This weekend, I had the pleasure of watching couples dance the tango in a public square in London. The intricacies of the dance, coupled with the individual styles of each dance partner made for an intriguing couple of hours. As each new song filled the square, the couples would wait for a few strands of the music and then proceed to move together. Often with their eyes closed, each couple moved around the dance floor.
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I have a tolerate/hate relationship with community needs assessments. I really wanted to write that I have a love/hate relationship with them but that would be dishonest. I do not love them at all, but I do understand their importance and will tolerate them...barely. In fact, I have designed them, conducted them, and used them to inform and guide work on community projects and initiatives.
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There are many interesting sights to see in Newfoundland and Labrador but in June the east coast of this province welcomes icebergs floating by in what is called ‘Iceberg Alley’ (http://www.newfoundlandlabrador.com/ThingsToDo/IcebergViewing). You can even follow the locations and tracking of these magnificent icons of nature through a website called www.Icebergfinder.com. It seems to me that Collective Impact and icebergs have a lot in common.
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Last December, the J.W. McConnell Family Foundation engaged the MaRS Solutions Lab to undertake a multistep learning and evaluation process to guide our thinking about possible future directions for its Cities for People initiative. In this piece, we are excited to share a few highlights from the Design Jam, one of the components of this process, and how its outcomes will help shape our work moving forward.
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Humancentered design is the application of design thinking to some of our most complex social problems, starting with the people you're trying to impact and ending with creative new solutions that meet their needs. While it has elements of a typical design process, including brainstorming, prototyping, and testing, humancentered design begins with empathy.
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When Stephen Covey published Speed of Trust in 2006, it marked a recognition that relationships are important to mainstream organizations and that trustbuilding is key to mobilizing their value. As the social sector increasingly builds networks of organizations to learn; engage with diverse others; and, to speed up knowledge development, we see how these loose relationships have value. But what do we really know about building trust in networks structures that are less "hardwired" than formal organizations and how to work well in relationships without the defining bounds of role and structure?
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