Why So Many Orgs?

Our communities all have two things:

• An abundance of wicked, persistent challenges.
• A number of non-profit organizations formed with the intent of addressing those challenges.

A cynic -- I used to be one, so I should know -- says that the employees of organizations don't want to put themselves out of a job and that is why the challenges persist. But if you spend any time at all with leaders (both staff and boards) of non-profit organizations you know that the vast majority devote their lives to the challenges. Most could make much more money (if that is what motivates them) doing something else in the for-profit world. To suggest that they care more for themselves than for their cause is simply wrong and offensive.

Yet, the paradox and the challenges persist. Why?

Increasingly I believe it is a reflection of how we try to make sense of our environment. Karl Weick said we are inclined to insert vestiges of orderliness to make sense of our lives. And organizations create a sense of orderliness. Organizations have mission statements and organizational charts that assure us that they are able address the challenge at hand.

In communities with significant resources, the ability to create organizations to address challenges appears limitless. There are now more than 1.5 million nonprofits in the United States, and sometimes it seems there are that many in the philanthropy-rich region where I work.

High-performing organizations can indeed address complicated challenges facing our communities. But the wicked, persistent challenges are complex -- that is their solutions emerge not from an organization but from the interactions of many organizations, individuals and institutions that make up the complex system that is at the heart of the challenge.

We can create all the organizations we want to improve educational outcomes, for example, but ultimately educational outcomes at the community level are determined by how well all of those organizations, and so many others that make up our "education system," interact with each other.

Why do we keep creating organizations to address complex challenges? I believe it is because we do what we know. We are taught by organizations. We work for organizations. We are all familiar with organizational charts; we encounter them in first grade and many of us cannot go to bed at night without knowing where we are on the chart. Funders work in organizations, too. Ideally, they want to know the outcome before the check is written and organizational charts and linear logic models all help.

But as the great Kathy Merchant, former head of the Cincinnati Foundation, so wisely puts it: "If you're looking for linear, find a new line of work." Bringing change to complex systems is anything but linear.

But we are all trained in linear. I had a biology teacher in high school who tried to introduce me to complexity (by having us read Aldo Leopold) and it wasn't until just a few years ago that I realized what he was talking about. And while I can be more obtuse than most, I don't think I ever really encountered complexity again throughout my schooling and my professional career until a mentor helped me understand its relevance to my work in regional economic development. When I speak to leaders I often ask how many are comfortable with complexity. Rarely do more than a few in a large crowd raise their hand.

This is why we keep creating organizations. It's what we know. If we understood complexity better -- and understood how the organizations we created our part of complex systems -- then we'd spend more time creating the capacity to understand how our systems perform and why, and less time creating new organizations unable to address the challenges they were created to solve.

 

 

On Reorgs and Spaceships

There are two common (and commonly ineffective) approaches civic leaders use to address persistent challenges within their communities.

The first approach is to reorganize the institution that is deemed to be to blame. Superintendents of urban school districts are very familiar with this phenomenon as they've watch one wave of reorganization after another wash over their districts. Rarely is a school reorg tied to a community effort to eliminate economic poverty, even though numerous studies link poverty to poor educational outcomes. Yes, we need high-performing schools (and other civic institutions) as the Leap of Reason movement makes so very clear. But we also know that no single organization can change the outcomes within a complex system. Restructuring a single organization in the absence of systemic change will not result in the outcomes we desire for our communities. But we keep trying.

We also like to try spaceships. "Spaceships" is my term for the practice of transplanting a "successful" program/project/initiative from one community to another.

In the best case scenario, the new initiative is led by an emotionally intelligent leader who is able to adapt to their environment, build relationships, create connections and generate results that make the spaceship a valued part of the system and the community.

Too often, the champions of the new initiative let others in the system know that the spaceship is here to fix what others could not. Existing players cannot be engaged because they are part of the problem. The spaceship must not be infected. These champions are like the aliens from a bad sci-fi movie; here to save the human race from itself. The problem with this spaceship approach to civic change is that spaceships are expensive to keep up. They start off all shiny and new and attract a lot of attention. But over time, the luster wears off, the problems they are trying to address are complex and therefore beyond the control of even the fanciest of spaceships. Eventually the funders of the spaceship tire of footing the entire bill and try to persuade others to embrace and make their spaceship "sustainable." But other funders have their own spaceships to sustain.

This is when the really bad stuff happens. The spaceships agree to a merger and promise all will be well as soon as they finish their reorg.

The Root Cause for Failing to Achieve Change

Recently a civic leader I work with expressed frustration that he's heard the same complaints for years about poor workforce development outcomes in our region and nothing has changed. He correctly observed that before we try to make change happen, we need to understand the root cause for why change hasn't happened to date.

While I originally offered several specific reasons for the persistence of the workforce status quo, upon reflection I believe the real root cause is rather generic. Whether the issue is workforce development, business development, public health, innovation or entrepreneurship, the root cause for the lack of sustained positive change is that these are complex civic systems.

What is a complex civic system and why is it so hard to achieve sustained positive change within such systems?

Complex civic systems are made up of diverse independent stakeholders (organizations, institutions and individuals) from multiple sectors (private, public, nonprofit and philanthropic).

Here are several things that we need to understand about complex civic systems:

• They are not controlled by any individual entity or even a small group of entities.
• The outcomes – educational outcomes, business development outcomes, job training outcomes etc. – that emerge from these systems are also beyond any single entity’s control.
• Complex civic systems exist even when they are not well coordinated. (Both chaos and order can emerge from complex systems.) Often I hear that "there is no system" or "we need to create a system." There is always a system, it just may not function in a way that we would like.)
• The quality of what emerges from a complex civic system is determined by the quality of the interactions among the players within the system.
• The boundaries of such systems are unclear, can change and vary widely. Just as in natural systems, civic systems are made up of multiple subsystems and they're all interconnected.

The consequences of poor performance (“the pain”) is diffuse and unevenly felt. For example, the poor performance of a workforce system in a community may mean a large international company needs to expand employment in a different market. While that may be a hardship, the company is able to expand. However, a small employer may not have resources to relocate and will instead struggle to be competitive. And the resident hurt by a poorly performing workforce system likely is neither prepared for a job, nor has access to one.

Within poorly performing civic systems, stakeholders with resources and capacity can influence parts of the system or create workarounds to achieve the desired outcomes. This may improve outcomes for some, but the overall system continues to perform poorly. Stakeholders without resources and capacity have limited influence over any part of the system and struggle to develop workarounds. They also have limited capacity to aggregate their individual interests into a collective voice and/or collective action.

This is the root cause of our frustration.

Civic leaders can catalyze the capacity for the cross-sector collaborations that are necessary to bring change to complex civic systems. The first step is recognizing the root cause of our frustration is that we are dealing with a complex system.

Thank You to Intersector

Last month, the Intersector Project was kind enough to post an article I wrote for them about valuable role that public sector officials can play to catalyze cross-sector collaborations.

I've been tracking the Intersector Project for awhile. Its four-step process for supporting cross-sector collaboration will be familiar to those who follow the work of the Collective Impact Forum, Bridgespan and others.

It is encouraging to see more energy and effort going into helping stakeholders develop systemic approaches to addressing the wicked, persistent challenges within their communities.

While I believe that philanthropy has the most freedom to catalyze cross-sector collaborations that target systemic change, clearly the private and public sectors can do the same. I am fortunate to work with public leaders willing to do just that in Summit County, Ohio. And I'm very thankful that Intersector was willing to help me highlight their leadership to a global audience.

The Coblaboration Test

I've written before about how many cross-sector efforts remain stuck in "coblaboration" and rarely move to collaboration. The following chart highlights the difference between the two.

Coblaboration	Collaboration for Collective Impact
Focused on assigning blame or taking credit	Focused on outcomes
Stakeholders participate to protect	Stakeholders participate to generate value
Opinions rule	Data is king
Talk exceeds action	Actions emerge from engagement
Informal process	Intentional, rigorous process

While "coblaboration" is a made up word, I've never had to explain it to anyone working in the civic sector. Everyone is all to familiar with the frustrations of coblabloration; even though they may not have had a word to describe it. As I've worked with more and more collaborations, I've begun to develop a set of multiple-choice questions that stakeholders can take to assess whether they're stuck in coblaboration-mode or whether they are moving to collaboration.

Leaders of collaborations should ask the participants to take and share such a self-assessment on a consistent basis to surface key issues that hinder a collaboration's progress.

1. I participate in this collaboration:
a.) To protect myself or my organization's interests
b.) I'm not sure why
c.) Because it creates value for me and/or my organization

2. When it comes to other participants in this collaboration:
a.) I am suspicious of their motives and priorities.
b.) I am unclear of their motives and priorities.
c.) I understand their motives and priorities.

3. My level of trust with other participants is:
a.) Non-existent
b.) Low
c.) Moderate
d.) Strong

4. My level of trust with other participants is:
a.) Declining
b.) Staying the same
c.) Growing

5. Our collaboration has a regular meeting schedule:
a.) Yes
b.) No
c.) I don't know

6. Our meetings are:
a.) Like Ground Hog Day, the same thing over and over
b.) Inconsistent
c.) Helpful
d.) Very Helpful

7. Our collaboration's communications are:
a.) Rare
b.) Sporadic
c.) Consistent

8. Our collaboration's communications are:
a.) Unclear and unhelpful
b.) Somewhat helpful
c.) Very helpful

9. Participants in our collaboration are focused on:
a.) Assigning blame
b.) Taking credit
c.) Achieving change
d.) Not sure yet

10. Data from our collaboration:
a.) Isn't available
b.) Is available, but irrelevant
c.) Is relevant but rarely used
d.) Is occasionally used
e.) Regularly informs are decision-making

Take the coblaboration test. What do your answers tell you about the health of your collaboration?

Organizational Leaders and Civic Change

A powerful recent article in the Stanford Social Innovation Review highlighted two truths known by anyone works in the civic arena:

• Sustained positive change requires cross-sector collaboration.
• Most collaborations fail because of a lack of leadership.

The authors make a compelling case that we need more "systems leaders" able to navigate the harrowing waters inherent within the complex, messy systems that make up our respective communities. The authors highlight the difficulty of being a systems leader, and offer insight on the core capabilities that systems leadership requires.

Implicit in the article was something that I believe needs to be explicit: Organizational leaders need to know that systems leadership is distinct from organizational leadership. Nearly every leader I know began their leadership journey as part of an organization. By the time the organizational leader is tapped by others or decides on their own to engage in the civic arena they are well versed and skilled at using organizational structures, lines of authority and established processes to catalyze change.

The problem is that within the civic arena those structures, lines and processes are either blurry or non-existent. The civic arena is all about complex systems. When dealing with education, workforce, food security, public safety, economic development, public health etc. we are dealing with systems that consist of multiple, diverse stakeholders who operate independent of each other; and there is an absence of control.

The complexity of civic systems demands the kind of systems leadership described in the article.

The first step to making the transition from leading within an organization to leading within a complex civic system is recognizing that a transition is required.

Funder Collaborations and Layer Cakes

Earlier this month I wrote about an interesting exercise that resulted in a long list of things that funders can do to guarantee the worst possible results from a funder collaborative.

The final part of the exercise -- which was facilitated by Robert Albright of FSG and the Collective Impact Forum -- was much more positive in nature. We were asked to illustrate what a well functioning funder collaborative looks like.

The group I was in came up with a rather esoteric illustration (probably because I volunteered to draw). But Ken Thompson of the Gates Foundation and his group came up with the wonderful drawing/analogy of how funder collaboratives need to be like a three-layer cake.

I wrote about that recently on the blog for my day job at the Fund for Our Economic Future. I hope you will check it out.