Open Sourcing Social Change
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If the vision of the social sector is that it will solve our world's most "wicked" problems, the social sector is set up wrong. In this presentation, Alison Gold of Living Cities, proposes open sourcing social change as a strategy for reorienting the sector away from the advancement of organizations, and toward maximizing impact. Closing presentation to the DC Lean for Social Good Summit on March 26, 2014.
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Open Sourcing Social Change
- 1. Open Sourcing Social Change Alison Gold Assistant Director of Knowledge & Impact, Living Cities Lean for Social Good Summit March 26, 2014 @AKGold11 @Living_Cities #leanimpact #OSSC
- 2. Vision for the Future: Maximize Social Impact Source: Lumley, Tris. “Structural Revolution and the Social Sector.” Stanford Social Innovation Review: March 13, 2014. Online at: http://www.ssireview.org/blog/entry/how_to_start_a_revolution @AKGold11 @Living_Cities #leanimpact #OSSC
- 3. How the Social Sector Works Today Source: Lumley, Tris. “Structural Revolution and the Social Sector.” Stanford Social Innovation Review: March 13, 2014. Online at: http://www.ssireview.org/blog/entry/how_to_start_a_revolution @AKGold11 @Living_Cities #leanimpact #OSSC
- 6. Traditional Approach Open Sourcing Social Change Leadership is about the organization Leadership is about the problem-solving network Expert Orientation (comes with solutions) Learning Orientation (comes with questions, seeking insight) Treats assumptions as facts Articulates and tests assumptions Shares when things are “done” Shares as thinking evolves Sees knowledge as a product that comes after they’ve done the work Sees knowledge as a process for doing the work Seeks credit Seeks to contribute Oriented toward advancing organizations and individuals Oriented toward advancing solutions @AKGold11 @Living_Cities #leanimpact #OSSC
- 7. HYPOTHESIS #1: IF WE WANT THE FIELD TO OPEN SOURCE SOCIAL CHANGE, THEN WE MUST FIRST LEARN TO DO IT OURSELVES. @AKGold11 @Living_Cities #leanimpact #OSSC
- 8. Background • Living Cities harnesses the collective power of philanthropy and financial institutions to improve the lives of low-income people and the cities where they live. • Organization was 20+ years old but had undergone a major reboot. • 20-25 full time staff • Offices in 4 cities, virtually all staff travel. • Teams of 3-5 individuals with focus on • Capital Innovation • Collective Impact • Public Sector Innovation • Knowledge & Evaluation • Finance & Administration
- 9. The Blog Experiment @AKGold11 @Living_Cities #leanimpact #OSSC
- 12. What We’re Learning About Embedding Open Sourcing Social Change Behaviors Start Just Do Something Evolve Exploring, Planning & Articulating Operationalize Implementing, Improving Institutionalize Embedding in processes Individual Individual/Team Individual/Team/ Organization Individual/Team/ Organization
- 13. @AKGold11 @Living_Cities #leanimpact #OSSC LEADERSHIP IS CHANGE AT THE PACE PEOPLE CAN STAND.
- 15. Alison Gold Assistant Director of Knowledge & Impact Living Cities Phone: 646-442-2238 Email: agold@livingcities.org Twitter: @AKGold11, @Living_Cities Hashtag: #OSSC Web: www.LivingCities.org Say Hello & Share What You’re Learning!
Editor's Notes
- When I graduated from college, I knew I wanted to work at a nonprofit.I suspect, some of you in the room felt the same way.
- I had a vision of solving the world’s toughest problems.The problems created by where markets and policies had failed.And I was naïve and optimistic, because I thought that if I worked in the social sector, I’d be part of solving “wicked problems.”
- But, during the 12 years I’ve been working in nonprofits, I’ve had to confront a hard truth.Write now, our sector isn’t oriented to maximize impact or solve “wicked problems.”Why do I believe this?-We perpetuate the myth that there are known solutions, that there are best practices.-According to all of our annual reports, we’re all doing great work, but our problems keep getting bigger.-And we don’t talk about failure, because we fear that funders will stop supporting our work.-We focus on advancing our organizations, not on solving problems.
- I’m a big fan of the systems theorist and environmentalist Donella Meadows. Who advocates that the “only way to fix a system that is laid out wrong is to rebuild it if you can.”Right now, the social sector is set up wrong.
- So what do we do to fix it.Meadows talks about leverage points: “Places within a complex system where a small shift in one thing can produce big changes in everything.”There are many leverage points within the social sector, but I’m going to share a strategy that Living Cities has begun employing, which I think can be a powerful one.
- We call this strategy: Open Sourcing Social Change.And at its root it is about making what we’re learning through our work and the work of others open and accessible to everyone, in as close to real time as possible.As LC CEO Ben Hecht wrote when we were beginning this work:The new reality is that leaders don’t lead alone. We are all part of a much broader problem-solving network…The most influential members of the collaborative are increasingly harnessing new technology to share ideas, get real-time feedback, and build knowledge for the field. Leaders are no longer just steering their own ship; they are helping a network solve problems with the best and most current thinking available. Ben Hecht, CEO, Living CitiesLeading in a Hyperconnected WorldOpen Sourcing Social Change provided LC with a great vision that we-at Living Cities are trying to figure out how to build by using lean principles.
- So, I want to share with you how we’ve been using Lean Startup to open-source social change at Living Cities.Our first hypothesis is: If we want the field to open source social change, then we must first learn to do it ourselves.We had to learn to model the behaviors we wanted to see in the world.
- Here’s a quick snapshot of what our organization looks like. And to be perfectly candid, when we set about making this change internally, we were still REALLY far away from open sourcing social change.As we embarked in figuring out what it would take for Living Cities to open source social change, I talked to virtually all of the staff to better understand how they were currently sharing their work, and what they saw as barriers.We learned a lot: about the staff feeling like they have to much on their plate to even do the critical thinking about what they were learningto not knowing who they were going to talk to about getting such work out the doorto not feeling comfortable sharing their work while it was still being developedTo all the bottlenecks created by senior staff in mid- and junior level staff being able to get simple things—like a blog post out.
- So I’m going to share one of the many build-measure-learn experiments that we’ve run over the last couple of years. This one is very small, and from very early on and it centered around our blog. Why our blog? Because as we set out to begin open sourcing social change, we figured that the blog was an easy, low-cost way for people to get their feet wet. However, during the blog’s first 8 months of being live, we had only posted 13 times.What do you want to learn and why?We wanted to learn how we could get the staff to post on the blog more going forward.What hypothesis are you trying to test?Our hypothesis was that senior staff was being a bottleneck to getting the blogs posted.
- Build:We did something really simple. Our CEO made an announcement, that going forward, staff could write about anything they felt was germane to their work, and if it was under their byline, they didn’t need their supervisor to approve it.Measure: In 2012: We had 81 postsIn 2013: We had 115Thus far in 2014: we’ve already had 41In the short term, we learned that our hypothesis was right—the endless reviewing and editing had diminishing returns and was forming a bottleneck. So the byline approach freed up a lot of staff to contribute.But, this also revealed two ancillary learnings:We also learned that people needed more supports to be able write blog posts (and open source social change in general). We had the false implicit assumption that people knew how to write a blog post. However, as more people started posting to the blog, others started coming to our team and asking questions about how to frame and write for the blog, and how they could even use blog posts to advance their work. This gave us insight into a whole set of tools and workshops we ran with staff to help them “build these muscles.”
- We also learned something that was a much bigger challenge. That there were some people who weren’t blogging not because of bottlenecks, or the need for skills tune ups, but because they had been hired as experts. And they were deeply uncomfortable with sharing their work before it was “done.” This was a HUGE learning for us. That in making the change from the traditional form of expertise—I do my work, and tell you all about it when it’s done, to sharing what you’re learning along the way, people felt loss. They felt like their expertise.
- But what was interesting, was that a couple of brave souls took the leap, and started open sourcing their work.They started writing for the blog, setting up meetings, participating in conferences not from the pov that I have the answers, but that I have questions, and I’m looking for other people to help me answer them.We saw that their expertise, their esteem, their influence, was growing. They were invited to speak at more conferences, and write in more publications. More people were seeking them out to talk about their own problems. And, of course, then others wanted to give it a shot.
- That was about 1.5 years ago, and ever since then, we have been using the Lean Startup approach (if I’m honest with varying degrees of rigor) to figure out what it will take to change the behaviors of our own staff.I’m not going to lie. It’s been hard.I can’t emphasize this enough, working lean is not always quick, but it is rigorous. And it’s not necessarily easier, especially when you’re dealing with trying to change behavior.And when you are trying to change behavior—especially once you’ve bought into the change—it’s imperative to practice patience. Because leadership is change the pace people can stand. Too fast, you leave them behind. Too slow and you stand still.
- Since I am one of the last speakers between you and happy hour. I want to urge you:Be rigorousBe braveMake mistakes (but let them be different ones than those that came before you)Reflect and LearnAnd share—continuously—not just about what you did, but about what you’re learning and how your thinking is evolving.Because as Bart Simpson made clear to me “open source is good for me.” But, it is also necessary for our sector if we’re ever going to have real impact, if we’re ever going to solve our world’s most “wicked” problems.
- Thank you!