The Latest

Thinking Beyond the Advisory Group

At last week’s Cities Innovating to Reduce Poverty summit in Mississauga, I had the opportunity to learn from the City of Toronto's Lived Experience Advisory Group (LEAG). These group members shared some of their fantastic work in advancing the Toronto Poverty Reduction Strategy through advocacy, education, awareness, monitoring and evaluation of the Strategy, and it was a great reminder of the importance of making sure that those with lived experience can drive the change that they want to see.

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A Common Purpose

In 2016, an international group of partnership broker trainers convened in Wales to reflect on the key principles involved in partnership processes. The gathering followed a 20 year journey initiated by Ros Tennyson and Michael Warner who wanted to promote professionalism and integrity in cross-sector partnering.

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Style Blindness: What Bruce Lee Can Teach Us About Community Change

“Use only that which works, and take it from any place you can find it.” – Bruce Lee

In the community of martial arts there are often discussions about which art is ‘better’ than others. Is Wing Chun a better technique for self-defense than Krav Maga? Would a championship boxer win in a fight against a Kung Fu master? These types of questions have many vocal champions on either side, but they are ultimately unanswerable. So much depends on both the ability of the practitioner as well as the context. Boxers train to fight in a specific context with specific rules. So do Mixed-Martial Arts (MMA) fighters, but with a different context and set of rules. The techniques of each martial art are well attuned to a specific set of circumstances have been honed over centuries of refinement.

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Innovating with Purpose: Part Two

We all seek to innovate for different reasons. Sometimes it’s that we feel the world is changing and we risk being left behind. Sometimes it’s because the issue we’re working to address hasn’t gone away, has gotten worse, or has changed. Sometimes it’s because we simply feel that we must.

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What Will You Stop Doing?

If it feels like you or your organization are always having to add something new to your plate, this is for you. It feels like a default tendency of the world we live in to ask more of ourselves, our teams, and our organizations without providing the time, resources, and energy that are needed for those extras. I find that this is particularly true when the word innovation is invoked. We’re simultaneously asked to innovate but also to maintain all the programs, services, and projects that help keep the status quo afloat. A common question I hear at all levels is, "How do we innovate when we're barely staying on top of our regular work as it is?"

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What do you mean, Innovation? Breaking the Buzzword

Have you ever left a conversation about innovation suspecting that everyone was talking about very different things? Like all buzzwords, the meaning of ‘innovation’ has become muddy and unclear over time, and yet ‘innovation’ is often seen as a panacea for our social ills. But is ‘innovation’ what we do, or what we aspire to do? Here are three questions that I’ve found helpful to narrow in on exactly what I, and others, mean when we talk about innovation.

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