Move from continuous communication to authentic community engagementĪuthentic community engagement places the community at the centre of the change process and ensures that those most affected by the change are involved from the start. The changes they promote in Collective impact 3.0 2, 9 are as follows: 1. In order to promote movement building, they argue that the five conditions of collective impact (discussed in the previous blog) should be revised in order to increase community engagement and to learn from bottom-up change movements. Movement building relies on community engagement and is much more consistent with many of the themes in this blog such as bottom up community development, shared power and principled community engagement. Movements change the ground on which everyday political life and management occur. Movements “open up peoples’ hearts and minds to new possibilities,” “create the receptive climate for new ideas to take hold,” and “embolden policymakers” and system leaders. Movement-building leaders bring together a diverse group of stakeholders, including those not in traditional institutions or seats of power, to build a vision of the future based on common values and narratives. The emphasis is on reforming (even transforming) systems where improvements alone will not make a difference. In contrast, in a movement building approach” As a result, CI participants employing a managerial approach typically (but not always) focus on improving existing systems through such measures as data-sharing, coordination of services, and joint action on policy or regulation barriers. While they may consult with the broader community on the nature of the problem and how it might be addressed, they perceive themselves to be primarily responsible for developing and implementing new responses to an issue. In a management approach, the leaders of institutions responsible for a domain-such as health, education, or criminal justice-come together to find ways to get better outcomes than they might achieve independently. The start by arguing that the approach to leadership (or the leadership paradigm) should change from “management” (which they suggest is the current approach) to “movement building,” and that this requires a fundamental shift in the way in which many collective impact initiatives are managed. Rethinking the 5 conditions of collective impactĬabaj and Weaver 2, 9 propose changes to the leadership paradigm underpinning collective impact and the five conditions, that place community engagement at the heart of collective impact. The following provides an overview of ways in which collective impact can have a greater focus on community engagement. While this may be the case, collective impact initiatives can, and I argue should, effectively engage the community and ensure that those who are most affected by the change are involved from the start. Wolff 8 argues that collective impact emerged from a “top-down business consulting experience and is thus not a community development model” and does not necessarily “set a priority of engaging those most affected by the issue in their collaborative impact processes” (p. Some collective impact initiatives are quite top down with a focus on government agencies and professional community services rather than adopting a more bottom up approach that starts with community members.Īs a range of authors and practitioners have argued, community engagement needs to be at the heart of collective impact 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7. Kania and Kramer 1 argue that collective impact involves “the commitment of a group of important actors from different sectors.” There can be a great deal of variation in how these “important actors” are defined and identified.
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