As we talked in Learning Lab 7 this morning (yay, LL7!!), I shared a few thoughts about getting started in this work that seemed to resonate with folks.  I'd love to hear others' thoughts on the mindsets and resources that are most helpful in getting started.

In my mind, Collective Impact really requires only three things--courage, self-awareness, and tools. Of these, courage is the most critical.  It takes courage to put forward a vision of how things can be, to propose a very different way of working and making decisions, and to bring a diverse group to the point of real action.  The wonderful thing about courage is that all we have to do is choose it, no research or thinking required!

Self-awareness can also be developed and the easiest way to do it is to start inquiring with others about how they view the issue--the challenges, opportunities and dynamics.  As we inquire deeply and humbly with others (being courageous AND humble), we step outside ourselves and at some point can look back and view our assumptions (and impacts) from outside.  While Polarity Thinking and other awareness tools can help us develop self-awareness more fully, nothing is more effective than than simple and authentic inquiry. 

That said, for those of you who did attend the Polarity Thinking session, here are some materials for that (and I'm happy to share more--just contact me).  

• Polarity Thinking Prompts
• Polarity Map
• Polarities In Working Groups

The essence of Collective Impact is simple: It only requires that you thoughtfully invite people in, share a compelling vision that you truly believe in, and start with a large sheet of paper on the wall (and a marker in one hand) with two questions, "What's going on now and what do we want?" 

With that start (and courage and self-awareness), if zero is failure and ten is blowing the doors off, the worst you'll do is a 6, which is usually FAR better than what's been done in the past on these issues.

To move toward more consistent "ten" experiences, here are some resources and tools on this site and others:  

First, I want to give a shout out to Sam Kamer at Community At Work, one of the pioneers in engaging communities in deeply participatory decision-making and action.  His book Participatory Decision Making is full of proven methods for helping groups understand issues and make decisions together. 

Second, CoCreative (my organization) has a huge toolbox of methods that we use in collective impact projects.  We've posted some of these here and will post more on our website going forward (I unfortunately already hit the upload limit on this site!).  Here are a few for now:

• 5 Methods For Moving Fast
• 4 Types of Initiative Groups
• 4 Brainstorming Techniques
• How Working Groups Work
• Initiative Worksheet
• 6 Ways The Working Group Can Work