The (Mostly) Certitudes of Change
All things considered, I prefer sameness in my personal life. Okay, actually, I really like the comfort of my personal routine when I am at home.
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All things considered, I prefer sameness in my personal life. Okay, actually, I really like the comfort of my personal routine when I am at home.
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Some people think of me as an expert in a few things, which is okay. It is not okay, however, that I have acted like an expert in most things...if not all things on occasion.
This awareness is part of the understanding that comes with experience and maturity (which is a nice way of saying "age"). That it took me a while to arrive at this self-understanding is a bit embarrassing yet I'm glad I did. It has dramatically changed how I try to work with individuals and groups. Even more, I think it has changed my relationship with them for better.
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Recently the Collective Impact Forum featured a terrific piece by Sheri Brady and Jennifer Splansky Juster on the Collective Impact Principles of Practice. These eight principles to guide efforts to put Collective Impact into practice are long overdue.
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A buzzing sound can mean many things. When I was a kid growing up on an Iowa farm, a buzzing sound usually meant bees were near by...typically a scary thing since I was pretty sure they had me in their tiny stinger sights. Ah, but there are buzzing sounds that are not at all scary and indicate good things are happening. I heard one just like that last week in Buffalo, New York.
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Recently I have been ruminating on the difference between community engagement and community mobilization. "Ruminate" is a great word for a Leap Day because the extra day gives us more time to really think on something, right? In the United States, where I do much of my work, we seem to prefer the term mobilization more than engagement, though we sometimes refer to mobilization as engagement and vice versa.
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