Welcome back from break!
This week, we are fortunate to have as our guest practitioner Jennie Curtis, who is the founding executive director of the Garfield Foundation, a private grant making foundation. The Garfield Foundation funds innovative models for change in three program areas that are dear to our hearts here at the MENV: Collaborative Networks, Environmental Sustainability, and Community Revitalization. In 2003, Jennie proposed that the Garfield Foundation apply a systems thinking approach to create the RE-AMP Network, a coalition of 175 Midwest organizations collaborating to drastically reduce global warming pollution. Jennie serves on the RE-AMP steering committee, and co-chairs its executive committee.
We will begin class with blog groups, to discuss the readings and catch up a bit on our Thanksgiving adventures. This week I’ve offered you a paper I wrote with my collaborator Will Butler on The U.S. Fire Learning Network, a collaborative learning network that I’ve partnered with over the past decade. Using the adaptive cycle framework that we’ve seen a number of times during this class (especially in the Resilience in Practice reading on adaptive management), Will and I describe how the Fire Learning Network acted as a catalyst for systems change, operating at multiple spatial/temporal/organizational scales simultaneously to nudge fire management out of the rut of responding to wildfires with ever more fire suppression, a response that only made things worse over the decades. This is of course an idea drawn from complexity theory – but also note our focus on fire fighter’s social identity and how the make sense of their place as actors (even “heroes”) in the system, an idea that draws heavily on interpretivist systems analysis.
I’ve also assigned an article written by Elinor Ostrom, the Nobel Prize winner who developed the concept of common property resource regimes that we read the week we did the Fish Banks exercise. This paper was a product of Ostrom’s final burst of innovative thinking, before her death in 2012 – after spending most of her lifetime examining how traditional communities could organize collective agreements to maintain sustainability, Ostrom was applying her ideas about collective governance to a more dynamic, globalized, interconnected modern world. Personally, at a moment when our national leadership is hostile to nearly all environmental initiatives and global treaty systems like the Paris Climate Accord appear to be faltering, I find it hopeful to consider how distributed and polycentric (multi-centered) approaches might succeed. We also have a movie about the RE-AMP network that will complement Jennie’s talk, and a blog post from Beth Kanter comparing systems and network leadership. I thought you’d particularly enjoy this blog post, since it explicitly establishes the connection between network and systems thinking, and does it in a lively blog format, with a lovely comments section where different practitioners connect with one another and weigh in with their ideas – see how blogging can be a powerful approach to professional communication! Note that Selections from the Network Weavers handbook have NOT been provided, I think we’ve got enough readings assigned already – consider that an optional, skimmable reading.
After blog groups, Jennie will provide a talk and PowerPoint emphasizing two things: applied systems analysis in a network context and, systems practice mindset as a network evolves and matures. She will introduce herself and the Garfield Foundation, provide a brief overview of the model she deploys of "systems informed collaborative networks", and provide a case study of the RE-AMP network, focusing on how it addresses 3 systems practices:
- Seek health, not "mission accomplished"
- See patterns, not just problems
- Unlock Change, don't impose it
There will be opportunity for you to ask questions and share ideas from your experience (or the readings). Specifically, you might consider asking Jennie about these issues, if they interest you:
- The RE-AMP systems map and the leverage points that emerged and were acted upon;
- RE-AMP Network structure and governance
- RE-AMP Network assets (on-line Intranet, member capacity building services, annual meeting, staff support, etc.)
- The role of funders & RE-AMP becoming a grant-making intermediary
- RE-AMP's evolution and what are its current priorities (13 years after its founding)
Note that the syllabus says “3SO draft distributed to your group for editing/formatting”. Your 3SO is due next week, at the start of class, so make sure you leave enough time for final editing. The following week you will prepare your Pecha Kucha, for presentation in class (on 12/11 or 12/13). If you would like to meet with me to discuss the 3SO this week or have any questions, please get in touch – we can schedule a meeting, meet using a Zoom conference, or email. I’ll be at office hours on Monday, but am also available other times during the week.
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