What we are learning

"We're not the change makers, we are the ones creating the conditions for the change to occur"
Mark Cabaj of Tamarack Institute for Community Engagement

For most of us our change efforts in the past have been focused on creating the change itself. Our focus in Inspiring Communities is instead on creating the conditions that will allow the change to occur based on each each community of place defining for themselves the changes they want. The questions that guide our learning are: what are the conditions for change we are attempting to create? what are we doing to support or erode these conditions? and how do we know things are changing for the better?

With these questions in mind, this is a taste of what we are learning:

Working together and across traditional boundaries is about far more than just working together and, as Mark Cabaj puts it, "is brutally hard work" for everyone involved. It requires developing a common language and common understanding of co-creation and working with these understandings together over time. Trust sits at the heart of true collaboration - trust that we are all acting for the common good. Trust takes time to develop. As Mark put it, the result is "faster alone but further together".

People thinking of themselves as actors not clients. - Collaborative community led development is all about drawing on community wisdom, knowledge and enthusiasm and letting the people take leadership. There is a lot of rhetoric around about the importance of this but little to guide us into how to actually make it happen. We are constantly coming up against questions such as "who is the community?" and "which people?" When people talk abut working with the community what they are often referring to is working with community groups based in the community. But this is only one aspect of community; the true heart of the community is its residents. We call this the difference between community of place and community of interest (understanding that often an individual will belong to both groups).

Community of Place - Our learning is that working with the community of place is where we will have the greatest impact. Communities of place comprise not just residents but also the area's businesses, local authority, Iwi, school, NGOs, churches, and other institutions and oranisations. However, working with communities of place takes the longest time and is the most challenging - we can't communicate with a community of place easily as a group, they don't have a group email address for instance, nor can we ask for one person such as a manager to make decisions on the community's behalf. Perhaps most importantly residents often have little, if any, experience of taking responsibility in their own communities, in the recent past decisions have been made for them.

Quick runs on the board - we tend to have short attention spans in today's world so we have found that it's very important to create short term, pretty immediate milestones, so that people can see things happening and have an opportunity to celebrate their achievements

Positive life enhancing shared experiences - having fun together, playing and celebrating are proving to be critical aspects of community building. Events with a positive focus are often great opportunities places to begin building relationships and getting to know each other.

Releasing energy - there is often plenty of energy in the system but it needs to be released and tapped into. Looking for where the energy and enthusiasm already exists and starting there is vital for success.

Working with funders - as we build more of a partnership with our funders we are discovering that such relationships are not only about money. Often the connections and processes we share our just as important, as well as being more enduring.

Being adaptable - we need to be prepared to adapt at any moment and be ready to respond to new opportunities as they arise

"It is not our actions alone which contribute to the common good but our states of being or consciousness" (Living Our Passion)

"It's all about us and not about us at all" (Getting to Maybe)

Personal discovery - to be effective in this work we must be on a journey of personal discovery at the same time as we seek to discover how the world is changed. Without this willingness and commitment to change ourselves we will achieve little.

Action reflection - this has been a model in adult learning and human services for many years now but in reality we have found little to validate the importance of reflection in either our own thinking or behaviour or in the structures or systems we live and work in. Learning to listen deeply and be fully present with another as well as to quieten ourselves and give ourselves the space for real reflection are disciplines we are having to commit to re-learning. Essentially this means validating thinking as action and action as thinking - we can act into a new way of thinking AND think into a new way of acting - both are true.

Focusing on what's working - working in a strengths based way is not about ignoring what's not working, this needs to be understood and acknowledged, but what is important is not allowing it to become the focus.

Communicating - passing on information is a vital aspect of our work yet our work is complex and has many layers of meaning. We do want our ideas to make a difference in the world and to do this we are very aware of the need to communicate simply without losing the essence of the message. We take heed from the work being done around "Sticky Ideas" (www.madetostick.com) and love their definition of a proverb - "a short sentence drawn from long experience". This is our aim in communicating.

Living with the unknown and uncertainty - we have been taught to think that we must have the answer. Instead we are learning it is important to have the question, and let the answer emerge. This means letting go of power and control and becoming comfortable with not knowing, of being uncertain. When we can sit in this place we allow other's knowledge and experiences to inform us, we see what we hadn't realised was there and we allow something new to occur.

Learning to see what is really there - and refining and modifying our view in response to new information. This is particular important when we know someone or something really well as we often no longer see what is really there, instead seeing what we expect to see. Changing this sounds easy but we are finding the opposite to be true. It is much easier to see what we already expect to see and continue on with our unconscious ways of doing and being that we have inhabited for many years. Letting go of current ways of seeing and thinking in order to see things as they truly are, and then allowing this to modify our behaviour, is an ongoing challenge. It requires motivation, discipline, practice and persistence. It also usually needs encouragement and support from others.

Being committed to a process of discovery - means that just as we make one discovery at the same time we realise there is something else that needs to be discovered. The learning is never finished and this can be tiring and frustrating as well as being inspiring and exhilarating.

Honing the question - so many times we have come up against the realisation that we have not gotten clear enough about the question before moving in to solution mode. Spending time ensuring we know what it is we are asking and why we are asking it can never be under estimated. We are also learning that wicked questions, for which there is no answer, can also be important to ask because the process of discussing them is "expansive, elucidating and shifting" (Mark Cabaj)

Admitting we got it wrong - goes against much of our conditioning. It is a rare thing for there to be an open, non defensive discussion around a mistake in our culture. Much more common is that we avoid bringing the mistake up, cover it up, defend what did result, argue trivial points, and so on. We are working hard to change our thinking around this, to accept that getting it wrong, making a mistake, forgetting to take something into account or failing to anticipate something is not unusual and nor is it a failure. It is instead an opportunity to learn something and we must do this and then move on. Our focus is on talking to one another about what's not working in a way that ensures we are learning and can move on.

Observing - while we all know the importance of deep listening and noticing we need to build our ability to do this in practice. We are learning to pay attention to such things as what is happening, what isn't happening, what is flowing, where the energy is and where it isn't, what's going on in our own interior, what is happening in "the space in between" (the space in the relationship between one person and another), and what is unfolding in the dialogue.

Moving away from dualistic thinking - much of our social and professional conditioning has led to us seeing the world in a polarised way - either right or wrong, good or bad, creative or analytical. One of our greatest challenges to date has been to shift this thinking to allow us to see the world as it truly is; both good and bad, right and wrong, creative and analytical. Our four dimensions of change framework helps with this as we are constantly being reminded that there is a grain of truth in every perspective.

Paradoxical thinking - social innovation, as is life, is full of paradoxes. We often find paradox uncomfortable and confusing and would rather not live with the truth it reveals. Instead we are attempting to identify and explore paradox when we meet it, asking what it has to tell us and to learning to live with the incongruence. As in much of our work, this means living with a creative tension, and sometimes even increasing or amplifying this tension in order to learn from it, rather than trying to reduce it, get rid of it or ignore it.

Possibility thinking - especially in today's world it is vital to continue to hold and even grow our own hope and that of others. Learning to step out of our limited thinking and move instead into possibility thinking, especially at times of greatest despair, has been an important part of our journey. These are the times we need others around us to offer in new ways of thinking and help us move out of our stuckness.

Allowing our ideas to be shared - ideas have become a very important source of power and control in our world and to ensure our ideas support "power with" we are learning not to attach so strongly to our ideas that they become us, nor to claim ownership over them. Ideas arise not just from one person or one group but out of a collective consciousness, however we understand this, and as such we believe they belong to everyone and should be publicly available.

Assuming greater responsibility for our lives - we are finding the greater responsibility we take for our own lives, the more open and able we are to support others to be responsible for their lives. This lies for us at the heart of community led development.

Spreading a positive virus - many or our structures and systems create blocks for the flow of creativity and ideas of which humans are so capable. We see our role as one of spreading a positive virus and thus we are drawing on ecological models and complexity theory to understand how virus's spread in the natural world and applying this where possible to our own human, natural world.

Living on the edge - social innovation and community development both call for us to spend a lot of time on the edge, letting go of what we know and of that which we are comfortable - letting go of our egos, of our assumed authority, of our offices and our desks, and of the accepted ways of thinking and being of the day. It is risky and often all consuming. It is not an easy way to live and, as has been testified to in Getting to Maybe, it is common for there to be times of burnout and despair. We are learning how important it is to nurture each other through these times utilising each other's strengths and accepting our own and other's failings. While it is essential that we allow each individual to shine we must avoid putting them in positions where they are expected to fix the world on their own.