The Latest

Sharpening One’s Saw in Rural Communities

As interest in collective impact grows, the question of how this work can look in rural communities continues to arise.

Rural communities face unique challenges when considering collective impact. With sparse organizational infrastructure and minimal philanthropic dollars, rural collective impact practitioners are asking: What does a backbone organization – or even a backbone function – look like when there are few local organizations, and even fewer private or public sector funds available to support the work?

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Going Deeper – Building our Trust Account

In a previous blog, I explored the components of trust including Stephen M.R. Covey’s 5 waves of trust from his book The Speed of Trust. This blog will go a little deeper, exploring how to build a personal trust account.

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Three Keys to Building Trust

A Harvard Business Review article describes that to build trust you need to align your interests and motivations with those of the
person you are working with or collaborating with.

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Thinking About Scallops

A few years ago, John Ott, author of The Power of Collective Wisdom and the Trap of Collective Folly spoke at a Tamarack Community Change Institute and talked about scallops. Now I have not really thought much about scallops since, given that I really don’t like seafood, but John talked about the ‘scallop principle’.

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This Is How I picture Community Development!

I recently attended the Evaluating Community Impact workshop that Tamarack hosted. During one of the presentations I thought to myself this is exactly how I picture community development playing out. A slide came across that read, “community change strategies and interventions tend to evolve through an adaptive cycle with different phases.” Hmmm. An example of an Infinity Loop was shown. Around the loop there were 5 different areas. Exploration, Development, Growth, Maturity and Release.

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Systems Thinking is a Mindset

Last week two books I had recently ordered arrived:  Systems Thinking for Social Change by David Peter Stroh and The Systems Thinking Playbook by Linda Booth Sweeney and Dennis Meadows. For at least the last 20 years of my career, I have been working in the complex space of trying to move, influence and change systems.    

With the adoption of the collective impact framework by so many community change practitioners, it seems that many of you are working in this space as well. 

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