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Collective Impact: Let's Hear Some Discussion for a Change!
I've hardly ever seen anyone make a comment on the PASCAL website. I find this disheartening -- and I implicate myself (although I've replied a couple of times). When an organization exists to stimulate "community engagement" but ends up being chockfull of folks who DO NOT engage with each other it is time to see some provocation.
Consider yourself provoked!
Anyway -- the reason I am blogging today is because I found the following article interesting. It's from the Stanford Social Innovation Review and isentitled "Collective Impact." Find it here: http://www.ssireview.org/articles/entry/collective_impact.
I'd be interested to hear some of you engage with this. I'd like to see a comment from every single PASCAL principal. If you don't know who they are see the following: http://pascalobservatory.org/international/pascal-principals-map-directo....
The above article is not controversial, in my opinion, but it cuts right to the core for why creating "learning regions" is so difficult. Many cities and communities congratulate themselves for being "learning communities," but I'm skeptical that they really exist simply because the work is so darn hard ... and the wrong people are delegated to start the work. Many of us want to turn learning into a TECHNICAL matter -- rather than treat it as an ADAPTIVE CHALLENGE.
So -- let's see what this PASCAL website can do.
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Collective impact
Right on target with colelctive impact. When one considers the many thousand (and I mean thousand) university-community partnerships that are extant in the United States and Canada, it seems reasonable to ask why things are not better! A case in point from one university.. Michigan State University has over 7200 partnerships in a data base with faculty and academic staff working with community partners to change everything from water quality to early childhood education. We are in every single county of Michigan, are in most cities, have many regional economic development project underway, and we are in nearly 160 countries of the world. So, why are we doing all of this. If the motivation is to simply have each faculty member and his or her students engaged with a community partner to fix one thing, perhaps that is a noble entreprise. But if our goal is to transform urban environements, neighborhoods, multi-county rugal regional economies, or to collaborative bring seven states and at least two provinces together to protect the Great Lakes, we need to ask the questions implicit in Collective Impact. Those questions are questions about systemic change, not single project change. They are questions about what funding agencies expect from their investments. They are questions about what communities what to see, and what they want to see is an enhanced distribution of wealth, well being, education, health, etc. There is enormous scholarship needed to determine best models for systems change to build on existing models, some of which are very effective when done fully engaging community partners in equity efforts to effect change. So, right on with Community Impact.
Getting large-scale social change to happen
It is hard to argue with the basic premise of the Stanford article that 'large-scale social change comes from better cross-sector co-ordination rather than isolated intervention of individual organisations' . Trying to achieve effective cross-sector action has been a feature of public policy in the UK, and no doubt elsewhere, for many years, and yet we still struggle to achieve it. Over the years, research has analysed both why it is difficult to achieve, and identified features of practice and structure which are likely to make effective joint working more likely. Many of those issues are mentioned in the Stanford piece. But let me venture a few comments.
Significant community change requires both leadership and be inaccordance wiith a grass-roots desire for change. Too often change is at risk of being imposed from outside; I have the impression that the Stanford paper runs the risk of being rather top-down in its approach, and not emphasising sufficiently the need to 'start where the prople are'. I think there are few social problems which have a simply technical solution. By definition, tackling most social problems requires adaptive change and community buy-in.
The paper is right to draw attention to the important role of intermediary organisations to bring together and 'manage' the organisations jointly contributing to the desired action. These organisations can sometimes usefully be given statutory authority. Examples in the UK would Urban Regeneration Companies, and in Scotland, the requirement for local authorities to establish neighbourhood planning partnerships and other partnership arrangements on, for example, community safety.
An interesting issues arises in relation to sanctions if partners in either a public sector or voluntary sector partnership fails to deliver the agreed contribution to the joint effort. Partnership 'with teeth' may sometimes be rquired. This could be achieved through the funding mechanism. More think is required about innovative funding around social impact bonds and social outcome agreements.
Finally, desirable though partnership working is, care must be taken to avoid too much or too many partnerships, if the demands of partnership working itself is not to sap the energy and the efficiency of the participating organisations themselves. There are examples of this too!
Collective impact
Interesting paper and yes I agree it gives us a better insight into real learning regions. I also agree we should be provocative to stimulate some discussion. I don't check PASCAL blogs very often, but there never seems to be much deate.
To me learning is a socialised process and so learning takes place through sharing knowledge through our everyday activities. A learning region may involve a variety of stakeholders coming together to develop a shared vision or plan, but this is not a learning region in itself, merely a task that could make a contribution. I am much more interested in how cultures of collaborative learning develop in particular places, where much of the learning may take place outside of any formal education or training organisations. The kinds of initiatives outlined in the paper seem to me to say a lot more about a learning culture than a learning stategy which is never fully implemented, or which is focused purely on the education system.
So for me a learning region is one where there are lots of social and community networks in which knowledge is passed on, where policymakers learn to improve their outcomes from learning from others within the region, across sectors, from outside the region and from the past, where there is a culture within which the population seeks to improve their knowledge through training at work, hobbies and societies, educated debate and where appropriate formal education. Making this a reality would involve a huge alliance of different bodies as it can only be a learning region if there is a shared commitment to learning, dialogue and self-improvement across all aspects of society. In such a commitment it may be best that no-one concerned with education and training takes the lead as they invariably seek to focus on what their own organisations can deliver rather than the wider goal. The promotion of learning is too important to be left to the education system alone.