Brenda Zimmerman, dear friend to Tamarack and a champion of community change and innovation, died verysuddenly in mid-December. She will be deeply missed and she leaves a lasting mark on us all. Like many of you, I was inspired and honoured that Brenda chose to share her newest idea - the concept of “snap back” - with us at the 2014 Collective Impact Summit. Her thinking offers guidance for moving forward despite being surrounded by resilient systems, and we now must share her thinking broadly so that it can live on.
I am grateful to have had the opportunity to introduce Brenda and her work to the members of Tamarack's Learning Community. Like many of you, I was inspired and honoured that Brenda chose to share her newest idea - the concept of “snap back” - with us at the 2014 Collective Impact Summit. Calling us her “audience of influence”, Brenda's presentation, Preventing Snap Back: The Challenge of Resilient Systems made a compelling case for her latest thinking which was grounded in an appreciation of the complexity of living systems. It also exemplified the leadership that she brought and shared so generously with the field: challenging each of us to embrace new ways of thinking and have the courage to share them.
The key ideas that Brenda shared in Preventing Snap Back: The Challenge of Resilient Systems include:
- Resilience 101 - Communities and organizations, like all living systems, experience ecological resilience: adaptation and deep change through creative destruction which allows the system to continually learn.
- Change in Complex Living Systems - The behaviour of the system can be largely explained by understanding “attractors.” Relationships and coordination among parts of the system can be more important than the parts themselves.
- Simple Rules - Living systems are self-organizing and influenced by simple rules that provide coherence while allowing for constant adaptation and innovations.
- Snap Back Defined - The tendency for innovative solutions to lose momentum or fail to take root when faced with pressure from the dominant system to return to the status quo.
- Preventing Snap Back: How to Make Innovations More Durable - The following four principles are outlined as important for minimizing the threat of snap back when implementing an innovative initiative:
- Relationships are Key - Choose an “Audience of Significance” that can provide honest feedback and validation for your thinking.
- Pay Attention to Engagement - Ensure resources are available for listening and engaging on an on-going basis. Protect space in your calendar and reward others that take the time to do this. Listening, engaging, and pattern recognition must be supported forever - not just at the beginning.
- Be Strategic Thinkers, not merely Strategic Planners - Reinforce strategic processes that recognize the iterative nature of profound strategic thinking, and always look for the small differences that could create a tipping point.
- Don't Confuse Quick Wins with Quick Fixes - Success is not a destination in complexity. Make resources available for safefail experiments and value context expertise as much as content expertise.
With warmth, humour and authenticity, Brenda invited us to rethink longstanding assumptions about change in ways that engaged both our heads and our hearts. In doing so she simply and powerfully reminded us all that the work of social change is a profoundly human endeavour.
The words of Michael Leunig have offered me solace in the face of the profound loss of my friend, "Let us live in such a way that when we die, our love will survive and continue to grow." Brenda, know that your life and love will live on and grow, within me, and within the countless minds and hearts that you have touched and inspired.
