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Finding the 'Sweet Spot'
Increasingly, as I travel the country, I find myself talking about the “sweet spot of public life” – how we can take action on specific issues and build community at the same time. This past week was no different. I spent two days with 40 leaders of local collaboratives in Newark, NJ, good people who are urgently focused on strengthening families and children. The challenges in Newark (and Essex County) are tough, long-standing, often depressing – but doable. In these communities, people often feel that no one speaks for or listens to them. Finding sustainable pathways for improving their local conditions can be hard. People worry that they are being left behind. Truth be told, many people are falling through the cracks. The collaboratives sit at two critical nexus points in relationship to these challenges. They work among people in neighborhoods trying to create change; and they sit in-between “official” city structures and the local neighborhoods and communities to ensure that all people are at the table of public discussion and decision-making. Indeed, they serve as essential connective tissue that can help to bring about a greater sense of community wholeness. No doubt, there is compelling need for better policies and programs that address people’s core concerns around families and children; but it is also the case, according to the folks in Newark and Essex County, that effective policies and programs also require the community coming together in new ways – from people supporting one another to people taking more responsibility for themselves. Indeed, a recurring theme of the conversation in Newark was how to tap people’s own potential to create change and come together to forge stronger communities. But what does this mean? How does it happen? How does it sustain itself? This is a challenge I hear everywhere I go.We must design initiatives that not only focus on a specific issue, but that also build the relationships, leaders, networks, and norms of communities – the stuff that makes communities go – what I call “public capital.” In Newark and Essex County, there were three key components of public capital that need attention if the community is to effectively address its core concerns around families and children:
• Cultivating leaders – there is a real need to identify and engage “untapped” leaders in the community who hold authority and authenticity in the eyes of residents. These leaders can help engage, inspire, and support people and their causes in ways that leaders outside the community simply cannot; • Creating safe space for discussion – there is a real need to create safe spaces in which people can come together to identify their aspirations, wrestle with competing values, and find ways to join hands in building a stronger community and strengthening families. The conversations that are now taking place too often focus on complaints and expert-framed policy issues that fail to move individuals and the community forward; • Building networks – there is a real need to build networks in which organizations and leaders can learn about each other, build trust, and discover new ways (or strengthen existing ways) of working together. These networks reduce the time and costs associated with mistrust, the spinning of wheels, the pointing of fingers, and the inaction which results when we are unable to overcome obstacles. The importance of finding the sweet spot cannot be over-emphasized. For it is not merely an academic point, or something simply to theorize about. Rather, the challenge is how can we move ahead? Let’s face it, whether in Newark or in other communities, we will never have all the resources, time, and people we want to address the challenges before us. Instead, we must find ways to leverage our resources for making progress. That, I believe, requires that we find the sweet spot. Then we can have the very capacities we need to act on the challenges we seek to overcome. -
On this President's Day
On this President’s Day, who is your favorite president? Take a moment to think about that and then write back so we can all see. For me, it’s Abraham Lincoln – hands down.
Of course, there have been many
But what emerges most for me is his personal strength in the face of enormous adversity – and I don’t just mean the Civil War. Indeed, his story, as we all know, was not one of an easy journey. History books tell us that he suffered some kind of melancholy; he had to weather the storm of his child’s death while in The White House; he lost multiple elections before getting to The White House; he barely made it to his second term as president.
His achievements, as we know them today, were not readily apparent back then.
So, here we are on this President’s Day as we watch the next presidential contest begin. The candidates are aggressively jockeying for position, endorsements, and donations – long before they will ever ask anyone for a single vote.
On this President’s Day, I wonder what potential do these individuals hold? What standards should we apply to them? What personal journey will they be on? If
Somehow
More to the point, on this President’s Day, who is your favorite president?
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Time for self-reflection
The Harwood Institute for Public Innovation is a 4 day journey of personal discovery, new organizational structure for engagement and aspirations for community involvement and hope.
The workshop was inspirational and had concrete tools to help us move our communities to a much better place.
One of the many kernals of thought that has taken root during this time is the challenge for those of us working in larger organizations to identify key "boundary" spanning groups who can share a vision of community and work together with others for common goals.
The ideas, tools, aspirations, and group commitment will help me help others reach our goals.
Debbie Bresette, Guest Blogger
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Lab thoughts
I have often wondered what it would be like if we were all moving in one direction, now I know. Brenda Dizon, Guest Blogger
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How does one convey to a broader audience the potential that exists in the public library to transform community?
How does one convey to a broader audience the potential that exists in the public library to transform community? This probably sounds at first like a pretty big assumption for what many people still see as a rather passive institution. But stop to consider the library's assets. Public libraries tend to be institutions that are trusted. This is huge in today's world where there is a tendency to question the motives and intent of private and public institutions. The library has been able to retain this trust in part because it has been able to preserve its heritage of providing service that is very individualized. At the same time it has adopted technologies that enable it to reach a wider mass audience. It's not uncommon for libraries to boast of the fact that more people pass through their doors than many of the most high profile events in their community combined. Libraries tend to be places that all aspects of the community visit on a regular basis and concurrently.When people think of libraries, they tend to think of books, of tables and quiet study spaces. These places still exist in libraries. This is part of their heritage that works and that is being preserved as new technologies and forms of media are being added. But people tend to think less often about what libraries are increasingly doing in the way of early childhood education and technology training. They tend not to think about how the library uses its knowledge to aid non-profits seeking funds or how individuals use the institution's resources to prepare themselves for new careers.
I have spent a great deal of effort engaged in activities that have helped me to understand the broad needs of the community in which my library rests. Rarely has there been a community challenge that was not susceptible in some way to being aided by a library asset. The biggest challenge for libraries is not figuring out how to be relevant. The biggest challenge is where to focus its relevance. The institution stands in a position where it often has needed resources. But, like any organization, its capacity is limited by time, talent and energy. It must be strategic in applying its assets. For those working in libraries, this means they must be engaged in the life of the community to the extent necessary to understand its priorities. And they must understand the assets of their institution well enough to know how they can be most effectively applied.
Carlton Sears, Guest Blogger
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How will online and other electronic commuications impact the capacity of civic life?
In thinking about electronic forms of communication and the implications for civic life, it is important to think about the socialization patterns of today's youth, human development, and the function of community. First of all, today's youth is very different from times past. Where back yard games were once played out with the negotiation of rules and the determination of who was safe and who was out decided by one's peers, we now have organized leagues controlled by some form of adult authority. In truth, children are rarely unsupervised these days. They need day timers to keep track of their schedules and no schedule is made without parental involvement and the guarantee of adult supervision. Whether it is soccer moms or football dads, parents are out there or at least making sure that someone is out there providing "proper" supervision. This means that the determination of who's out and the rules of play are no longer negotiated between peers. This means that the creation of rules of interaction, social norms, and values are externally controlled by adults. While the significance of this can't entirely be known, it is important to think about the skills and attitudes that are no longer realized through childhood play. The ability to argue, to make a point, to see difference, to work through that difference toward an agreement, to believe that one can solve a problem through communication might be some of the possibilities. Thankfully there is space out there that is not dominated by adults, the Web.
Today children's unsupervised domain is the Web. Granted limitations need to be made over which sites are visited but some of these sites provide children with the opportunity to learn through interaction with others. They can create fictional characters in these online games and learn how to negotiate and trade goods to develop points allowing greater privileges in the game. They can learn who to trust and what it means to break trust. They can learn how their desire to be successful is often tied to others and to external cooperation. These are the skills, attitudes and perceptions that might help them when their own self interest calls them into the broader realm of civic life.
Now not all games provide this potential for civic learning but why couldn't we try to promote such games. Why can't we use the opportunities of the Web to enable students to hear different perspectives and to learn different uses of language to express the world in ways unfamiliar to them? The technology is there and student motivation is there. We need only to promote the uses of these technologies toward a better end, an end that is not limited solely to entertainment.
Of course, the creation of virtual communities and learning through electronic forms of communication is limited. In the online world, one can change identity, use inappropriate language, and have no stake in civility. It is only in the face-to-face world where consequences for behavior, good or bad, take place. It is only within a physically interactive social context that any moral order can be determined through a process of defining and redefining our norms. It is only in this context that children learn the harder lessons of difference and the importance of negotiating these differences in good faith. It is only in this environment that behavior can lead to real tangible benefits as well as punishments.
In the end however, it may be the ability to connect these two worlds that hold the greatest potential for building community and developing the skills that can be used when and if civic life knocks on the door. In online classes, it always seems that students are willing to say more and to reveal themselves, blemishes and all. In the online world we can reach beyond our neighborhood, our geographical community, and what we think we know. In these spaces we can seek out those with whom we share some commonality. While these are important to the development of who we are as human beings, they are not sufficient. It is still the genuine idea of community in which real consequences occur for what we do or fail to do and in which we can properly define ourselves that ultimately leads us to our role in the civic enterprise.
Peter Sawyer, Guest Blogger
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Prisoner of Hope: Notes from a Would-be Library Innovator
Since my childhood there has always been an impalpable but very real tether binding me to libraries. Though I read often and widely as a child, it was not so much the books, but the physical space that libraries offered—a Bermuda Triangle for the mind of sorts, where readers could unapologetically get swept up in stories and daydreams—that compelled me. I remember my grandmother and I making weekly pilgrimages to the public library. The rows and rows of volumes seemed infinite and in my frustration with the improbability of ever being able to read them all, I would sometimes walk along the shelves lightly toughing the spine of each book as if comprehension could occur simply through osmosis. Every week I read a book that made me want to be something different when I grew up, one week a detective, the next week a fashion designer. In the library I could read about and try on so many lives.
The library offered a space for dreaming and for learning how to make those dreams come true. In the midst of a south Los Angeles neighborhood that had been seemingly politically and economically abandoned after the riots of the late 1960’s, the library offered hope against a backdrop of vacant lots and scorched shells of buildings that served as evidence of the outgrowth of hopelessness.
That I would eventually pursue a career in librarianship is neither accidental nor a surprise. Having worked in libraries in communities on both coasts, and having visited as a consultant, libraries across the nation; I am still amazed at the social capital that public-focused, mission-driven libraries can leverage in their communities. I have seen libraries that nurtured small businesses by providing sole-proprietors and family-owned businesses with the human and information resources necessary to identify and implement new ideas. I have witnessed whole neighborhoods become invested in and reinvigorated by libraries that worked with community members and stakeholders to offer relevant programming that reflected real need and highlighted existing assets. On the other hand I have also seen libraries that failed to connect with their communities and in missing that critical connection lost both public support and resonance.
I come to this institute because as someone who believes and is invested in libraries and their potential impact on the communities they serve, I want and need to expand my bag of tricks, as it were, as both a library and information science practitioner and now, as educator and administrator. Few callings are as noble as public service. If I can learn how to innovate in my role as a librarian, the time I spend here will have a personal and an exponential impact.
Tracie Hall, Guest Blogger
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10 questions for public innovators
Are you a public innovator? If you’re reading this, I suspect you are. And I want to engage you on 10 questions I hear from public innovators repeatedly. I’m sending these questions to you just one week before the next Harwood Public Innovators Lab, which we sold out! See what these questions spur in you and write back.
1. How can I position my organization so that it not only provides worthy services or programs, but is catalytic and creates systemic change in the community?
2. How can I genuinely engage other people to see why I’m pursing the path that I am in my work – and when do I decide to keep moving forward despite their resistance?
3. How do I move my organization or group to focus on the tough, underlying questions at hand rather than to reach for the easy answers? And how do I avoid watering down our mission?
4. How do I keep our efforts aligned with the reality of our capacity, so that we have a chance to achieve results, and avoid doing things that sound good but ultimately won’t make a real difference?
5. How can I place 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?
6. How can I sustain people’s engagement over time, especially when things get tough or move too slowly?
7. How do I take effective action when oftentimes there is limited capacity for action within our community?
8. How fast can I expect progress to come, and what should I do when everyone around me expects change seemingly overnight?
9. 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?
10. How can I keep myself going as I pursue my path?
These and other questions pervade almost every conversation I have with public innovators. I have heard them from leaders of large, fast-growing national organizations to individuals who lead small community-based groups.
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 as well as some of the individuals who are attending our Public Innovators Lab.
Be well.