1. Expanding Leadership Beyond Your Walls
Collaborating for Collective Innovation
Laurie Preece
Melissa Jaggers
Ford NGL Conference
October

2. Laurie Preece Community Coach, Alignment USA Former Executive
Director, Alignment
Rockford

3. Melissa Jaggers Associate Executive Director, Alignment Nashville
Coaching/Technical Assistance, Alignment USA

4. Alignment USA Network

5. Learning Objectives What are systems?
What is systemic/transformational change?
What are the key elements of a collaborative leadership mindset?
Why share power, decision-making and recognition?
What are the steps to an aligned agenda?
Why open and frequent communication?
How do you safeguard the
collaborative process?

6. What is a System?
sys·tem /’sist m/ noun: a group of related parts that move or work together e

7. Transportation System
sys·tem /’sist m/ noun: a group of related parts that move or work together e

8. Community Educational System

9. Score = Community/System
“Each institution is autonomous and has to do its own work the way each instrument in an orchestra plays only its own part. But there is also the score, the community. And only if each individual instrument contributes to the score is there music. Otherwise there is only noise. And this…is about the score.”
Peter F. Drucker, 1999 .

10. What is Systemic Change?
INCREMENTAL
Focus: problem-solving
Evolutionary
Existing culture
Question little
Adjust status quo
Few stakeholders
Leader-directed
Current structure
Narrow focus
Power consolidation
SYSTEMIC
Focus: vision & strategy
Revolutionary
Create culture
Question everything
Disrupt status quo
All stakeholders
Diverse perspectives
Change environment
Broad focus
Power distribution
©Alignment USA – Sydney Rogers & Laurie Preece

11. When Expertise is Not Enough
“The capability of individuals is not proving to be our primary difficulty…It is not clear how we could produce substantially more expertise than we already have. Yet our failures remain frequent. They persist despite remarkable individual ability.’’
The Checklist Manifesto, Atul Gawande

12. Optimizing Parts
“Anyone who understands systems will know immediately that optimizing parts is not a good route to system excellence.”
The Checklist Manifesto, Atul Gawande

13. True Complexity
“Under conditions of true complexity-where the knowledge required exceeds that of any individual and unpredictability reigns – efforts to dictate every step from the center will fail. People need room to act and adapt. Yet they cannot succeed as isolated individuals, either – that is anarchy. Instead, they require a seemingly contradictory mix of freedom and expectation – expectation to coordinate, for example and also to measure progress toward common goals.”
The Checklist Manifesto, Atul Gawande

14. Collective Impact Common agenda Shared measurements and systems
Mutually reinforcing activities
Trust and continuous communication
Backbone or intermediary organizations
Community-wide tactics
Fidelity of implementation
Stanford Social Innovation Review, Winter 2011: “Collective Impact” by John Kania and Mark Kramer

15. Ford NGL Strands

16. Collaboration
co·lab·or·ate /k ‘la b rat / verb: to work with another person or group in order to achieve or do something e e _

17. Why is Co-labor-ating So Hard?
CHALLENGES
1) Work across
boundaries
2) Build trust fast
3) Share risk/benefit
4) Make it work with
all stakeholders
5) Link resources into
networks
REALITY
1) No authority
2) Inertia, suspicion
& bureaucracies
3) Self-serving nature
4) Collaboration
viewed as a last resort
5) Legacy attitudes
about resources
©Alignment USA – Sydney Rogers & Laurie Preece

18. Collaborative Leader Mindset
Resources as shared instruments of action
Authentic leadership without passive aggressiveness
Transparent decision-making
Codified relationship between decision-making rights, accountability and rewards
Ron Ricci and Carl Wiese, Copyright ©2012 Cisco Systems Inc.

19. Collaborative Leadership Roles
Assess the environment for collaboration
Create clarity of model and agendas
Built trust, transparency and predictability
Share power and influence
Develop people and organizations
Encourage self-reflection
Build and share common knowledge
Build social leadership identity
Dr. Jill Jameson, Center for Excellence in Leadership

20. Collaborative Leadership Roles
Assess the environment for Alignment

21. Collaborative Leadership Roles
Create clarity of model

22. Alignment IS…
…a system designed to support a public school’s strategic plan for student success by aligning community resources

23. Alignment IS NOT…
…a program …a parent organization …a school governance model

24. Alignment Team Process
Tactical
Planning

25. Collaborative Leadership Roles
Built trust, transparency and predictability .
A collaborative leader invests time in developing sound relationships. Without healthy relationships then diving into the data can stall or reverse progress. Egos inflate and historical rivalries are resurrected.
Everybody has to be willing to give up something.
While what’s best for transforming the system may not be what’s best for all organizations IN THE SHORT RUN, IN THE LONG RUN, what’s best for the community has to guide decision-making.
A saying seen on the highway: ‘’Temporary inconvenience – Permanent improvement’’
When decisions are based on data that all have access to and understand, then all collaborative leaders should support decisions where the data leads. Leveraging moral authority may be needed at this point.
John Kania cautions that while designing solutions, the relational is as important as the rational.

26. Culture of Communication
Embedded in Process (mechanical)
Open/Transparent/Pithy (artful)

27. Culture of Communication

28. Collaborative Leadership Roles
Share power and influence

29. Community Engagement Struggle Awareness Back & Forth Tactic Plan
Pilot Tactics
Success or Failure

30. Collaborative Leadership Roles
Develop people and organizations

31. Collaborative Leadership Roles
Encourage self-reflection

32. Collaborative Leadership Roles
Build and share common knowledge

33. Collaborative Leadership Roles
Build social leadership identity

34. Steps to an Aligned Agenda
Convene Stakeholders in
‘’A-Teams’’
Analyze Relevant Data
Select Strategy & Craft Common Vision
Define Desired Outcomes & Assessment Plan
Design Tactics & ITP
©Alignment USA

35. Steps to Resource Alignment
Community
Organizations
Respond to ITP™
©Alignment USA

36. Backbones Safeguard Process
Process Experts
Adaptive Leaders 1
Focus attention to create urgency (storytelling)
Apply pressure without overwhelming
Frame issues (opportunities/difficulties)
Mediate conflict
Move collaborators from advocacy
to collective impact 2
1 Stanford Social Innovation Review, Winter 2011: “Collective Impact”
by John Kania and Mark Kramer
2 Alignment Nashville

37. From Advocacy…
The backbone organization has an apt name. It’s role is to support and protect CI activities as a spine and ribs protect internal organs.
It is one of the necessary elements to launch a collective impact effort.
It does not deliver direct services; it doesn’t fee the hungry or clothe the naked.
The backbone organization is focused every day on moving a collective impact effort forward –
so that collaborative leaders and collaborating organization can continue to operate their organizations AND engage in innovative solution design.
Without the backbone organization there are risks that:
Collaborators will burn out
Boards of collaborating organizations will resent the time commitments and may pull out
There won’t be process experts
Power will not be balanced among all parties (somebody in the orchestra will be tooting their own horn…)
Strategic Focus may be lost
Administrative tasks may be neglected
Facilitation skills won’t be specialized
Responsibility for communication may be diffused or neglected
Responsibility for data and reporting may be diffused or neglected

38. From Advocacy…

39. …to Collective Impact

40. Risks Without A Backbone
Loss of stakeholder diversity and balance
Loss of strategic focus
Collaborators may burn out
Collaborating organizations may pull out
Loss of process expertise
Administrative tasks may be neglected
Facilitation skills may not be specialized
Communication may be neglected
Data/Assessment may be neglected
©Alignment USA – Sydney Rogers & Laurie Preece

41. Learning Objectives What are systems?
What is systemic/transformational change?
What are the key elements of a collaborative leadership mindset?
Why share power, decision-making and recognition?
What are the steps to an aligned agenda?
Why open and frequent communication?
How do you safeguard the
collaborative process?

42. Reference List
Stanford Social Innovation Review, Winter 2011: “Collective Impact” by John Kania and Mark Kramer
Stanford Social Innovation Review, Digital Edition: ‘’Collective Insights on Collective Impacts”
Center for Excellence in Leadership, “Investigating Collaborative Leadership for Communities of Practice in Learning and Skills”, 2006, Dr. Jill Jameson
The Checklist Manifesto: How to Get Things Right, 2009, Dr. Atul Gawande
The Collaboration Imperative, 2011, Ron Ricci and Carl Wiese
Drucker Institute
Churchman, C. W. (1967). “Wicked problems”
Management Science, 14(4), B-141 and B-142

43. ©Alignment USA – Sydney Rogers & Laurie Preece
Thank you!
Laurie Preece
Melissa Jaggers
©Alignment USA – Sydney Rogers & Laurie Preece