When we wrote our book, "Community Visions, Community Solutions" in 2003, we titled our chapter on the delicate role of funders in working differently communities: The Power Delimma.  

In a recent discussion with Tamarack Institute in Canada, they referenced a  briefing paper by Geo Partners which made a series of recommendations to funders regarding their involvement in collective impact efforts. They were broken down into three sections:  starting off strong, bringing the right people to the table at the right time, and implementing smartly.  Keys to starting off strong include:

• Make sure the goals and purpose for convening are clear
• figure out what role you will play
• think of progress incrementally
• be sensitive to the big picture of context and timing

I would add a fifth: their grants can set the agenda for how issues will be addressed within a community.  The requirements that funders attach to their grants can have a significant effect on the way grantees address a problem. We gave an example of how two funders, tackling the same problem with different requirements, elicited very different -- nearly opposite -- responses from their respective communities.  With nearly as divergent results in solving the problem being addressed. 


Our Working Differently experience in achieving community outcomes has almost always found funders collegial and intrigued, but also reticent to fully engage (certainly as a group). More often we see one or two funders around the table and that "checks the box" for funder participation. It would be like in an effort to improve early childhood outcomes to be engaged with just a couple of the broad diversity of early childhood centers or schools in a community.

Where we have seen the most success is where there is clear intentionality on engaging the funder community as there is in engaging any other sector of the community.  Communities often find that they have as many misperceptions about funder roles and motivations as they do about any "new" partner.  As with any community collaborative engagement, you are not gonna get all of any sector from the beginning, but that doesn't mean you don't constantly evaluate yourselves on your outcomes of increasing funder participation over time.

The two cross-currents or "Traps" you are risking by not being intentional in broader funder engagement are: (1) an ownership risk (which I'll talk more about in a future blog) but for purposes here the risk simply stated is that the engagement of a single funder could give the impression that that one funder "owns the process" which we've seen as having on-going negative ramifications to engagement across your community; and (2) the narrowing of funding requirements, that I touched on above, which affect results.

This is the second 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. If you keep them in mind, you can see them a mile off and avoid falling into them. 

Here’s the full list of “traps” that we have encountered.  Over these three entries, I’ll feature 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?


Oh, That’s Their Problem

“The Blame Game” [link to Habit #5 in my Seven Habits of Highly Effective Communities post] can go both ways—refusing to take responsibility for poor outcomes, or insisting that your organization, sector, or silo “owns” that problem and keeping others out of the effort to solve it.  If you let your citizens believe that your organization owns education or health or economic development, they will fold their arms and say, “Let us know when you succeed.” But these are our problems as an entire community. We all own them together, and we can only solve them together.

We Need a New Organization

Working at the community level does create a work load that someone needs to manage. An organization or an individual leader must commit to convening meetings, preparing handouts, taking notes, reporting back, and convening the next meetings. Successful communities have dedicated staff time to facilitate the process. But the last thing we need to encourage working differently is another organization to feed.

In our 2003 book, "Community Visions, Community Solutions" we called this type of community support a "community support organization."  The recent work on Collective Impact call this effort a "backbone organization."   Both of these conceptualizations envision a stand-alone entity.  But I have seen many communities make great progress at achieving outcomes without the formal establishment of an "organization."  The key is a means for the community to work in this new cross-sector, outcome driven space.  In Erie, PA, for example (www.erietogether.org), Mary Bula holds this space, despite being housed in the United Way and supervised by a partners group from Mercyhurst University, The United Way and a leading community action council: GECAC.  Someday they might form a separate organization, but they didn't dissipate a lot of the community's energy thinking organization, before they though outcomes. 

Don’t assume that a new 501(c)3 will make everything easier. It feels easy, because that has been the standard answer in the past. But it may damage your ability to achieve aspirations, because it will take ownership from the community and put it in the “new, super-duper organization.” This creates an excuse for disengagement. How often have we seen the community metaphorically clap the dust off its hands and say, “Well, that’s done,” and move on to some other equally uneventful activity?

Your desired outcome isn’t to create a new organization but to create a new way of working as a community that balances activities and solutions. Find other ways to get the work done through existing mechanisms.  [link to “A New There” post]

 
We Need to Collaborate More

Whenever we visit communities and ask executives how many collaborative meetings they attend in a month, the average number is 7 or 8 meetings. That’s 7 or 8 different collaborations for different purposes. Now, we’re all about bringing organizations and community members together, so we obviously advocate for collaboration. But no organization can change its structure, processes, and measures [link to “Implementation Kit” in the Tools upcoming posts] 7 or 8 different ways to meet the goals of all these collaborative efforts.

            The problem is that most collaboration occurs around activities and funding, not around outcomes. Communities that are working differently require fewer collaborative groups, because they are no longer building coalitions for each program or funding stream.  Instead, they have begun with the question, “What do we want to accomplish?” and then built an infrastructure to get there. Collaboration occurs in order to achieve the outcomes that everyone has agreed on together. This creates a fundamentally different way of organizing work and, therefore, of organizing how we all work together.

            How do you know if you are engaged in worthwhile collaboration? Check out this tool and test yourselves. [link to “Collaboration” in an upcoming Tools post]

At every community meeting, at every step in the process, we have seen some version of these traps arise and threaten progress. If you keep them in mind, you can see them a mile off and avoid falling into them. Even better, we’ve seen communities where, at every meeting, they designate someone to be “Sergeant At Arms” who will point out when such traps emerge and help everyone steer clear.

Here’s the full list of “traps” that we have encountered.  Over the next week or so, in three entries, I’ll feature 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?

Let’s Get Comfortable

Working differently isn’t easy because it isn’t what we’re used to doing. Whenever community groups meet, they must be constantly on alert not to let discomfort pull them away from the new approach. This is especially a risk with people who are joining the effort mid-stream and may try to devolve the conversation back into an approach with which they are comfortable. You want folks to join the process continually, BUT be sure to orient newcomers appropriately [see earlier blog posting on “Seven Habits of Highly Effective Communities” for more detail on this concept of on-going orientation], and designate participants in each meeting to be the watchdogs or guards who will point out when the conversation is falling back on old, bad habits.

If every other community meeting your members are likely to attend, is focused on the old way of thinking about problems – single-sector activities, scarcity, ideology, blame – it is no surprise that there is a natural inertia in that direction and away from the more successful outcome focus of Working Differently.  We’ve seen where communities have posted their “values” and “method of operation” or take a few minutes at the beginning of each meeting reminding folks that this is a different way of working. (See upcoming “Tools” posts for examples.) 

This is also a real value provided by the community support organization or backbone organization [see earlier blog posting on "Creating the New There." for more detail on this concept of someplace in the community having a catalytic focus on the end result -- the community outcome].

Another derivative of this trap is a long-drawn out process of TRUST Building.  We’ve seen some efforts derailed for years while some well-meaning funder pays for trust building exercises.  (And most consultants are more than willing to prescribe this easy source of consultant-billing).  We have yet to see where this artificial trust is maintained in the face of the hard decisions required to develop a shared definition of the outcome and a meaningful measure.  At best, they are the community equivalent of gathering around the campfire to sing "Kumbaya."  (It's perhaps pleasant once a year, but would be mind-numbing as a sole activity.)  Success comes from jumping right into the central question – what outcome do we want? – and build trust around acting and not falsely around preparing to act.

Let’s Put On a Show!

When we aren’t sure what to do, we can easily fall back on familiar strategies like creating a new program, hosting a conference, holding a fundraiser. But we shouldn’t propose any actions until we know what the outcomes are, and then we should test those actions to measure if they are, in fact, getting us to those outcomes. When we are ready to decide how to reach the outcomes, we should begin with what we already know is working, rather than grasping at new ideas just because they are new. Achieve results from respecting and aligning the work of the community, not covering over the old system with one more layer of programs.  (We'll cover this more fully in future posts.)

We’re Not Ready

Even when we are inspired by the idea of working differently, it may feel like too much, too fast for some communities. Or certain organizations perceived to be critical to success may not feel ready to participate. But if we aren’t ready now – when our kids and elders need help, when families are in distress, when our environment is degrading – when will we be ready? Don’t get held up because some people won’t get engaged right away; some folks won’t take time to get involved until you have some actions to show them.  As we talk about in the earlier “Seven Habits” post, make sure there is always an empty chair at your working differently community meetings for whenever folks are ready to join, BUT we don’t have the luxury to wait.  Get moving. NOW! [link to Habit #2 from the blog post: Seven Habits of Highly Effective Communities.]

When Michael Bromberg moved to Illinois and became dean of Benedictine University of Springfield, he wanted to get involved in the community in order to learn about his new home town, to bring greater awareness to the university, and to seek stronger connections between his institution and others in town. He was grateful to discover Springfield’s “Continuum of Learning” as a doorway into his community. Unlike in most cities, he found a central place to connect with various community leaders in all sectors around a shared purpose related to his goals.

One of the greatest obstacles to improving our communities is that there’s no there there. When policy makers, potential funders, or new leaders come to town, they cannot find an entry point that connects them to the community as a whole. Should they go to the chamber of commerce? The mayor’s office? The community foundation? A service club? Each of these will connect them with certain segments of the community, but none can offer the bigger picture or a wide-ranging network of other leaders.

The infrastructure of most communities is a web of organizations. This web is valuable, but it must be balanced with a capacity to think and work at the community level. While most of us can point to plans that were made at the community level in the past, we have tried to implement them at the fragmentary level of organizations, and we are, not surprisingly, disheartened by the lack of results.

When community members get involved with social challenges, they do so as volunteers or board members for individual organizations committed to particular activities and programs. As a result, the community’s strengths – resources, decision making, accountability, and engagement – are all placed on the side of the scale that takes action (whether or not those actions are solving problems). By creating a new working space at the community level, we can tip the scale to bring more resources, decision making, accountability, and engagement to our overall goals and outcomes. We then have a way to target our strengths toward solutions, not just tasks.

[Figure One: a scale showing imbalance with focus on activities (almost all the weights are on that side of the scale right now) and little focus on outcomes (almost no weights on that side of the scale)]

Community enterprises need to be managed; they need a community-level infrastructure. Again, this does not mean creating a new organization [see upcoming blog post re Traps to Working Differently for Community Outcomes]. What it does mean is that some individuals – no matter where they are employed – are charged by the community to hold the center [link to Habit #3 in blog post on "Seven Habits of Highly Effective Communities] and act on behalf of the community.

Erie, Pennsylvania community leaders decided to hire Mary Bula to direct its Erie Together Coalition. She is housed in the United Way, but her charge is to keep people working differently at the community level to reach Erie’s aspirations (which are related to education and economics). Mary says that all participants in this community-wide effort “have to be willing to look at what is in the best interests of children and community instead of where the money is coming from. I’m still trying to get folks to think about community rather than self. I just keep pointing out our true job – equitable opportunity for every child. We have to look at what the community needs.” She is holding the center, and she holds open the door to community-level connections.

We know that policy makers and funders want to work more at the community level but say they have no place to go. With this new infrastructure in place, they will know who to call to get connected with the community. They will find a new there there.

From Activities to Aspirations: The Why Test

Nearly all of our community conversations are about activities: "agency Y does this or program X does that."  Yet, when our "working differently" communities want to solve a problem, they begin by developing the highest aspiration possible so that all relevant resources, decision-making, participants, and measurements can be aligned for success. You will know you haven’t reached high enough if you can still answer the question “Why?” about any outcome statement. Here’s an example:

“We need all of our kids to have a nutritious lunch!”

Why? “Well, because if they have the right nutrition, they have the right energy.”

Why do we want that? “Well, if they have the right energy, they’ll be able to concentrate.”

Why do we want that? “Well, if they concentrate, they’ll learn more.”

Why do we want that? “Well, learning more could lower the dropout rate.”

Why do we want that? “Well, lower dropouts means more graduates.”

Why do we want that? “Well, more graduates are more likely to go to post-secondary education or meaningful careers.”

Why do we want that? “Well, to improve self-sufficiency and stabilize our community economy.”

Why do we want that? “Well . . . because we do!”

Ah, so there’s your aspiration: Self-Sufficiency and a Stable Community Economy

It took seven “whys?” to go from activity to aspiration. All the intermediate answers are desirable outcomes that can be targeted and measured and achieved in order to reach the aspiration. Looking back through all the answers, you can begin to see some of the people, resources, and activities that will need to be engaged to reach this aspiration.

Practice the “Why Test” at your next community meeting.

We have learned that some things are absolutely required to truly work differently as a community and, therefore, achieve your goals. These are the irreducible minimums for success. Think of them as the “Seven Habits of Highly Effective Communities.”

1. Reach for It

2. Go With Who Ya Got

3. Hold the Center

4. Keep the Circle Open

5. Avoid the Blame Game

6. Choose Measurable Outcomes

7. Develop a Sense of Urgency & Keep Going

1. Reach for It!

We have yet to work with a community that chooses a higher aspiration than is doable. Every community under-aspires, probably because they have felt defeated so many times in the past. They walk around with the heavy weight of “We’re never going to fix this problem.” Plus they feel they need to keep the aspiration “manageable” in order to please everyone. It’s no wonder they find it hard to reach for the sky.

Know this: High expectations are not unrealistic. You actually can create a great community where all residents thrive to their best ability. Setting a high aspiration inspires the process. It may feel beyond your reach at the beginning, but no one wants to make the effort to work differently for a modest goal.

As your community engages in a process to develop its aspirations, keep focused on the highest common denominator, not the lowest. Don’t we all want smart, capable kids? Strong, healthy families? Fulfilling jobs for all our residents? A joyous, beautiful community in which to grow old? Then let’s say so. And mean it. And reach for it.

Take the “Why Test”

2.  Go With Who Ya Got

So often we hesitate to make decisions when certain key players aren’t participating. We let them control the conversation by their very absence. Instead of waiting for or worrying about their opinions, keep the aspirations front and center, make decisions based on that, and keep the wheels rolling forward. When the absentees see the exciting places you are headed, they will want to jump on the bus.

The key is to place a higher value on achieving the outcome than on deferring to those who are supposedly “in charge” of that outcome. If they alone were truly in charge, would it be the issue that it has become?

3. Hold the Center

Your aspiration becomes the center of your community’s new way of working. You need it to direct your subsequent work, and you can’t live without it when the going gets rough.

"Like the core of a planet, a clear, strong sense of purpose creates the gravitational pull that will bring people, effort, resources, and commitments to the process."

Your aspiration becomes your mantra. The more your repeat it, the more you will believe it. It is posted at every meeting. It appears at the top of every handout and press release. It is incorporated into the logo for your community’s website. It is your guide.

             It is also the beginning and end of every conversation. When self-interested objections arise, or people go on the defensive, or old ways of doing things threaten progress, the aspiration reminds people of what must come first. It is hard to work at the level of community, instead of as representatives of our jobs. But we must continually hold onto that unfamiliar place and plant our feet firmly at that center where we all want the same things, where our aspiration calls us to our higher selves.

The aspiration statement allows you to talk about measurable actions. Without a clear aspiration, courtesy will always trump impact. No one wants to refuse funding to a favorite organization or question the value of a long-time community leader’s work. But without clarity on the goal and the measurements, we reinforce too many people for what they do and not for the results they achieve. However, with that clarity, those favorite organizations and stalwart leaders can see how they can align their work to help achieve the goal—and how to prove the difference they are making.

            By starting the community conversation with aspirations, we also inoculate ourselves from the harm of disrupters. Community members have feared the disruptive tactics of certain individuals who have derailed past efforts. But when the community started with such a clear picture of the goal ahead, they gave disrupters no opportunity to wreak havoc. We have heard people reflect, “So-and-so has always been so difficult before, but in these sessions they’re not.”

By holding the center, we maintain our neutrality about the activities or programs and remain committed to the outcome. It’s not that activities and programs are not important – they are how we get things done – but they are valuable only to the extent that they get us to the outcome. Even the value of collaborating must be tested against progress on outcomes. Collaboration [link to “trap” on collaboration] to gain funding or create programs can be useful, but it must be designed first and foremost around what we want to accomplish.

4. Keep the Circle Open

A community effort must be just that—the work of the whole community. While you can’t force anyone to participate, you absolutely cannot keep out anyone who wants in. This is an inclusive process that takes everyone’s perspectives into consideration but is not held hostage by any one idea or agenda.

            The circle is kept open through communication, invitation, and orientation:

Communication

Every step in the process should be documented and publicly posted on the web. Regular press releases to local media may also keep the effort in the public consciousness. The process will not be a smooth, linear success, and open communication will reveal missteps, re-dos, and changes of direction, but that’s okay. It shows how seriously you are taking this and how deliberately you are working to do it right.

Invitation

Every report, news article, and web page should include information about where and when the next meetings will be held and an open invitation for anyone to attend. You should also make personal invitations to people whose knowledge or expertise would be a valuable addition at each point in the process.

Orientation

New people won’t be used to working in new ways and will need to be caught up on what has happened so far. If they aren’t well oriented to thinking and working differently, to understanding how and why certain decisions have already been made, they will likely drag the conversation backward or in directions that reflect old ways of thinking. This is frustrating for previous participants and slows down the process.

Of course, newcomers’ questions should be answered, and they should be made to feel welcome. But the best strategy for keeping them from derailing the process is to get them up to speed before the meeting.

Plan on perpetual orientation as part of working differently. [pull quote] Phone conversations, materials to read, and half-hour pre-meeting orientations for newcomers are all helpful. Tell them your story, and when you get to the present, add them as a character. Then they can be full participants who will carry forward the process in their own valuable ways.

5. Avoid the Blame Game

Communities have a long history of not reaching their goals. It is easy to point fingers at who isn’t pulling his weight or doing her job. But the blame game only hurts; it never helps. In fact, usually we blame what is most susceptible to the broader failings of the community—the very institutions that are dependent on us as citizens for their achievement. It is the classic lesson of the pointed finger that has three fingers pointing back at ourselves.

We’ve yet to run into any malicious person who doesn’t want everyone to prosper. The ineffective systems we have are not caused by evil people trying to create hurdles. They are the result of all our good intentions put into action without clarity and rigor about what those good intentions will achieve.

Thus, blaming schools for failed outcomes, for example, is our way of avoiding our community responsibility for those outcomes. This new way of working asks everyone to take responsibility for success, so everyone is accountable. “Their children” become “our children.” “Those schools” become “our schools.”

6. Choose Measurable Outcomes

When Nisa Hensley, a Duke Energy executive in Shelby, Indiana, began participating in her community’s new way of working, she shared this realization: 

 “For success in real estate, the one guideline is ‘location, location, location.’ For community solutions, it should be ‘outcome, outcome, outcome.’”

Once you have agreed on what you want to achieve, you must determine how you will know when you’ve achieved it. Like stepping on the scale every morning, measurable outcomes are your guideposts for progress.

They need to be specific and measurable with clarity about how they will be measured:

·      95% of third graders read at grade level as measured by such-and-such test (e.g. NEAP).

·      90% of high school graduates attain at least an associates degree or trades certification within four years    of graduation.

·      95% of families move out of poverty as defined by such-and-such calculator.

·      90% of all residents report getting regular exercise as measured by local survey.

·      No more than five days a year does the air pollution measure exceed such-and-such level.

·      75% of vacant land within the city boundary is repurposed within ten years.

After you have your community aspirations, no other decisions should come before the outcomes, because when you get clear on the outcomes, the next questions – what should we do? how should we do it? who should do it? how can we pay for it? – become much easier to answer.

If we spend money to help send first-generation low-income students to college, but only 19% of them graduate (as is currently true in the state of Indiana), we haven’t invested that money very wisely. But if we commit to an outcome of 80% of first-generation students graduating from college (a commitment made in Grant County, Indiana), we will invest appropriately in the supports needed to help students succeed once they get there.

Sometimes we hesitate to choose outcomes because we worry they aren’t the right ones to measure, or that some good things cannot be measured. But if we are going to do the right thing for our future, we have to abandon the shifting ground and focus on what we can prove. As we learn more, we might decide to move to a different plateau, but we need some permanent measures to begin mapping our progress.

7. Develop a Sense of Urgency & Keep Going

If your community’s goals are worth aspiring to, they are worth invoking a sense of urgency. Each day, month, or year that passes without progress on the outcomes means more children, families, or opportunities are permitted to languish.

"Even so, working differently as a community is not a short-term project. It is not a new program. It is a long-term strategy."

When someone starts a new company, the entrepreneur never thinks, “Well, I hope I can do this quickly and get it over with.” It is just as absurd to think that way about solving community problems. Creating a healthy community is on ongoing commitment with an indefinite timeline. Like a successful company, you should want it to last and last, because it means you are succeeding at working at the community level. This doesn’t mean you can’t see quick results on certain outcomes, and it doesn’t mean you shouldn’t keep the momentum rolling. But you should embrace it as a new way of operating from now on.

Our "Working Differently" communities have been catalysts for long-term educational reform and improvement by taking a very disciplined approach to change.  Think of it as "The Cohort Effect."  

Many community members conceptualized it this way: if we are able to get 80% of our children ready for kindergarten, then as that class -- that cohort -- moves to 1st grade, how can we assure that 80% or more are at grade level (or ready for 1st grade work)?  And then, as we follow that first grade cohort to 2nd grade, are, at least that same percentage, at grade level?  If a community carries this forward, it is not hard to see how the "cohort effect" can literally transform ALL educational outcomes in a community in a single generation -- or the time we, as a nation, have been struggling with "no child left behind."
   
First in Decatur, Illinois, then in Shelbyville, Indiana and again recently in Erie, PA, there was an understanding that getting children ready for kindergarten was important, but not sufficient, in achieving sustainable outcomes.  Much as an earlier landmark research associated with Perry Pre-School demonstrated, it is one task to get children on grade level, but it is an even more significant task to keep them on grade level.

Our communities were finding that getting children ready for kindergarten required two shared decisions: what do we mean by "ready" and how will we measure progress to that outcome.  "How will we know?"  This took a concerted -- cross-sector -- effort of leaving past agendas and ideologies at the door and clarfiing adult expectations from the point of view of the student success.

Now comes some powerful randomized control research.  A2i (see below) has shown significant efficacy as an innovative way to support teachers’ implementation of effective differentiated, individualized, reading instruction, borne out in a series of randomized control field trials described specifically in numerous peer-reviewed journal articles and chapters. From kindergarten through 3rd grade, students in the A2i classrooms showed significantly greater reading gains compared to students in control classrooms.  Moreover, the most recent A2i research (Connor, Morrison et al. in press) reveals that it is not enough to provide highly effective reading instruction only in 1st grade (see Figure; TTT = students in A2i classrooms all three years; CCC = students in control classrooms all three years; z-score 0 = end of 2nd grade achievement). The results of this three-year cluster-randomized-control longitudinal efficacy study (with over 850 students) revealed that once is not enough even in first grade. The support for a first grade inoculation effect was inconsistent and inconclusive (e.g., TCC vs. TTC in Figure below). Rather, students who received the more efficacious A2i instruction in first, second and third grade (TTT) had stronger reading skills at the end of third grade than did children who received fewer years, regardless of when the A2i instruction was received. The accumulated impact was large by any standard.   Additionally, effects accumulated from 1st through 3rd grade (Connor, Morrison et al. in press) and 94% of children in A2i classrooms 1st through 3rd grade were reading at or above grade level compared to only 78% of children in control classrooms all three years and compared to the national average of 66% of 4th graders reading at basic or above levels according to the 2011 NAEP.

Our "Working Differently" communities have strategically addressed outcomes in early education environments -- most notably k-readiness.  There was an intuitive sense in these communities that getting students off to the right start would have the biggest sustainable impact.  This was especially true in those communities seeking to break the cycle of inter-generational poverty.
      While, in the past, many other community efforts focused on HS graduation, teen pregnancy, criminal justice and college remediation, there has been a growing understanding that the dye is cast on these outcomes at a much earlier age.  As with our powerful literacy outcomes with A2i (see complete discussion of A2i - January 23, 2013), focusing on k-3, resources invested and held accountable to achieving outcomes have a markedly higher impact when applied earlier as opposed to later.  This is borne out by Nobel Prize winning economist James Heckman's work, which is devoted to the development of a scientific basis for economic policy evaluation.  His career has included developing models to study unemployment, wage growth and skill formation.  Heckman's report, The Productivity Argument for Investing in Young Children, describes how individual productivity can be fostered by investments in young children, particularly children in poverty or other adverse circumstances. 

Figure 1.  Rates of Return


       The report's findings are based on an analysis of the impact of current workforce conditions, workforce skills, the impact of baby boomer retirements, crime and family environments.  For example, the report finds that America's workforce is not gaining in quality or productivity, but rather seeing slower growth.  He argues that if this trend continues, there will be fewer educated individuals in the workforce and lower productivity than in previous periods.  Key findings of the report include:

• Cognitive and noncognitive abilities are important for a productive workforce, and gaps that emerge early are difficult to change. 

• “Skill begets skill and learning begets more learning.”  Because skills are accumulated, starting early and over time, investing in young children is an investment in future productivity and public safety.

• Family environments are important in determining education and skills.  Growing numbers of children face adverse environments that restrict the development of these skills.  Early education and other early interventions such as home visits can mitigate the effects of poor family environments.  Key workforce skills such as literacy, motivation, persistence and self-control are developed early.  Heckman concludes that 5-12 schooling comes too late, and other remedies are prohibitively costly as well (e.g., job training programs and second-chance GED programs). (See Figure 1.)

Source: Heckman and Masterov, The Productivity Argument for Investing in Young Children, October 2004. 

 In "Scenes of America," describing a post-Katrina resolve, Walter Isaacson explodes the imagination and deftly brings logic to a chaos of emotions that New Orleans has always triggered for me by using a word (perhaps best recognized as the title of Lillian Hellman's autobiography): pentimento.

Pentimento refers to the reappearance in painting of an underlying image that has been painted over. For me, my first experience with this effect was on a field trip to the Art Institute of Chicago and on first seeing Pablo Picasso's The Old Guitarist. Far more powerful for me than the slightly deformed looking man was the mysterious image of a woman painted underneath. I always placed more faith in the artist's intent as being more than simply recycling a cheap panel ... her haunting eyes visible just above the line formed by the guitarist's arthritic neck gave power and rebirth to this bent man. The new and transcendent was in fact the old and transitorily covered. Like The Old Guitarist, in Issacson's passion, New Orleans is our cultural pentimento where rich and textured will never be covered by safe and homogeneity. In remaking itself, New Orleans is as it was and never will be.

I think this dualism of never and always is best described in one of my favorite poems. There is no doubt Wallace Stevens was ruminating on Picasso when he wrote "Man with the Blue Guitar." Here is the opening stanza which in many ways is why I see the work I do in communities to encourage them to work differently -- not unlike New Orleans -- as "my blue guitar!"


The Man With the Blue Guitar
Wallace Stevens

The man bent over his guitar,
A shearsman of sorts. The day was green.

They said, “You have a blue guitar,
You do not play things as they are.”

The man replied, “Things as they are
Are changed upon the blue guitar.”

And they said to him, “But play, you must,
A tune beyond us, yet ourselves...,