Over the past few weeks, I have been talking and thinking alot about getting or being ready for collective impact.  The reality is that sometimes a good idea is not enough.  There are alot of things that have to be done to help a good idea gain the right traction in a community.  

Rich Harwood, CEO of The Harwood Institute has written about the five stages of community readiness

(https://buildingdialogue.files.wordpress.com/2010/09/5stages.pdf) which is an insightful way of thinking about communities and community change efforts.  

These stages of community readiness are: The waiting place, impasse, catalytic, growth and sustain and renew.  Communities at either end of the spectrum have a little more challenge in moving community change forward.  

If your community is in a waiting place where people sense that things are not working, but think someone else needs to step up to the plate, getting the right people to the table can be a long and tedious process.  

Communities that are ready are catalytic and in growth or renewal modes.  

But how practically can we know if our community is ready for collective impact?  The best way is to gether as many colleagues as you can in a room and ask them about the potential of implementing a collective impact approach on a complex community issue.  The question is not are we ready for collective impact?  The question could be:  what would it take to implement a collective impact approach so that we can get traction on this issue?  

Listen to the responses.  Is the question generating energy?  Do people lean in on the conversations?  

If these are the responses you get, your community is getting to readiness.  Ready for more conversation, ready for the next steps, ready to launch.