"Vision without execution is hallucination."  This quote by Thomas Edison has particular resonance in our Working Differently / Collective Impact communities.  For in many ways, these communities seek to accomplish transformative change by building on two visions: the aspirational outcome and the cross-sectoral means of achieving that outcome.  For this reason, carefully considering "how" this can be accomplished is vital. 

Our work with multiple communities across North America has given us insight to the four steps required to assure community sanity in the midst of achieving sustainable outcomes.  Assuring execution across these four steps is the foundational requirement for any successful multi-partner endeavor.  It is all the more important when these partners are across sectors.  In that case, this is the core of what a community support organization, roundtable and/or backbone organization must deliver.

First, clarity on the target (see figure).  Where communities fail to to even get out of the gate to meaningful change is their failure to agree on a shared definition of what is the target of our collective efforts and how will we know if we are making progress to that result.  For many, there is a reluctance to make this goal concrete for fear of disengaging some partner or because it involves the tough work of getting beyond jargon and assumptions.  As I discuss in other blog postings (most particularly in the recent Understanding Measures), the reluctance to be crystal clear on the target quickly metastasizes into on-going debating societies among good people where much time is used but very little meaningful progress is charted.

Second, embrace the fact that activities beyond those being done by "the usual suspects" are vital to success.  (In a future blog posting, I'll discuss how the most significant player in a community achieving kindergarten readiness was the town's largest employer.) To truly engage the entire community in this effort requires the humility to understand that it involves so much more than mapping current activities (see figure).  We must begin with a comfort about "what we don't know."  An important test here is assessing the level of community engagement in the partnership -- if the vast majority of those organizations involved are in some way funded to be there, then you are not reaching far enough.

Third, create a means for all parts of the community to align to your efforts.  This is the core of execution in that collective space above the "command and control" structures of individual organizations and institutions.  Execution here moves from dictate to enable.  No community collective has (or should have) the power to force action, but they certainly have the ability to help organizations and individuals ask and answer the simple question: "what can I do?"  This aligning arrow (see figure) that you are creating is made possible by a whole series of resources from shared language, to shared measures, to supporting data and indicators to published checklists to communications to best practice case studies to training.  This step is particularly helpful when thinking about funding decisions: there should be less emphasis for this effort to fund activities (those have better sources of funds and tends to disengage non-funded, but vital community activities) rather here the need is to fund those things that allow disparate organizations to align, coordinate and manage to the shared outcome: e.g., universal assessments; common data systems, etc.    

And, fourth, recognize and salute the many community activities that have aligned on your arrow.  This will serve to model and induce broader community engagement to propel the outcome forward.  Communities have done this in annual gatherings, newspaper articles and tweets.  The key gravitational pull is the ongoing reporting on the progress to the shared target.  This brings us back to the importance of the first step to continually improving your execution.   

A tsunami of measuring things has hit our community efforts over the past decade.  For the most part, this "run it like a business" mantra has done little harm, but it also has not gotten us to the promised land of transformative change.

There have been critics on both sides of the exercise.  Some will talk about their belief that important things, by their very nature, do not lend themselves to be measured.  While others will identify the insufficiency of the measures chosen.  Still more have called it a distracting fad that takes providers away from the important work of good people doing good things.

Perhaps the best place to start our thinking about how best optimize and tame this measurement fever is the fact that 90% of what we are required to measure in community -- be it because of grant mandates, donor or Board requests, or other well meaning impositions -- fail to measure those aspects of our work, especially our collaborative work, which truly represents the path to transformative and sustainable outcomes.

This 2x2 matrix shows the four quadrants of types of measures available to monitoring our work and progress.  Measures can be thought of in terms of quantity or quality of the work being measured AND the amount of effort or effect such work requires or delivers.

The vast majority of the measures, indicators, mileposts that we have used in community are stuck in the first quadrant --  counting quantity and effort.  Here we look at number of clients served, seats available, units built.  We are focused on what we do, assuming that will be transformative in and of itself.  Most of the public policy and advocacy work in this quadrant is about access and funding more of these same types of activities.  

The dilemma here is multi-fold: 
(1) It tends to solidify our definition of success around what we are already doing, i.e., though, we've failed to achieve our desired outcomes over the past quarter-century, we would be successful if we only did more of it.  Einstien's definition of insanity certainly comes to mind -- doing more of the same, hoping for a different result.
(2) By emphasizing the count versus the result, we tend to heighten the competition around the action -- agency A is better than agency B because their overhead is lower.  
(3) It tends to crowd out innovation be it in activity, result or data because we built momentum around maintaining where we have already been, as opposed to where we want to go.  If fact, in most communities the definition of the ideal future is a better funded past.

Quadrant #2 moves us beyond counting activities, yet it is still limited in scope by framing what matters around the quality of those who are performing the activities.  Imagine: This community runs the very best "Dare" program!  Irrespective of whether there is any evidence that "Dare" programs causally impact teen drug use.

Quadrant #3, though back to counting, is at least looking outside the provider frame for an assessment of impact.  Unlike the first two quadrants, since we have now moved to the part of the matrix dealing with effect, we need to consider more directly whether our activities are in fact the path to improved outcomes.  The first two quadrants were about agency, we are now shifting to impact.  Yet, we are still a level removed from sustainable change.  We are taking a community vessel and filling it with good things without the ultimate connection between whether these "good" things create a good lasting result in the community.  "Self-Esteem," "High School Graduation Rates,"  "Worker Retraining Skills"  are all examples of Quadrant #3 measures, which are not sufficient to tell us whether we have achieve the tipping point in community success.

It is only Quadrant #4 measures which begin to outline the collaborative, collective impact our communities deserve.  The other three quadrants are about counting, whereas here we are measuring the heavy lifting of a community actually accomplishing something. 

As you move from Quadrant #1 to #4, not only are you shifting your collective focus from good people doing good thing to good people accomplishing good results, but you are also declaring what it is that you need all of those other quadrant measures aligning to.  This quadrant thus becomes the ultimate community accountability.

A very worthwhile test for your organization, partnership or community is to assess all measures you are presently using against Quadrant #4.  If you are NOT tracking measures here, you are simply being busy.