Imagine leaving a meeting feeling naturally inspired, energized by new ideas, with enhanced goodwill toward your colleagues, and a shared sense of alignment and clarity for where to go next. In a highly-functioning group, ideas and experiences cross-pollinate, perspectives broaden, assumptions shift, and something new emerges that no one could have discovered alone. Sadly, many people spend a lot of time in meetings, which are boring, routine, frustrating, and do not access the ideas and perspectives of every one in the room.
Here are some of the needs I often hear expressed by people in organizations and those working on positive social change:
Our work is to ‘siloed’ – people are not aware of what others are doing.
Insights or lessons learned are not well communicated so others make the same mistakes or reinvent the wheel
We spent all this time to come up with a plan and now that we are rolling it out, people are resisting and objecting to it – we need better messaging.
How do we convince people to act? To change? To adopt our goals?
In a world of pressing demands and complex challenges, where people want to have impact, take action, and get outcomes, what gets overlooked is the process of how we get there. The how is all about how people are engaged, brought together in meetings, and how they participate, learn, and think and work together. As Atul Guwande, a surgeon and writer says, “Human interaction is the key force in overcoming resistance and speeding change.”
In over 25 years of work in organizations and collaborative initiatives focused on environmental and social change, I have come to realize that meetings hold more potential than we typically access. I have been blessed to discover some great teachers and had the opportunity to learn, experience and practice new ways of working and organizing meetings to achieve multiple benefits (see end of this blog for credits.) We can design meetings to do more.
Design starts with intent, which means becoming aware of the world view and assumptions that inform our choices. I’ve always been inspired by how one quote or question can shed light on and shift my assumptions and intentions. Here I’d like to share the quotes that inspire how I design meetings:
“Are you lighting a candle or filling a bucket?”
There is a tendency to highly script every minute and fill a meeting or workshop with speakers and presentations, squeezing in a bit of Q&A with the participants. If our aim is to spark people’s motivation, willingness to engage and take action, getting the balance right of presentations with conversation is key.
“It’s a far superior strategy to get all the minds working on what needs to change, rather than to convince each person to do what we think is best.” -Fran Peavey
Inviting a group to consider well-framed strategic questions is a great the way to get all minds working on what needs to change. This engagement, when well designed, is what leads to better thinking overall and an experience of participation and contribution. When people help shape a strategy or plan, there is less need for “messaging” and convincing.
“Nothing about us without us.”
This slogan from South African disability activists is a good reminder to have people in the conversation who are closest to the situations being discussed. Aryanna Pressley, who is the running for Congress from Massachusetts, said it well: “The people closest to the pain should be closest to the power.”
“If I had an hour to solve a problem and my life depended on the solution, I would spend the first 55 minutes determining the proper question to ask, for once I know the proper question, I could solve the problem in less than five minutes.” - Albert Einstein
An effective practice for meeting design is to have a design team work ahead of time to consider and distill the most important relevant questions to be considered by the group. As this blog shares, this strategic clarity and investment before the meeting “sets the table” for productive conversations.
“Social learning networks enable better and faster knowledge feedback loops, essential for innovation and creativity…social learning is how we share implicit knowledge and get work done.” – Harold Jarche
Combining a good question with meeting methods that get people talking in small groups and then mixing and cross-pollinating those conversations enables us to access the ‘collective intelligence’ of a group. Methods such as World Café, 1-2-4-All, and Open Space allow many voices to be heard and inform the group’s understanding and development of consensus, as I have written about in other blogs.
On October 11th, I will be hosting a workshop called Designing Meetings that Do More, which will explore more of these ideas. Hope you will join us!
Credits go to (among others):
Art of Hosting, Liberating Structures, World Café, Fran Peavey and strategic questions, Tom Atlee and the Co-Intelligence Institute, Harold Jarche, Time to Think, National Council on Dialogue and Deliberation.
Trust is a core principle – in Chaos Theory, we’d call trust within human systems a powerful ‘Strange Attractor.’ [ap_spacing spacing_height="15px"]
The purpose of a Change Network is to amplify the flow of knowledge, information, resources, skills, and assets throughout all parts of the network – especially to where they can do the most good. To put everything we can contribute, collectively, into the shifts we’re trying to make – so that change is faster, more meaningful & relevant, and spreads further.
And as one who struggles greatly with trust – it’s glaringly obvious – without trust, nothing significant moves. It’s that simple, and abundantly clear.
But whenever the word comes up in community-work, I cringe a little. Especially in groups with different cultures and privilege gaps. Because what, really, are people espousing?
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What do we mean when we say ‘trust’?
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What IS it we’re trying to create together? And who gets to decide?
"'We must trust each other for this to work' is a dangerous statement. Dangerous because it too often implies that trust is easily or instantly developed. Actually, we have little awareness of how authentic trust is built."
In fact, I’m a little afraid of saying what comes next – so this constitutes a small act of trust that I’ll be forgiven for writing what can’t help but come across as snarky, judgmental, condescending – tho it’s meant more as a contribution – some clues about where to start when things aren’t moving along as hoped-for.
But in my mostly-white, well-educated, middle-class, do-gooder, some-brand-of-spiritual, conflict-averse, organizational-consultant-filled ‘Minnesota nice’ universe, I often feel like the operating definition of trust is stiflingly narrow, superficial, insensitive and – ultimately dominating and destructive. I trust that’s no-one’s intention, but intentions are rarely enough.
I’ve often felt like I’m being told or seen others being told: ‘never challenge me’, ‘never create a conflict I have to sit in the middle of’ and ‘never do anything I wouldn’t do, because that frightens me.’
In other words – Trust as ‘no overt challenge to anyone’s (especially the speaker’s) cherished beliefs & behaviors.’ (or even, ‘trust’ as the tool for shutting out what anyone who is different is trying to contribute, ‘trust’ as the reframing of ‘intended contribution’ to ‘attack’). The rare exceptions make the norm more glaring.
I’m exaggerating (just a little ) and maybe it’s just my own trust issues filter, but what I often hear when the topic of trust comes up – is ‘YOU need to trust ME (precisely as I am behaving in this moment, even if it’s not what you find trust-worthy, and without discussion of said behavior). Or else it’s ‘I CANNOT trust YOU unless YOU be different than you are (and don’t bother explaining or clarifying yourself, because my mild manner proves my rightness & you are broken, crazy, mean, not spiritual enough’).
I almost never hear ‘How can I earn YOUR trust?’ or ‘How are MY social norms excluding, devaluing, controlling YOU?’ I never hear ‘I DON’T KNOW HOW to trust what’s going on, but I don’t want to shut it down – I want help understanding it so I can learn to react to this sort of situation differently.” (all of these, I notice, require real vulnerability. . . )
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Presuming upon trust is hazardous
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My own (admittedly still sometimes hyper-vigilant) gut often says ‘in this context Trust means ‘don’t push members of the dominant culture out of their comfort zones’.
The dominants are usually the only ones who feel safe enough to express when & what they don’t trust. For everyone else, just showing up as ‘different’ is uncomfortable enough. Expressing mistrust of dominant norms – I can attest – is hazardous – and that perceived call to safeguard privileged comfort zones just pushes the mistrust further below the surface – making it that much harder to correlate with more mundane problems and that much harder to heal.
As a person who grew up in poverty & chaos – expecting to trust, deep down, still feels like a privilege & a luxury to me. I envy (and occasionally resent) people with stable lives, trustworthy families & trustworthy friends – people who feel safe in community & actually believe others will support them when needed. They have a beautiful Ease the rest of us lack. My years of working on my own trust-worthiness and trust issues has taught me to recognize both the presence and the absence of that Ease in others. And to mourn the amount of time I’ve engaged in the world without it.
To me, trust is rare, super-hard-won and precious, whether I’m earning it or bestowing it. A most fragile gift we are lucky to share (though luck has nothing to do with it).
Trust is not something we can demand from one another. It’s not something we can decide to feel because it’s expected of us. We can TRY to feel it, we can PRETEND that we feel it – and what a mess THAT creates!!
Trust is also absolutely NOT an effective tool for controlling others, or for keeping ourselves safe. But, too often, that seems either it’s unconscious purpose or it’s unintended consequence.
Because of the rarity of trust in my own life (in both directions, I freely admit), I may know some things about trust that those who take it for granted can’t know. It’s a reality I’ve had to study, struggle with, learn to apprehend & to value. Which is why I can say, with conviction – that beautiful Ease people have when they trust, not only is it palpable & lovely – it makes all sorts of magic possible.
I’ve lived in enough of both trust & not-trust to know this – trust is what makes transformation possible. It helps things fall into place. It creates a flow of value and met-needs so much greater than anything we can create without it.
But within a broader culture of separation & domination & exploitation – trust is hard to muster, it takes work.
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Approaching trust with humility
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So when we’re aiming to build change networks, I think we’d all benefit from a far more patient & nuanced understanding of Trust. As something emergent, not manufactured. And understanding that especially, especially, especially when we belong to the dominant culture of any given context, or wherever we have rank or privilege, there are more layers to it than we can perceive on our own.
Let’s learn – from scratch and not from what we were raised with – how to earn it from one another and/or how to give it to one another- knowing there is no direct path or single route, that for every small group and ‘two-sie’ it’s different, and that, especially for those who have historically been excluded, it’s asking a lot).
Let’s learn to recognize its presence, and not accidentally spoil the trust we’ve been given.
Let’s also learn to recognize the lack of trust and to honor its absence – because that lack comes from real stuff. We can’t pooh-poo away mistrust with platitudes & empty promises, and until we can see where Trust isn’t, we can’t begin to revive it.
Of course, there are more elements to network weaving and more elements to social change. But when we lose track of or trivialize this foundation, all those other elements are going to be less effective.
[ap_spacing spacing_height="25px"]Trust makes it’s own, often uncomfortable, demands
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This post was meant to be a single brief paragraph introducing some thoughts on kinds of trust that we can learn to work on. I guess my own trust issues needed to be heard from before they were ready to let me be more pragmatic.
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Originally Published by Christine Capra on October 12, 2015 at GreaterthantheSum.com
Trust in networks is different than trust in organizations or coalitions where it is essential to spend time building trust among everyone because the relationships are likely to be long-term.
However, networks often have hundreds or even thousands of participants and it is not possible for everyone to know everyone else in the network, let alone have the time to build deep relationships. People in self-organizing networks are often involved in a number of collaborative projects at any one time, but these projects are often of short duration with little time to build deep trust, and after the end of the project they may not work with those individuals again.
For this reason, people in networks need to learn how to build swift trust. Swift trust, explored by Debra Meyerson and colleagues, means that the participants of a collaborative project interact as if trust were present.
Several things make establishing swift trust easier. First, when a few of the collaborators have had previous experience working together, they can set the tone or standard of trustworthiness that others buy into. For example, they can model openness, appreciation and other qualities that help everyone be more trustworthy.
Another key to swift trust is the communications ecosystem and values. By agreeing to be transparent and make all their work easy to observe and be accessed by others, it’s easy for all participants to see that others are doing the work they said they would do. That’s why it’s so important to use tools like google docs and set up task and timeline spreadsheets, a place for meeting notes and a budget and expense spreadsheet. Slack is another tool that helps people see what others are doing.
Another essential ingredient of swift trust is taking time to clarify roles in the project based on specific expertise. For example, I am in a collaborative project where one person is responsible for developing content, another for the tech aspects of the virtual sessions, and other for the communications. This doesn’t mean that each person does all the work in their area - in fact, we often work together on content - but one person is responsible for moving that part forward. The clearer the roles are to everyone, the less conflict is likely to occur.
As in any situation, it’s always important to take time to help people know each other: even if the group is working virtually, it’s easy to set up breakout rooms in zoom.us where smaller groups or dyads can share about themselves. If the project has a convener, it’s helpful for them to state values such as “We are all unique, and each of us has quirks or things about ourselves that can affect our work. For example, one person has a child with a chronic illness; another person may be very introverted. We need to get to know people so that we know about these things and realize the parent may be called away from work to care for the child and we need to make sure the introverted person has space to talk.”
Having skills in dealing with a person when they do not do what they have agreed to do is essential. People quickly become more reliable if small infractions are dealt with immediately and directly (often through a one on one conversation).
If someone proves to be difficult to work with or untrustworthy, they will find that they are not included in future network collaborations. This is a powerful incentive for most people to contribute as positively as they can. Word of mouth that occurs in the network means that effective contributors will find they are frequently sought after for projects.
Undergirding swift trust is a set of network values and understandings - things such as openness, transparency, acceptance of difference.Network weavers can help ensure that most network participants are aware of these values.
On Friday we will offer a free Trust Assessment that network weavers can use to increase network participants awareness of these critical elements of trust. [ap_spacing spacing_height="30px"]
“Relationship is the fundamental truth of this world of appearance,”
– Tagore[ap_spacing spacing_height="10px"]
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Over the past several years of supporting networks for social change, we at IISC have been constantly evolving our understanding of what is new and different when we call something a network, as opposed to a coalition, collaborative or alliance. On the surface, much can look the same, and one might also say that coalitions, collaboratives and alliances are simply different forms of networks. While this is true, it is also the case that not every collaborative form maximizes network effects, including small world reach, rapid dissemination, adaptability, resilience and system change. In this regard, experience shows that a big difference maker is when participants in a network (or an organization, for that matter) embrace new ways of seeing, thinking, and doing. The following revised list continues to evolve as our own practice and understanding does, and it speaks to a number of network principles to guide thinking and action: [ap_spacing spacing_height="20px"]
1. Adaptability instead of control
Thinking in terms of networks means leading with an interest in adaptation over time. Given the complexity of the situations we are often called to help address, it is difficult for any actor or “leader” to know exactly what must be done, much less keep a diverse and decentralized social structure moving in lockstep. Iterative design and adaptive strategy serve us better. [ap_spacing spacing_height="20px"]
2. Contribution before credentials
You may have heard the story about the custodial staff person in a shoe company who anonymously submitted his idea for a new shoe design during a company-wide contest, and won. Or the homeschooled teenager who contributed tremendously helpful information on nitrogen pollution to an open and crowdsourced call for research. “Expertise” and seniority can serve as a bottle neck and buzz kill in many organizations, where ego gets in the way of excellence and vital experience. If we are looking for new and better thinking, it should not matter from whence it comes. [ap_spacing spacing_height="20px"]
“Your generosity is more important than your perfection.”
-Seth Godin
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[ap_spacing spacing_height="20px"]3. Giving first, not taking
You’ll see it when you create it. Often people are drawn to networks by the promise of abundance, but stand back and wait for something to happen. The key to generativity is generosity, to being first to make a humble offering – of ideas, truth, courage, attention and other resources. The fear of having an already scarce pie became further divided is fulfilled by the failure to give, to give freely and fully of our experience, gifts and excess capacities. For more on the importance of giving, see Adam Grant’s work.[ap_spacing spacing_height="20px"]
4. Resilience and redundancy instead of rock stardom
You see it on sports teams all the time. When the star player goes down, if the team is built around said star, so goes the team. Resilient networks are built upon redundancy of function and a richness of interconnections, so that if one node goes away, the network can adjust and continue its work[ap_spacing spacing_height="20px"]
5. Diversity and divergence rather than the usual suspects and forced agreement
New thinking comes from the meeting of different fields, experience, and perspectives. Preaching to the choir gets us the same old (and tired) hymn. Furthermore, innovation is not a result of dictating or choosing from what is, but expanding options, moving from convergent (and what often passes for strategic) thinking to “design thinking.” And network action is not simply about everyone having to engage in one big effort, but cooperation and parallel play[ap_spacing spacing_height="20px"]
6. Intricacy and flow not bottlenecks and hoarding
Networks are key to supporting life and liveliness – life is after all a network. A constant threat to aliveness is rigidity, hoarding and exclusion. Economically we are seeing plenty of evidence of this, pushing us towards what Jane Jacobs once called socio-economic “necrosis.” With hyper-concentration of resources, patterns of exclusion and growing inequality, we see the entire system put at risk. The antidote is robust, diversified local networks that are connected to other such networks, which are collectively able to move resources of many kinds fluidly from and to all parts of the social body.[ap_spacing spacing_height="20px"]
Keep reaching out, keep interconnecting, keep things flowing.
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[ap_spacing spacing_height="30px"]7. Self-organization and emergence rather than permission and the pursuit of perfection
As with any complex living system, when a group of people comes together, we cannot always know what it is that they will create. The whole is greater than the sum of the parts. Vying for the predictable means short-changing ourselves of new possibilities, one of the great promises of networks. Furthermore, network effects and change stem from many different experiments rather than looking for the single best answer. [ap_spacing spacing_height="20px"]
8. Shift focus from core to the periphery
As living entities, networks are defined by the nature and quality of their edges. The core of the network tends to be made up of those who are most connected to others in the network, as well as interested in and engaged in the work (albeit in some cases through exclusionary dynamics of power and privilege). Those on the edge, or periphery, may be less connected and engaged, and also bring considerable strength, to the extent that they provide lessons about adaptation, a willingness and ability to play in different spaces, and have connections to other important domains. In many cases, there is strength in following the lead of the margins. As Ceasar McDowell says:[ap_spacing spacing_height="20px"]
“If you take a tent and you stake it far out at the margins … the middle is always covered. And the further out you stake it the stronger the structure you get. And why is that? Because in our systems and our social systems the people at the margins are actually living with the failures of the systems. And they are creating adaptive solutions to them. So when we design to take care of them we build stronger systems for everyone.” [ap_spacing spacing_height="20px"]
[ap_spacing spacing_height="30px"]9. From working in isolation to working with others and/or out loud
I recently spoke to a leader of an amazing organization in Pennsylvania who was bemoaning the situation where a number of his newer staff thought that “getting the job done” meant paying attention to the tasks on their list and working on them in an independent and efficient way. What they were not doing was involving others, communicating about what they were working on, where they were in their process and what they were learning as a result. One network mantra I have heard is “Never work alone.”Or to put a more positive spin on it, “Work in good company.”Why? Because our thinking and ideas are made better by others. Furthermore, sharing our work is crucial since communication is the lifeblood of networks (and networked organizations) if they are to be intelligently adaptive and resilient to changing and challenging times. Even it we are physically alone, we can show and share our work in helpful ways, to ourselves and others, using virtual tools. [ap_spacing spacing_height="20px"]
10. From “Who’s the Leader?” to “We’re the Leaders!”
Leadership can be a confusing and fraught concept. In certain quarters there is still glorification of and deference given to heroic individuals, with little recognition of the interdependent nature of, well, everything! The late Mila N. Baker made the case that the individualized and command-and-control leadership lexicon is grossly insufficient for our changing, complex, and interconnected world. She promoted the use of peer-to-peer (P2P) IT architectures as models for thinking about leadership and how people organize themselves. In P2P arrangements, everyone becomes a generative and recipient node in a network, and has easy access to other nodes. This embodiment of leadership is stymied by rigid hierarchies, fixed positional authority and purely transactional mindsets (without regard to underlying and authentic relationships). Flipping this script means seeking arrangements where everyone leads and follows, trust and reciprocity are fundamental values and thriving is linked to connection. [ap_spacing spacing_height="20px"]
What might the integration of these principles do to the way you lead and do your work? What opportunities and outcomes might be created? [ap_spacing spacing_height="20px"]
[ap_spacing spacing_height="35px"]Co-Design Series Part 4[ap_spacing spacing_height="28px"]
Most of you reading this post are involved in what are called social change efforts. We are working on social change because we want the world to be full of communities that are good for everyone. But the reality is that our communities are full of problems - poverty, drugs, intolerance, etc - and most of us are working diligently to try to crack open these problems and find solutions.
What is amazing is how little time we actually spend thinking about change - how it happens, how it can be supported, how to increase it and most importantly, how to make it transformative.
Increasing numbers of us know that what it is going to take is not simple incremental change but transformation - shifting the systems in which these problems are occurring.
Transformation means changing the way our society operates so that it reflects healthy values: this means that all our institutions, our processes, our interactions are open and transparent, inclusive and diverse, innovative and experimental, where power is equally distributed, and we work collaboratively together.
But transformation doesn't just happen on the system level. Transformation needs to occur on every level: at the same time we are working to change institutions such as the prison system we need to be working on personal change and on organizational change.[ap_spacing spacing_height="20px"]
Diagram 1. Groups help us change on other levels
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If we don't change as individuals - our mindset, the way we interact with others and who we interact with - we’re not going to be able to work well with others to shift the systems. And it's only when we begin to interact with others who have different perspectives that we are able to see the hidden assumptions we have been making that have been keeping our efforts from leading to systemic change,
For example, if we are trying to develop strategies to end poverty and we don't have any people who are actually living in poverty in the room with us figuring out the best way to address poverty, we will be unlikely to come up with solutions that will be more than a Band-Aid on the complex and massive problem that poverty represents.
And, we won't get other people in the room with us unless we change and become better listeners, more open to new ideas, and more willing to let go of control.
Another example of why it's so critical that we change as individuals is because our endless “to do lists” are holding us prisoners and keeping our work from being transformative. When June worked with people as an executive coach, they discovered that their to do lists were filled with items that were nonessential. These nonessentials distracted people from spending time on stepping back from their work as a whole. It's only when people learn to scrutinize and prune their to do lists that they have time to reflect on what they're really doing and notice what works and what isn't. (see Worksheet: Freeing up your time for transformation Free in Resources Section)
What keeps us from changing?We need to become more aware of our behavior so that we remember to change. Personal assessments or checklists and then daily journaling are helpful tools for change. How can we encourage more people to incorporate these into their daily lives?
But let’s face it, change is hard to do alone. We need the support of others to help hold us accountable, listen to our challenges, and give us ideas for strategies. Small support groups or learning pop-ups are very beneficial for personal change, and they can support us as we work to change our organizations.
And, when we change ourselves, but don’t simultaneously help our organizations transform, we will continually run up against obstacles in our work. For example, many organizations see time spent on building relationships with those outside the organizations as a waste of time rather than an important step in network building and discourage or forbid their employees to network. Or, our manager insists on getting approval from her/him for the action steps we take in collaborative projects with other organizations, thus slowing down responses to opportunities that arise.
One of the best ways to change both ourselves and our organization is to be part of small groups where people help each other change. These can be support groups, learning pop-ups or communities of practice (monthly sessions where people share skills and provide support for each other around challenges that they face in getting their organizations to shift to a network mindset). In addition, working with others on self-organized projects related to our work can be a powerful way to shift behavior.
Networks can also set up friendly fun systems to enable us to identify where we want to change, help us get ideas for how we can change, and get feedback on those changes.
A new free resource is available in the Resources section of Network Weaver.
Many people ask me "How do I get people to participate more in our network?" This simple worksheet offers tips that you can quickly implement to get network participants interacting with each other. We have found that is one of the best strategies for getting them to invest more time in the network.[ap_spacing spacing_height="25px"]
It would be great if you would share any activities you have done to engage network participants in the comments section below.Then we will add them to the handout, which we will continually revise![ap_spacing spacing_height="30px"]
I have a number of ‘network friends’ – people I know, online & by video & phone, whom I’ve not yet met in the flesh. People who for one reason or another, reached out to me, or I reached out to them, knowing by our online presence & by our shared connections to others that we had something to learn together.
In this growing field of ‘Network Weaving’, it’s easy to connect quickly & begin to share work, ideas, resources and to bond in a real way, with people we’d normally consider strangers.
One of the women I’ve connected to in this way just shared something with me that she’s been working on. A beautiful contribution to our field that she’s been toiling away on so long she’s lost track, a little bit, of the value & beauty in it. As I affirmed & appreciated her efforts via email, she reflected me back to myself in a way I aspire to, but, honestly, I DO NOT know what causes her to see me in that way. She sees the me I’d like to be, but don’t identify as self.
As I began to write a reply email, saying that I’m honored by how she sees me, even tho I cannot see myself the way she does, this struck me:
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When we connect & share & trust & honor, we begin to see the strengths, beauty, & potential in one another that we can’t entirely see in ourselves. And when we voice those things we see in one another, we help bring them into being even more.
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Her words made me feel SEEN, recognized. Which inspires and en-courages me to be more of what she saw, even if I’m not entirely sure what allowed her to see it.
No doubt this seems elementary to good parents & teachers (I mean, as a parent, that power to bring out the best in my son by simply reflecting him back to himself was awe-inspiring) – but there was a new epiphany in it, for me, today.
So – here’s the part that was striking in the moment – what we see in each other, and call out in one another – becomes the very source of transformation. A greater belief in our gifts increases our ability, willingness & desire to give of them. Seeing one another’s gifts brings about more of those gifts. Feeling valued and recognized also increases our willingness to collaborate, our openness to others, our ability to journey together into the unknown.
System change & saving the world are hard work that many people want to be part of. But over and over, we hear how people are just below their breaking points, stretched to their limits, overwhelmed with how much effort it takes just to maintain. They can’t take on even one more small commitment. But when the efforts that align with our passions or express our deepest selves are met with affirmation & encouragement, what we do becomes a little less effortful, we regain energy faster, we contribute again sooner and more. Recognizing & affirming each other, in a change network, can be one of those small shifts that bring about huge changes.
As a traumatized hyper-vigilant welfare brat, I’ve usually been highly suspicious of compliments or kind words, and have spent much of my life pushing them away.
But lately I’ve been learning, in very tangible ways, how our piling on sincere appreciation & authentic recognition of one another not only heals & encourages at the individual level, it fuels collective transformational ripple effects.
[ap_spacing spacing_height="20px"]For Mary Roscoe for inspiring this reflection and for Michael Bischoff, for seeing the true me into being.
[ap_spacing spacing_height="20px"]Originally published May 16th, 2016 by Christine Capra at GreaterThanTheSum.com
As was mentioned in Monday's post, the sense of urgency is a major impediment keeping our networks from being transformative. I'd add busyness to that: having endless to do lists that keep us stressed and leave no time for the kind of deep reflection and learning that we need to really make progress on the complex problems we are trying to solve.
[ap_spacing spacing_height="20px"]Many years ago when I did a bit of executive coaching I created a worksheet to help people track what they were doing and then analyze each day's activities to identify what they really were passionate about, what activities were really making a difference and what activities they could take off their list because they weren't really important or making a difference.
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Most of my clients said they ended up taking at least a quarter of the items off their to do lists, freeing up time for more collaboration and learning. It's a great idea to do this worksheet with others in your workplace or collaborative project.
Before we go any further down the road of this blog, we need to point out that network approaches cannot become transformative unless the network explicitly works on dismantling white supremacy culture and racism.
This is because networks only flourish when people in them are able to interact as peers, valuing everyone’s input and involvement. In addition, many aspects of dominant or white supremacy culture hold us back from reaping the benefits of networks, but are so pervasive as to be hidden from our awareness. Tema Okun has one of the best lists of these cultural characteristics which include (the next two sections are quoted verbatim from her article):[ap_spacing spacing_height="15px"]
1. Perfectionism
Little appreciation expressed among people for the work that others are doing; appreciation that is expressed usually directed to those who get most of the credit anyway[ap_spacing spacing_height="15px"]
more common is to point out either how the person or work is inadequate - or even more common, to talk to others about the inadequacies of a person or their work without ever talking directly to them[ap_spacing spacing_height="15px"]
mistakes are seen as personal, i.e. they reflect badly on the person making them as opposed to being seen for what they are – mistakes[ap_spacing spacing_height="15px"]
making a mistake is confused with being a mistake, doing wrong with being wrong[ap_spacing spacing_height="15px"]
little time, energy, or money put into reflection or identifying lessons learned that can improve practice, in other words little or no learning from mistakes[ap_spacing spacing_height="15px"]
tendency to identify what’s wrong; little ability to identify, name, and appreciate what’s right[ap_spacing spacing_height="15px"]
often internally felt, in other words the perfectionist fails to appreciate her own good work, more often pointing out his faults or ‘failures,’ focusing on inadequacies and mistakes rather than learning from them; the person works with a harsh and constant inner critic
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2. Sense of Urgency
continued sense of urgency that makes it difficult to take time to be inclusive, encourage democratic and/or thoughtful decision-making, to think long-term, to consider consequences[ap_spacing spacing_height="15px"]
frequently results in sacrificing potential allies for quick or highly visible results, for example sacrificing interests of communities of color in order to win victories for white people (seen as default or norm community)[ap_spacing spacing_height="15px"]
reinforced by funding proposals which promise too much work for too little money and by funders who expect too much for too little[ap_spacing spacing_height="15px"]
Others are: defensiveness, quantity over quality, worship of the written word, only one right way, paternalism, "either/or" thinking, power hoarding, fear of open conflict, individualism, "I’m the only one", objectivity, and right to comfort.
“[Organizations] who unconsciously use these characteristics as their norms and standards make it difficult, if not impossible, to open the door to other cultural norms and standards. As a result, many of our organizations, while saying we want to be multi-cultural, really only allow other people and cultures to come in if they adapt or conform to already existing cultural norms. Being able to identify and name the cultural norms and standards you want is a first step to making room for a truly multi-cultural organization.” [ap_spacing spacing_height="15px"]
Please share experiences you have had or how your organization or network is working to dismantle racism and dominant culture.
A new downloadable free item is up on the Network Weaver Resources page.[ap_spacing spacing_height="20px"]
One of the most critical support structures for networks is a well-thought out communications ecosystem - a set of tools and platforms that enable everyone in the network to connect and collaborate directly with anyone else in the network.
This kind of communication system is quite different from the broadcast strategy of many organizations, where the organization sends out information via a newsletter and/or website but has no avenues for people to respond or build connections to each other.
A communication system that supports interaction among network participants needs to fill four functions:
Provide spaces and places for discussing ideas and for sharing what has been learned. [ap_spacing spacing_height="15px"]
Ensure that everyone has access to new ideas and innovations from other communities and networks.[ap_spacing spacing_height="15px"]
Many places for network participants to get to know each other and deepen relationships, and to work together collaboratively.[ap_spacing spacing_height="15px"]
Ways to track network development (network leadership, network values, collaboration and collaborative skills, stages of network development, development of network support structures, network stories, etc) and use this data to enable the network to move more rapidly to a system shifting networks. [ap_spacing spacing_height="15px"]
[ap_spacing spacing_height="15px"]You can use the free handout in the Resources section to engage participants in your network in a process to help co-design your network's communication ecosystem. Share the handout with any network participants who are interested and begin to fill out the page with blank boxes
First, identify any elements of the ecosystem that are already in place and write those in the appropriate boxes. Then brainstorm and select other tools or platforms that your network might experiment with to fill in the circle.[ap_spacing spacing_height="20px"]
Small groups may want to explore options before making a decision. Make sure any new platform's use is seen as an experiment. The group may need to provide training on a new tool. Make sure the group checks back with network participants to see of the platform is working for them, and if not, try another.[ap_spacing spacing_height="30px"]
I like this quote from Nenad Maljkovic: "Don’t talk about tools. Talk about how to make it enjoyable for yourself and see what tools can support that."
NENAD MALJKOVIC
CLICK HERE to download Communication Ecosystem handout.
Many people ask me "How do I get people to participate more in our network?" This simple worksheet offers tips that you can quickly implement to get network participants interacting with each other. We have found that is one of the best strategies for getting them to invest more time in the network.[ap_spacing spacing_height="25px"]
