MEASURING LOVE in the JOURNEY for JUSTICE
Below is the preface to this week's featured resource: Measuring Love in the Journey for Justice. Find the link to download this Brown paper at the end of this post.
MEASURING LOVE
Preface: A Sovereign Perspective
As this is a Brown—not white—Paper, we want to give some perspectives before you dig in. In a sovereign, self-determining perspective, we see Two Spirit people as sacred gifts. Children are treasured. Elders are respected and privileged. Womyn are beloved and respected and have power and voice. Fathers, sons, and boys are lifted up as the warriors, believers, and loyal friends that they are. Mothers, daughters, and girls are as valued as life itself, seen and treated as blessings. And all relations are sacred.
To be sovereign and free, our people need policies made of love, forgiveness, and connections.
As oppressed, exploited people of color in this work of social and racial justice, we have seen — and are seeing—children separated from their caregivers, caged in concentration camps. We are living in another era of the systemic denial of democratic civil rights. To be sovereign and free, our people need policies made of love, forgiveness, and connections. Our communities deserve health and educational equity; land and housing justice; economic independence; living wages (as in universal minimum income). Our people want restorative justice practices to replace punishment and lockup. Our communities want community organizing and advocacy, block by block. Our people need community controlled governance and accountability systems. We want civic leadership everywhere, as the right to vote goes with the rights to drive, assemble, drink, and travel.
This Brown Paper flips the script of what is acceptable as a “Paper” on its head. It is not a “formal,” research-based, finished product of the traditional type. It comes from the heart and is meant to be used—like love. It is meant to spark dialogue and provoke.
In it, we are asking ourselves, “Are we loving bravely enough?”
And “How much am I loving?” “What else I can do to be in community from a place of love?” and “How am I wielding power fused with love?”
These are the essential questions posed in our brown paper. We are excited to bring this out into the world to provoke, connect, and build with you.
We have so much to love. We love YOU because we know if you’re reading this paper, you know what it’s like to be powerless and not feel loved—and are working on bringing about more justice in the world.
We release our intentions into the universe. We want to know what your reactions are. We thank you for honoring us by your comments and discussion.
Spread your love. And, we know we are rising as one.
Download Measuring Love in the Journey for Justice HERE
Shiree Teng has worked in the social sector for 40+ years as a social and racial justice champion – as a front line organizer, network facilitator, capacity builder, grantmaker, and evaluator and learning partner. Shiree brings to her work a lifelong commitment to social change and a belief in the potential of groups of people coming together to create powerful solutions to entrenched social issues.
*After the Measuring Love Brown paper was released, Shiree's co-author was arrested on allegations of child molestation. She addresses this in a "Letter to Beloveds" - an excerpt from her next collaborative paper, Healing Love into Balance. (which will be highlighted at NW in the coming weeks.
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Governance for System Change
The Complexity Spectrum blog describes how clock and cloud (non-system change and system change) approaches require fundamentally different strategies and tactics. The same goes for the mental models and processes we use to govern system change work.
In fact, governance for system change may not look much like traditional governance at all. Webster’s defines governance as “overseeing the control or direction of something.” Because system change work is emergent, long term and comprised of dispersed and diverse actors, centralized control and oversight is unworkable if not impossible.
Rather, system change work requires distributed decision making in pursuit of a common aspiration and in response to emergent facts on the ground. While centralized control may be impossible, there are ways to bring coherence to this work, increasing the probability of shifting a system to a more desired state.
In this case, governance applies to anyone who makes important decisions that affect the probability of success of a collective system change endeavor, and not just to members of a board of directors.[1] This type of governance is difficult and often requires building a range of new practices over time. Here are a few practices that may help:
- Capitalize on uncertainty to lower risk and increase chances for success.
- Focus on creating the conditions for change over short-term outcomes.
- Liberate choice rather than trying to control it.
- Rely on multiple ways of knowing as you navigate the journey.
Practice #1: Capitalize on Uncertainty
“Uncertainty is an uncomfortable position. But certainty is an absurd one.” -Voltaire
Depending on where you engage on the Complexity Spectrum, uncertainty can be a problem or it can provide a valuable opportunity.
Targeted solutions require a technical approach where you move efficiently along a mostly known pathway from a known problem to a known solution. Take for example a population that has been displaced by a natural disaster. We have experience dealing with this type of situation (known problem) and delivering the targeted solution of emergency shelter (known solution) though various tried and true means (mostly known pathway). In this case, uncertainty can be disruptive because it creates barriers between the problem and the solution.
Solutions at scale usually require an adaptive approach (think Human-Centered Design).
For example, in California many more people were eligible for benefits to alleviate poverty and food insecurity than were applying for them. The reasons why the problem existed were fairly well understood (sufficiently defined problem). In response, Code for America talked to people to understand why they weren’t applying and how they could provide a solution. They built an app, iterated it, and eventually launched a product (GetCalFresh) that greatly increased the number of eligible people applying for benefits (iterated to find a solution that was initially unknown).
An adaptive approach requires a fair level of certainty about the definition of the problem and its causes — enough to support a process of managed uncertainty in which you experiment to find deeper causes and solutions to the problem.
System transformation calls for an emergent approach.[2] In an emergent approach, while you are likely certain about the negative symptoms of the challenge (e.g., high levels of poverty or inequality), the deeper drivers of the problem and reasons for its persistence are mostly unknown or misunderstood. Consequently, the ways to address these drivers are also mostly unknown (or unformed). The key is to nurture the conditions that will support the system healing itself (e.g., understanding the systemic drivers of the challenge and supporting the emergence of ways to address them).
In an emergent approach, uncertainty unlocks opportunity. When complex challenges persist over time despite efforts to address them, there is often a sense of frustration, even despair. However, this can lead to the realization that we don’t have all the answers, which can make us more open to thinking differently.
Some forms of systemic analysis, like dynamic system mapping or participatory futures, provide a structured process for thinking in new ways about an all-too-familiar problem. When doing participatory system mapping, aha moments often arise when participants identify a pattern that explains why change has been elusive. It is empowering to see an old problem from a different perspective and find a possible path forward.
Effective system sensing should lead to confidence that you have “good uncertainty” — or trust that there are good questions to explore and a way to experiment and learn more about the system and how to engage it. Think of uncertainty as a gateway to doing things differently and finding ways to unstick a stuck system.
Practice #2: Focus on Creating the Conditions for Change
Uncertainty is uncomfortable because it increases our fear of failure. It makes us anxious. One common but ultimately unhelpful response is to over-rely on short-term substantive outcomes that are a small piece of the ultimate outcome we want to see. [3] For example, if we are looking to end human slavery in global supply chains, we might measure progress by looking for annual percentage reductions in the estimates of slave labor by 5% or so each year.
It is wise to understand the impacts our work is having in the short term, if for no other reason than to detect and mitigate potential negative impacts. However, there is a danger of using pre-defined, substantive outcomes as waypoints to navigate our way on the journey toward long-term system change.
Specifically, there are two key dangers:
- Short-term outcomes dominate our time, attention, and resources and reduce commitment to long-term change. According to neuroscientist Ian Robertson, “success and failure shapes us more powerfully than genetics and drugs.” This means short-term successes can lead people to invest more time, resources, and emotional commitment in concrete short-term outcomes instead of longer-term, hazier systemic shifts. Moreover, grantees often need to trade annual impacts for continued funding, so pre-identified short-term outcomes take priority.
- Short-term impacts can be bad predictors of long-term, systemic impact. In complex systems, impact is not static. What may seem like a good outcome in the near term, might drive negative downstream impacts in the months and years ahead. Basing future investments mostly on short-term outcomes can lead to bad long-term investments.
The implication is an inexorable pull away from making the hard choices and risk tolerance needed for system change. As a result, the pursuit of specific substantive outcomes in the short term may make it more likely a system change effort fails in the long term.
Fortunately there is an alternative. Alice Evans, who in her time at Lankelly Chase helped build their systems practice, said a key enabler of their work was the realization that creating the conditions for system change should be their focus rather than targeting specific outcomes those conditions might produce.
For example, there are a few generic conditions that will apply, in some form, to most system change initiatives. These include the degree to which important system actors can:
- See their context as a complex system and use that shared understanding to inform action and increase the potential coherence of distributed action.
- Identify and engage patterns that people believe will unlock change (e.g., weakening patterns that sustain the problem or strengthen bright spots that can shift the system).
- Build or strengthen connections, networks, and information flows across the system.
- Build an infrastructure for learning and, as Marilyn Darling says, “return that learning to the system.”
Elaborating these and other conditions that might support system change requires a participatory process that prioritizes the voices of those closest to the day-to-day operations of the system.
As we look at the conditions we are trying to cultivate, we must also look at those in ourselves and in our organizations. We are all part of the respective systems we are engaging and it’s critical to contend with power and who is making decisions both within an organization and in a broader system impacted by those decisions. If you haven’t already done work on your own relationship to power and how it impacts your work, now might be a great time to dig in. Consider asking:
- How are we showing up in the system? What feedback are we getting about how we’re showing up? Are we working in a system-informed way? How do others experience our presence?
- What is the quality of our relationships with other key system actors? How have we prioritized the voices of those closest to the context?
- How do we understand our own power in the context we are working in and the people we are working with? How do others perceive it? How can we engage others in an honest conversation about our relative power?
Fortunately, changing how we show up in a system shifting initiative is a condition over which we have the greatest control. Unfortunately, many of us, especially funders, show up in ways that replicate or entrench unhelpful power dynamics that constrain choice and make distributed decision making impossible. This means a critical early condition for system change is understanding and adapting the ways in which our organizations — and even ourselves — work. For more thoughts on internal organizational conditions and how to work toward them, see Building Emergent Organizations.
Practice #3: Liberate Choice
Successful system change requires those closest to the day-to-day operations of the system to be highly adaptive over time in response to emerging realities.[4] However, this is hard to do with traditional governance processes that seek to maximize control and minimize risk.
For example, a standard grant agreement trades funds for outcomes identified by the donor, which replicates the power dynamic of “those with resources call the tune.” This dynamic too often prioritizes donor interests rather than those most impacted by the funding, removes agency from those closest to the context, and creates highly transactional relationships.
If funders behave in ways that reduce the agency of these actors, they inhibit their ability to work for system change.
The alternative to donors limiting choice is to use what Cyndi Suarez calls “liberatory power,” or the ability to “create what we want” by transforming “what one currently perceives as a limitation.”[5] A key question for donors wishing to support system change is, how can we increase the ability of key actors in the system to effectively connect with each other, sense, sense-make, act on, and learn from their system?
Each level of actor in a system change initiative can liberate the choices of actors in the system. Liberating choice is not the same as giving more choices — it requires both the presence of choice and the agency to act on it. A board of directors needs to liberate choice for organizations they oversee; leadership of an organization needs to liberate choice of its program teams; program teams need to liberate choice of grantees and partners; grantees and partners need to liberate choice of stakeholders and community actors; and based on how information flows in the system, stakeholders can liberate choice for program teams, etc.
This is not the same as simply giving money and getting out of the way. Liberating choice does not mean removing all structure. Many argue there is no such thing as structurelessness when it comes to any kind of group activity, especially when one actor is providing significant resources to support the work of other actors.[6] Donors need to provide enough structure to enable choice, but not so much as to prematurely curtail choice.
The key is to create minimally sufficient, helpful structure. For donors supporting system change, there are some key components to creating minimal structure, which include:
- Articulate a common aspiration or guiding star.[7]
- Clarify boundaries by articulating key interests and values.
- Establish an infrastructure for learning.
- Invest time in building trusting relationships among system actors.
Of these four points, clarifying boundaries or guardrails may be the most difficult. An unhelpful but familiar way of doing so is to provide directives to either do or not do something. A more useful approach is the “even-over statement” as developed by Tom Thomison and popularized by Aaron Dignan.
The benefit of even-over statements is that they share how different actors in the system might make tradeoffs between key interests and values. The statement consists of two “good things” and says, “if confronted with a choice, I would choose this good thing over that good thing.” However, it aims to preserve the agency of an actor to make a decision in light of the specific situations that they find themselves in.
Some generic even-over statements that liberate choice for system change include:
- Prioritize responsible, smaller experiments even over concentrating resources on large-scale bets.
- Invest time in building trusting relationships even over delivering on preset timelines.
- Value responsible learning even over clear-cut wins.
- Foster regular, honest feedback across the network of actors even over preserving harmonious relations.
Whatever boundaries you try to set, and however you set them, they will be wrong in some respect. This is where a dynamic learning process is essential. Part of that learning process needs to ask to what degree are the boundaries and common aspiration helpful? In what ways are they affecting people’s thinking and behavior? Are they strengthening agency of system actors or reducing it? What might we do better?
And none of this works if the relationships between actors in a system change initiative are mainly transactional. Because system change work is highly emergent, it requires real time and honest communication and the ability to work in a decentralized way. All of this requires high levels of trust between actors, and this level of trust does not happen unless they invest time in it. This can be particularly difficult for funders who see investing time to build trust as simply increasing overhead.
Practice #4: Rely on Multiple Ways of Knowing
“There is a strong bias in the U.S. dominant culture, one that shows up in the nonprofit sector as well, to value only one way of knowing, the one grounded in data, analysis, logic, and theory — a rationalist’s approach to truth.” -Elissa Sloane Perry and Aja Couchois [8]
Working effectively in complex systems requires strengthening our ability to use multiple ways of knowing. It is essential for implementing the practices described above. Unfortunately, as the quote from Elissa Sloane Perry and Aja Couchois indicates, the default capacity for many in the West is to privilege only one way of knowing — a cognitive, analytic approach.
This is not to say we should devalue rational analysis. Rather, it means putting a high value on the ways others understand their world and make decisions about how to act.
There are various ways to define multiple ways of knowing, from Howard Gardner’s theory of multiple intelligences to the model of five minds described by Tyson Yunkaporta.[9] A simple way to look at multiple ways of knowing is: thinking, feeling, and intuiting.[10] At a minimum, it means asking: what do you think about the situation, how does it make you feel, and what is your gut telling you to do? It means listening to how others think, feel, and intuit.
Listening to feelings and intuitions is not the same as following them. Rather, it means understanding how information, situations, and decisions make us and others feel; allowing our intuitions to come to the surface; and not automatically subjugating these to what we might judge as rational or rigorous analysis. It means sitting with differences and uncertainty and valuing the important stories people tell about their system, and not just the numbers they can fit on a spreadsheet.
For many, this is the most disruptive practice for system change governance. It requires us to change how we think about and develop strategy, how we evaluate our effectiveness and that of our grantees, and how we make decisions. It means that good questions are often more useful than seemingly good answers. Fundamentally, it changes how we know what we know (e.g., how we weigh a quantitative analysis versus the lived experiences of partners on the ground).
But as disruptive as it can be, cultivating multiple ways of knowing is worth it. There are several reasons why: from the neuroscience that shows the role of emotions in decision making to the necessity of multiple ways of knowing for advancing equity.
In addition, there are simple, practical arguments for cultivating multiple ways of knowing from a system change perspective:
- If shifting systems involves diverse actors spread across geographies and cultures, different ways of knowing will always exist in the network. This means effective system change work requires the ability to understand and work with those different ways of knowing.
- And, because complex systems are murky and constantly changing, it is naïve to rely on only one way of knowing. Each way of knowing has limits but, together, multiple ways of knowing increase our effectiveness.
- Lastly, multiple ways of knowing are essential because we can’t just reason our way to system change — rather it requires a dynamic connection between head, heart, and gut.
One accessible way to start bringing multiple ways of knowing into your work is to play with meeting structure. Try starting meetings with a check-in question like “how are thinking and feeling coming into the meeting?” Or you could ask something more playful like “what was your favorite movie character as a kid?” A more serious question could be “can you describe a time when you felt truly happy?” Think of it less as an icebreaker and more of a space for people to welcome in their whole selves and deepen relationships. It also helps to build in time for silent reflection in the room, have people journal, or to pair up and process the meeting while taking a walk.
Many people have built more in-depth ways to incorporate multiple ways of knowing. A few I suggest are: the Equitable Evaluation Initiative, for using multiple ways of knowing to build more equitable evaluation processes; Relational Systems Thinking: That’s How Change Is Going to Come, from Our Earth Mother by Melanie Goodchild, for how to realize the benefit of differing world views and ways of knowing; and Theory U by Otto Scharmer, for a comprehensive approach to system change that has multiple ways of knowing at its core.
Next Steps
Learning to use a different frame for how we govern system change is a practice, and it takes time to develop. Devoting time to consciously changing your governance practices is the first challenge you will confront. But remember, systems seldom change on a dime, and neither do we. You might want to start with the system you know best and are closest to — you and your own organization.
One way to start is to use these governance practices as a set of prompts for your own self-reflection and experimentation, such as:
Using the Complexity Spectrum. How are we differentiating among our organization’s approaches along the Complexity Spectrum? Are we developing different mindsets and practices for clock versus cloud initiatives (e.g., solutions at scale versus system innovation or transformation)?
Capitalize on uncertainty. How are we cultivating good uncertainty and capitalizing on it? Are we resisting the urge to create certainty when there is none?
Liberate choice rather than trying to control it. Do those closer to the context feel they are able to make the choices needed to engage the system effectively? How well are our aspirations, guardrails, and learning processes helping us learn from the choices we make? What levels of trust are we able to build?
Focus on creating the conditions for change. What are the conditions that will support change in our organizational system? How well are we supporting them? How might we revise them? How are we understanding what others in the system feel are the conditions that will drive change?
Rely on multiple ways of knowing as you navigate the journey. Are we getting in touch with our own ways of knowing and cultivating openness to others? Are we trying both small and large experiments? (e.g., creating space in meetings for check-ins and reflection time? Building a more equitable evaluation practice or sitting in the tensions between different world views?)
Lastly, give yourself and those around you room and permission to change. Rather than expecting to get it right, focus on getting it better. Together I think we can do just that.
Download a PDF of the blank worksheet
Download a PDF of the example worksheet
Acknowledgement: While I take responsibility for the words used in this blog, the ideas come from dozens of colleagues, hundreds of conversations, and thousands of hours of experimenting and learning by many.
[1] I will often refer to the work of a foundation board because this is the context I know well.
[2] I am using the terms technical, adaptive, or emergent approach instead of technical, adaptive, or emergent strategy to avoid confusion with established writing on these types of strategy. There is a fair amount of commonality of usage of the terms technical, adaptive, and emergent between this piece and earlier works, but there is not 100% overlap and I want to avoid confusion or to imply that I am redefining these types of strategy. For writing on the subject, see the works of Ron Heifetz, Adrienne Marie Brown, and Henry Mintzberg.
[3] In this case, substantive outcomes mean measurable changes to the symptoms of the problem we are concerned with, as opposed to the process by which we work.
[4] This is particularly important when working with complex systems where those closest to the context need the ability to respond to what they are learning. This is what Gen. Stanley McChrystal found in doing counterinsurgency work and wrote about in his book, Team of Teams. McChrystal saw the need to empower choice from units on the ground by creating more distributed decision making.
[5] See The Power Manual by Cyndi Suarez, p. 13.
[6] See The Tyranny of Structurelessness by Jo Freeman who wrote about organizing the women’s liberation movement in the 1970s. Here is a relevant passage: “Contrary to what we would like to believe, there is no such thing as a structureless group. Any group of people of whatever nature that comes together for any length of time for any purpose will inevitably structure itself in some fashion. The structure may be flexible; it may vary over time; it may evenly or unevenly distribute tasks, power, and resources over the members of the group. But it will be formed regardless of the abilities, personalities, or intentions of the people involved.”
[7] For guidance on developing a guiding star, see the Systems Practice Workbook.
[8] Multiple Ways of Knowing: Expanding How We Know, April 27, 2017, Non-Profit Quarterly.
[9] Here is a quick description of the five minds.
[10] Here a quick explanation of the science of intuition: “Intuition is a form of knowledge that appears in consciousness without obvious deliberation. It is not magical but rather a faculty in which hunches are generated by the unconscious mind rapidly sifting through past experience and cumulative knowledge.”
Rob Ricigliano is the Systems & Complexity coach at The Omidyar Group, where he supports teams as they engage complex systems to make societal change.
originally publshed at In Too Deep
featured image by kazuend on Unsplash
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The paradox of transformation: acceptance as a precondition to change
The radical potential of healthy shame... to return us to belonging
This is the paradox: to reach transformation, we must let go of the aspiration for transformation. As psychologist Carl Rogers put it:
The curious paradox is that when I accept myself, just as I am, then I can change.
While I accept this truth intellectually, and it feels doable when it comes to my self-transformation work… I haven’t yet figured out a way to embody it in integrity and authenticity when it comes to my work for social transformation. David Kelleher names the tension I feel:
If you’re going to work with people for change, you have to love them… I’m still stuck with the contradiction of loving someone and making demands on their behavior in the name of justice.
It feels like I’m being asked to let go of my commitment to justice… in order to honor my commitment to justice. I don’t know what to do with that. So today I want to explore a controversial idea: the concept of “healthy shame.”
TL;DR: Toxic shame tells us we don’t belong, and offers no path back to belonging. Healthy shame reminds us that we belong, and warns us when we transgress a social norm that threatens the collective: it invites us to change our behavior, not our core sense of self. We need to cultivate the capacity to heal from toxic shame, and build resilience to tolerate healthy shame… and take action to repair harm and return to belonging. There are four steps: show up with compassion for the other; help them practice self-compassion; co-regulate to feel safe in their bodies; support the practice of new behaviors. To come into right relationship with shame is to exercise power: a tool we can use in service of justice, and to create a world where everyone belongs.
Transform behavior, not people
This feels important to underscore: by virtue of the miracle of our existence, like all beings, humans are perfect exactly as we are. It’s our behavior (at an individual, collective, and systemic level) that needs to change.
When I first started writing this post I paused for a couple days to do another deep-dive into the literature on shame and guilt (building on this post, where I first named the acceptance/transformation paradox, and this one, exploring more collective accountability questions). I want to update/amend my previous conclusions to explore the transformative potential of healthy shame.
To be clear: the way our dominant culture wields shame is incredibly toxic: any shame that contributes to paralysis, that inculcates in its target a fundamental sense of unworthiness harms our goal of enabling transformation. That is NOT what I am talking about here. There is shame that is associated with trauma, and there is shame that is associated with healing and resilience… it is this fraught latter terrain I want to explore today.
Because shame (and guilt) are social emotions that have to do with our sense of (and right to) belong, the core difference that distinguishes healthy shame from toxic shame is whether there exists the possibility of returning to belonging. If the purpose or function of shame is to exclude without offering a path to redemption, it is toxic. If instead the purpose is to illuminate a harm and invite repair… it can serve a healthy function. I appreciate Joseph Burgo’s treatment of the subject, where he explains:
Helpful shame always leaves room for improvement rather than making someone feel fundamentally worthless, with no hope for growth.
This to me is the difference between feeling shamed (you are making me feel something, which may or may not register as fair) and feeling ashamed (I internalize the assessment and agree I have done something I regret; a third party may not need to be present or aware of my transgression in order for me to feel ashamed). Annette Kämmerer explains:
We feel shame when we violate the social norms we believe in.
In this rendering, to feel ashamed is to feel the pain of finding ourselves out of integrity with our own values. As Mark Manson notes:
Our values determine our shames.
Shame defines the conditions of belonging
Shame is a social emotion: it is the enforcement mechanism for belonging. Burgo again:
Human beings developed the ability to feel shame because it helped promote social cohesion.
Social norms define the boundaries of belonging: they are the set of agreements that allow us to function and live in community. In its social expression, shaming alerts community members that they have transgressed a social norm, and invites them to take corrective action, to repair the harm. I love Miki Kashtan’s explanation of how shame functioned in pre-patriarchal societies:
When the behavior of an individual threatens the ongoing cohesion or functioning of the group, and only in those circumstances, that’s when shame emerges as a mechanism for protecting the group from the threat of an individual taking action that might endanger the group.
Burgo agrees:
Our evolutionary ancestors used shaming and shunning to encourage change, to help tribal members reform their transgressive behavior and then reintegrate.
I think of it this way: love is unconditional; belonging is not. Love (for your self as a simultaneously perfect and flawed human) is unconditional; belonging (which includes how you behave in a collective) is conditional on you adopting the pro-social norms and behaviors that allow the collective to thrive. I loved Naava Smolash’s comment on my last post taking up this topic, where she named this tension inherent in the promise of belonging:
The one condition of belonging that makes true belonging possible, is the willingness to excise those who genuinely do not care about others or are unwilling to challenge their own conditioning into dominance.
It is perhaps easiest to understand the value of shame by imagining its absence: to be “shameless” is not a good thing; it’s associated with sociopathy. I’m reminded of that classic line in the McCarthy hearings, which I hear as another way of saying: are you impervious to shame?
Using—and choosing—healthy shame
I believe there is a role for healthy shame to help encourage people to adopt these new norms… but it’s a delicate dance. Take for example the emerging awareness around micro-aggressions: misgendering or deadnaming someone for example, or inadvertently deploying a racist stereotype. I think it’s healthy and necessary to feel that initial sting: it’s to become aware that I have caused harm, and to feel shame. And of course I don’t want to stay in that feeling: it’s deeply uncomfortable. We tend to respond in one of three ways (and let’s assume for the sake of argument that the norm is a positive pro-social norm, as I believe these are):
- Internalize the shame without self-compassion; this transmutes healthy shame into toxic shame: I’m a terrible person, I don’t belong. This not only misses an opportunity for transformation, but it also leaves the harm unrepaired as I retreat into myself and disassociate from the person/people experiencing the impact I caused.
- Reject the new norm and refuse to feel shame: I don’t believe in pronouns, and I refuse to take accountability for my impact. Often this strategy is accompanied by blaming/attacking the person who made visible the transgression: instead of attending to impact, we cast ourselves as victim for not having our intention seen/honored (Jennifer Freyd coined the term DARVO to describe this approach, often used unconsciously). This too misses the opportunity for transformation and for repairing harm. I resonate with Heather Plett’s description of what’s going on here:
People who’ve convinced themselves they are good people… are suddenly sent into spasms when their biases and blindspots are revealed. They can’t fathom the fact that they are capable of causing harm. They haven’t been equipped to hold space for their own shame. Subconsciously, they’re terrified that they will be abandoned and, at worst, banished from the kingdom.
- Accept the new norm, move from feeling shamed to feeling ashamed, and try to do better. To practice self-compassion (now I know, I can do better) and to exercise responsibility for impact (I’m sorry) and accountability to repair (how can I make it better and avoid causing harm in the future?)
Our goal, of course, is to support people in choosing the third path. And: we also want to exercise individual and collective discernment about which norms we want to embrace/internalize, and which we want to rightfully reject.
There are many existing social norms that I think are harmful and incompatible with a world where everyone belongs: in those cases, I think it is incumbent upon us to reject the norm and decline to feel the sting of shame. For example, should a man choose to wear a dress, in a world where everyone belongs that’s a perfectly valid and beautiful choice: he should refuse to be shamed for it (and we should refrain from shaming him). Because I’m a nerd, I made up a 2x2 matrix trying to illustrate this.
In this understanding, guilt only occurs when you already accept/agree with a norm: by definition, you can’t feel guilty for something you didn’t know was harmful, because you couldn’t have acted differently. In the case of encountering a new norm, the initial feeling is shame, which you can then transmute into guilt by accepting the norm and committing to repair. Shame researcher Dr. Stephen Finn summarizes his findings:
The goal is to help people tolerate shame and move to guilt… healthy shame is guilt.
Four steps: from shame back to belonging
I love Stephen Finn’s reminder here:
Shame is a social emotion; it can only be healed interpersonally.
If toxic shame tells us we don’t (and will never) belong, then a culture of belonging is one without toxic shame… and one that supports people in processing their healthy shame into guilt and repair and a return to belonging. Matthew Gibson puts it bluntly:
We cannot face our shame alone, certainly not the toxic form of shame that is not ours.
I think there are four steps to supporting transformation, which I want to unpack here.
- Show up with love and compassion: The first step has to do with the motivation and attitude of the supportive partner: if we are sincere about supporting transformation, we must come from a place of love and compassion. Here’s Father Richard Rohr:
What empowers change, what makes you desirous of change is the experience of love. It is that inherent experience of love that becomes the engine of change.
- Practice self-compassion. The purpose of this compassionate witness is to provide a safe environment for them to practice self-compassion. For the vast majority of humans who struggle with self-compassion, the radical act of offering compassion to ourselves is itself the first act of transformation… and those of us who are interested in social change need to support, recognize and celebrate it as such. I credit my wife Jennifer for helping me understand how foundational self-compassion is to the entire enterprise of transformation: it helps us ensure that shame stays healthy and doesn’t turn toxic; it motivates repair instead of paralyzing us into a trauma response. Emily Nagoski is clear on this:
The antidote to shame is self-compassion.
- Feel safe in our bodies: so many of our defenses, particularly around shame, operate at the level of the sub-conscious, and are deeply shamed around trauma. Healing from shame, therefore, is not a cognitive process: it’s somatic. Our bodies need to learn that it is possible to feel safe in the face of shame… to feel at a physical embodied level that there is a path back to belonging. As change agents we can offer the gift of co-regulation: allowing them to experience our own calm nervous systems as an embodied experience of safety. Stephen Porges has a beautiful line here:
If you want to make the world a better place, make people feel safer… the first step is to develop a sense of self compassion in our bodies.
- Practice new behavior. Finally, we need a new strategy to adopt… and it has to be accessible to us. Lisa Lahey had a great two-part interview on Brené Brown’s podcast where she explains:
Motivation is a necessary but insufficient condition to actually change… People won’t make a change unless you find another mechanism to meet the need that the maladaptive behavior is currently serving.
Right. It’s not enough to let go of the old behavior; that is necessary but insufficient. We also need a new behavior to replace it; one capable of meeting the same need. If shame is fundamentally about belonging… this means supporting people in feeling like they belong. Friend and somatic coach Jesse Marshall summarized the research this way, reminding us that this sense of belonging must also be felt in the body:
The body will only let go of the old strategy if it is offered embodied experiences of the safety and efficacy of other strategies.
Mastering shame is a claim to power
Toxic shame is the master’s tool: we must reject it. More: we must work hard to refuse to succumb to it, and to support each other in healing from present and intergenerational trauma and the shame that accompanies it. As Daniel Schmachtenberger notes:
Unhealthy shame has been one of the most powerful tools for systemic control and oppression throughout history.
But healthy shame is one way those with less institutional/structural power can push back: to wield healthy shame skillfully is to exercise power. Jennifer Jacquet contends that shame can be a powerful tool of nonviolent resistance. She explains:
Shame gives the weak greater power.
In researching this piece I found myself returning to the literature (and Buddhist practice) of fierce compassion. The difference between healthy shame and toxic shame (for those of us trying to use shame in service of justice, to challenge entrenched systems of power and oppression) is the target. As Kristin Neff reminds us:
Call out the harm, not the people. Good anger prevents harm; bad anger causes harm.
(I would replace good/bad with healthy/unhealthy, and here anger is the expression of the “fierce” part of compassion that is calling power to account). This is one of our greatest strengths: one I have elsewhere called the righteous anger of hope we feel at injustice. This is to return shame to its pro-social role: as a tool to promote social cohesion in service of the whole, not the narrow interests of those in power (credit to Miki Kashtan for this insight).
One of my favorite contemporary examples that explicitly embraces shame as a tactic is the Swedish-initiated “flying shame” movement. It’s been personally effective in my own life: where even five years ago I wouldn’t have given much thought to air travel and its carbon footprint, now I think about it… and it’s influenced my behavior. I don’t like the sting of shame I feel at the disconnect between my values/beliefs (need to end carbon-intensive industry) and my actions. It’s an example of how a few individuals (including Greta Thunberg) can catalyze individual change by challenging an institutional/systemic practice… by appealing to our own values and exposing our already-existing but not-often-acknowledged dissonance. That feeling of dissonance motivates a reparative impulse. Koshin Paley Ellison explains:
Shame is what we feel when presented with evidence of our own hypocrisy... You’ll never be free until you can feel the pain, feel the sting of the ouch that inspires you to do better.
It also points to a key lesson: we must have alternative ways to meet the underlying need. Flying shame has been far more successful in Europe where there is a well-connected, fast, and reliable rail network… and much less successful in the car and plane-dependent U.S. It’s a fine line to walk: Cathy O’Neil argues that it’s an inappropriate use of shame if it’s not meaningfully possible to change behavior (e.g. shaming rural Americans for using pickup trucks, when they rely on those gas-guzzling vehicles to do heavy work and there aren’t available alternatives). She explains:
The principle is you shouldn’t shame somebody who doesn’t have a choice, and you shouldn’t shame somebody who doesn’t have a voice. If you do one of those things, that’s punching down.
She also cautions us against targeting individuals for systemic problems: the purpose of shame is to transform systems (and yes, the people who make up those systems), to make it easier to live in a world where everyone belongs. Jacquet explains the transformative potential:
Shame’s performance is optimized when people reform their behavior in response to its threat and remain part of the group… Ideally, shaming creates some friction but ultimately heals without leaving a scar.
Co-creating new conditions for belonging
The good news: I think there’s a roadmap to coming into right relationship with shame, to navigating the paradox that kicked off this post. I now feel more grounded: there is a way to show up with love… without letting go of the need for change. I think there is a necessary role for judgment and the skillful wielding of healthy shame: not of people as individuals, but of behavior and systems that are at odds with justice, with the demands of a world where everyone belongs.
Where increasingly I see mindfulness/social justice spaces arguing “stop trying to change people,” I want to offer a more nuanced response. Yes, stop trying to change people… but don’t give up on trying to change behavior. Justice insists that we stay in the struggle, that we continue the difficult work of inviting people—and supporting them—to transform.
The bad news: it’s a tall order. The first step alone may be insurmountable for many of us in the work of social justice: showing up with love and compassion for those whose behavior we wish to transform… is asking a lot. And it reinforces a core truth: we have to show up for ourselves first, and extend the very self-compassion we are inviting others to step into. That is the first act of transformation (I credit this framing to a conversation with Aisha Shillingford).
From that place of self-compassion, we have more agency to transform ourselves and the world. As bell hooks observed in her classic All About Love:
The more we accept ourselves, the better prepared we are to take responsibility in all areas of our lives.
Indeed, this is one definition I like defining the purpose of social change efforts generally, and the invitation to social movements in particular. adrienne maree brown puts it this way:
The invitation to create sanctuary and welcoming movements is to constantly grow people’s responsibility to transform the world for themselves and their people.
We desperately need new norms. Pro-social ways of living and relating that are conducive to a world where everyone belongs. And if we are serious about transformation, this means both co-creating and identifying those news ways of relating… and supporting others (and ourselves!) on the difficult path from here to there. To let go of old norms is to refuse to be shamed by them… to adopt new norms is to feel the sting of shame as we realize we have caused harm.
Of course this all begs an obvious question: how do we decide/agree on these new norms? As friend, collaborator, and parenting expert Jen Lumanlan put it in her in-depth module exploring shame:
If we can’t agree as a society what are the attributes and activities that should be considered shameful, how can we argue in favor of the continued use of shame?
I’ve intentionally sidestepped that question here, because so much of my other writing tackles this question directly (here, e.g.) I wanted to take up shame specifically because so often it is the biggest impediment to the kind of radical imagination I’m longing for. Too often we use it the way it’s been used against us… and it hurts our movements. This post is an invitation to step into right relationship with shame, and therefore to entertain the tantalizing possibility of returning to belonging.
As always, I’d love to hear what lands, what doesn’t, and how you’re making sense of a difficult and fraught topic. I’d love to join you in dialogue around it, in the comments below or in our next subscriber gathering.
Brian Stout is a systems convener, network weaver, and initiator of the Building Belonging collaborative. His background is in international conflict mediation, serving as a diplomat with the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) in Washington and overseas. He also worked in philanthropy with the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, before leaving in early 2016 to organize in response to the global rise of authoritarianism and far-right nationalism. He recently returned to his hometown in rural southern Oregon, where he lives with his wife and two children.
originally published at building belonging
featured image taken by author : "My kids enjoying the bliss of a summer afternoon along a Norwegian fjord"
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Five Calls-to Action from the 2022 Facing Race Conference
What happens when thousands of racial justice leaders and practitioners come together after a pandemic? So much power and knowledge-sharing – and plenty of dancing and hugs, and even a few martinis!
At the 2022 national Facing Race Conference in Arizona, sponsored by Race Forward, participants were graced with gratitude for their work for racial justice, invited to be even bolder in our approaches, and instructed to avoid internal implosions at a time in which our organizations and the movement are needed the most.
I heard five important calls-to-action:
- Backlash Means We’re Winning. Keep Going!
We’re winning! The number of people of color leading and pushing change in institutions is at its highest levels. We see movement wins such as the growing people of color electorate and the halt of the Keystone pipeline. The use of the word “systemic racism” is now commonplace. We were encouraged to keep pressing forward and harder to break through on our biggest ideas. Opening plenary speakers said, “Fight for your impossible idea… and let us dream and fail.”
- Get out of Isolation. It’s Time for Reconnection!
We’ve become accustomed to quarantine and staying close to home but we were encouraged to move out of our comfort zones. Specifically, we were reminded to talk to people at their doors and to bring them back into protests and visible organizing. One speaker said, “we have to retrain people, including ourselves, to interact again, especially in person and in public.” At IISC, our mission is creating skills for collaboration and interaction. We’re exploring how we can enter and hold physical spaces with care while still centering those at risk from COVID through an equity and disability access lens.
- Don’t Underestimate White Nationalism. Expose and Bring it Down!
As distinct from the ideology of white supremacy, white nationalism is coordinated and direct action fueled by hatred and violence. Organization-building to support white racist and anti-semetic attacks and violence is on the rise and getting very sophisticated. From Boston to Michigan and Florida, leaders pointed to overt and well-organized actions in their communities from white nationalist organizations. They encouraged us to work with community organizations, government leaders, and neighbors to develop strategies to prevent their inroads and to frame messaging to drown out their discourse.
- Stop Internal Organizational Implosions. Build Organizations on Soul Work!
We heard a loud and clear call for each person inside an organization to take responsibility for extinguishing the internal fights we are waging against each other so we can focus on the external fights for justice. No organization, person, or leader is perfect so we can’t cast each other to the curb in punitive and harmful ways, stay in victimization, attack each other, and fall into gossip. They asked us to build our organizations so people can do their soul work and be liberated to do work with joy and happiness.
- Move Forward. Live into Possibility!
I was struck that you barely heard the name “Trump” around the conference. The focus was on moving and organizing for what we want and imagine. Not that we don’t pay attention to the war on our democracy and progressive values but that we go in the direction of creating even more conditions for change and living good personal lives as we do it. IISC held a workshop at the conference on fighting the return of the old normal by envisioning and leading for liberatory systems and racial justice transformation. We produced a resource guide to help you and other organizations do that while attending to the current challenges before us. Check it out.
In summary, we have power, we’re winning, and we need to reconnect and get our own house in order. Now that’s a push we at IISC appreciated and definitely needed, and maybe you feel that way, as well. We hope to see you at the next Facing Race conference in 2024.
As president, Kelly Bates (she/her) leads the strategic direction of Interaction Institute of Social Change and supports its dynamic and diverse team of consultants and trainers to meet the organization’s highest aspirations for social change and racial equity.
Kelly is a social changer, nonprofit civic leader, and lawyer who for more than twenty-five years has led advocacy, organizing, racial justice, and women’s organizations promoting collaboration, equity, and civic engagement, both locally and nationally. She strives each day to develop and embody the heart, skills, and mindset of a facilitative leader and civic innovator for progressive movement building across the country and in communities.
originally published at Interaction Institute for Social Change on December 13, 2022
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Creative Freedom for True Equity
Equity is often discussed, but rarely understood in a context that speaks to the core challenges of people who are under-represented in race, religion, gender, socio economic status or who may be geographically excluded and differently abled. In particular, the necessary experiences and spaces for communities within rural Texas are just beginning to receive the attention and resources required to spark conversation and change. Paying homage to deep rooted history and lineage of community members is essential for Black communities in Bastrop County, Texas (and beyond). In Bastrop, home to 13 original Freedom Colonies, the untapped power of equity-for-all lies in the centering of Blackness. In order for our society to evolve, it is imperative to recognize Black America's contributions and sacrifices as a strategy towards equity for everyone. This has been the primary focus of my personal work, which aspires to bring about social change for all.
Grappling with the core roots of exclusion and inequity, Network Weaving helps to build a framework for connection, access, support and consistent learning– a critical necessity for many who have generational ties to this local land. In Central Texas, approaching community organizing from a network weaving paradigm has supported an evolving model of rural mental health equity in many ways by building on existing culture of community-led organizing. By providing resources for gatherings and trainings for local community leaders, network weaving has become a pillar of support for the work already being done by many on-the-ground community members of these rural networks.
As a weaver, the support of this network and the ability to work collectively and autonomously alongside like-minded people has helped me develop the courage to continue down the path of creating safe spaces for Black women and Black boys. While they continue to be challenged by those who rarely experience the feeling of being othered, safe spaces continue to be places where, as Kelsey Gladwell writes, “we can simply be — where we can get off the treadmill of making white people comfortable and finally realize just how tired we are. Valuing and protecting spaces for people of color (PoC) is not just a kind thing that white people can do to help us feel better; supporting these spaces is crucial to the resistance of oppression.”
After the George Floyd Protests, people began coming to us, as community leaders to shoulder the burden of anti racist organizing, but as a mental health clinician, I saw that my community required a more communal approach that centered their mental, spiritual, ancestral and physical health. This led me to co-create a series of social wellness brunches for Black women in central Texas, a podcast about centering community voices in healing, and the Bastrop County Black Boys Collective which aims to nurture their innovation through connection with other boys and men.
Resistance has been the bedrock to creating safe spaces for local black communities, and it has often been misunderstood as an exclusionary act. Finding the courage, self-love and dedication to create from a vulnerable place has been an emancipating experience, making it hard to return back to “business as usual.” My vision and purpose, as I reflect on my life thus far, are to find ways to enhance freedom and liberation for like-minded communities. To get to this creative utopia, I often reflect and ask myself;
- How can I continue to create spaces for renewal, healing, safety, trust and belonging?
- Who understands and can support this desire for creative freedom?
- What are my strategies to unearth the core stories around me that have led to freedom and prosperity for rural Black America?
- How can we as a collective redefine “success” to allow space for our inherent goodness?
- Where and how can I build upon my connections to others dedicated to liberation?
Through my partnership with the network weaving community since 2019, I’ve been able to form lasting relationships to other community organizers, writers, and social change agents who also see a path towards healing for the communities in which they identify. Weavers are a set of individuals looking to bring attention to the causes that they are most passionate about. Working with advocates and activists dedicated to equity initiatives has been confirmation that we have much more work to do but…I am not alone.
As a Black woman, Mother, mental health strategist, and safe space creator, I’ve been able to carve out a path of healing with my community. These experiences have enabled me to have a clear awareness of those around me and the resources needed to build upon a framework of freedom, liberation, reciprocity and resilience while redefining my understanding of self within the totality of my community.
The thought-leaders within the network have remained bold, focused on serving all populations and dedicated to creating a system of social entrepreneurs with the belief that social entrepreneurship which honors the lived-experiences of community leaders and disruptors is the catalyst towards rural social and political change.
We are innovators and creators. My legacy will be the creation of a physical space for healing, freedom, and creativity for the under-represented. As an act of rebellion and love, weaving through my social change work has helped to heal my battle with power by stepping into my potential as a Network Engine, connector and artist. Weaving has become an important aspect of reclaiming my right to connect and create with like-minded individuals. I’ve already begun to witness the shift in our local narrative, relying on the voices, contributions and vast experiences of the black community.
The function, the profoundly serious function, of racism is distraction. It keeps you from doing your work. It keeps you explaining, repeatedly, your reason for being. - Toni Morrison
Krystal Grimes, M.S., LPC is the President and Founder of AMMA Empowerment Services, LLC. Krystal is recognized regionally and internationally as a safe space creator and mental health strategist. Through an intrinsic ability and desire to support others, Krystal has positioned herself as a local convener and facilitator for healing and diversity initiatives, supporting the creation of inclusive and brave spaces for dialogue and innovation.
featured image by Alicia W. Brown
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The Complexity Spectrum
Systems change is not for everyone, but making a good choice is
Philanthropies are increasingly becoming key players in the field of systems change. As organizations grow more innovative and risk tolerant, they are logical partners to those working to shift systems for the better.
In addition, the work many philanthropies are doing to reckon with drivers of inequities and racism — which very often contribute to their accumulation of wealth — requires many of the same changes that systems work calls for. In fact, breaking the deeper patterns that drive racism is itself a system change effort.¹
Systems change, however, requires philanthropies to operate in ways that are often unfamiliar, even counter to traditional ways of working. While we all need to see the world through a complex systems lens, systems change is not an approach that every philanthropy can responsibly pursue.
Clock vs. Cloud
Systems change is a “cloud problem” that exists in a world built for “clock solutions.”
The clock vs. cloud (or complicated vs. complex) distinction is based on the insight that most challenges lean toward two distinct types:²
These two types of problems require two fundamentally different approaches:
Like most organizations, philanthropies traditionally focus on a clock approach: solve problems, fix what’s broken, and get it done as quickly as we can. But that’s not how systems work:
- Systems don’t get solved. At best, we hope to shift systems to a healthier state.
- Systems don’t just need things fixed. They need healing — healing of relationships, historic inequities, destructive patterns, and the environment.
- Systems are infinite. There is no finish line that can be crossed in days or even a few years. Maintaining healthy systems is an ongoing task.
Damage can be done when we try to fix what needs to be healed or think we can solve that which is unsolvable. Rather we must apply the appropriate approach to the type of problem being addressed.
“We shouldn’t try to fix what needs healing or heal that which can be fixed.
- Dr. Failautusi (Tusi) Avegalio, University of Hawaii
Philanthropies interested in pursuing system change should avoid thinking of mission in terms of solving problems — or worse, thinking they can fix in a matter of months or even a few years that which needs healing. In contrast to a mission statement that is some form of “we exist to solve the world’s biggest problems,” systems change needs a different formulation. Something like:
As a philanthropy, we make good use of our resources to support the well-being of people, relationships, processes, and ecosystems as they grapple with complex and dynamic challenges.
Why “good use” instead of “highest and best use?”
Philanthropies often think being good stewards of their resources means putting those resources to their highest and best use. But highest and best is an impossible standard when dealing with the uncertainty and unpredictability of cloud problems. Moreover, highest and best implies an expectation of perfectionism which, while a conceivable aspiration in the clock world, can be counterproductive, even destructive in the cloud world.³
Why “support the well-being” instead of “solve problems” or “create impact?”
As outsiders, as opposed to those living in the system, a system is not our problem to solve. In cloud environments, change often takes time and has multiple influences and repercussions. Tying something you did to a specific, sustainable, and systemic impact is nearly impossible.
Why “people, relationships, processes, and eco-systems?”
These are the sources from which system change emerges. It takes a system to change a system. Lasting change is more likely to happen if those in the system, as well as their relationships with each other and with the wider environment, are healthier.
A Spectrum of Choices
The goal in exploring systems change for philanthropies is not to argue that everyone should be doing this type of work. The goal is to help philanthropies make good choices about how to use their resources (financial, people, social, network, etc.)
The choice of systems change is not a binary one. Rather there are distinct types of problems and interventions that exist along the spectrum from clock to cloud.
To illustrate the Complexity Spectrum, take the issue of houselessness:
The key to understanding the Complexity Spectrum is understanding differences in clock and cloud problems and approaches. The defining characteristic of a cloud approach is that it targets the underlying patterns of behavior that make up a system and drive the outcomes the system produces (e.g. underlying patterns that drive levels of poverty and make it difficult to “fix” the impacts of poverty like lower life expectancy, increased stress levels, etc.) If an approach aims to just lessen the extent of a problem or ameliorate the impacts of it, it’s more clock than cloud.
The murkiest part of the spectrum is the difference between Solution at Scale and System Innovation. This can be confusing because the same tactic can be a Solution at Scale or a System Innovation depending on how it is implemented. Take for example Housing First in Salt Lake City and Calhoun County, MI.
In Salt Lake City, Housing First was used to remedy the problem of the chronically houseless, defined as houseless people with histories of substance abuse or mental illness. As a Solution at Scale, it was effective. Chronic houselessness was cut by 90% for the target population over a ten-year period.⁴
This success was hailed as an example of how Salt Lake City had solved houselessness. But over the same period, the number of people living in houseless shelters doubled. Why? The program was designed to solve a widespread need among a portion of the city’s houseless, but it was not designed to address the many complex and interconnected forces that drive houselessness and make it difficult to emerge from.
In Calhoun County, in a project supported by noted systems change practitioner David Stroh, they asked a different question. What was keeping the network of actors in the houseless system (providers, houseless, government, advocates, community groups) from being more effective at dealing with houselessness? They found these actors were being incentivized by a variety of sources to choose short-term fixes to houselessness rather than work on the more complex reasons driving houselessness in the first place.
The key actors in the system worked collectively to interrupt the pattern of short-term incentives and create a new pattern of relationships and processes by which they would work to deal with houselessness. They too started with the Housing First program, and it was effective. But Housing First was an outcome of a System Innovation approach — it changed key relationships and patterns that drove houselessness in the County.⁵ When the Great Recession of 2008–2009 hit, levels of houselessness did not spike even as there was a major loss of jobs in the area. In this case, a key pattern in the system changed and, as a result, the problem of houselessness was also changed.
Note the type of activity can be the same in a Solution at Scale and System Innovation. The difference is that System Innovation targets a persistent pattern (the incentive structure). The choice of Housing First in Calhoun County was a result of changing that pattern. Conversely, as a Solution at Scale, Housing First in Salt Lake City was used as a direct intervention and did not aim to change the underlying patterns driving houselessness in general. In this case, Housing First succeeded at meeting the needs of a significant population, but it did not change the system itself.
So what’s the main distinction between System Innovation and System Transformation? A system has interconnected patterns that drive the system and its outcomes. A system can have any number of patterns, depending on how deep one wants to go in understanding the system. System Innovation targets one or two of these patterns and its success depends on whether changing a specific pattern is sufficient to create a sustainable, positive change in the overall system. System Transformation, on the other hand, aims at changing the system itself by changing multiple patterns as well as how those patterns affect each other. So the key difference between System Innovation and Systems Transformation is the number and extent of patterns that are being affected.
Making a Good Choice
As the houselessness example portrays, challenges have both clock and cloud dimensions and have the potential for Targeted Solutions, Solutions at Scale, System Innovation, and System Transformation. The point of the spectrum is to show us that, in every situation, we have a choice as to where and how to engage.
Systems change is not right for everyone nor is it necessary for every problem. While the renewed interest in systems change is promising, it has a downside. The popularity of systems change almost certainly means that people and organizations are choosing it when they shouldn’t. They may lack the capacity to do the work, or only do it because they feel it’s what’s expected. Or worse, they may label an initiative as systems change when it isn’t.
Making a good choice is a function of three critical ingredients:
- Your Mission and Values. The expression of who you are, what you care about, and how you want to be in the world
- Your Capacities. Skills, relationships, practices, structures, and mental models at multiple levels (individual, organizational, network)
- Your Context. The ecosystem in which the challenges you care about exist and that affects how they may change into the future (e.g. people, structures, attitudes, narratives, trends, patterns, the natural and built environment, etc.)
Ideally, an organization aims to find the sweet spot where mission and values, context, and capacities align; a particular approach will allow you to effectively serve your mission in a specific context using your distinctive capacities.
Let’s take a hypothetical organization whose mission is to reduce houselessness in a major US city. Assume that organization takes a system-level view of what drives houselessness in their community. As noted above, they are likely to find some version of each of the four challenges (urgent needs to a complex system) and the potential for the four approaches. But assume their analysis also shows:
- The system overall is moving in a positive direction and many novel and promising approaches are emerging.
- Recent policy changes mean there are many new benefits for those in or emerging from houselessness, but there are many obstacles to applying for and receiving those benefits.
- This “benefits gap” creates a widespread need among the houseless.
- There is still uncertainty whether these emerging trends will continue in a positive direction and if policy changes will help, or if old patterns that drive houselessness will re-emerge.
- There are still many houseless who will face urgent needs for shelter when the weather turns cold, and there are many chronically houseless who are still underserved.
The organization is tech savvy, has strong capacity in product development, and solid relationships with local government and houseless providers. They do not have experience in doing systems change explicitly and lack the monitoring and evaluation capacities that highly adaptive system change work requires. And because the organization found solid indicators that the “houseless system” in their community is generally moving in a positive direction, they saw less of a need for the organization to invest in some form of systems change (Innovation or Transformation).
They decide their resources would be best used in pursuit of a Solution at Scale — an app that connects houseless and providers with benefits and simplifies the application process. But they will need to monitor whether urgent needs in the system will grow and make longer-term work much harder, or whether old problematic patterns will re-emerge and potentially undermine even an effective Solution at Scale.
Governing Amidst Complexity
The Complexity Spectrum and the mission-context-capacities framework are designed to help make a hard choice a bit easier — but it is still a difficult one. Of the three variables, capacities pose the biggest challenge:
- Your mission and values are in your control. While they may be ill-defined or out-of-date, you still have control over them.
- Understanding a complex system is difficult, but it is still possible. There are a wide range of systems and complexity tools and practices for sensing systems and how to engage them.
When it comes to capacities, however, I am not aware of any organization pursuing system change that feels they have it all figured out. In fact, I’m certain they never will — because systems are dynamic, as are the capacities needed to engage systems.
Philanthropies, like most organizations, will take time to become agencies of system change. Effective governance — the ability to make a steady stream of decisions in the face of complexity and outside of just the board room — will allow philanthropies to become effective contributors to system change efforts. Governance, in service of being agile and adaptive, is the key capacity that philanthropies must develop to be effective at system change. The next blog in this series will explore this idea further.
* * *
Note on definitions: the use of the term “system” in this piece refers to an aid for learning or discovery — a helpful way to understand reality. In particular, the word system here refers to a complex adaptive system, meaning it is ever evolving and made up of many patterns of behavior that persist and change over time, and which interact with and affect each other. In this sense, system, as used here, is not a real thing; it is a mental model. A complex adaptive system, as used in this piece, is distinct from seeing just the tangible elements of a system (e.g., seeing a healthcare system as consisting of patients, providers, insurers, first responders, nurses, doctors, regulators, etc.) versus seeing the dynamic patterns that drive the level of health in a community (e.g., a poverty trap where people who are poor can’t afford sufficient healthcare; but because their health suffers, their earning potential is limited). The theory behind using the complex adaptive system is that understanding patterns of behavior and affecting them is the way to change such systems over time.
[1] See Systems Change & Deep Equity: An Interview with Sheryl Petty and Mark Leach; And the work of Jara Dean-Coffey and the Equitable Evaluation Initiative; Also Dean-Coffey, J. (2018). “What’s Race Got to Do With It? Equity and Philanthropic Evaluation Practice.” American Journal of Evaluation, 39(4), 527–542.
[2] Clock-Cloud are terms coined in the 1960’s by Karl Popper; Complicated-Complex have been described by Dave Snowden (in the Cynefin Framework) and Brenda Zimmerman.
[3] Okun, T. “white supremacy culture.”
[4] Hobbes, M. “Why Can’t America Solve Homelessness?”
[5] Stroh, D. P. (2009). “Leveraging Grantmaking: Understanding the Dynamics of Complex Social Systems.” The Foundation Review, 1(3). 109–122.
Rob Ricigliano is the Systems & Complexity coach at The Omidyar Group, where he supports teams as they engage complex systems to make societal change.
originally publshed at In Too Deep
featured image by Wolf Zimmermann on Unsplash
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The role and power of re-patterning in systems change
7 everyday patterns to shift systems towards equity
Many recent discussions about civic innovation and systems change have focused on big structural changes that need to take place if we are to grow more equitable outcomes. Along with our friends at TSI / Auckland Co-Design Lab we suspected that we also needed to explore what could happen underneath those structures at the level of more fundamental and ‘everyday’ values, mindsets, behaviours and interactions.
Our combined piece of work began with the hunch that ‘there are already patterns of change that exist and are emerging’. Maybe there were pockets of the future that already exist in the work we were doing that could help transition systems towards equity?
This series on patterns is the culmination of this exploration. We offer it as a demonstration that shifting systems towards equity is possible and that it is the responsibility of everyone to start doing and being differently, in every part of every system, every day.
It introduces seven patterns we have identified across the work of TSI in South and West Auckland that go some way to making visible, active re-patterning for equity and power sharing. This blog and the full PDF introduce the series, and we will release more detail on each pattern over the next couple of months.
First — what’s a pattern in the context of systems change?
In simple terms, patterns are interconnected behaviours, relationships and structures that together make up a picture of what ‘common practice’ looks like and how it is ultimately experienced by people interacting with and in a system.
If we take Public Services in the twenty-first century here are some examples.
Public Service organisations have most often been formed around concepts such as universal access, service delivery, social safety nets, and public provision of critical infrastructure. Built into these elements are patterns, like:
Patterns of relationships: based on objectivity, universalism, professional relationships.
Patterns of resourcing: focused on rationing, efficiency, programmatic resource flows.
Patterns of power: centred on professional expertise, needs assessments, deserving access to spaces and services.
On the surface, these are not necessarily negative and there have doubtless been many successes enabling broad access to services and infrastructure.
It’s also true though that there remain many who have not benefited, who have missed out on access or opportunity, and who have actually been harmed by and within the system.
What is needed is a foundation for public systems that moves away from goals of access to more and better servicing of communities, and towards goals around learning how we can promote patterns of thriving, aspiration, success and ‘wellbeing’.
The role of everyday patterns in shifting systems
There are a growing number of people discussing the need for systems in many circles — from service providers, funders, investors, intermediaries, and policymakers.
As noted above, most of these discussions focus on the big-picture tasks of pulling various levers from policy changes to new program design.
However, in our work alongside public servants, we have found it just as important to focus on how we shift the foundational patterns, behaviours, relationships and interactions that underlie all parts of systems.
The everyday patterns.
These may look small in the scheme of systems, but actually, they can fundamentally shift people’s lived experience of systems. And importantly — they are within the reach of every one of us who works in a system to start to learn our way into.
Becoming pattern learners to re-pattern systems
If we’re interested in systems transformation we need to become pattern learners.
Humans are extraordinarily good at recognising and responding to patterns. They have always helped us understand, navigate, make sense of and respond to the world around us. Every pattern — every interaction within a system — can reflect the values embedded in that system. So, if we want to change systems, we need first to observe or at least begin to understand the patterns underpinning it. We also need to imagine, learn, test and spread new patterns in order to affect change.
The patterns we present here provide a glimpse of transitioning to more equitable, just and healing systems. They have been developed in a context and are still more like starting points than fully developed patterns of good practice. We see them as prompts that help us to learn, make sense and meaning and deepen dialogue about what it may take to truly create transformed systems for wellbeing in equitable and just ways. We share these patterns to foster collective dialogues about how we can shift systems towards wellbeing, where people and places can flourish rather than just survive.
Over the next couple of months, we will share deeper dives into each pattern, culminating finally in a combined piece of work.
Read the first deep dive: Beyond Services
Read the second deep dive: Starting Differently
The Yunus Centre at Griffith University exists to accelerate transitions to regenerative and distributive futures through systems innovation
Originally published at Medium
featured image found here
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Turning the stone: embedding systems thinking in the everyday
The context
Images
Isn’t it interesting how frequently as human beings we turn to metaphor? Sometimes these images are so embedded in the everyday that we don’t see them for what they are. We talk about ‘just ploughing on’, ‘turning over a new leaf’ and much more. Why? Because we don’t feel, think and communicate solely in mechanistic term, we are not ‘desiccated calculating machines’. We think in patterns, through resonance, emotion, stories and intuitive connection as well as logic.
Metaphor evokes in us things the literal cannot. It uses the poet’s deftness to reduce the messiness of the world, rejects the technocrat’s straight line sketch of reality. Metaphors also offer shortcuts to submerged mental models or situations, containing in their DNA bundles of previous inter-related experience and learning. I find images can be useful touchstones or motifs around which to organise my thoughts or re-centre activity or purpose. ‘Be more water’ etc.
Systems
Given this, it’s not surprising that imagery and metaphor feature heavily in systems thinking.
Over the past six months I’ve been learning about systems thinking approaches as well as systems change — their practical application in the cause of social justice or similar ends. I’ve been exposed to an intoxicating array of philosophies, tools, narratives and claims. Inevitably some have resonated more strongly than others. A couple I have found a bit vague (but probably didn’t understand) and a couple I have found a bit opaque (and definitely didn’t understand).
But the process of learning has been quite liberating. It has given me new ways to think about the universe I exist within; who can ask for more than that?
Imagine if a toolkit existed which allowed you to pick the lock of whatever complex policy or operational challenges you were dealing with that day. But also somehow captured the shifting beauty of a thousand starlings in flight or the majesty of the moss covered forest-as-organism. Something that gave definition and structure to all the intuitive system-craft we develop simply by being tenacious and creative in our work. That to me is the appeal of systems thinking.
Systems change in the everyday
Some of the approaches I have come to know take hard work, safeguarded time and the willing collaboration of colleagues. Others flit around at the paradigm level, triggering unconscious mindset micro-recalibrations. The variety is at times overwhelming.
So when I asked myself what artefact I wanted to produce to mark the end of my School of System Change Basecamp programme I thought I would consider practical ways to weave embed systemic practice into the everyday.
After reflection I concluded first one thing and then another. Firstly, that identifying and developing the mental and behavioural pre-conditions which allow systemic thinking to flourish is probably more important than striving to develop deep technical understanding of specific tools — after all no plants will grow in a barren field, no matter how packed with potential the seed. And secondly that I wanted to use emblematic metaphors to pin down the most important of these core attitudes, from which a number of simple, everyday systemic practices could then flow.
So the three sections below are a simple — and imperfect — attempt at that. Three images to lodge in my head, and perhaps yours too.
The images
Turning the stone
I have a memory as a child of turning a large flat stone in a wood and becoming enthralled at the universe-in-miniature beneath it. Insect life, leaf mulch, moss. The dynamic equilibrium of decay and fertility, death and life.
Although it’s impossible to pin down what systems thinking/change represents to any single person, for me it is a world-view build on a deep curiosity about the universe and our place in it. It’s hard to be open to other standpoints, learn or develop without an open mind (and an open heart too). A sense of ongoing intellectual and social inquiry can turbo-change any job which requires tactical relationship building, political weather reading, policy landscape navigating and hard decision making.
Ways to turn the stone:
- Deliberately immerse yourself in media and news sources you know you’ll disagree with. Take time to mentally articulate why you disagree with the arguments and be wary of jumping to conclusions. This is actually quite hard to do! The voluntary sector in the UK, for instance, has an obvious bias towards the soft left politically but I hear few people challenging the system to actively seek out opposing views and force the remaking of arguments for the full range of world-views. If you find your ideas shored up by the process that’s great — like a vital aircraft component that’s been stress-tested to near destruction in the workshop it is now ready for use in the outside world. However you may find your ideas slowly changing — it’s all part of ‘exposing your mental models to the light of day’ (Donella Meadows). [ap_spacing spacing_height="5px"]
- ‘Get the beat of the system’ (DM again) — set up a rolling meeting with an inter-disciplinary cast representing the most obvious system viewpoints around which you are working. Or convene a space with four or five experts from the same discipline. Get a monthly Zoom/Team invite in the diary and the admin load is light. Help set the tone and model behaviour at the beginning then sit back — see what people bring. It’s amazing the insights, thoughts, ideas (and yes rants) people share, once they are convinced of the fact they are within a group of trusted system colleagues, outside the more formal spaces of government forums and rigid agendas. Sometimes this more explorative space may feel unfamiliar so you may need to sell it as an informal advisory group of some kind. Convening isn’t about just ‘doing the admin’ it’s about setting a tone, making people feel valued and respected, ‘holding the space’ and modelling behaviour that you wish to see others exhibit.
Building the spider’s web
There are three basic elements in any system — data points (people, perspectives, organisations, cells, trees), the connections between them and a uniting, animating purpose. My observation from policy work is that too much attention is paid to the things themselves and not enough to the connections between them.
Building a network of contacts — and entrepreneurially convening flexible spaces within it — may again allow you to get the beat of the system and develop a more richly detailed (though still partial) map of the territory. A fancy name for this might be ‘distributed cognition’, but I think of it as building a web.
Ways to build the web:
- At the most simple level it could be consciously focusing on the relational. Almost all roles and ways of exploring the world involve working with and through others so relationships are obviously key. Systems leadership across organisational boundaries is impossible without high-quality, sticky and trusting relationships. These will support all future work from developing shared campaign positions to negotiating the finances of a major joint operational undertaking. Thinking of relational work as the work and not just a means to doing the work might help.[ap_spacing spacing_height="5px"]
- If getting into systems change feels a bit like joining a secret society then it follows that you must identify and cultivate your fellow travellers. They will not appear according to rank, status or job description. Some will be formally trained and others not. Carving out space and time is key here, which is why I’ve started some thinking about a systems change learning club with an emphasis on the fun, informal side of systems exploration.
Looking into the pond
Knowledge of self precedes almost all other forms of knowledge. The wisdom of the ages tells us that we must know ourselves before turning to identify problems and solutions in the external world — ‘physician, heal thyself’.
There is no two ways about it — to work systemically is to work reflectively. The whole idea is about taking a step back and what is that other than an instruction for reflection?
The image of a still pond reveals itself to me here. Mirror-like, but not a mirror. A surface broken by debris, imperfectly reflecting a face.
Ways to look into the pond:
- Building simple reflective practice into the everyday. Do you have a key series of meetings or a super important stakeholder relationships to develop? Or perhaps a colleague you are struggling to get on with? Or a knotty policy issue dancing before your eyes? Try journaling. Don’t overthink it, use a physical journal or a note-taking app like Evernote to get some stuff down. This is usually about the wisdom of the moment so try to do it immediately after the event rather than in hindsight (when our brains begin to impose post-hoc rationalisation). I remember doing this after my first board meeting and breaking it into ‘head’ and ‘heart’. The first covered the mental and bodily experience of a potentially stressful situation, the second provides analytic commentary on how events unfolded and how things could be different next time.[ap_spacing spacing_height="5px"]
- The pond does not reflect just the individual but the system itself. One of the School for System Change’s systemic practices — which I love — is ‘enabling the system to see itself, hold the whole picture’. Think about the causal chains that (nominally at least) link the key data points within the system you are working on. For me it might be something like: minister is keen on a policy, directs senior officials; officials develop policy framework; resource devolved to local government level; commissioner commissions provider; provider CEO sets out a vision; ops director mobilises a service; practitioners make the magic happen for people in recovery; person in recovery volunteers as peer mentor. (You can make it more or less detailed as you see fit.) Now typically most data points (people in this instance) are familiar with only their neighbouring one or two points but much less so with the ones further up or down ‘the food chain’. Short-circuiting those connections can have powerful results. I recently organised a trip for a very senior civil servant who had taken on the treatment and recovery brief. We brought him, and other officials, to a recovery service in North London to listen and learn from senior public health representatives, local government commissioners, frontline workers and people in recovery. And in that room in Tottenham the system was presented with a mirror and — fleetingly — could see itself and understand its shared purpose. The officials walked away remembering that policy-making is not an end in itself but an embodiment of the social contract in action; communal resource being deployed to high quality create public services. The frontline workers walked away feeling that policymaking at the centre is hard, but has good people attempting to address that hardness. Things click into place. ‘Ah, I get why that join up with criminal justice doesn’t work properly, as you’ve had your budgets hammered’. ‘So that’s what assertive outreach is, I had always wondered’. ‘So which agencies should we try and bring together at a local level to provide accountability back to the centre?’ ‘I can see it now, this is why we do what we do — communities improved, families healed, citizens recovering connection and meaning’.[ap_spacing spacing_height="5px"]
- Finally I hope the pond will reveal the embedded nature of our locations within multiple overlapping systems. And the see-sawing of feelings this realisation brings — greater understanding, identification of allies and experience of positive change delivering hope and a potent sense of agency on the one hand, awe at the scale and intricacies of the systems which shape the problems we wrestle with delivering a sense of hopelessness on the other. It might be daunting but we are part of it. As one of my co-learners brilliantly put it: ‘I am the system; we are the system’.
Oliver Standing is Director of Collective Voice, the national alliance of drug and alcohol treatment and recovery charities. He is responsible for its day to day leadership and delivery of its main activity – policy and advocacy work to help bring about an effective, evidence-based and person-centred support system for anyone in England with a drug or alcohol problem. Collective Voice also shares good practice and brings together networks across the sector.
Before this Oliver worked for Adfam (the national charity working to improve support for families affected by drug or alcohol use) for eight years, latterly as Director of Policy and Communications. He has a deep interest in systems change, having taken part in the School for Systems Change Basecamp for Health Leaders in 2021, with a particular focus on policy-making in complex environments and driving collaboration across organisational boundaries. https://twitter.com/OliverStanding
originally published at School of Systems Change
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Decentralized organizing: More collaboration, less hierarchy
From organisational governance to mobilising and sustaining grassroots movements, what is decentralised organising and how can this approach facilitate collective but efficient decision-making without management hierarchy?
Decentralised organising isn’t just about delegating tasks and responsibilities. It’s about transparency and openness, including how financial decisions are made and how labour is divided. This approach creates a great work ethic:
- Empowering members to do the work they care about, not just what they’re told to do
- Cultivating a culture of trust, collaboration and transparency
- Incentives are aligned because ownership is open to all
Sounds good? We recently caught up with Rich and Nati from Loomio while they were in London and discussed some useful decentralised organising approaches. Here are some changes you can easily implement to start working more collaboratively with less hierarchy:
Establishing “ground rules”
Norms are informal agreements about how group members should behave and work together, e.g. open, honest, inclusive. Boundaries are behaviours that we want to exclude, e.g. no mean feedback, exclusionary decision-making. Collectively, norms and boundaries can also be referred to “ground rules”.
Take time to listen to each member’s perspective. Then, as a group, decide on what your shared norms and boundaries will be. Finally, have this documented and accessible to all members and new members so that expectations are clear and transparent. This way everyone is bound by the same ground rules.
Communication norms
Open but efficient communication is a cornerstone of successful and strong relationships. It can be built by establishing communication norms and collectively agreeing on what communication tools to use for what job. For example:
- Realtime: like whatsapp chat: Informal and quick, it’s about right now.
- Asynchronous: Email or Loomio. More formal, organised around topic. Has a subject + context + invitation. Can take days or weeks.
- Static: Google Docs, Staff handbook, or FAQ. Very formal, usually with an explicit process for updating content
An understanding of when to use different communication tools avoids clogging up communication channels with unnecessary information. Finally, it is important to support members to learn how to use tools and remind each other gently to build habit.
Sharing is caring
Hierarchy habits such as having the same chair for team meetings can discourage other members to feel that they can bring ideas forward, participate in decision making, and take leadership. It is important to be intentional about the behaviours you want to bring to your organisation or network so that members trust each other and feel comfortable working together:
- Intentionally produce a culture of trust and belonging by sharing power, enabling lots of time for discussion, for natural leaders to be reminded to hold back and let others talk,
- Growing collaboration skills with practice through empathy, reflection and communication. It helps to have 5 mins reflection at the end of the meeting to ask people how they think it went – OR send out an anonymous reflection form just after the meeting to see how it performed against the organisational values.
- Distribute ‘care’ labour: make care work visible so that it can be fairly shared – this includes things like organising biscuits to setting the agenda.
Decentralised organising in practice: The Lambeth Portuguese Wellbeing Partnership
In this next section, we feature the Lambeth Portuguese Community Wellbeing Partnership (LPWP), a grassroots community network of over 40 local groups and community members. Bringing together organisations and people from across the health, social, charity and voluntary sectors to listen and work together, the LPWP is an exciting example of working in partnership through decentralised organising to help the Portuguese speaking community live healthier lives and to remove the barriers they face accessing health services. The partnership are keen to work towards adopting a decentralised organising approach and are on a continuous journey to work towards greater transparency and collaboration to create change.
Their successes and impact so far include
- A Breakfast / Homework Club run in conjunction with a Portuguese Café, a local school, educational charities and the NHS.
- A GP surgery and a voluntary sector organisation carrying out joint assessments of frail and vulnerable patients, with the voluntary community liaison officers providing care-coordination and links into social support.
- End of life and Latin American disability charities working together to modify advance care planning templates, empowering those at the end of life to make the decisions that are important to them.
- Culturally relevant patient leaflets, education videos and an NHS ‘Welcome Brochure’ in Portuguese, informing patients of their NHS rights and self-care options.
- A children’s charity working with scientists, to provide children from vulnerable backgrounds experiences working in science in universities.
The LPWP commissioned the Social Change Agency to support developing a strategic and decentralised organisation framework that will ensure that the partnership can play an active role in helping people with multiple long-term conditions live fulfilling lives for longer. It was a great pleasure to meet and interact with some of the organisations and individuals within this partnership, their passion and commitment to working together through values that include inclusivity and trust to improve the wellbeing of Portuguese speakers in Lambeth is truly inspiring!
If you want to focus was on moving towards flatter hierarchies, grassroots decision-making, and letting go of traditional hierarchies, then get in touch to find out how we can help.
The Social Change Agency is an expert team of strategy consultants, campaigners, communicators, and governance geeks. They’ve launched powerful movements, built innovative networks and led groundbreaking campaigns - their expertise spans every aspect of social change.
originally published at The Social Change Agency
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Network Weaving for Equitable Wellbeing
The following post was written for those who will be attending the Full Frame Initiative's (FFI) Wellbeing Summit in Charlotte, North Carolina December 11-14. The Interaction Institute for Social Change has been supporting FFI staff and signers of the Wellbeing Blueprint in developing network ways of thinking and doing as they work to ensure equitable wellbeing in systems ranging from health care to transportation to housing to education to legal aid to food and beyond. Feel free to sign the Wellbeing Blueprint by going to the link above and join the movement to make sure everyone has a fair shot at wellbeing!
"It really boils down to this: all life is interrelated. We are all caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied into a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly.”
- Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. (minister, activist, civil rights leader)
What are networks, and why should we care?
Networks are collections of “nodes and links,” different elements that are connected to each other. These nodes or elements could be people, places, computer or airport terminals, species in an ecosystem, etc. Together, through their connections, these nodes create something that they could not create on their own. This is what some might call “collective impact” or what network scientists call “net gains” and “network effects.”
“While a network, like a group, is a collection of people, it includes something more: a specific set of connections between people in the group. These ties are often more important than the individual people themselves. They allow groups to do things that a disconnected collection of individuals cannot.”
- Nicholas A. Christakis (sociologist, physician, researcher)
Network effects and net gains can include the following:
- Resilience - The ability for a network to weather storms of different kinds, literal and metaphorical, and to bounce back from adversity. Healthy networks can bend without breaking.
- Adaptation - The ability for a collective to change with changing conditions. Healthy networks can rearrange themselves to adjust and respond to disruptions and perturbations.
- Small World Reach - The ability to reach others relatively quickly, across different lines of separation or difference (geography, culture, sector, etc.) . Healthy networks have a diversity and intricacy of pathways, so there are a variety of ways to reach many different nodes/members efficiently.
- Rapid Dissemination - Related to reach, this is about the ability to get crucial resources out to a wide variety of nodes in a timely manner. Healthy networks can ensure that different members can get the nourishment (information, ideas, money, food, etc.) they need to survive and thrive. (1)
“Connections create value. The social era will reward those organizations that realize they don’t create value all by themselves. If the industrial era was about building things, the social era is about connecting things, people, ideas."
-Nilofer Merchant (entrepreneur, business strategist, author)
Other “network benefits” can accrue to individual nodes or members of a network. For example, when surveying members of different kinds of social change and learning networks, some of what often gets mentioned as benefits include:
- Being with other people who inspire and support me
- Learning about topics relevant to my work
- Understanding the bigger picture that shapes and influences my work
- Gaining new tools, skills and tactics to support my work
- Having my voice and efforts amplified
- Accessing new funding and other resources
- Forming new partnerships and joint ventures
What is a healthy network?
“We are the living conduit to all life. When we contemplate the vastness of the interwoven network that we are tied to, our individual threads of life seem far less fragile.”
– Sherri Mitchell/Weh’na Ha’mu’ Kwasset (Penobscot lawyer, activist, author)
A healthy network is one that is able to achieve its collective purpose/core functions, while also addressing the interests of its members, and continuing to be adaptive to changing circumstances. Some key features of these kinds of networks include (2):
- Diversity of membership
- Intricacy of connections (many pathways between nodes)
- Common sense of purpose or mutuality; a sense of a “bigger we”
- Robustness of flows of a variety of resources to all parts of the network
- Shared responsibility for tending to the health and activity of the network
- Resilient and distributed structure(s) with a variety of shared stewardship roles
- A sense of equitable belonging and ability to give to/benefit from the network
- Ongoing learning and adaptation
Like any kind of living organism, networks require care and feeding to keep them vibrant. This is where network weaving comes into play!
What is network weaving?
“A network weaver is someone who is aware of the networks around them and works to make them healthier.”
- June Holley (writer, activist, network consultant)
Network weaving is an umbrella term for the practice of network leadership/stewardship, and it refers to a specific role. If you think about weaving with fabric, it is about bringing different strands together to create a tapestry or cloth of some kind. This can create beautiful patterns, functional garments, and also strength where individual fibers might otherwise be relatively weak. The same goes for weaving connections between people, places and ideas. This is what network weaving is about!
Network weaving is not necessarily the same thing as networking. Networking is generally about putting oneself at the center and making connections to others that create what is called a hub-and-spoke network (see middle image below).
“We never know how our small activities will affect others through the invisible fabric of our connectedness. In this exquisitely connected world, it’s never a question of ‘critical mass.” It’s always about critical connections.”
- Grace Lee Boggs (author, social activist, philosopher)
A core activity in network weaving is what is called “closing triangles.” (3) This happens, for example, when we connect people we know who do not already know each other. This effectively creates a triangle of connection (see the many triangles created through the connections in the left hand image above). These triangles, by extension, can bring the connections that those three people know together, potentially creating more diversity, intricacy and robustness in a larger network (see image below). This is how we can begin to realize a sense of abundance, if these many connections are actively engaged, sharing, contributing and caring for each other and the whole network.
The work of network weaving is also about strengthening existing connections, keeping them warm and engaged. This can happen through asking questions, making requests and offers, and sharing resources of different kinds. Beyond this core function of supporting greater connectivity, network weaving can also be about supporting greater alignment and coordinated or emergent/self-organized action in networks. Other key activities for weaving and activating networks include: designing and facilitating processes to achieve a sense of shared identity/destiny, creating conditions for self-organized and emergent action, curating resources, creating diverse communication pathways, and helping to coordinate joint ventures.
What do networks and network weaving have to do with a fair shot at wellbeing?
“Connectedness is a social determinant of health. The degree to which we have and perceive a sufficient number and diversity of relationships that allow us to give and receive information, emotional support and material aid; create a sense of belonging and value; and foster growth.”
- Katya Fels Smyth (wellbeing/justice advocate, Full Frame Initiative founder)
Wellbeing, as defined by the Full Frame Initiative (FFI), is “the set of needs and experiences that are universally required in combination and balance to weather challenges and have health and hope.” FFI notes further that everyone is wired for wellbeing, but we do not all have a fair shot at the core determinants of wellbeing, or what FFI uplifts as the 5 Domains of Wellbeing. (4)
- Social connectedness to people/communities that allows us to give and to receive, and spaces where we experience belonging to something bigger than ourselves.
- Stability that comes from having things we can count on to be the same from day to day and knowing that a small bump won’t set off a domino-effect of crises.
- Safety, the ability to be ourselves without significant danger or harm.
- Mastery, that comes from being able to influence other people and what happens to us, having a sense of purpose and skills to navigate and negotiate our life.
- Meaningful access to relevant resources like food, housing, clothing, sleep and more, without shame, danger or difficulty.
The first domain above has clear connections to networks and network weaving. Being embedded and engaged in supportive social networks is a great contributor to individual and collective wellbeing! Beyond this, being connected to others in authentic, caring and mutually rewarding webs of relationships can contribute to a sense of stability, safety, purpose, as well create access to resources (financial and otherwise) that sustain and enliven us. So let’s notice the networks around us, who is in them and who is not, who has access to the five domains and who does not, and invite others to do the same. Ask, ‘What systemic/structural changes need to be made for greater inclusion, equity and belonging?” And then together, let’s weave our way to everyone having a fair shot at wellbeingll!
“i think of movements as intentional worlds … not as an unfolding accident of random occurrences, but rather as a massive weaving of intention. you can be tossed about, you can follow someone else’s pattern, or you can intentionally begin to weave and shape existence.”
- adrienne maree brown (author, doula, activist)
For more on network weaving, see:
- 25 Behavior That Support Strong Network Culture
- 3 Mantras and 3 Small Moves for Advancing Networks
- Network Bridging: How a Regional Network is Creating New Connections, Flows and Opportunities
1. See NET GAINS: A Handbook for Network Builders Seeking Social Change https://www.researchgate.net/publication/238708418_NET_GAINS_A_Handbook_for_Network_Builders_Seeking_Social_Change
2. More on the health of networks can be found here, in the work of Dr. Sally J. Goerner - https://capitalinstitute.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/000-Goerner-Regenerative-Development-Sept-15-2015.pdf
3. See more about network weaving and closing triangles at http://www.thenetworkthinkers.com/2009/11/network-weaving-101.htm
4. https://fullframeinitiative.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/Five-Domains-of-Wellbeing-Overview.pdf
About the Author:
Much of Curtis Ogden's work with IISC entails consulting with multi-stakeholder networks to strengthen and transform food public health, education, and economic development systems at local, state, regional, and national levels. He has worked with networks to launch and evolve through various stages of development.
Originally published at Interaction Institute for Social Change on Nov 29th & Dec 6th
featured image found HERE
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