discussed in more detail in the next post.

Better Deliberative and Participatory Democratic Community Based Governance through Systems Thinking

This blog post is on incorporating principles of systems thinking into a system of direct deliberative and participatory community based governance by using a systems thinking model, Participatory Democracy with Systems Thinking.  The concept of deliberative and participatory community based governance was first discussed in the early stages of this effort with Using Online Communities to encourage Direct Democracy for On-The-Ground Communities and was related with resources found under the People’s Governance in California and Community Governance wiki-pages.

Systems thinking has also been previously discussed.  Resources gathered and organized so far and related blog posts can be found under the Systems Thinking Approaches wiki-page.  However, until the blog post before this one, those blog posts had been about system thinking working within various areas of concern related to new community paradigms with a vantage point looking from the outside in.  This post and the one before it are the first time using system thinking means of conveying concepts through system thinking models. The last post focused more on factors regarding the mechanisms of systems thinking. This post will expand upon that to include direct deliberative and participatory community based governance. 

The last post dealt with a systems thinking model developed by Gene Bellinger. Gene runs the (STiA) Systems Thinking in Action LinkedIn group, and a host of other systems thinking learning resources on the Internet including STiA Brain and Systems Thinking in Action Wiki. Gene used Insightmaker.com to make a systems thinking (ST) model that told a story by unfolding the presentation of elements and links making up the system under consideration.  This particular ST model dealt with factors that would likely encourage groups or organizations to use and continue using systems thinking principles.  From a systems thinking perspective, few people could make a better argument for this than Gene.

Any model not made private in Insightmaker.com can be ‘cloned’ or copied, so I cloned Gene’s model and renamed it, A 'Better World' thru Systems Thinking, other than that, I made no other changes.  Gene had used his model in an online community discussion regarding the future of the now Systems Thinking in Action LinkedIn group, so it was designed to have a relevant impact upon the nature of the group.

My purpose in cloning the model was to demonstrate how systems thinking could be used by a group as a means of collaborative communication, particularly in comparison with written means such as blog posts.  The last blog post provided ‘a build a watch to tell the time’ explanation of the A 'Better World' thru Systems Thinking model. This was, of course, redundant but it made explicit how the story could be presented by the model unfolding. It also made the point that writing as opposed to the ST model was far less efficient in conveying the information.

The Participatory Democracy with Systems Thinking model is going to be allowed to speak more for itself.  It works in the same manner as the previous model.  Clicking the [Step Forward] button at the bottom right hand corner of the model’s page moves the ‘story’ one step forward revealing elements and links, developing their relationship. Relevant information is provided at the bottom bar of the model with each step. Additional information can be found in each element (or in each link), by placing the mouse over the element and clicking on the ‘i’ icon that is revealed. The model will demonstrate the potential relationship between systems thinking and direct deliberative participatory democracy. This blog post will deal more directly with pertinent aspects of the model itself. 

I will describe some of the differences between the two models. When you open up the Participatory Democracy with Systems Thinking model, the embedded A 'Better World' thru Systems Thinking is already on the page in a dimmed state. I kept the A 'Better World' thru Systems Thinking model almost unchanged, wanting to show how it is possible to build upon models to develop and expand upon ideas. 

Instead of starting with ‘A Better World’ as the end goal, the new model starts with ‘Civic Community’, which is quickly explained to be made up of various community and civic groups.  A more relevant point is that the system is then bifurcated into two separate dynamic subsystems, direct deliberative participatory democracy and systems thinking. 

This bifurcation is made readily apparent with this latest ST model, whereas with the A 'Better World' thru Systems Thinking model, the group dynamics were somewhat more subsumed under the development of the systems thinking process. Another change made in the more current model is that links are labeled.  This allows you to more precisely define the relationship between the elements. The label ‘adopts' was chosen because the principles defining direct deliberative participatory democracy and the principles defining systems thinking would in turn be used in defining the community, as a system, from that point on. Another change with the links is that some are made bi-directional with the premise being that the influence or affect can go both ways. 

The elements and links of the A 'Better World' thru Systems Thinking were maintained, but reformatted so that the participatory democracy elements are gathered in the top right hand corner of the new model and the systems thinking elements are gathered in the bottom left hand corner. Most of the new links for the Participatory Democracy with Systems Thinking model are purple or violet (depending upon how big your crayon box was when you were young). The A 'Better World' thru Systems Thinking model links are blue, making it easy to determine where the two models interact. Based on the design decision to keep the original model and work around it, the unfolding of the A 'Better World' thru Systems Thinking component of the current model is for the most part in reverse order.  

The new model also introduces two new re-enforcing loops similar to those found in the previous model.  Under the new model, each R loop is provided a title, as proposed in the last blog post, under the ‘i’ icon. R5, Deliberative Democratic Dialogue defines the relationship with the group dynamics of the A 'Better World' thru Systems Thinking model. R6, Creating Proto-type ST models, introduces an additional component of systematic intervention with the community group and other staff, based hypothetically on design thinking concepts. (The differences between design thinking and systems thinking and how they can be related needs to be explored more in the future.)

One change made from the A 'Better World' thru Systems Thinking model is that the Discussion Perceived Meaningfulness was renamed Discussion Perceived and Defined Meaningfulness. As is explained in the related ‘i’ icon for the element, “‘Defined’ meaningfulness is added as good or bad the decisions will define and provide meaning for the community. BD” The element Discussion Perceived and Defined Meaningfulness is in the center of the new model with multiple links connecting to it.

A new element is also included, by repurposing a variable ‘primitive’. Under Insightmaker.com, primitives are the various text boxes, pictures, stocks, links, flows and variables that can be used in making up the models. The variable primitive is usually used to set a value for something defined numerically or mathematically, such as the interest rate on money in a bank. I wanted to convey values in a different manner and differentiate it from the other elements in the model.  In this case the focus is on the possible values created by the system.  This hierarchy is admittedly hypothetical at this point.

“Decisions or outcomes between competing proposals are endeavored to be reached through a collaborative process that may or may not work. This means that such decisions could reach a level of: 1. Synthesis, 2. Collaboration, 3. Compromise, 4. Prioritization, 5. Competitive Selection.”

A third new re-enforcing loop, R7 Enhancement of Systems Thinking, is revealed, delineated by green links.  The model finishes off asserting that, ‘A Better World’ helps to create ‘A Better Community’. 

The Participatory Democracy with Systems Thinking model is a simple, even simplistic model. It only provides positively re-enforcing loops. It could perhaps be demonstrated more openly that a balancing loop is inherent within the system between systems thinking and deliberative democracy, with each one influencing the other to be maintained within certain parameters.  There are no negatively re-enforcing loops. One could imagine an element being included within the deliberative and participatory democracy subsystem being made up of a small group of individuals allowed to dictate the outcomes of the larger group.  Using A Ladder of Citizen Participation by Sherry R. Arnstein as a metric, those factors at the bottom of the ladder of engagement would be apparent if the group excessively limited the engagement of the larger community, and at the top if the group was exceedingly open and transparent or perhaps even not in existence. The same could happen with the systems thinking subsystem with a manager that only selected certain projects that specifically benefited those in the selected group and in turn helped guarantee continued employment. Taken together, these two elements could create an ‘entrenched’ government institution within the community that could continue under a facade of democratic protocols despite not truly adhering to democratic principles. It doesn’t demonstrate how two or more proposed alternative interventions might work through the entire model.

If you wish to learn about systems thinking in more detail, I am again going to recommend the book Beyond Connecting the Dots Modeling for Meaningful Results, Copyright © 2013 Scott Fortmann-Roe and Gene Bellinger featured in the right hand column of this blog.

Entrenched City Halls Defined then Disrupted

In the last blog post, the idea of combining disruption and innovation was suggested as a strategy for implementing New Community Paradigms in communities in which politically controlled bureaucratic government institutions are entrenched.

This post will provide clarification as to what is meant by an entrenched city hall or a politically controlled bureaucratic government institution that is no longer serving the community by reviewing past arguments made over the course of this effort.

The potential push for disruption against an arguably entrenched city hall is based first on the philosophical premise that the democratic basis for the power of governance is based not on the authority of government institutions but on civil society.

The idea of ‘entrenched city hall’ started taking form back in 2011 with Why is this so hard? It's complicated and it's complex but that's OK which promoted the idea of a community creating its own community paradigms despite the complexity of doing so.

There has been an unstated assumption throughout the posts of this blog that ‘City Hall’ has failed to adequately address the need for an economically and environmentally sustainable and livable community. That is obviously not going to be true for all cities and the degree to which it is will be different from city to city. In some cases, the effort will find a willing partner and the collaboration will create a new more expansive form of community governance. In other cases, there will be pushback from the incumbent institutional government. The key issue is whether City Hall truly represents the community as a whole or only special interests or privileged key community members. If it is later, then there are pathways that can be taken to weaken and subsequently disrupt that control in a sustained and innovative manner.

For this to happen requires greater Community Governance - Third Path to City Government, a move away from current entrenched forms of closed city government to more open forms of community-based governance. It also requires recognizing, as did Governance by the Community or Not - Getting with or past City Hall that:

There is a difference though between governance and government. New community paradigms do not assume that people will take turns being the city planner or a city council member for a day. It does work under the premise that the relationships with community leaders and city employees (maybe better would be community-based employees) need to change and become different. How community needs are met and community standards enforced would also likely be different. How to make this work is another challenge for new community paradigms.

The idea is that the community itself makes more of the decisions directly through some system of direct deliberative democracy or a hybrid with the current system rather than indirectly through a mayor and city council system. Support for such an approach will be considered in greater detail in the future but for now, the focus for this post is on the factors involved when Community Governance Takes On City Hall in determining the balance of influence between political leaders, public sector and the community at large. 

The standard argument is the degree to which the process of running communities should be by politicians or by the public sector. This can, however, be a false choice as politicians and the public sector or bureaucrats often come together in a disjointed form of control in which city council members use their political power to force short-term decisions that make poor long-term sense for the community and city management works to protect the political self-interests of the city council members. Even when this is not overtly excessive, it can still significantly define the culture of city hall.

Each component ends up working to support the dysfunction of the other to maintain its own survival and the entire system becomes more closed. This does not always happen, perhaps not even as often or as significantly as my experience leads me to believe but when it does, it creates a culture of entrenched institutional government control and despite appearances to the contrary discourages community participation. 

The second problem with the standard approach to institutionalized community government is that it can discourage ongoing community participation in city government as A Ladder of Citizen Participation by Sherry R. Arnstein explains.

The usual claims that change can come about through elections every four years have little merit as there may be in reality minimal opportunities for true community participation between elections and elections are always under processes controlled by the status quo power culture. Not necessarily in mechanical terms of voter suppression or such but by the culture already instilled by the daily process of city hall control that results effectively in disenfranchisement. Worse, any successful election of a new slate of officials often times only changes the players, not the game. There may be superficial changes in policy when one political clique replaces another but it swings back a few years later and the deeper culture of the existing status quo power system stays in place.

Again, it should be stated that there is no claim that this situation applies to all cities or even in the fullest extent to a substantial number. It does happen though and one of the worst examples has been the City of Bell though on the positive side Bell can also be seen as An Example of Civic Renewal From Broken City.

The City of Bell was an example of what was the worst of local municipal governance with both politicians and top public sector management taking self-serving advantage of the community. Yet, how many California cities looked at the City of Bell with derision when the difference between Bell and those cities is not really one of kind but in truth only a matter of degree. Not that there is any claim that there are numerous city councils or administrations currently breaking the law. Rather, how many city halls adopted policies whether official or not that in the words of newly elected Bell City Council person Ana Maria Quintana, instituted a lack of inclusion by the public in decisions having an impact on the public, whether intentional or through negligence.

This argues that new alternative methods of community transformation need to be developed to change the balance of power in favor of a broad-based community vision and away from entrenched city hall bureaucratic politics when the supposedly democratic process has become corrupted not through blatant illegalities but through the small corruptions of a system turned to protecting itself at all costs and turning away from the real needs of the community.

It should be recognized though that arguing against the existing system is different from arguing for a system proposed to replace it. That will still continue to be needed to be done in future posts. There are though additional challenges beyond getting past an entrenched city hall.

This blog has advocated for ‘radical’ community engagement and through it the far greater inclusion of Non-Experts to Create New Community Innovations.

This has its own set of challenges:

This brings up the at first seemingly unattainable chasm created arguably as a symptom of the current system of local political and economic power. Most people are not involved enough in their communities to make the necessary changes. Many currently have zero involvement because they have been turned off by the current system of power which becomes all the more entrenched because people are not involved. This is a matter of learned helplessness which can be unlearned.

Others continue to try to make changes but are locked out by the current benefactors of politics occupying city hall which often has the appearance of a democratic system but the culture of entrenched power.

In future articles, it will be asserted that this is not as unattainable as may be seemingly apparent. While members of a community may have different degrees of involvement in their community, it is still possible to organize to generate the necessary community will for change.

Finally, many city halls constituted under the current form of local government structure are becoming increasingly unable to adequately address the ‘wicked problems’ facing our communities because it means adopting a complex approach to finding solutions as opposed to the more traditional, complicated, machine-based approach as was argued in Complexity as Cradle for Creativity and Innovation.

Public Sector organizations though, particularly at a local level, are often not able to do this as well. Instead, reacting to protect their status they end up imposing unseen additional layers of complicated or closed processes that are essentially subconscious from an organizational perspective that in time become culturally implicit. It is a means of maintaining power by becoming entrenched as a system both operationally and culturally. This is why so many local city halls or other public sector organizations prefer the more traditional organization as machine approach in which complexity is seen as chaos and why community engagement in some communities remains stuck at the bottom rungs of Arnstein’s Ladder.

From Community Attachment to Community Empowerment

Over the past few months the posts of this blog have dealt with various aspects of community engagement including, community governance as an arena for community engagement and Systems Thinking as a possible avenue for community engagement. What has not had enough attention is what is it that engages members of the community, not what can be done to get them engaged but how engaged do they get and why?

It could be easily argued that what we have now under our current system of incumbent, often politically entrenched, governmental institutions is not working and actually actively discourages, albeit covertly, community engagement. This means ignoring apologetic protestations about having elections every four years and noticed public hearings being the necessary limits of democratic integration by the community. Further, history would also argue that working in direct opposition to such politically entrenched government institutions at its own game seldom works.

New Community Paradigms would therefore have to set up a new system of community engagement to work within its new perspectives regarding community governance. This means recognizing that people have different motivations for being engaged and will be engaged at different levels of interaction.

New Community Paradigms has been arguing for a greater reliance upon direct democratic deliberation in community governance in the post Of, For, By the People and now Through the People. Community Governance Revisited for example. This does not require that 100% of a community population be 100% involved with 100% of the community decisions that must be made as a function of a community working as a corporate body or city. The current system of politically geared representative democracy, even during the few weeks of an election, does not reach anything near this level of interaction. 

It would require a means of assimilating desired community changes on a continual basis while at the same time creating enough community cohesion that there wasn’t a constant state of disruption or upheaval. Such a system of community governance would have to create enough general agreement to be able to implement programs and projects sought by the community and see them to completion over an extended period, often a period that exceeds that of most political terms of office. 

We already have a scale for the greater degrees or levels of community engagement that being the Ladder of Citizen Participation (Sherry R. Arnstein) to attain greater Citizen Control as discussed in the past post, Looking for Non-Experts to Create New Community Innovations then Make sure They are Disruptive. Arnstein’s Citizen Control would equate to the New Community Paradigm’s idea of community empowerment. The Arnstein levels of Partnership and Delegated Power on the Citizen Participation Ladder would be encompassed by the community engagement level of New Community Paradigms.

The New Community Paradigm idea of community participation diverges from Arnstein because it portrays engagement that is no longer based on direct interaction with civic institutions but involvement with the overall community through those civic institutions. These type of activities would include participating in the community’s 4th of July activities, annual community clean up programs and other activities that are outside the power structure of city hall and more based on neighbor to neighbor avenues of assistance. They may be included on Arnstein’s Ladder at the levels of Therapy to Placation and are more prone to the abuse of Manipulation but they are also more firmly established in the concept of civil society.

We also have a step outside of the lower end of a community engagement scale. One that moves below the level of active community involvement, if only at a minimal level, to simple attachment to the community.

This idea of community attachment was introduced early on in this endeavor back in October of 2011. This sense of attachment, however, can go as deep as other forms of engagement and has been portrayed as being the ‘Soul of a Community’. It arose as a means of finding the soul of your community and the reason to create your own community paradigms accompanying early explorations of Places or Placemaking.

Through the efforts of the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation and Gallup after:

Three years and close to 43,000 interviews later with people in 26 communities, the study found three main qualities responsible for attaching people to place:

• Social offerings, such as entertainment venues and places to meet, 
• Openness (how welcoming a place is) and 
• Area’s aesthetics (its physical beauty and green spaces)

The fact that people are not showing up to community meetings does not mean that they are not attached to their community. This also means that the actions of any form of community governance, whether through the status quo of city council government or the establishment of direct democratic deliberation through New Community Paradigms, is usually not the primary reason why people are attached to their community.

This coupled with an appreciation of the role of civil society in establishing the legitimacy of governance should provide a basis of humility in efforts to establish New Community Paradigms.

The idea of community attachment without community engagement means that any governing body might find itself unknowingly (or knowingly) misinterpreting the will of the community as a whole resulting in a loss of attachment and thereby a loss of community members who move out over time leaving those behind in a downward circle of community decay.

Community attachment, even if it is outside the desired levels of community engagement, can be understood as a force or factor for community cohesion. This is true even when significant portions of a community does not acknowledge even the best intentioned efforts at community governance.

Under New Community Paradigms recognizing the role of community attachment provides the ability to see the community in a more holistic manner, particularly with economic factors and economic development. It is those who are attached to the community that will make up the majority of those providing the workforce to businesses and customers to merchants.

The idea of community attachment coupled with Placemaking encourages the community’s form of governance to go beyond focusing on revenue creation for the civic governmental entity’s utilization to the overall economic enhancement of the community as a whole.

Including community attachment as part of the spectrum of community engagement moving along from community attachment to community participation to community engagement and finally to community empowerment also provides an explicit avenue for greater engagement by the members of the community thereby strengthening the establishment of New Community Paradigms.

What is needed is the means to implement a community based system of community governance and expand it to making it function in a viable manner through new technology and concepts in change management and community leadership but that is likely to require first disrupting the current forms of civic institutions of governance.