bob brown explains strategic doing in flint

Strategic Doing

September 5, 2013 Bob Brown

Michigan State University

The Big Picture

In Battle Creek, People Are Working to:

• Improve education and cut dropout rates • Create a zero tolerance for violence • Eliminate blight and create healthy green spaces • Help people achieve financial stability • Promote healthy behaviors • Reclaim neighborhoods and increase their

vitality

All of These Efforts Run Smack into Messes

The educational mess The poverty mess The healthcare mess The public safety mess

What’s a Mess?

Complex Messes

A system of interacting complex problems

The Long Standing Violence Mess

Domestic Violence

Battering of Children Insensitivity of court personnel (towards battering)

Rape

and

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Mass media sensationalizes violence

Youth bitter and hopeless about future

Economic flight from distressed neighborhoods

Depressed economic conditions

Feelings of inequality and powerlessness brought on by racism, classism, age discrimination, ethnicity discrimination, cultural background discrimination

Physical and psychological abuse

Sense of isolation

Fear for one’s personal safety (inability to resolve conflict without violence)

Alcohol and violence

Historic underinvestment in poor neighborhoods and neighborhoods of color

Felonies

Misdemeanors

Increase in Post Traumatic Stress Disorder by witnessing acts of violence

Overburdened hospital emergency rooms

No Jobs and Money

Unsafe Neighborhoods

Little or no Arts & Culture

Poor Housing

New Understandings: Complex problems behave in ways that make more

straightforward programmatic solutions less effective

The past does not necessarily predict the future. Small changes can create large and sometimes

unanticipated effects Preskill and Tanya, 2012

New Understandings: Producing specific outcomes at a pre-determined

time (a grant period) is difficult

Predicting all possible outcomes that might occur (United Way funding proposals) is difficult

Sequencing outcomes in the same way that a well-tested, stable program intervention can (Logic Model) is difficult

Preskill and Tanya, 2012

A Challenge However Remains

Even with this increased understanding,

the challenge of working in messes remains: Getting from here to there without getting lost or overwhelmed

along the way

But Here Where It Gets Tricky

Within the pathways of dealing with messes not only do we take action to address:

• simple situations • complicated situations • complex situations • And potentially chaotic situations

Those taking the actions live in: – simple situations – complicated situations – complex situations – And potentially chaotic situations

Chaos

In chaotic situations people are just trying to survive, we do whatever it takes

Complicated

In complicated situations things are either socially complicated or technically complicated

When things are socially complicated we build

relationships and create common ground to increase our social agreement

When things are technically complicated we

experiment and coordinate expertise to increase our technical certainty

Simple

In simple situations we just trying to follow the recipe – evidence-based practices.

Complexity – the land of Messes Characterized by high uncertainty and high social conflict (high uncertainty

about how to produce a desired result fuels disagreement, and disagreement intensifies and expands the parameters of uncertainty.)

Complexity Causal connections are intertwined, entangled, and overlapping

Complex Situations

cause-effect relations are unknown and, in principle, unknowable before effects have emerged.

Complexity Uncertainty and unpredictability are part of the innovation process

•

Living in the Land of Complex Messes: Flint, Mi

The Zone of Complexity in Flint

Starting in the late 1960s Flint has

suffered from 50 years of disinvestment, deindustrialization, depopulation and urban decay, as well as high rates of crime, unemployment and poverty.

The Zone of Complexity in Flint

• 1978: 80,000 GM employees

• 2010: 8,000 GM employees

The Zone of Complexity in Flint

• May 2002, Ed Kurtz appointed as the city’s

1st Emergency Financial Manager

The Zone of Complexity in Flint

•2010 Headline: Flint still is number one for violent crime in the

nation

The Zone of Complexity in Flint

• November 2011: Governor Snyder appointed Michael

Brown as the city's 2nd Emergency Financial

Manager

• But we are numb to words and stats

• Here is the Zone of

Complexity in Flint – my city in pictures

But Most of Us Are Overwhelmed With the Sheer Scope and Complexities of

These Issues So we fall back on a set of rules and standard

operating procedures that predetermine what we will do

Effectively short circuits our ability to work across

simple to complicated to complex situations or messes

Patton, Developmental Evaluation, 2011

So What’s the Response – Is There a Key?

• We can address messes • But traditional programmatic approaches aren’t

creating impact • We need Social Innovation to impact messes

Preskill and Tanya, 2012

What is Social Innovation?

Novel solutions to social problems that: • Are more effective, efficient, sustainable, or just than

present solutions • Creates value that accrues primarily to society as a

whole rather than individuals • Crosses sectors, • Involves changing the dynamics, roles, and

relationships between many players, • Challenges conventional wisdom about the nature of

the problem and its solutions

Preskill and Tanya, 2012

Your Social Innovation: Project 2020

• Working together, we champion ideas and initiatives that move this community toward excellence.

• We exist to create a coalition of groups and

individuals who are connected, coordinated, mutually supportive and working toward the greater good.

Project 2020 – a network of people

• Getting on the Same Page

• Moving Levers

• Changing Outcomes

Achieving Your Vision Will Require:

• Thinking Differently

• Behaving Differently

• Doing Differently

Strategic Doing

What is Strategic Doing?

� used to develop & implement strategy � based on collaboration and open networks � asset based (using what you have) � leads to shared, measurable outcomes and a roadmap to follow

Strategic Doing is being taught across the nation

The background and theory of change

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Hierarchies are limiting

Networks can help get things done

Networks are all around us

Wizard of Oz made in

1939 by ONE company

Spider Man 3 made by 56 companies in

a network

Who makes the iPhone?

A network made by

Apple

Moving from old to new

Strategic planning

Link, leverage and align

Paradigm shift

New ways of thinking

New thinking: the two economies

New thinking: the two economies

New thinking: understanding networks

Network structure & combining networks

How networks emerge and grow over time

New networks can move older assets to new opportunities

The network effect

New ways of behaving

Growing trust takes time

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Balance leadership and direction

We move in the direction of our conversations

Developing a civic space important

New ways of doing

Strategy

Strategic Doing

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Managing a network and getting things done

Build a strong foundation with a balanced civic portfolio

Choosing a strategy, evaluating complexity and payoff

Using Networks in Flint

“A partial solution to a whole system of problems is better than whole solutions of each of its parts taken separately.” (Ackoff, 1999, p. 324)

Elements of Healthy Neighborhoods

• According to the Institute for Comprehensive Community Development, “Neighborhoods are complex systems that require many elements to work well, from decent housing and safe streets to employment opportunities, good schools and access to shopping, health care and other services.

Responding to the Mess of Flint Neighborhoods

• Use a new, more holistic approach to community and neighborhood development. – Blends human, community, and economic development – Provides the supports needed for healthy transitions from birth

to adulthood – Is grounded in research – Acknowledges the natural challenges to healthy development

but recognizes that these challenges are more difficult without the proper supports

– Offers guidelines for realigning investments for collective well-being

• Facilitate a process that creates action based on available

resources and assets

Goals 1.Improve communication among and between stakeholders at all levels. 2.Proactively address conditions in Flint neighborhoods that give rise to crime, social disorder and fear of crime. 1.Re-establish a city-wide sense of community with a shared responsibility.

Working to impact the lives of youth, and families by “Creating Community with a ZERO Tolerance for Violence” in neighborhoods of high need

Neighborhoods Without Borders

(NWB)

We are mothers and fathers, sons and daughters, grandmothers and grandfathers, business people and pastors, educators and students, administrators and

workers coming together in a grassroots and community effort to significantly improve the over-

all quality of life in Flint neighborhoods.

Flint Lifelines Building

Neighborhood Capacity

In Flint, We Work to Link, Align, and Leverage Across Networks

Building Neighborhood

Capacity

Flint Neighborhoods

Community Action

Lifeline Ceasefire

Neighborhoods Without Borders

Flint Area Congregations

Together

Flint Neighborhoods

United

Edible Flint