Alright, finally onto the last two posts to wrap-up Deepening Community Edmonton!
Continuing with my Al Etmanski and Vickie Cammack filled couple of days, I chose their workshop "Thinking and Acting like a Movement" as my final one at this gathering.
Al and Vickie emphasized the power of networks/movements to help shift cultures and the importance of shifting cultures to create change and to create the political receptivity for larger social change. I'm going to try to capture my top three things I took away. Here goes:
- Networks help us confront the fact that old habits die hard. If a network is assembled to intentionally have many diverse perspectives it can help to check us when we inevitably try to revert back. We are vulnerable when we try to do work alone or with others who are too like-minded.
- There are four kinds of innovators you need in your network or your network needs easy access to. No one person should be more than one for a given issue or circumstance. The kind of role you're playing can vary based on circumstance. Read more about this from Al here.
- Disruptive innovator - inspired by love and motivated by necessity. They challenge the prevailing way of doing things and shake the lethargy off the status quo. They also have trouble understanding why everyone doesn't roll over and adopt your new idea.
- Bridging innovator – Explain the value of the disruptive idea to others in the system. They are able to translate and interpret using the language of the system. They also help disruptors understand limitations the system might have.
- Receptive innovator – Receive and implement the disruption into the system. They know the formal and informal channels inside bureaucracy and who the key players are. They are navigators, steering the innovation so that it may flourish and become the new standard.
- Passionate amateurs - Amateur as in doing something for the love of it). Passionate as inspired by love, devotion, mortality, loss, triumph and tragedy to the highest standard. Love this concept. Al expands on this idea here.
- Who you are is as important as how you do the work. Spend as much time on getting the right people, building a team and yourself for networked work. One of the most important elements Al and Vickie pointed out was moving from hubris to humility. Especially for those disruptive innovations, we (and I include myself in that category) can have a habit of thinking we have the best solution, which we think is oh so obvious. The importance of humility in this work can't be overemphasized.
If you'd like to explore more you can find a recent blog post from Al here on his blog.
Being a Force for Good 