Название: Impact Networks: Creating Connection, Sparking Collaboration, and Catalyzing Systemic Change
Автор: David Ehrlichman
Издательство: Berrett-Koehler Publishers
Год: 2021
Страниц: 235
Язык: английский
Формат: pdf, epub
Размер: 10.1 MB

This practical guide shows how to facilitate collaboration among diverse individuals and organizations to navigate complexity and create change in our interconnected world.

The social and environmental challenges we face today are not only complex, they are also systemic and structural and have no obvious solutions. They require diverse combinations of people, organizations, and sectors to coordinate actions and work together even when the way forward is unclear. Even so, collaborative efforts often fail because they attempt to navigate complexity with traditional strategic plans, created by hierarchies that ignore the way people naturally connect.

By embracing a living-systems approach to organizing, impact networks bring people together to build relationships across boundaries; leverage the existing work, skills, and motivations of the group; and make progress amid unpredictable and ever-changing conditions. As a powerful and flexible organizing system that can span regions, organizations, and silos of all kinds, impact networks underlie some of the most impressive and large-scale efforts to create change across the globe.

Networks are webs of relationships connecting people or things. When they seek to address social and environmental issues, they are called impact networks. This special type of network brings individuals and organizations together for learning and coordinated action, based on a shared purpose. Impact networks provide a transformational way of working together across the typical boundaries that often hold us back. They offer a collaborative infrastructure for a more equitable, interdependent world. As a powerful and flexible organizing system that can span regions, organizations, and silos of all kinds, impact networks underlie some of the most impressive and large-scale efforts to create change across the globe.

This book is about how to cultivate impact networks that enable diverse groups of people to connect, coordinate, and collaborate within and across organizations to do more together than is possible alone. Given the increasing complexity of our society and the issues we face, our ability to form, grow, and work through networks has never been more essential.

David Ehrlichman draws on his experience as a network builder; interviews with dozens of network leaders; and insights from the fields of network science, community building, and systems thinking to provide a clear process for creating and developing impact networks. Given the increasing complexity of our society and the issues we face, our ability to form, grow, and work through networks has never been more essential.