The Latest

Act on What You Want to See

Last fall I asked an extremely smart woman a question. I asked her to list three ways that she brings integrity into her social change work. The person was Melody Barnes (@MelodyCBarnes) and it was at Tamarack's Collective Impact Summit. Because she took a long pause to answer, I knew something solid was coming. Her honest answer was two-fold: 1. I act on what I want to see and 2. I hire people who have a sense of humor. Act on what I want to see. Act on what I want to see. What does that mean to my work in community?

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Thinking About Our Thinking

Two weeks ago, Tamarack hosted a webinar where Elayne Greeley interviewed Mark Holmgren about Upside Down Thinking. As Mark said, he doesn’t claim to have created this term but I’m certainly glad they brought it forward for us to think about.  Actually he has been talking about his for a while to get us thinking about a lot.

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Turf, Trust and the Collaboration Spectrum

 

This week was bookended with facilitated discussions in Alaska and Collingwood on the topics of Collective Impact and community transformation.  While both conversations were productive, engaging and challenging, a couple of things stuck out for me.  

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Experiencing Mariposa: A Community Story of Place

Too often the places we create are placeless because they don't include our stories ­
- Michael Jones

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"Culture Eats Strategy for Breakfast": Lessons from 2014

In December, Liz Weaver and I hosted Community Change: Lessons Learned 2014 a webinar exploring key community change lessons. It provided a great opportunity to generate deeper insights about our work over the past year with the 200 learners who joined the webinar. The dialogue and response energized us with the realization that our growing online community of learners has really become a movement for social change!

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Working Together – Harder than it Looks

Recently I joined in the Collective Impact Summit hosted in Toronto by Tamarack. Collective impact is all about different types of groups working together to advance a common goal, and while the practice is really nothing new, the work of Tamarack acknowledges that this type of work is:

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