This weekend, we finished entirely revising our Community Engagement Action Kit. And so this whole subject is on my brain a lot.

When we use Community Engagement as just one more tool in the toolbox, yes, it is a powerful tool. But when engaging the community becomes your group’s way of being in all its work – well look out!

First, our definition of Community Engagement:

Community Engagement is the process of building relationships with community members who will work side-by-side with you as an ongoing partner, to make the community a better place to live. Considered from the perspective of that two-way relationship, Community Engagement is the organizational equivalent of friendship.

As we know from our real lives, friendship isn’t something we “do.” It’s something we “be.” So how can you infuse that way of being into everything your organization does?

These 3 steps will get you started.

Step 1: What Do We Need to Accomplish, and How Can Engaging the Community Further Those Goals?
The very first step is to consider all your organization’s goals for the year. The goals of your Community Impact Plan. The goals of your Organizational Wellness Plan. The goals of your Program Development Plans. And the goals of all your other plans.

How could all those goals be enhanced by engaging your community more deeply in your work?

Try this: For each of the following sample goals, name at least 3 ways that goal could be enhanced by engaging people in your community. And think about what kinds of people that might be.

• Goal: Create a new program to address an unmet need you have uncovered.
• Goal: Create a succession plan for your Executive Director
• Goal: Expand the reach of an existing program into a new neighborhood.
• Goal: Choose a goal from one of your own plans.

Step 2: Who to Engage?
For each of the opportunities you uncovered in Step 1, list the types of people you could engage to enhance that effort.

Whose lives are touched by the issue at the heart of that goal? Perhaps it is parents of young children – or the young children themselves. Perhaps it is elected officials. Or neighborhood residents. School principals. Public Safety employees.

For example, if your goal is to create a succession plan, your list might include:
• Other executive directors
• HR specialists
• Corporate leaders / local corporate boards who may have recently gone through an executive transition

From there, list names of people. For now, it doesn’t matter so much if you know those people – you can always be introduced by a mutual acquaintance. But the bottom line is that we can’t engage categories of people – we can only engage with real humans. So create a list of names.

Try this: For each of the opportunities you listed in Step 1, list at least 3 types of people or groups whose lives have been touched by that issue. Then for each of those types, list at least 3 people to engage.

Step 3: How to Engage?
The ways to engage are as many as the stars in the sky – or the people in your community! One-on-one meetings over coffee, small group meetings, events, presentations – the list is as long as your imagination, and will rely entirely on what you are trying to accomplish by engaging in the first place!

What you will quickly find in these activities is that Community Engagement is fun. That’s because it is tapping on the passion you have for making a difference in your community.

Because of that, Community Engagement is a great way to engage your board. Unlike fundraising, with Community Engagement, board members don’t have to ask for anything but someone’s wisdom, ideas and passion. And that is always fun!

Try this: For each of the types of people noted in Step 2, list at least 2 ways you might engage those groups or individuals.

Once you begin engaging the community in the work your organization is doing, you will see that the benefits move beyond the ideas you had in Step 1. And that is because the real goal of Community Engagement is building an engaged community – a huge part of what creates the healthy, vibrant places we all want to live.

Half Price – only $13.99
We are selling out the 1st edition of the Community Engagement Action Kit, clearing the shelves to make room for the revised and expanded 2nd Edition.  At $13.99 / book, click here now to get your copy (or get copies for all your board!).

Photo: Found this picture hanging on the wall at a McDonald’s – art is everywhere!

The Goals
Our vision at Creating the Future is a healthy, vibrant, resilient, peaceful, humane world. To influence the conditions that would make that vision a reality for all of us, we committed last year that we would work on three goal areas:

• Expand our Educational Opportunities
• Engage a Higher Level Dialogue Sector-wide
• Act as our own Demonstration Project in Transparent Engagement

The 2010 WOW List!
Every year we start the year by putting a blank flip chart on the wall. On that sheet we write the year and the word “WOW.” And we do our best throughout the year to list what has been amazing so far.

This year’s WOW list filled two columns in small print. Here’s a taste of what is on that list, sorted by the goals above.

Expand Educational Opportunities
• Consultant Immersion: Taught 4 week-long immersion courses for consultants, including one only for leaders in Management Support Organizations and one for the faculty of the Not-for-Profit Management degree program at UNITEC in New Zealand. The course has continued to evolve and grow, with “seasoned participants” from prior classes coming back to both teach and learn – going deeper into learning how their consulting practice can create the future of our world.
• Consultant Grads Learning Community: Increased support of the community of consultants who have graduated from the immersion course, as they move deeper into this community-changing (and life-changing) work.
• Consultant Intro Course: Developed and taught a 3-hour introduction to Consulting to Create the Future (Los Angeles and Omaha, Nebraska).
• Free Community-Wide Workshops: Taught free workshops in communities around the US and New Zealand. (US: Lake Havasu City, Phoenix, Tucson, Los Angeles, St. Louis. New Zealand: Hamilton)
• Free how-to articles: Expanded the library at Creating the Future, and added dozens of blog posts at this blog AND at our blog for consultants – Consulting to Create the Future.
• YouTube Library: Expanded the library at YouTube, adding videos on governance, program development and sustainability, and consulting. (Almost 7,000 views at the Community-Driven Institute Channel (still haven’t changed the name there) and 8,500 views at the Pollyanna Principles channel)
• MSO Project: Met with Capacity Building leaders in the US, New Zealand and Australia, to discuss how capacity building can more effectively enable organizations to improve their communities.
• College Syllabus: Worked with Professor Angela Eikenberry at the University of Nebraska Omaha, to develop a curriculum that not only uses The Pollyanna Principles as a text, but models the principles in the way the class is taught. When completed, the syllabus will be available free online, for professors to use in their courses.

Engage Broader Dialogue re: Social Change Throughout the Sector
• #NPCons Twitter Chat: Facilitated monthly Twitter chat for consultants to Community Benefit Organizations, elevating discussion to focus on this sector’s potential. Create and maintain monthly archive of those discussions (which some people read as their professional development!)
• Chronicle of Philanthropy “Making Change” Podcast Show: Produce a top quality monthly interview program, delving into the question, “What creates visionary social change?” Guests included Robert Egger (DC Central Kitchen and V3 Campaign), Kathleen Enright (Grantmakers for Effective Organizations), Brett McNaught (BuildOn), Jan Masaoka (Blue Avocado), Tom Kelly (Annie E. Casey Foundation), Michelle Nunn (Points of Light Foundation), Margaret Martin (Harmony Project) and John McKnight (Asset Based Community Development Institute / Author w/Peter Block: The Abundant Community – interview goes live next week).
• LinkedIn Discussion: On behalf of the Chronicle of Philanthropy, run a LinkedIn discussion group on the factors that undergird social change.
• Blog and Twitter and Facebook: Used social media to engage different questions. Posts often reached 20-50 comments.
• Salons: Kicked off a program of intimate salons, providing space for small group discussion of conditions that lead to creating dramatic social change.
• Keynoting Conferences: From New Zealand and Australia to home in the US, engaged the conversation of this sector’s potential to create more significant change. (You can see a sampling of those events here.)
• Use of the Term “Community Benefit Organization”: Two years ago, when we began using this term, people smiled broadly, loving the term, wishing it were the commonly used term. And while it may not be THE commonly used term yet, it is absolutely more commonly used. Weekly someone reports having heard someone who, in their conversation, will mention nonprofits, quickly adding, “or as I prefer to call them, Community Benefit Organizations.” Hooray for successful change of dialogue and language!

Demonstration Project in Engaged Transparency
• Open, Engaged Decision-Making / Leadership: Discussions held openly included factors leading to our name change; decision about whether or not to purchase our domain names; factors to consider in board recruitment; thought process behind our program development; status updates on building legal and financial infrastructure; program development for Consultant Intro Course.
• Bylaws Project: As part of filing our 501(c)(3) application, working with legal guru Ellis Carter to develop bylaws that can be used as a sample of how to incorporate open decision-making into the bylaws themselves.

That’s it for our goals and results for 2010.  And that doesn’t even begin to describe the amazing results our Consultant Graduates are seeing in their own work – a clear reflection of even more success in creating the future of our world!!!

As I look back at my WOW post from last year, I noted that 2010 would be the year when Creating the Future “moves out of the nest we created through our consulting firm, to spread its wings as its own tax exempt organization. And when that happens, we can barely imagine the possibilities that lie ahead.”

We have indeed incorporated and started the tax exemption process. As we suspected, the possibilities are endless.

The thing that became huge for us this year – in large part through our decision to engage so transparently – is that we could not have done a speck of what we did without everyone reading these words. It is YOU who accomplished all of this with us. Is that not amazing?

And so it seems fitting to end this post with the exact words I used last year, because that is one small area where nothing has changed – and that’s a good thing!

We know in the core of our being that the only thing stopping this sector from changing the world is that current systems preclude that change. Our goal as we move forward at Creating the Future is therefore simple: change those systems and aim this sector at its highest potential – making our world a healthy, vibrant, resilient, humane, peaceful place for all of us.

Unless something is physically impossible, it is possible. We are excited to have you with us at every turn as we work throughout the coming year to continue to make visionary community change practical and doable.

Find out what’s happening next at this link.

Year-end is always a time for wrapping up, but these days around our office, we feel like we are just getting started.This ramping-up year at Creating the Future has meant inspired leap after inspired leap, lightning bolt after lightning bolt. I never dreamed so much creation could happen so instantly!

Of course, it’s not really instantly. We have spent the past few years seeing what happens when we put The Pollyanna Principles more deeply into practice. We’ve spent hours and days watching the growing army of consultants who have trained with us – watching what they accomplish, how they move beyond what challenges them, tapping into their clients’ highest potential to create amazing communities.

The result has been a plan for developing the programs that will aim this entire sector’s work at our potential to create the future we all want.

I hope you’re strapped in, because this is going to be one heck of a ride!!!!

Our Vision for the Future
The story of our planning began with the same questions we would ask in any planning session: What future will we aim our plan at creating? That vision has been so solid for so long that this was an easy question to answer.

Our mission and programs will be tethered to the peaceful, joyful image of a healthy, vibrant world. A future where each of us naturally and reflexively reacts from a place of kindness and possibility. A future where that is what we expect as the norm.

A Mission to Accomplish
We then began to reverse engineer that future, asking, “What pre-conditions have to be in place for that future to be reality?” To each response, we asked the same question again. “For those conditions to be in place, what would have to happen first? What would cause that? What would it take?”

It was during this process that the first surprise hit us.

We had thought our mission for the next 5-10 years was to change the modus operandi of the Community Benefit Sector, so that every aspect of the sector’s work is aimed at creating that vision of the future.

What became clear is that we hadn’t drilled down deeply enough, to establish all the steps along the critical path.

The big huge honking piece we missed was this:

“Sectors” don’t change. Neither do “organizations” or “systems.”

People change.

People change their beliefs and assumptions and expectations, which then changes their actions. That is the combination that will change systems and organizations and yes, the whole sector.

And so the mission we are working to accomplish in the next 5-10 years is this:

1) To change the assumptions and expectations of people working in and influencing this sector, regarding the extent to which visionary community / global change is possible

2) To embed those new expectations into every aspect of the work being done by people in this sector, and

3) To ensure that all leaders of organizations know how to make that level of visionary change practical and doable.

Programs that will Accomplish the Mission
If our mission was to make those 3 bullet items the reality of this sector’s work, what exactly would we do to accomplish that?

Focusing on people vs. institutions changed everything about the programs we considered. Reverse engineering continued as we asked ourselves, “What is it that creates behavioral change?” In both our practical experience and our research, we have found repeated success with two basic steps:

• Meet people where they are in their thinking
• Then show them a path for moving beyond their frustrations, towards what is possible.

That’s when another aha struck.

Capacity building initiatives have been aimed at positions (board member, executive director, foundation CEO) and at organizational life cycles (start-ups, growing orgs, sustaining orgs, etc.). Where they have not been aimed is at real live people! No wonder the capacity building movement has not succeeded in creating a strong, effective sector!

So what might happen if we create a capacity building effort for the whole sector, focused on real people making those changes?

What if we helped move people’s assumptions and expectations towards our collective potential to create the world we want?

What if we acknowledged people where they are, embracing that “where they are” is at all different stages along a spectrum of willingness / readiness / being-ness to move towards that potential?

And what if we provided a range of programs for every field – a range of programs for boards, a range of programs for consultants, a range of programs for funders, and etc. – depending on where an individual might find him/herself on their own journey?

And THAT is when the whole world opened up.

Those of you who followed my limited blogging / tweeting during my 6 weeks of contemplation and exploration this past summer kept hearing me say that my head was exploding. (IrkaFirka even immortalized my saying that in one of their wonderful sketches!) Lightning bolt after lightning bolt shook my living room as I wrote and thought and read and then wrote and thought and read some more.

Others began providing their own thoughts, as well as other readings. The more Dimitri and I shared our thinking, the more we found evidence of a spectrum approach in all effective efforts to influence behavior. Some of the more high profile thought systems included:

• Moves Management (fundraising)
• Lead Scoring (and other effective business sales methods)
• Stages of Change (psychology)
• Belief Repatterning (personal development)
• Spiral Dynamics (human development)

Imagine the power of applying this vast array of wisdom to the work of a sector that is poised to create a healthy, vibrant future for our world!

Developing Programs
From all this planning and thinking, our path has become clear, and the work has already begun. We are simply applying the same thinking that has worked to create change in individual behaviors – from getting someone to quit smoking to getting someone to donate to a cause – to the work of social change.

Over the next 24 months, we will be developing a spectrum of programs for boards, for consultants, for funders, for academic instructors, for executive directors, for social entrepreneurs… and so on, for every field within this vast Community Benefit Sector.

Each of those programs will meet individuals where they are in their own being – their current assumptions, expectations, beliefs, and especially their current programmatic and organizational needs.

Each of those programs will then extend a hand to encourage those individuals to take the next step towards their potential to create a more vibrant, healthy world.

We are confident that if we have a staff committed to developing this breadth of programs, we will have a full spectrum of programs up and running in the next 24 months. For now, our next step is clear – find funding, hire that staff, and get to work!

We’re excited to see what’s next, and we are honored that you are part of this adventure – sharing your wisdom, your ideas, your experience, your passion, and most of all putting new ways of being and doing into place in your own work.

We know that creating the world we want is both practical and doable.

We also know that once our assumptions and expectations align behind what is possible, things happen faster than we’ve been conditioned to think is possible.

How much more exciting can it possibly get!?

On August 1, I embarked on a month of “semi-sabbatical,” writing and exploring and planning and reading.  I say “semi-sabbatical” because I only decided mid-July that the time was right.  So there are still some tasks to be done, some projects with timelines that won’t allow me to simply abandon ship.  This post is about one of those efforts.

]]> http://hildygottlieb.com/2010/08/09/building-a-program-by-engaging-community/feed/ 10 http://hildygottlieb.com/2010/01/17/goals-for-2010-and-beyond/ http://hildygottlieb.com/2010/01/17/goals-for-2010-and-beyond/#comments Sun, 17 Jan 2010 16:09:02 +0000 Hildy http://hildygottlieb.com/?p=1629 The vision of the Community Driven Institute is a healthy, vibrant, resilient, peaceful, humane world. To make that vision a reality for all of us, the mission of the Institute is to encourage and support the Community Benefit sector to leverage its considerable resources to do so.

In developing our plans for the next 12-24 months, we started with that vision of a peaceful, vibrant world and reverse engineered the cause-and-effect conditions that would ultimately lead to that vision.  The following are among the immediate conditions we want our work to create:

* There must be ample proof that it is not only possible but practical (and simple) for “nonprofit” Community Benefit organizations to create visionary community transformation
* There must also be proof that functioning according to The Pollyanna Principles is a practical way for organizations to do their work.
* Social Change agents must be able to easily learn about and engage with the principles that undergird visionary community improvement. They must be aware that there are more effective options than “the way we’ve always done it.”
* Those who are ready to take the step of transforming their work must have access to teachers and mentors who can help them do so.
* Individuals who are on the path to creating transformation must have a place to learn together and support each other in their work.

To create these conditions, we have three major goals (and a lot of smaller goals / objectives) for the next 12-24 months. Those three include
• A Demonstration Project
• Expand Education Programs
• Engage and Expand the Conversation re: Creating Visionary Community Results

Demonstration Project: The Community-Driven Institute!
Over the last 2 years, we have kept an eye out for demonstration projects that could provide evidence of the results that happen when work is rooted in The Pollyanna Principles. The more we sought such projects, though, the more it has become clear that the first demonstration project is the Institute itself!

As the Institute separates from its nurturing incubator in our consulting firm (ReSolve, Inc.), we will be doing the kinds of things every organization does in the beginning – building a board, applying for tax exempt status.  We will also be doing the kinds of things strong organizations do throughout their whole lives – ongoing learning and exploring about effective governance, building sustainability (financial and otherwise), and all the rest of what it takes to run the day-to-day of a community benefit organization.

The difference at the Community-Driven Institute is that we will be basing that work as consciously as possible on The Pollyanna Principles, determining at every turn what it means to walk that talk.

For example, what does it mean to build open, transparent, engaged governance?  To recruit transparently? To build bylaws by engaging the wisdom of others? To make choices and operate by engaging transparently?  To develop resources and form collaborations transparently?

How do we ensure our vision and values are infused in every action and decision, large and small, this new organization will make?

Over the next several years then, we will be exploring all our organizational infrastructure choices and actions openly, here on the blog and elsewhere. We will begin in the next week or so, engaging conversation about the decision-points we encounter in filing for our tax exemption – asking for advice and wisdom from the very people who will be not only benefiting from our work, but some of whose taxes will, in part, be supporting our work!

Similarly, we will engage conversation about how to build the board, about how to fund the Institute’s work (currently it is being supported entirely by Dimitri and me – certainly not a plan for sustainability in the long term OR the short term!). We will engage dialogue about changing the name of the Institute – a huge effort in the next few months, as the current name doesn’t come close to describing the work we are doing to engage this sector in creating the future of the world.

Being our own demonstration project infuses every action we take, no matter how seemingly “internal” or “unrelated to the mission” with the knowledge that those actions indeed have consequences for our mission.  In reality, that is already true for each and every organization in each and every community. We are just vowing to be as conscious as possible and to transparently engage beyond our “4 walls” as much as possible about how our vision and values influence that seemingly “non-mission” work.

If our being a case study helps others learn what it looks like in practice to aim all our work at the difference we want to make in the world, it will be well worth the effort.

Expanded Education Projects
With our classes for consultants and MSO leaders already underway, we will be expanding the Institute’s learning opportunities to other leverage points in the system. Over the next year, those points will include:

• Consultants. We will continue to teach consultants and MSO leaders. Teaching the sector’s “Johnny Appleseeds” continues to be the fastest way to spread the mission.

• Social Entrepreneurs. This year we will be developing an immersion course for social entrepreneurs, one of the fastest growing areas of this sector’s work.  Social entrepreneurs are passionate about creating visionary change, often employing innovative methods for program delivery.  However, in most cases they are using the same infrastructure systems for governance, planning, and resource development that have proven to preclude the very change they want to create!  As a result, most social entrepreneurs are quietly struggling -  frustrated at what it takes to run an organization, frustrated that their ideas are not immediately springboarding into incredible community results, and all the while thinking they should know better.

• On-the-Ground Learning Communities. As word of the Institute’s work spreads, and as more people read The Pollyanna Principles and want to put that work into practice, it is becoming clear there is a need for supportive learning communities – not just virtually, but on the ground.  These learning communities will convene and leverage the passion of otherwise disparate individuals, who believe they are alone in their belief that visionary change is not only possible, but practical and happening. By convening and supporting these groups of passionate community leaders, can you imagine what they will accomplish?

Engage Broader Dialogue / Change the Conversation in the Sector

I’ll be honest: the old drumbeat of blame and shoulds has become almost unbearable. The battle cries for more rules, more regulation.  Huge publicity for competitive prizes coming at the same time as huge outcries about the need for collaboration. More checklists and standards and rankings of things that create no impact in communities but create stronger, more competitive, individual walled organizations.  The myth that if we have effective organizations we will necessarily have great communities…

It is time that a new conversation become the pervasive conversation. The conversation about what is possible for our communities and how practical it is to achieve it. Conversations about how to build upon our interconnectedness, how to identify and build upon our assets and strengths. Conversations about the vibrant healthy world we are creating, and the vibrant healthy aspects of the world we are part of right now.

The goal of igniting and keeping a fire under a new conversation will include ongoing discussion at this blog, as well as the development of other blogs. It will include social media. It will include speaking engagements and writing in mainstream publications.

And it will include encouraging other bloggers and speakers and writers to also aim at what is positive and affirming and working well in this sector full of individuals who care passionately about our world. (Because if it’s just us, we will not get very far!)

The goal will also include a new means for engaging the dialogue – a new website for the CDI is clearly long overdue.

But beyond that, we are extending a challenge to the world, to ensure that every group working to “change the world” has the web presence it needs to do so.  In our minds, one cannot separate the dialogue from the tools for dialogue, as those who don’t have the tools will continue to be excluded from the conversation.

And so we will simultaneously be
• Re-working our own CDI website to include considerably more avenues for conversation;
• Engaging that conversation elsewhere both online and off-line;
• Carrying the torch for an open source platform to ensure every group in the world has easy access to creating an engaged web presence.

*****

That’s it for our 2010-2012 goals.  For each of these goals, you will hear more soon.  For now, we hope you will share your thoughts about all or part of what we are presenting here.  And we look forward to having you be part of this amazing journey.

So hold onto your hats, kids. The fun is just getting started!

The work we did in 2008 made all we accomplished in 2009 possible.  It was 2008 when we developed and taught “Creating the Future of Your Community” as a graduate level university class.  That was also the year we gathered experts from across the US and Canada to help us develop the Consultants Curriculum at the Institute.  It was 2008 when we traveled the breadth of the continent to spread the mission that creating visionary community change is not just possible – it is practical and doable. (In one trip alone we put 9,000 miles on the car in 3 months across + 20 states and 1 Canadian province).  And let’s not forget that 2008 was the year I wrote (and rewrote 3 complete times) The Pollyanna Principles.

We didn’t think anything could top what we accomplished in 2008. Boy were we wrong!  Herewith, the WOW List from 2009.

Goal #1 and Results
Goal #1: Raise awareness that creating visionary community and global change is not just possible, but practical and doable.  Use every means available (convening, teaching, writing, social media) to engage those who are ready to begin walking the path to creating visionary social change.

Accomplishments:
The list of accomplishments on this goal is so long, we got tired just typing it all!

We published The Pollyanna Principles!

Simultaneously launched the book and the Community-Driven Institute
• Teleclass “Introduction to Community-Driven Consulting attended by 50 people
• Interviews / Reviews in over a dozen online & print publications, including a “life-changing” review at CharityChannel
• Created Facebook page for the book
• Created Facebook group for CDI
• Created a Wikipedia page for the book
• Great launch discussion at Facebook
• +100 people attended launch event in Prescott

Produced the video Introduction to the Pollyanna Principles: Viewed in 10 minute segments by almost 3,600 people on YouTube. Another + 400 people viewed the full-length video on Blip TV.

Arranged 6 week tour of New Zealand / Australia, including conference keynote, University lecture, week-long consultant immersion course, and community-based workshops (March & April 2010).

National School Boards Association
• Keynoted awards lunch at NSBA annual conference. Topic: “School Districts as Catalysts for Community Success”
• Article in American School Boards Journal: “School Districts as Catalysts for Community Success”
• MORE than makes up for the plagiarism event that led to all this!!!

Social Media successes
• Spearheaded, developed and facilitating monthly Twitter chat for consultants to Community Benefit organizations (#NPCons).
• Developed #NPCons website for that chat.
• Initiation and ongoing facilitation of the CDI discussion group at Facebook.
• Doubled blog visits from EOY 2008 to EOY 2009. Twitter followers grew from 79 in December 2008 to almost 2700 and cited as “highly influential” in December 2009. Other social media stats similarly significant (Facebook, LinkedIn, web visits at www.CommunityDriven.org, etc.)

Built incredible relationships with individuals throughout the sector / around the world, to engage dialogue / build the message. Those relationships led to:
• Facilitated 2 week-long online discussions on behalf of Skoll Foundation – one on Boards as Leaders and another on Issue Fatigue
• Facilitated 2 live online discussions for the Chronicle of Philanthropy – one on Doing More With Less in Hard Times (technically December of 2008 – and man did I hate that title!) and another on Board Recruitment
• Quoted as governance expert in New York Times

Engaged dialogue at home in Tucson!
One of the nice things about building the Institute this year was that we got to spend more time in Tucson than we normally do (and 2010 will immediately have us back on the road!).  Here is some of what we accomplished here at home this year:
• 65 people attended governance workshop – in the desert in the middle of summer!!
• Produced DVD from that workshop, for use in Consultant Immersion Course
• Produced YouTube clips from that workshop – total viewings: almost 600 in 2 months
• Developed and facilitating monthly Boards & Governance Learning Community in Tucson
• Participating in ongoing local discussions re: building an MSO in Tucson
• Facilitated discussions for Tucson Pima Arts Council re: “What Can We Accomplish Together that We Can’t Accomplish Individually?”

Goal #2 and Results
Goal #2: Use demonstration projects to prove that visionary change is both possible and practical.

Accomplishments:
We spent much of 2009 discussing possible demonstration projects.

In some cases, we began and/or continued work in areas with the potential to grow into demonstration projects. The two most salient were community foundations with great potential for changing the modus operandi of how we fund community change:
• Consulting on vision-based strategy and organizational sustainability for Dalia Association, the Palestinian Community Foundation.
• Facilitation of vision and values discussions with Nebraska Community Foundation

Exploratory discussions also grew from other work, most notably the keynote and article written for the National School Boards Association.  (Project: How might Community-Driven Governance apply to the work of an elected body, where each individual believes he/she was elected to uphold his/her own vision/values rather than work towards shared vision/values?)

Lastly, the project that received most of our attention was one about which I blogged back in November – building Community-Driven Management Support Organizations. Towards that end, our January 2010 immersion course is exclusively for leaders in MSO’s. We have had numerous conversations with leaders of state associations of “nonprofit organizations” and with MSO leaders around the world. And we traveled to discuss the possibility of developing a Community-Driven MSO in cities such as Pittsburgh and in Lincoln, Nebraska.

As you will see in tomorrow’s installment, building Community-Driven Management Support Organizations will likely be the demonstration project we develop in our next plan.

Goal #3 and Results
Goal #3: Develop curriculum and teach those who are ready to apply this immediately to their work, creating ongoing supportive learning communities as part of that process.

Accomplishments:
Wow did we ever accomplish this goal!  In 2008, a group of top consultants from across the US and Canada spent 5 days with us, helping to develop the first curriculum for the Institute – the immersion course for consultants.  In 2009, we accomplished the following:

• Developed / refined syllabus, scheduled & coordinated back-end and taught 4 classes.
• Developed the role of “Seasoned Participant” as part of the ongoing path to embodying the Pollyanna Principles in a consultant’s work
• Post-session monthly conference calls: well-attended, generative, insightful, energizing.
• Created a video showing the power of the Consultants curriculum.
• Consultant results in their own communities have been remarkable. (Many are documented in the video. Evaluation metrics are being developed now to document and report these results, especially compared to the conditions we intend those courses to affect.)
• Developed a blog specifically for Community-Driven Consulting
• Discussions / planning for other phases of the curriculum, specifically pathways for moving beyond “doing” this work, where consultants transform to think and “be” as Catalysts for Social Change
• Consultants course has been consistently attended by consultants with 20 and 30 years of experience, seeking to transform their work from “consulting” to “catalyzing community change.” In each case, the most seasoned of consultants talk about being “transformed” by the classes, with the transformation changing not just their consulting, but often everything about the way they live their lives.

In addition to the powerful results of the immersion courses, we have begun bringing Community-Driven curricula to college level “Nonprofit Management” courses.  In 2009, we began working with Professor Angela Eikenberry at the University of Nebraska Omaha, to develop a syllabus that moves beyond simply using The Pollyanna Principles as text, and instead actually models the principles in the very structure of the course.

Lastly, in 2009 we began an effort to engage Nonprofit Technology leaders to explore the development of an open source interface to address all the web needs of any organization.  The goal is to ensure that technology for creating websites and blogs, online classrooms and libraries, online communities and forums, and any other online education and engagement need – would be available for FREE for ALL organizations EVERYWHERE.  (While individual components may already be available, they are not easily integrated without tech savvy that is sorely lacking in the majority of organizations. This not only severely limits their success in engaging those who can help their mission; it limits their ability to participate in supportive learning communities and online education experiences.)

That’s it for our goals and results for 2009.

In 2010, the Community-Driven Institute will move out of the nest we created through our consulting firm, and spread its wings as its own tax exempt organization. And when that happens, we can barely imagine the possibilities that lie ahead.

We know in the core of our being that the only thing stopping this sector from changing the world is that current systems preclude that change.  Our goal as we move forward in developing the Institute is therefore simple: change those systems and aim this sector at its highest potential – making our world a healthy, vibrant, resilient, humane, peaceful place for all of us.

Unless something is physically impossible, it is possible. Join us tomorrow as we share what we will be doing in 2010 to turn the “possible” into the “practical” and “doable” and “achievable.”

Developing the Institute has taught us (and continues to teach us) that we can accomplish vastly more if we are transparent in the work we do – even the internal work of planning.

And so this week, we will share with you our plans, and ask for your guidance as we start to immediately move those plans forward.

First, though, we want to share with you last year’s plan – both the plan and the results. We share this for a number of reasons. First, we want to be clear that we practice what we teach.  The plan you will see unfold in the next several days is no different from any we have facilitated over the years.

In addition, we want to show yet another case study of what such a plan looks like in action. You can see that this is a plan for aiming the work of this whole sector at what is possible, rather than aiming our work at what is wrong.

And lastly, we are excited to share the incredible results such a vision-based plan created and is continuing to create.

The Plan

When we created our first Impact Plan back in 2007, we used the same reverse engineered approach we teach.  We started with the end result in mind, and worked backwards to develop our 2-year goals.

The ultimate vision was the same one we all want – a peaceful, healthy, compassionate, resilient, vibrant world.

After reverse engineering the cause-and-effect conditions that would ultimately lead to that vision, the following are among the most immediate conditions that would need to be put into place:

• Social Change agents must be able to easily learn about and engage with the principles that undergird visionary community improvement.
• There must be ample proof that it is not only possible but practical (and simple) for “nonprofit” Community Benefit organizations to create visionary community transformation
• There must also be proof that functioning according to The Pollyanna Principles is practical for organizations as well.
• Those who are ready to take the step of transforming their work must have access to teachers and mentors who can help them do so.
• Individuals who are on the path to creating transformation must have a place to learn together and support each other in their work.

As we worked this plan 2 years ago, back at the end of 2007, we established the following 2-year goals as our first steps in establishing those conditions throughout the Community Benefit Sector.

#1: Raise awareness that creating visionary community and global change is not just possible, but practical and doable.  Accomplish this by convening, teaching, writing, and engaging those who are ready – by telling stories of what had already been accomplished, and urging others to accomplish similar results as their own proof.

#2: Use demonstration projects to prove that visionary change is both possible and practical.

#3: Develop curriculum and teach those who are ready to apply this immediately to their work, creating ongoing supportive learning communities as part of that process.

The results of that plan have been beyond anything we could have imagined.  I’ll share those results with you tomorrow, to lay the groundwork for the plans we have drafted for 2010 and beyond. (Update: That post is online here.)

We look foward to your being part of this adventure, because that is just what this is – an adventure in the world of what is not only possible for our communities, but what is practical and achievable.  See you tomorrow!

]]> http://hildygottlieb.com/2009/12/28/planning-to-change-the-world/feed/ 1 http://hildygottlieb.com/2009/12/07/3-steps-to-changing-the-world-guaranteed/ http://hildygottlieb.com/2009/12/07/3-steps-to-changing-the-world-guaranteed/#comments Mon, 07 Dec 2009 15:49:30 +0000 Hildy http://hildygottlieb.com/?p=1478 This will be the first of several gifts I will be sharing with you this holiday season.  And I thought I would make this the first one, because it contains every single thing you want.  Really.

Readers here dedicate much of their lives to making a difference, whether as their full time employment or their seemingly full time volunteering.   So that is my gift to you – 3 guaranteed steps to making that difference and changing the world.

No, I’m not exaggerating or outright lying (or even delusional).  If you follow these three steps, you will make a difference, guaranteed.

Step 1) Believe it is possible.
Yes, it sounds simple.  But if you don’t believe with every fiber of your being that you can make a visionary difference in your community – well, then you can’t.

Unless something is physically impossible, it is possible. Believe in your bones that you can make your community a healthy, vibrant, humane, resilient place to live, and you can.

Once you believe it is possible, the next step is to…

Step 2) Aim at what is possible.
Aiming is about planning. As you create your annual plans (or even your weekly plans), ask, “What do we want to be different in the community we serve, because of the work we are doing?”  Create plans that aim directly at making that difference.

Most “strategic” plans are actually reactive – reacting to either internal or external circumstances.  “Our community is having X problem. What can we do to help?”

Instead of reacting, aim your plans at where you want to be. Then reverse engineer what it will take to achieve that. Create your annual goals from that reverse engineered process.

With those goals in place, the last step is to…

Step 3) Use systems that help you achieve what is possible.
In addition to refocusing your planning systems, make sure all the rest of your organizational systems are aiming you at what’s possible.

Are your board systems focusing all the board’s work on the difference your board members want to make in the community? Or are you using board systems that ignore “making a difference,” focusing mostly on means (money, HR, etc.) over ends?

Do your resource development systems build upon the strengths of others already doing similar work to you? Or do those systems reinforce that those groups are your “competition?”

Do your program evaluation systems measure the degree to which you are changing conditions in your community?  Or do they measure whatever you think the funder will approve?

If your systems are not helping you achieve the difference you want to make in your community, get new systems.  Really.

That’s all there is to it.

• Believe it is possible to create the future you want for your community.
• Aim everything you’ve got at making that difference.
• And make sure you are using systems that support you in making that difference (rather than fighting you at every step).

It is possible to create a healthy, vibrant, resilient, humane, peaceful world, simply because it is not impossible.  So that is my gift to you – steps for moving beyond “possible” and on towards “practical and doable.”

Your gift to the rest of us will be putting those steps into motion, and creating the world we all want.

For detail about systems aimed at making a difference, read The Pollyanna Principles.

Photo credit: NASA

]]> http://hildygottlieb.com/2009/12/07/3-steps-to-changing-the-world-guaranteed/feed/ 2 http://hildygottlieb.com/2009/06/22/strength-based-work-is-not-enough/ http://hildygottlieb.com/2009/06/22/strength-based-work-is-not-enough/#comments Mon, 22 Jun 2009 16:24:56 +0000 Hildy http://hildygottlieb.com/?p=895

If we want to create a healthy, vibrant, compassionate, resilient future for our communities and our world, strength-based work is not enough.

I know that’s stepping on a lot of toes, but hear me out.

Strength-based / asset-based work is seen in various places.  It is seen in community engagement efforts, to engage folks in solving their own problems.  It is seen in the counterbalance of “Yes, we did a needs assessment because the funder wanted it, but we also did an asset map to assess our strengths.” It is seen in the battle cry to not just look at clients and communities as a pile of needs, but a pile of strengths to address those needs.

All this is good stuff.  Heck, I even included the need for building on our strengths as Pollyanna Principle #5! As Jody Kretzmann of the Asset-Based Community Development Institute says when he speaks about a glass being half empty or half full, “When we consider only needs, we are considering only the useless part of the glass.”

That said, there is a gap that focusing on strengths cannot fill. When we use strengths to solve people’s problems – to help stabilize a homeless family or to eliminate crime from a neighborhood – our best possible outcome is that we will eliminate that problem.

And while yes, we indeed want to solve those problems, when all we do is fix what’s not working, we are limiting our potential. We are failing to reach for what is possible, because what is possible goes beyond just eliminating harmful circumstances. What is possible is – well – everything we can dream of!

We Accomplish What We Hold Ourselves Accountable For
and
We are Creating the Future, Right Now, Whether We Do So Consciously or Not

As the first two of the Pollyanna Principles note, creating visionary change in our communities and our world requires that we hold ourselves accountable for aiming at positive, powerful, visionary end results.

And that’s why strength-based work is not enough.  Strength-based work focuses on the means we use – tapping on the strengths every individual and every community has to create its own future.  But strength-based work towards marginal goals will still only take us so far.

The key is in the future we hold ourselves accountable for creating, for an individual client, for a community, for the world.

If we hold ourselves primarily accountable for getting homeless people back on their feet, that is where we will aim our strengths. And that is what we will continue to accomplish, over and over again.

If, however, we hold ourselves primarily accountable for creating an equitable society where not only does homelessness not exist, but everyone has the opportunity to reach for their own highest potential, then that is where we will aim our strengths. And along the way to that end goal, we will indeed get homeless individuals back on their feet.

I cannot guarantee we will achieve the equitable society imaged in the second example.  But I can guarantee that if we do not aim for it, we will absolutely not attain it. We will continue to fight poverty, fight drug use, fight terrorism – fight whatever sadness it is our mission to fight.

Try This
Question 1: Today, for every need you identify (in a client, in your organization, in your community, in your country, in our world), ask this question:

What is the best possible outcome here? For whom?

Question 2: Just by asking that question, what might change about your approach to the work you do?

If you have not already taken the first step in aiming at what is possible – for your clients, your organization, your community AND for yourself – The Pollyanna Principles can take you there.

This is an organization with the potential to accomplish such incredible work – the community could be an astoundingly different place, simply because this organization exists.  Their mission is unlike any other organization in town.  And they have considerable strengths to build upon.

And yet the organization’s leaders have all but squandered its considerable strengths.  They have done mediocre work because the work could easily get funded.  And they have so completely ignored the difference they could make in the community, that now their only hope is a group of past leaders who are gathering to determine the organization’s fate.

My advice to my colleague was simple: Blow it up and start over. Or at least assume that is what you have done as you do your planning.

When we plan to save an existing organization, we dive right into problem-solving tactics. How can we ensure it survives financially? How will we find better board members?  What programs are salvageable? And etc.

However, when we plan as if we had blown it up and started over, we invite the opportunity to ask very different questions.

• If the organization didn’t exist, and we were starting from scratch, what success would we be aiming at? What would the community look like if we were 100% successful?

• What conditions would the organization be seeking to change in our community?

• What kinds of programs might we build to begin changing those conditions?

• Who should we engage as we ask and answer these questions?  Whose lives could be affected by the work we are considering?

• How would we know if we were successful at changing those conditions?  What might be good indicators?

• Who else is doing similar work? Who could we partner with to make this happen?

From there, we can identify the strengths upon which we can rebuild.  From there, we can identify the values we want to always uphold as we do our work.  From there, we can engage others in the quest to build a better community by rebuilding the organization.

Creating concrete plans to achieve our highest potential for impact is something each of us can do with everything we are working on, whether or not your work is in disarray.

• Organizations that are not falling apart can create concrete plans to reach for their own highest potential – the highest level of success they can imagine creating in their communities.

• The same goes for us as individuals.  We, too, can envision our own highest potential and create concrete plans to work toward that success.

And the secret to all this? In the end, we don’t need to blow it up at all!  Just aim at what is possible, identify the strengths that can help you get there, and start walking.

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