Here’s something most people don’t think about, but that affects all of our lives every day: For the most part, the everyday systems we all encounter are rooted in suspicion and reactivity. Think about it. Laws that are meant to keep you from messing up, which then enumerate the repercussions if you do. Human resource … Read more
This week, Creating the Future will begin developing a communications strategy, to move our work to the next level. (You can watch or participate in that session here.) Because we will use Catalytic Thinking to develop that strategy, you may notice that some of the questions we ask feel different from questions posed in traditional … Read more
Ever since our founding, everything about Creating the Future has been an experiment to discover and share systems (i.e. “the way we do things”) that bring out the best in everyone. With that mandate, one of the systems that has repeatedly cried out for change has been the variety of systems for funding social change. … Read more
When preparing to plan, what are the most important questions to answer, to set the stage for successful and impactful planning? The experts in Creating the Future’s Facebook group for consultants to community benefit organizations have a wealth of experience in this type of work, so we asked for them to share their wisdom on … Read more
It’s time for another strategic plan – yay! Wait, that wasn’t your reaction? Is it because you didn’t enjoy your last planning sessions? Or because that last plan didn’t really make a difference? If you are frustrated by the lack of significant results from your prior plans, and you’re not looking forward to your group’s … Read more
The planning framework we use at Creating the Future turns most other planning frameworks inside out. Instead of beginning with today and moving forward to create goals (planning in reactive mode, responding to today’s issues), we instead begin at the future we want, tethering our plans to that future, and reverse engineering back to today. … Read more
On August 1, I embarked on a month of “semi-sabbatical,” writing and exploring and planning and reading. I say “semi-sabbatical” because I only decided mid-July that the time was right. So there are still some tasks to be done, some projects with timelines that won’t allow me to simply abandon ship. This post is about … Read more
The vision of the Community Driven Institute is a healthy, vibrant, resilient, peaceful, humane world. To make that vision a reality for all of us, the mission of the Institute is to encourage and support the Community Benefit sector to leverage its considerable resources to do so. In developing our plans for the next 12-24 … Read more
This post is the 3rd & final installment in a series. To begin at Part 1 head here. The Evidence We’ve established that Problem-Solving solves neither complex organizational problems nor complex social problems. And we’ve posited that the only thing that CAN solve such problems is to look beyond the problem – beyond “zero” – … Read more
This is Part 2 of this post. If you have not read Part 1, you will find that here. Reverse Engineering the Future We DO Want There is something that DOES work to solve the large, systemic problems our organizations and our communities face today. And that is to aim our efforts out beyond “zero” … Read more