The Latest

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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Movement Building and Collective Impact

In an article written for Fast Company, Kaihan Krisppendorff, identifies four steps to building an effective social movement, which I have adapted below:

1. A community forms around a common goal or aspiration.
2. The community mobilizes its resources to act on the goal/aspiration.
3. The community crafts solutions and acts to deliver them.
4. The movement is accepted by (or actually replaces) the establishment or established regime of laws and policies (Source).

If you are involved in a collective impact initiative, these steps should resonate with you, in particular with the five conditions of collective impact. Krisppendorff doesn’t address shared measurement in his post about social movements, but successful movements are always about moving the needle and bringing about systems change to do so.

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The Power of Mapping Your Journey

One of the key conditions of collective impact is continuous communications. In Collective Impact 3.0, Mark Cabaj and I reframed this condition to include authentic community engagement. We all know about the importance of continous communications but how well and how often do we practice this condition?

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Sustaining Collective Impact Efforts – How to build your approach

At the most recent Champions for Change workshop for backbone leaders, I was asked to develop a workshop which focused on the challenge facing many collective impact efforts – how to build a sustainable approach.   

This is a challenging conundrum for collective impact efforts which are designed purposefully to move the needle of vexing community issues, work with an eye to complexity and exist in an ever changing community context.  The variables inherent in collective impact efforts lead to many more questions:  

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A Partnership Building Primer

Building Bridges for Collaborative Success is a resource for organizations seeking to build sustainable partnerships through the power of collaboration.

Evidence-based and aptly named a primer, the resource is the result of 4 years of collaborative health research between the Canadian Cancer Society, BC Cancer Agency, Northern Health, University of British Columbia and Athabasca University, termed the Harmonization project.

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Collective Impact in Motion

A new report by The Atmospheric Fund (TAF) and Evergreen CityWorks reflects on the lessons learned by Move the GTHA, a dozen civic groups that coalesced around the need for transit investment in the Greater Toronto and Hamilton Area (GTHA).

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