DAY 2 HIGHLIGHTS

Our focus: Essential Mindset Shifts for Collective Impact

Photo credit: Larry Gemmel - Original artwork by Elayne Greeley

KEYNOTE HIGHLIGHTS | JOHN KANIA:

The Five Conditions of Collective Impact build a foundation – Mindset Shifts Are Also Needed to Do the Work

Mindset Shift One: Who is Involved?

·         Get all the right eyes on the problem – new eyes bring new vision

·         Move from what is obvious to what is not obvious. 

·         This work is not counterintuitive, it is counter-cultural

·         What if each of us could see what everyone sees, what if we had collective vision?

·         How much we can accomplish in this world depends how much we can see

·         If you want to change the system, you have to get the system in the room

Mindset Shift Two: How People Work Together

Getting things to scale requires a different way of working together:  Collective Seeing – Collective Learning – Collective Doing:

·         This is adaptive work, not technical work. Solutions that emerge are not known in advance

·         The people who are impacted by the issue need to be the ones who solve it

·         CI offers a structure to organize and make this work 

·         The dominant paradigm assumes that pre-determined solutions and emerging rules of interaction are needed for large scale change – Collective Impact focuses on pre-determined rules of interaction and emerging solutions

Mindset Shift Three: How Progress Happens

·         It is important to discern between Program Strategies and Transformation Strategies

·         The four Strategies for Transformation are:

1.       Increasing Coordination: finding ways to re-align existing programs and stakeholders to maximize system efficacy

2.       Enhancing Services: bringing in previously unnoticed practice, movement or resources to enhance existing local services

3.       Policy: advocating for policy change at local or state levels to improve major components of the systems

4.       Learning through Pilots: start small with willing partners, learn from the experience, and then to expand

·        Successful collective impact efforts “bootstrap” successful programs and outcomes are improved through emergence. 

Emerging Questions:

·         Whose “eyes should be on the problem” but aren’t currently?

·         Are your CI strategies program focused or systems focused?

LEARNING WALL HIGHLIGHTS:

Relationships are the Foundation of Change

§         Who’s in the room? Do we have the right eyes on the problem?

§         When the cast of people is constantly changing, it’s difficult to gain momentum. What are our rules for engagement?

§         People need TIME to talk to each other – often we don’t allocate time for this

§         How can we involve “enemies” without comprising our values?

§         How do we evaluate levels of trust?

Transformation

§         Adaptive work is organic and emergent

§         Transformation is counter-intuitive. Going beyond the physical, almost spiritual

§         Are we doing it right? Validate. Course correct. What does “right” mean?

Program vs. System Focus

§         Shifting to see things differently

§         Where do programs fit in system change work?

§         Where do we delineate the scope of a system?

Resources

§         How do we change the paradigm so that those who hold resources understand the values of being relational/co-creating?

§         Change costs money…lack of money becomes the first excuse for not doing something…often when things get started the money will come

AHAs

§         Collective Impact is a strategy for collaboration that requires system thinking

§         When you hear great ideas they seem so obvious. So why didn’t I think of that?

§         Have patience to do a deep dive not knowing the answer. Embrace the unknown.

SOCIAL MEDIA HIGHLIGHTS: