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Planning for Collective Impact: A Practical Tool

Collective Impact is a framework that is being used by many communities to tackle complex problems.  At the heart of the framework is the notion of bringing together diverse voices (business, government, community organizations and citizens) to deeply understand the problem and begin to develop strategies to address the systems context and policy barriers.  The Collective Impact framework consists of five core conditions:  the development of a common agenda that is shared amongst all stakeholders; shared measurement strategies to understand if progress is being made; engaging in mutually reinforcing activities; continuous communications and the support of backbone infrastructure. 

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Ingenuity Required

Ingenuity, the ability to be clever, original and inventive, is a skill needed in every community.  People living across the Lower North Shore of Quebec have incredible ingenuity and resourcefulness.  One of the biggest challenges is that this region is a mix of 15 small, often isolated communities.  Some of the communities are only connected by ferry or airplane while others have roads.  Cell phone service is sporadic at best and if the weather comes in, forget it.  The communities, in the past have spent more time competing with each other, rather than leveraging their ingenuity to tackle their tough problems. 

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Dancing with the System

Community change work is often compared to being engaged in a Tango, a complex dance where the partners exchange leadership, followership, passion, desire, intensity and drama.  Now, I am not much of a dancer, but I can appreciate this metaphor. 

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The Tyranny of the Immediate and The Importance of Reflection and Relationship

There is a big tension in community change efforts.  There is the tyranny of the immediate - hunting for quick wins, trying to move the agenda forward and being aware of the multiple demands on participant time.  With such a focus on the immediate, we sacrifice the building of relationships and reflection to meet the demands of the short term and time factors.

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Stash Your Plan in the Cutlery Drawer

Imagine a restaurant review that focused exclusively on the cutlery on the table. “What about the meal?” you would ask. Indeed.
Knives and forks aren’t the meal. They are merely a means to a hopefully delicious end. Sadly, in the social justice world there is too much focus on tools and processes.

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Just who are we doing this for?

My colleague and mentor Jay Connor often pushes me with this question. On the surface, it seems like an easy question to answer. We are doing this to improve the lives of people in our communities who are being impacted in negative ways. That answer pulls at heart strings. It gets lots of heads nodding in agreement. But it is also a vague response and one that does not hold us to account.

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