A number of years ago I read a series of leadership books written by Max Depree, former CEO of the furniture maker Herman Miller. These books were inspiring both in their simplicity and also in their application. In many ways the design and content of the books – Leadership is an Art, Leadership Jazz and Leading without Power – were formative contributions to my own style of leadership and my career path.
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There is increasing interest in the design and execution of Collective Impact collaborations. The five conditions of collective impact, on the surface, seem both intuitive and appropriate. It’s the execution that often has us spinning. Collective Impact is, as my colleague and fellow blogger Jay Connor so effectively says, about working differently. (Read his blog – www.workingdifferently.org for more insights about how hard this is to get right - hard but not impossible.)
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Collective impact is all the rage these days. The concepts put forward in the paper that appeared in the Stanford Social Innovation Review in the Winter 2011 by FSG Social Impact Consultants have resonated with collaborative tables across Canada, the United States and internationally. The five conditions of collective impact include a common agenda, shared measurement, mutually reinforcing activities, continuous communication and a backbone infrastructure. Simple in design, much more challenging in the practice.
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One of my favourite things to do when I am in an airport is to cruise the bookstores and catch up on the latest publications. I often indulge in buying a book if the title and table of contents speak to me. Recently, on a trip home, I picked up The Impact Equation by Chris Brogan and Julien Smith.
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Policy Horizons has recently published a very interesting article about policy levers. How can we make our community change efforts more impactful? One way to do this is to be aware of the policy levers and use them to your advantage to create scaled community change.
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A number of years ago I was the director of the Hamilton Roundtable for Poverty Reduction (HRPR), a comprehensive, communityinitiative focused on reducing poverty for the citizens of Hamilton, Ontario. The HRPR had the aspiration of making Hamilton the best place to raise a child. The change framework encouraged investments across five critical points in the lives of children, youth and their families: investing in the early years (0-6), helping kids to be successful in school, ensuring that kids complete high school successfully, providing bridges to post-secondary education and employment and working to build assets like savings accounts and home ownership.
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