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A day at the Lab - Taylor Willingham
Taylor Willingham, a participant in the Spring 2006 Public Innovators Lab that The Harwood Institute hosted last week, has written a blog entry on her experiences.
It's a great piece that gives you a good idea of what a day in the Lab is like. If you're interested, I encourage you to check it out. -
Some thoughts on the 3 A's - Gail Hayes
As a funder involved in neighborhood transformation and family strengthening, Rich’s concept of 3 A’s for public innovators – authority, authenticity, and accountability – is invaluable. To be both authentic and accountable while at the same time speaking with authority that comes only from a deep understanding of the neighborhood is the gold standard that neighborhood-based funders should seek to uphold. Communities deserve no less from us.
The accountability covenant requires us to make promises that we can keep, to make claims of success that we back up, to celebrate the milestones along the journey, and to put our contribution in perspective
The authenticity covenant requires us to keep the work deeply rooted in the desires and experiences of the people – not linked to the cause of the week. Community residents have a keen sense of what rings true and false – we need to seek out and trust their instincts
The authority covenant is two-fold – we should seek a deep understanding of the community and accept the responsibility for putting that knowledge to work.
Taken together, the 3A’s are a more intentional and thoughtful approach to our everyday work. If we insert the discipline and consciousness of accountability, authenticity, and authority in our decision-making, we should expect better results and broader and deeper support. Fulfilling our mission requires us to learn, share, persuade – and the 3A’s will help us do all those things.
Gail Hayes is the manager of the Atlanta, Georgia, civic site for the Annie E. Casey Foundation. She is a participant in this week's Harwood Public Innovators Lab. -
10 questions for public innovators
I’ll be leading our Public Innovators Lab this week in Baltimore, Md., which always brings to a head some fundamental questions about people’s efforts to create change in communities. Here are some questions I hear over and over again from public innovators. See what they spur in you.- How can I get other people to see why I’m pursing the path that I am in my work?
- How can I position, or reposition, my organization so that it’s not only providing worthy services or programs but is in the business of being catalytic and creating deep change?
- How do I move my organization or group beyond simply embracing the easy answers through the programs we pursue, the uses of technology we adopt, the events we stage, and get us focused on the hard work that is required to bring about change? How do we avoid watering down our mission?
- How do I keep our efforts aligned with the reality of our capacity, so that we have a real chance to achieve results, instead of frittering away time and resources on things that sound good but ultimately won’t move the needle?
- How can I put my work in a larger conceptual framework – so that it’s possible for me and others to see the bigger picture of what we’re trying to do and why?
- How can I sustain people’s engagement over time, especially when things get tough or move slowly?
- How do I take effective action when too often there is limited capacity within our own communities for action?
- How fast can I expect progress to come, and what should I do when everyone around me expects change seemingly overnight?
- How can I engage my funders and supporters who don’t want to take the time to truly understand what we’re trying to do?
- How can I keep myself going as I pursue my path?
What do you think? Print out the list of questions and try answering them yourself. Send in one or more of your responses so others can benefit, too.
In the meantime, I’ll be posting some thoughts on these, and hopefully you’ll be hearing from some of the individuals attending our Public Innovators Lab as well.
Be well. -
Thoughts on Our Way Back - Dateline Youngstown
Last week I saw the face of America’s future, and it was a good one. Most of us know Youngstown, Ohio, for everything it has lost over the years; now, we can take a cue from something it has gained. Get to know the new mayor, Jay Williams.
In 1999, my colleagues and I wrote a report with the support of the Charles Stewart Mott Foundation about Youngstown, entitled Waiting for the Future. Back then Youngstown was a community stuck in place, mired by parochialism and mistrust. One man there told me, “I don’t see much hope here.” Others said they were waiting for a knight in shining armor to ride into town and save them. Not exactly a recipe for progress.
Today, much work remains to be done. Just drive around town – as I did with my host Margaret Murphy, the courageous executive director of Wick Neighbors, Inc, a community development corporation – and you’ll still see a town in trouble.
When I recently returned to speak in Youngstown to give an update on the community’s progress, over 300 people turned out. The progress people have made there is a story of perseverance winning out over despair. There are lots of signs of progress, impressive signs. I look forward to telling you more about Youngstown’s promising journey in the future.
But, for now, allow me simply to extol the good news story of Jay Williams. Last November, the people of Youngstown, in yet another sign of grabbing hold of their own future, turned from establishment party politicians to elect Williams. Merely turning away from the power-holders would have been something to note. But, the people did something more than that: they elected a young man (Williams is his early thirties), the first ever African-American mayor in Youngstown, and the first independent in 80 years.
What other city in America can boast as much?
To hear Williams speak is to hear someone seamlessly combine inspiration and policy moxie. He belongs to a cadre of young African-American leaders – including Barak Obama, the U.S. senator from Illinois, and Cory Booker, the odds-on favorite to be the next mayor of Newark. But he is even more than that; he is a new breed of elected official in America who is putting politics as usual aside and offering authentic hope.
People in Youngstown – old and young, white and black, old-timer and new comer – described Williams to me as honest and hardworking. He is someone, they say, who exhibits a depth of sincerity. He is a roll-up-the-sleeves kind of guy. And he is someone who speaks from the heart and leaves the doublespeak behind.
In the local Business-Journal he was quoted as saying, “I never want to overpromise. I would rather underpromise and overdeliver.” The article went on to quote Williams as saying, “we must be realistic” about the pace and scope of what can be accomplished.
There is so much wrong in politics and public life today, and the people of Youngstown are as quick to point that out to me as folks in any town. But they were also quick to highlight Jay Williams. And yet, he’s not the knight in shining armor that people told me they were waiting for in 1999. He sees his own role as one of many leaders – indeed, as one of many people – who will steer Youngstown into its future.
I have said here many times that I believe each of us must stand by leaders who exhibit authentic hope in what they say and do. They need our support. I’m glad to support Jay Williams. -
Connecting to Jane Jacobs
The headline on the front page of this Sunday’s New York Times Week in Review section roared “Outgrowing Jane Jacobs.” The piece suggests that Jacobs’ view of community life is outdated, even quaint, and not so relevant anymore. While part of this argument may be right, the heart of it is wrong.
I still remember when I read Jane Jacobs’ classic, The Death and Life of Great American Cities. I was an undergraduate at Skidmore College; I read it again in graduate school. Now, every so often, I take my weathered copy off the bookshelf to re-learn another point.
Jane Jacobs, who recently passed away, detailed the vibrant and interconnected lives of people in neighborhoods, and helped a generation or more of people interested in community to think hard about what brings about and sustains community life.
So here comes Nicolai Ouroussoff, who suggests, rightly so I believe, that “the threats facing the contemporary city are not what they were when [Jacobs] first formed her ideas, now nearly 50 years ago.” Suburban sprawl, booms in urban population, homogeneity of communities, large-scale projects – these and other challenges cannot be fixed, the reporter says, “simply through the incremental growth in existing neighborhoods.” Jacobs was a kind of “small is beautiful” proponent.
Indeed, I have made a similar point to Ouroussoff elsewhere in my blog and work: that communities have undergone such great change that we need to rethink how we view them and create new mechanisms for people to shape their communities and engage with one another. The scale, size, and shape of our growing and often fragmented communities present new challenges for us today. I routinely see these challenges in places like Tampa where the region has busted open at the seams; any kind of regional solutions are hard to come by as most people live in, and identify with, small pockets of the community. And yet, how can we deal with county-wide public schools?
In Las Vegas, one of the fastest growing regions in the nation, a new community performing arts center is being built, the kind of big initiative that Jane Jacobs might have scorned. You may be wondering why a community that has the “Strip,” which is already a world-class entertainment district, is moving ahead with such an initiative. Because by building an arts center for the community, not tourists, there is the possibility to create greater community identify and cohesion. So, here’s a big-time project that might help people’s sense of community.
But, where I think Ouroussoff got it wrong is to dismiss the very heart of Jane Jacob’s perspective: that people want to be connected to one another. In fact, I wrote a report on Las Vegas with my colleague Jill Freeman, On the American Frontier, in which the people of Las Vegas told us that the No. 1 challenge facing them is how to build a sense a community when people are pursuing their own individual, customized American Dream.
Indeed, no matter how the size and shape of our communities change – in fact, because of how they are changing – a basic aspiration of people remains how to feel connected to one another. This is not about community planning; it is about human nature.
On that score, Jane Jacobs got it right.