“The greatest revolution of our generation is the discovery that human beings by changing the inner attitudes of their minds, can change the outer aspects of their lives”  -- William James

In my work with over 75 communities across North America, on achieving transformative results on issues ranging from educational outcomes to poverty reduction to economic development, I've come to see that at the very heart of success there are just two interrelated and mutually dependent, elements: the need to change expectations or the "inner attitudes" in James' phrasing and the need to work differently, to innovate.  The beauty is that these changes, when embraced, can reinforce each other in a virtuous cycle of improvement.  

Expectations define and shape the context or ecosystem wherein an innovation takes root or is starved for resources.  Let's take for example, a transformation in expectations that I have seen in our working differently communities in the last few years.  The new "inner attitude" by growing parts of the community is that ALL children can/should succeed in school.  The old standard or expectation was: when a child failed it was seen as their fault (or the fault of their parents, or the fault of their circumstances, i.e., poverty or race).  All of the prior "innovations" were in interventions believed required to address the child's failings, and all of the rest of the adults went on as business as usual.  

"We don't have a kid problem.  We have an adult problem."  -- Bill Millikan founder of Community in Schools on receiving a life-time achievement award at the ASU Education Innovation Summit (4-17-13)

Instead, when we change the expectation to ALL children can succeed, the innovations concentrate on what the adults are failing to accomplish, or how the system needs to support these adults in deeper richer ways, so that the system meets the expectation -- all of the children do in fact achieve outcomes.   This shift in expectations, has a profound shift in the ecosystem which in turn directly affects the success of innovations. 

Failure of Innovation, whether a new high tech application available in the itunes store or a community process, has three possible henchmen.   All of which are directly influenced by expectations and in turn reinforces or undermines that ecosystem. 

1.  Knowledge
2.  Design and Engineering
3.  Adoption and use

Failure of knowledge is striking for how prevalent it is.  We have a fanciful image of the innovator as the lone dreamer.  Sitting in contemplation until the "eureka" moment, where often proof is in the assertion of correctness.  There have been huge waves of wasted effort across all of our institutions and communities based on ideology or philosophy rather than rigorous investigation.  It is incumbent on all of us to be much more critical about the next "shiny object" before we fall head over heals in pursuit.  A good rule from scientific research: if it sounds intuitive, it's probably wrong.  

The first of the Seven Habits of Highly Successful Communities is to "reach for it."  We must change our "inner attitudes," so we can change the outer aspects of our lives.  For without this focus on context, most innovations will fail. We must be clear as to what needs to change (be accomplished) and how will we know (measure) whether the innovation is moving us in the direction of our expectations.  

These observations are "with thanks" to James Shelton, Deputy Secretary US Department of Education, adapted in part from his keynote at the recent ASU Education Innovation Summit.

In their book Decisive, which I will review more completely in the book reviews section of this website, Chip and Dan Heath suggest that to make the most effective choices we need to go beyond the way we have traditionally made decisions individually or in group environments. They identified four “villains” of decision making that interfere with making good choices: narrow framing, confirmation bias, short-term emotion, and overconfidence.  Here, I look at these "villains" through a complex systems, collective impact community lens.  I will show how the habits developed in working differently communities help vanquish these villains (See: Seven Habits of Highly Effective Communities).

Villain # 1: Narrow Framing. Narrow framing means that you are not considering all the alternatives available to you–you are defining your choices too narrowly. Narrow frame thinking would be when you are asking yourself if you should take a certain action or not, or which of two actions would be better. For example, should you fund Agency A or Program B?  Should you emphasize early childhood or High School graduation?  Restricting yourself to two choices limits your alternatives. You may not even consider options that would be better.

The likelihood of narrow framing in community decision making is directly proportional to the degree to which  the "table" is populated by only folks working in the present system. You want subject matter experts but you don't want to be overwhelmed by the usual subjects setting the frame.  I've tried to get these community discussions to, what I call, 50% neutrality.  That is 50% of the folks don't make their living from activities on the subject nor carry a fiduciary responsibility to an organization dedicated to the subject.  They are neutral to the activity or program but 100% DEDICATED to the changed state.  It is often not either or but rather both and that propels us to outcomes. Here the "working differently" habit #4 of keeping the circle open is so valuable. 

Karyn Hall, PhD, adds this insight which is of particular interest in the context of community members dedicated to "doing something."  Being aware of narrow frame thinking is particularly important to emotionally sensitive people. When emotionally sensitive people face a decision, they tend to become more emotional than others and their thinking tends to narrow more than the person who is not emotionally sensitive. With awareness, the emotionally sensitive can take steps to widen their view.

Villain # 2:  Confirmation Bias. Confirmation bias means that when you want or believe an idea to be true, you pay more attention to the information that supports that belief. People naturally tend to select information that supports their preexisting attitudes, beliefs and actions. 

This is why in working differently communities, we see a sequencing of data gathering which flows FROM discussions of what we as a community want to achieve or what we aspire to become rather than take up a lot of data gathering about the present state.  Because that data picture of the present state tends to be narrow frame (problem rather than solution) and bias toward what we already are doing.  How many "fact finding" surveys conclude with the need to fund more of what we are already doing?  "Working differently" habit #6 is most helpful here: choose measurable outcomes. 

Villain #3: Short-term Emotion. Short-term emotion will pass and is not useful in making a long-term decision. Short-term emotion clouds thinking. When you are emotional about a decision, you might replay arguments over and over until you can’t think straight, even though the facts have not changed. You may also only be thinking emotionally, such as wanting a red sports car that is impractical for you in the long run. 

In a community systems context, this can be seen as defensiveness.  Good people, doing good things who, while hampered by the present system from getting good results, feel put upon by "new-comers" asking why "you" aren't achieving certain results.  This tends to perpetuate a cycle of blaming things actually, or perceived to be, outside of these good people's control.  Which then tends to create a lot a busy work about what is presently being done rather keeping the focus on what needs to be done differently across the community.

It is only in a "safe" place where folks who have been doing the community's heavy lifting are respected and see that clarity regarding the shared outcome is a full answer to their prayers for resources and tools all aimed at moving the needle on the outcome.  This is the shared we're-all-in-this-together buoyancy provided by the working differently habit #5: avoiding the blame game.

Villain #4: Overconfidence. Overconfidence is believing that you know what the future holds. Some years ago people generally believed the Internet would never catch on and no one would pay for television programs. Many years ago people were confident the earth was flat. In everyday life it might be that you are absolutely positive that a certain philosophical or ideological banner is the right one for you (even though there is no meaningful evidence that it achieves the desired state) or that getting into a certain grant is the only way to achieve your goals. Being overconfident leads to not considering alternatives or what might happen if your choice doesn’t work out well. Being overconfident about the future can lead to unfortunate outcomes.

That is why the final habit of highly successful communities is so telling: develop a sense of urgency and keep going.  You are on a journey to discover what you don't know about achieving transformative change.  You are passionate about getting there and you are humble about knowing that tomorrow you will know more than today ... 

At the recent ASU Education Innovation Summit (see my post summarizing The Summit), there was a fascinating panel -- “Thar’s Gold In Them There Hills!”: How University Research Can Transform Education -- moderated by one of the central education outcomes thought leaders, Jim Shelton, Acting Deputy Secretary of the US Department of Education.

The irony presented by the panel was the dissonance between the fact that there truly was "gold" available in the peer review disciplines of our Universities -- in that a large number of education quandaries have been addressed and research has determined some very viable paths to significant (if not transformative) outcomes -- yet no one in the education technology marketplace, to quote one of the panelists, "was beating a path to our doors."  The if you build it, they will come mantra of so much other tech transfer was either broken or not operating.  Why?

As Jim Shelton emphasized, as long as the market has no incentive to apply research rigor (i.e., there is no outcome standard), they will not beat a path to research.  Why pay for something that presently isn't valued in the marketplace or which runs counter to other things mandated to be used?
   
In the face of this "frustration" -- children's outcomes remaining relatively flat for the past 20 years with only a third of our children proficient or advanced readers at the end of third grade and tools being sold without the rigor of documented achievement -- I think the research community (perhaps with the lead of IES, the research funding arm of the US Department of Education) is in the best position to knock down the wild west aspect of "proof by assertion" that the ED tech market is presently permitting.  

As I've learned over years of working with communities to achieve outcomes across various systems, there are two necessary predicates to achieving these outcomes.  First, clarity as to what the shared definition of outcome is and what measures are relevant.  This piece is the role that IES (and an aligned Department of Education) can play.  Like an ED FDA that would expect statistically proven outcomes through RCT (randomized control trials) before inflicting an idea or approach on our kids and schools and/or through recommended policy mandates.

Second, refusal to go along with shoddy statements of outcome in the industry.  Even the "best and brightest" companies at The Summit had a dearth of real causal data.  Here is where you and I, other researchers and the education community as a whole can clearly exert influence.  Take one of the panelists', Richard Clark, Professor of Educational Psychology and Technology, Co-Director of the Center for Cognitive Technology Rossier School of Education, University of Southern California, statement about "discover learning" or any of the other philosophies in education (like "developmentally appropriate" or you fill in the blank __________).  If research has debunked an approach, the fact that states are still mandating its use has to be shame on all of us.  It's like the Medical Community not objecting to blood letting.  We need to be much more forceful in calling out those who perpetuate the ideological myths.  Because as long as "anything" gets outcomes, nothing does.  

The fifth habit of our Seven Habits of Highly Successful Communities is “avoid the blame game.”

I am constantly struck by how destructive blame is to the ability to achieve impact and how terribly hard it is to banish blame from our most basic human interactions.  A significant example this past week reminded me of both of these cancerous elements of blame.

I had the pleasure to speak at and participate in a number of sessions at this week’s ASU Education Innovation Summit (Twitter: #eisummit) held in Phoenix.  I have had the blessing or curse of attending scores of conferences in all three sectors over my career.  This Summit (fondly called “Davos in the Desert”) is head and shoulders above the best of the rest.  It is truly a cross sector gathering of key leaders in Education, Business, Venture Capital, Philanthropy, Academia and Public Policy with the central focus of how do we achieve better education outcomes across all ages.  The focus seeks to complement teaching with cutting-edge technology – not for technology’s sake but for the learners’ sake.

During the week, powerful progress was made in understanding the freedoms and constraints of each sector in moving the trajectory of results in a fragmented system and to begin to see the potential power of collective impact across these sectors.  There was a growing respect and sense of true shared-passion. 

That is, until the Wednesday evening Closing Keynote.  The speaker – Andy Kessler – one assumes in an effort to be cute and provocative, took the collective air out of the room of 1500 leaders from across the globe.  Most shocked, no doubt, were the phenomenally talented organizers -- GSV and ASU – of this stellar conference. Whether it was sheer distain or unadulterated stupidity, Kessler felt the path forward was to blame the teachers and that the technologists’ main job was to eliminate all teachers.  He had several slides that built to a crescendo that society could afford to replace all teachers with iPads.  If blame IS the currency for Kessler, then he should have at least been balanced enough to point out that the promise of technology in the classroom has been as often delayed over that past 20 years as any teaching reform.  And meanwhile, the immutable fact remains since measured in the early 1990’s – as many or more of our children are not able to demonstrate basic literacy at the end of 3rd Grade.

As with any complex system, there is a fairly low threshold of gray matter required to find fault in any number of aspects of a dysfunctional system.  Like shooting fish in a barrel, as all of us working on improving systems know. The genius, shown by so many at the Ed Summit, is in beginning to truly grapple with how to achieve transformative change in the midst of that system.  The most heartening reaction in the face of this blame-oration, about the false choice between technology and teaching, was first to virtually sit on our hands when it was mercifully over and to take to Twitter to stand up for the shared values built during the rest of the conference. 

In the past, we have often been silent when confronted by the bully of blame.  The vast majority of the participants at the Summit – thanks to the Summit itself – drew the line and said we will no longer be “dragged” into the divisiveness of blame; we have too great work to do.  In this way, perhaps Kessler’s speech truly was the “Closing Keynote” – the closing of an era of small, selfish thinking for which blame rather than result is the cudgel of choice.

I’m often asked: what is the most surprising aspect of your work with over 75 communities in their efforts to achieve better outcomes?

Whether it is a city, town, school, or district, what has surprised me most is that I have never had to talk a community down from too high an aspiration.  I have never felt the need to pull back the reigns because a community was getting their expectations too far ahead of their potential grasp.

Now this isn’t to ignore the sorry reality that communities often fail to achieve suboptimal results, but, as I have seen time and time again, that is a function of implementation and not of aspiration.  In fact, in my experience, those communities that tend to stretch the limits of expectation also tend to apply more rigor to their implementation, understand the need to reach across the community, and emphasize measurement planning because they intuitively know that this transcendent goal requires them, as a community, to get out of the “same ol’ same ol’” mindset of most past “community betterment” endeavors. 

We’ve talked about some of the potential speed bumps before (see my blog posting on “Traps”), and avoiding them is at the center of what I have called “Working Differently.”  Here is one simple suggestion to get your analysis off to a better chance to get to the “Big Hairy Audacious Goal” that Jim Collins underscored as a fundamental driver in those organizations moving from “Good to Great.”

SWOT v. SOART

Most of us, who have ever participated in or facilitated a strategic planning session, are very familiar with the warhorse of organizational analysis – SWOT.  Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, Threats.  The group would take several hours to fill several pages of flipchart paper with their assessment of community characteristics that fit under each of these headings.  I used the process for years.  It engendered a lively discussion and helped to get people with vastly different perspectives, biases or sector experience closer to being on the same page.

So far so good.   But over the years, I began to suspect that this very process was effectively lowering the horizon.  In the same way that a gun sight can be bent forward, SWOT tended to create a context where the ultimate shot was low.  Under achieving became self-fulfilling.

I think there are two dynamics at play here.  First, a community usually only opens itself for a “strategic” review when it already knows that it has problems.  An intuitive sense of community weakness is at the heart of the “call to action.”   This is anecdotally born out by the fact that usually the newsprint sheets labeled “weakness” often had significantly more entries and more unanimity than any of the other headings.  Second, “weaknesses” tend to give permission to the problem.  How many times have we heard something “outside our control” as the reason we have the problem – the why we can’t succeed.  Poor parenting: school outcomes.  Fast food: obesity health care.  Economic deterioration: pollution.  Media: teen pregnancy.  All of which, serves to confirm why we have the problem without serving to sufficiently guide us to the transformative solution. Even the 180-degree different strengths-emphasis of asset maps tends to fail in this development of a clear guide, because these asset maps are most often framed as activity resources from the problem perspective rather than from the solution point of view.  (Is it an asset to have more slots for early childhood, if the number of children who become k-ready doesn’t change?)

What I saw was needed was more intentionality about the aspiration and then more rigor regarding the characteristics of achieving that aspiration – that transformative outcome.  We all have weaknesses; it is those of us who focus on the change state that soar above those weaknesses.

That is why, several year ago, I switched to SOART.  Strengths, Opportunities, Aspirations, Resources, and Threats.  In many ways, it is very much the same flipchart process, but by re-defining the headings (i.e., the sight line of the participants) and encouraging iteration across the sheets I witnessed significantly enhanced  discussions. The results have been eye opening.  Not only are the collective sights raised but also the ultimate time to result has shrunk.    

Don’t be naive about your weaknesses, but also, don’t let them limit your expectations. 

Much has been written about “backbone organizations” and “community support organizations” when Working Differently or seeking Collective Impact. And their core task of keeping the work structured and moving forward is extremely important, especially as we move our needed involvement to cross sectors. Action teams are developed to address each of the targeted outcomes.
      Whereas each action team should have at least 50% participation by people who are not subject experts and don’t make their living in the field being discussed.  The Community Governance body should be dominated by these neutral participants.  As we discuss below, Community Governance has four levers at their disposal to insure the achievement of outcomes.

Looking at the chart, the work of the action teams are summarized on the left verticle axis, where as the value-add of Community Governance is along the horizontal axis.

Each Action Team decides how to implement structures, processes, and measures to achieve the outcomes, while Community Governance looks at how to organize resources, decision making, accountability, and community engagement to support the work of the Action Teams in a coherent fashion in order to optimize achieving outcomes for the community.

For example, if the outcome is “All children are ready for kindergarten,” the action team agrees on a definition of readiness (structure), plans a way for all kindergarteners to be assessed—whether at preschool, at the pediatrician, at home, etc.—with the same readiness assessment tool (process), and chooses an assessment tool to be implemented (measure).

Meanwhile, Community Governance, lets call it the Steering Committee, informed by the Action Team’s decisions, will leverage the following to ensure success:

Resources

Steering Committee members may seek direct donations from corporate and individual participants, identify and pursue grant opportunities, suggest ways to realign existing funding streams.  The emphasis should on leverage funding: i.e., that funding which would not be possible with out the Working Differently effort.  For example, in the k-ready outline above, investing in an assessment tool for all of the providers might have more impact than funding more slots in a fragmented system.  If the test for an effective measure is to answer the question “How will we know?”  Then test for the type of resource addition considered here should concentrate on those areas of funding which “but for” the Working Differently process would not be attainable.   

The Steering Committee is uniquely positioned to seek corporate funding articulated as a form of investment rather than a charitable donation. Decatur, Illinois, rallied resources from Caterpillar, ADM, Staley, and others by engaging representatives of those companies in the community aspiration process. The companies could then connect their funding of community work to their business goals, such as a workforce prepared to help the companies succeed. Shelby County in Indiana took the same approach with Hospital Corp and Duke Electric.

Decision Making

Steering Committee members will invite participants to the Action Teams that bring neutrality and/or expertise. They will evaluate the Action Team’s decisions according to whether these plans get to the outcomes?

Accountability

Steering Committee members ask, “What are our measures going to be? How will we know that we’re making progress?” They make sure each Action Team has a rigor and discipline about how we will hold ourselves accountable to achieve outcomes.

Engagement

The Steering Committee understands that community ownership is necessary for success, so they continually seek ways to get the word out and involve more people. They intentionally go out into the community to build engagement and to present a unified picture of the community’s aspiration and plans. (If each Action Team does this, it runs the risk of falling back into the fragmented picture of the past). The Steering Committee uses the Internet, local media, community meetings, and presentations to school boards, hospital boards, faith-based groups, and so on.

We have all seen this process repeated in our companies and organizations for decades now. We know that in our own work, if we identify the outcomes we want to achieve and target our work toward them, we will most likely reach them.

Why don’t we do this as a community?

Because the very way a community is organized pre-empts any kind of overview of what we are trying to accomplish. We work in our separate realms as good people doing good things. But lacking a larger focus, is it any surprise we don’t achieve the larger goals?

We simply don’t know how to work as a community body. Our community leaders and citizens don’t typically get together and aspire together. Even when we come together in collaborative groups, we come as representatives of our organizations, companies, and agencies.

We are, at our most basic, a collection of people living in the same place, all wanting a good life for ourselves, our families, and our neighbors. But we don’t think or do things at that basic level. We have so long operated from our own niche in the community—from our job, mostly—that we can only think through the prism of that niche. Finding a way to work as a community is what we mean by working differently.

What is a “community?” This is determined by the people who are working together, but it can refer to a neighborhood, a town or city, a county, or a region. The “community” is defined by wherever the solutions exist. If a problem can be solved at the neighborhood level, then that is where the community needs to work differently. If the problem requires multiple counties working together to solve it, then that is where the community needs to work differently. The community is wherever we can share an aspiration and achieve it.

Working differently as a community doesn’t mean reorganizing the systems we have created to address problems. Years of collaboration and efforts to rework how money flows and how services are provided have left most of us frustrated and more pessimistic than when we started. 

[Rochester/Olmsted County, MN early childhood service system spaghetti – “Trying to reorganize existing systems has left most communities frustrated and pessimistic.”]

But when community members are clear about what they want and hold themselves accountable for achieving it, alignment of effort happens naturally. The systems reorganize themselves to achieve the goals.

Get Together
Aspire Together
Set Measurable Outcomes
Make Plans
Take Action
Evaluate Results

In 2003 we published a book called Community Visions, Community Solutions  that laid out the concept of working differently at the community level. Our suggestions for what this work looks like and what it requires for success were based on research and a few community examples.

In the seven years since, we’ve shared this approach with communities throughout North America, and they have proven time and again that working differently, well, works.

The latest to explore the Pixar Pitch, is Daniel Pink in his new book "To Sell is Human" (see Book Reviews).  In order to move others, we need to become much better at clearly stating what it is we want and where it is we want people to go. Pink presents the Pixar Pitch as a prime tool in thinking about this. Pixar Animation Studios, starting with Toy Story, is one of the most successful studios in moviemaking history. Pixar has produced 13 feature films that together have grossed $7.6 Billion. Six of these movies have won the Academy Award for best animated film. And the company has amassed a total of 26 Oscars in all. 

How do they do it?

There are probably a number of interrelated reasons, but no one will discount the stories themselves. Pixar story artist, Emma Coats has cracked the code and argues that every Pixar film shares the same narrative DNA – a deep structure of storytelling that involves six sequential sentences:
1. Once upon a time there was …
2. Every day …
3. One day …
4. Because of that …
5. Because of that …
6. Until finally …

Take for example the plot of Finding Nemo. 
1. Once upon a time there was … a widowed fish, named Marlin, who was extremely protective of his only son, Nemo.
2. Every day … Marlin warned Nemo of the ocean’s dangers and implored him not to swim far away.
3. One day … in an act of defiance, Nemo ignores his father’s warnings and swims into the open water.
4. Because of that … he is captured by a diver and ends up in the fish tank of a dentist in Sydney.
5. Because of that … Marlin sets off on a journey to recover Nemo, enlisting the help of other sea creatures along the way.
6. Until finally … Marlin and Nemo find each other, reunite and learn that love depends on trust.

This six-sentence template is both appealing and supple. For it allows pitchers to take advantage of the well-documented persuasive force of stories but within a framework that forces conciseness and discipline.

Now, let’s bring this to a community example where you are seeking to dramatically improve early childhood reading outcomes. 
1. Once upon a time there was … an education crisis haunting our schools and communities across North America.
2. Every day … large percentages of our children were not achieving proficiency in vital literacy skills to the point that some in our community even doubted whether they ever could.
3. One day … we developed a simple and shared definition of what children had to know to be ready for school.
4. Because of that … our early childhood centers and parents became better at helping all children enter kindergarten ready to learn 
5. Because of that … teachers were free to work more on skill development for each individual child.
6. Until finally … every child, irrespective of ethnic or economic circumstance, became a proficient reader by the end of third grade.

The Working Differently communities -- like Erie, PA and Decatur, IL and Shelby, IN and Austin, TX -- have all made transformative progress on K-readiness.  In common, they were able to engage their entire communities (not just those in the early childhood sector) in the story of what is possible for all our children.  They knew intuitively how to give the Pixar Pitch!  You should try it for your collective impact vision.

A recent comment to a collective impact article -- "...and let all of the skeptics stay at home" -- hit me with a dull thud.  Can you have collective impact with only "true believers?"
     I think not.
     Nor, it seems to me, can you achieve community outcomes with just the agencies, or schools, or hospitals, or funders, or whatever institutions in a community are dedicated to addressing "the problem," on board.  For I'm a believer in the concept that a core requirement to true sustainable outcomes is a change in community expectations and behaviors.  This can't be done by just a few committed souls.  It is for this reason that I think of this work in the on-going (strategic v. tactical) sense of working differently.  There are too many examples of strong, meaningful impact having an innoculation half life of two to three years (see my blog postings on The Cohort Effect and Return on Investment on Early Education for examples in the sphere of education outcomes).  Impact needs to be embedded into the on-going community context -- not just grafted on as a transitory accomplishment.  When we are envisioning community impact, we are required to think of the entire community -- skeptics and all.
     Thus, engagement, full throated, cross-sector, friend and foe embrace is central to achieving collective impact.  It should be the core capacity of any backbone or community support organization.  But often the path of least resistance (see my review of Linchpin) sub-optimizes on the size of the circle.  To get some help thinking about engagement, I went to Daniel H. Pink's new book "To Sell is Human" (which I'll review through a community collaborative lens in the near future). 
     In discussing engagement, Pink says that there are two methods of attempting to get people to act in a concerted way.  The first, practiced in the vast majority of situations is IRRITATION.  Here you are attempting to engage people to do something that WE want them to do.  Think of the vast number of non-profit or corporate endeavors under the guise of engagement, community outreach, listening sessions, where in fact we are presenting the audience with something we have already decided to do and are seeking their assent.  
     According to Pink, the other, less traveled approach to engagement is AGITATION.  Here you are engaging folks by challenging them to do something that THEY want to do.  "Want to" creates much more energy than "have to."  
     This catalytic energy is one of the reasons why all of the Working Differently communities start at the aspirational level.  In essence, coming to a shared aspiration brings us to a shared understanding of what it is we are collectively trying to achieve -- not in narrow provider or programatic language, but in clarity of what's in it for all of us.  It brings the community to the necessary "want to" energy!

Watch Out for Traps!  Despite the Best of Intentions, How Efforts at Working Differently to Achieve Meaningful Community Outcomes Get Derailed

This is the third of three postings regarding "Traps" in achieving community outcomes.  At every community meeting, at every step in the process, we have seen some version of these traps arise and threaten progress. 

Here’s the full list of “traps” that we have encountered.  Over these three entries, I’ve featured a different set of these traps:

o  Let’s Get Comfortable
o  Let’s Put On a Show!
o  We’re Not Ready
o  Oh, That’s Their Problem
o  We Need a New Organization
o  We Need to Collaborate More
o   Data First
o   Money First
o   What If We Get It Wrong?
o   But What Are We Going to Do?

Data First

It is helpful to know where you are now in order to determine where you are going. But if every community effort begins with, “First we have to gather all this data” (do a needs assessment, create an asset map, whatever), it will never get off the ground. For one reason, extensive data tends to "burn through" a lot of volunteer hours and passion, with in the end, very little to show for it (see below).

Put aspirations first, outcomes second, and actions third. As you do the work, the data will follow, and will help you progress toward your outcomes. In the beginning, you won't know what you don't know.  So how do you know what data to look for?  Conversely, as you progress toward outcomes, the data points will be more clear.

Another way to think about this trap (and it again seems counter-intuitive to most of the consultant prescriptions ... remember data collection = billable consultant hours) is to think about your own personal or community history with data.  To gather data you have to have some frame, some way of looking at things.  This frame tends to be the way we have always looked at the problem.  This data tends to be all about telling you where you've been; but very little help in telling you what you need to do differently.  Historically, the actions from this approach tend to be "do (fund) more of the same."  This pleases the status quo, but does very little about "moving the needle" on outcomes.

I would venture to say that upwards of 50% of communities who contact me have undertaken some sort of extensive indicator or benchmark study, that gave them a score of where they stood but very little direction as to what to do about it.     

Money First

So often, we see an opportunity for a grant and try to figure out how we can use it for our purposes. Or we short-circuit our dreams as soon as someone asks, “But how are we going to pay for this?” Be careful not to let money drive the conversation. (Check out my recent post on Funder Intentions in Working Differently Communities).  

The desired outcomes should drive how money is sought and invested. Available money should not drive the activities we try. We know from experience that the communities that are willing to work differently together are much better positioned to get resources. We have seen millions of new dollars come to our Working Differently communities -- from state and federal sources, as well as, foundations (especially corporate foundations) -- primarily because they were working differently and had the outcomes to prove it.  In fact, we have seen in community after community that achieving the outcome is no more expensive then perpetuating the problem. Start with the outcomes, and the money will follow.

It is the zen of Working Differently: don't focus on the money and the money will come!

What If We Get It Wrong?

Every community feels overwhelmed by this process at first. Like people with stage fright, the participants fear that everyone is looking at them and waiting for them to give the right answers. But working at the community level is a process of discovering what we don’t know, not proving how much we do know. Unlike leadership at the organizational level, expertise is not revealed by having the right answers but by asking the right questions. [See: On becoming a “Catalytic Leader” in a forthcoming Tools post] And if you feel people are judging you, invite them to get involved; after all, it’s their community and their responsibility, too.

But What Are We Going to Do?

It is so easy for our brains to jump from “what is the problem?” to “how are we going to fix it?” Everyone wants to know his or her purpose in the process and how existing roles and organizations will be affected. All too often the conversation rushes to action steps before participants are clear about purpose and how to measure success. We’re wary of too much “process” and not enough action.

It’s true that process without action and outcomes is of no value, but actions and outcomes without process won’t succeed. Look at your present community outcomes, if you have any question about that reality.   

Without trust and buy-in, there’s no implementation. Without ever-increasing engagement -- well beyond the usual suspects -- there’s no sense of ownership. Without a solid foundation of community support, there’s no sustainability. The process is much of the enterprise. It allows you to use what you already do, and what you already spend, more effectively and efficiently.  As an example, we have seen communities come to a shared and actionable kindergarten readiness measure and action plan in six months where two-thirds of the time was "process." And conversely, we have seen communities spend little time on process during years where of never coming to that agreement (they still have 10 different definitions of readiness -- at loggerheads with each other) and it remains that fewer than 35% of their children ready.

Process isn’t something to get done as fast as possible; it is the warp through which all the action is woven.