Community Engagement Plan: Session 1 Summary

On May 14, 2014, Creating the Future held its first planning session for our own community engagement plan. (You can watch / listen to that meeting here, and follow along the tweet stream.) 

We followed the simple steps in this “How to Craft a Community Engagement Plan” blog post. 

1) Determine what you want the plan to accomplish.
2) Determine who you need to engage to accomplish that.
3) Determine how you will engage them.

Our group began at the beginning – asking what we hoped the plan would accomplish, and for whom. What would 100% success look like?  What will engagement make possible, and for whom?

The easy answer in the “for whom” question would be Creating the Future – the point where most groups begin. “We need X or Y, so let’s engage others in getting that for us.”  Talk about a disengaging premise right from the start! How engaged are any of us when we know the reason for the engagement is, "What have you done for me lately?" 

What we have realized is that the part about any effort that is truly engaging is not about the organization, but about the community. And so, rather than tethering this plan to what it will accomplish for Creating the Future, we considered what our efforts could make possible for those we hope will join us on this journey. That is because our ultimate goal is not that our organization thrive, but that communities thrive. 

From there, yes, we will figure out what the plan can accomplish for us, to help us in doing our work. But if that’s where the plan had started, we would never focus on what engagement has the potential to accomplish for the people we hope to influence. 

And the answer to that question is where the gold is!!

For whom?
The first set of answers, therefore, was about the “for whom” question. What difference do we want this plan to make, and for whom?

For this first plan, our list focused on what we often talk about as “the first ripple.”  If Creating the Future were a stone tossed into a pond, and that first ripple were the lives we immediately touch with our work – who are those lives who are being touched, right now, by the work we are doing?

That list includes:

• Creating the Future’s board members
• Creating the Future fellows
• Potential fellows – people who have expressed deep interest in becoming fellows
• Participants in our online communities for consultants (Facebook group, Twitter #NPCons chat, consultant newsletter recipients)
• Participants in meetings (people who tweet in attendance of our board meetings and other meetings)
• Recipients of our general newsletter
• Podcast listeners and guests
• Potential funding partners
• Potential demonstration partners (aside from funders – academia, businesses)

Defining Success
So then, in the broadest sense possible, what could engaging all these people accomplish? What would 100% success look like if these people were fully engaged with the core of our work? What could that engagement make possible?

Accomplishing Creating the Future’s mission in the world

• People from diverse points will be finding our work because our theory of change is something they have already been seeking. “I’m so glad I found you! Your work resonates with what I have already been feeling.!?”

• Success would be less about resources (the traditional approach to engagement is that engagement is a pathway to resources – and that resources = money…). It would be more about framing a different conversation for anyone to plug in, wherever they are along the continuum of potential, learning and practicing more effective ways of doing things.

• Success = finding people who want to learn together with us and apply what they learn to their own work.

• This is a movement. People would be touching the movement at points along the continuum of connecting, the various pathways to participation.

What, then, would accomplishing Creating the Future’s mission make possible?

Changing the Questions / Changing the World

• Influencers in the social change arena would be asking more effective, high potential questions. Their language would be changing.

• People would be telling themselves a more realistic story about humanity’s story. Instead of “life is hard and things are getting worse” our first assumption would be “Life has been getting better for 50,000 years.” (Steven Pinker’s “Better Angels of our Nature.”)

What, then, would changing those questions and stories make possible?

Engaged communities

• Communities would be people-centered and sustainable. People would be participating and engaging in their own communities. People would be finding pathways to create communities they want to live in . Success = what engagement makes possible for THEM.  Engagement that does not need to keep coming back to Creating the Future, because there are systems in place for catalyzing and supporting engagement in communities, in the way we be with each other.

• People would not only BE more engaged, they would FEEL actively empowered and engaged in helping create their community. They would feel like they are an actively engaged participant in their community. (Difference between being it and recognizing and self-identifying as such).

• People would be engaging in their own potential – for themselves and for those around them.  Engagement as a leadership development opportunity.

What, then, would engaged communities make possible?

Engaged, empowered people

Ultimately, if all the above were true – if our engagement efforts were 100% successful – people would be engaged in bringing out the best / highest potential of themselves and those around them. As redundant as it sounds, people would be empowered to their own potential for engaging their potential!

Pre-conditions for Success
For our engagement efforts to result in people who are engaged in bringing out the best in themselves and each other, our efforts need to reflect and create the conditions for that success – helping to catalyze and support that vision.

So, then, what would it take for people to be engaged in bringing out the best in themselves and those around them?                                            

What would it take to bring people together?

• Questions that make community engagement possible, likely and natural. 

• Leadership that is collaborative and collegial. “We together” conversations vs top down. Per Stacy Ashton via Twitter, “In top down, someone else has the authority, not me.”

• People must know each other.  Regular opportunities for dialogue. How do we have conversations / find others?

• People need to want to engage.  It must further what THEY want to accomplish.

What would it take to focus on process as a precursor to action / to meet people where they if they are not ready to take action?

• Understanding that only some people are ready to take action, not everyone.  

• Ways for people to connect to the work that meets them where they are and opens up the possibility for moving to the next stage in their own development.

• Being mindful that a “call to action” that makes sense at one stage in the continuum will actually turn OFF people who aren’t at that stage.

• People need to be met where they are with language and questions that resonate wherever they are in their readiness to take action, honoring and acknowledging that everyone is ready for something when it comes to stepping into their potential.*

• People need access to more than just skills. They also need the space to allow for inquiry. Space where process can happen. 

• Eliminating the duality between process and action (cultural favoring of action vs process. “Are you a process person or an action person?”) to see that all action / outcomes are a result of process. Robust outcomes are the result of robust process (and paltry outcomes are the result of poor process).

For purposes of this discussion, “process” includes:
– relationships
– questions
– time
– space

What would it take for people who are ready to take action to have clear Pathways to Participation?
Once people are ready to take action, the Pathways through Participation research done by NCVO is a tremendous resource re: the various pathways people take to connect. Among the things the research indicated as prerequisites for participation:

Triggers: Being asked, having an emotional connection
Linkages: Between their resources (practical resources, skills, confidence to engage) and the results they want 

People need to feel the spark to get engaged. They need motivation – emotional component. Something that makes people want to be engaged, to have their community be engaged. Not everyone wants to be engaged – yet.

What would it take for people to feel confident to engage?

• An environment where their engagement will be taken seriously.

• Confidence that they can do whatever it is they want to do. 

• Trust and confidence in each other. “That is what turns an individual response into a community response.  What will give us the confidence in each other to believe we can achieve what we want?” (Stacy Ashton via Twitter)    

• People need somewhere to turn when they do NOT have confidence but wish “someone would do something.” (Have the desire to have something get done, but not the confidence to be the one who does it.)

• What would it take for people to have access to / awareness of more effective ways of engaging?

• People must have access to and awareness of new approaches / questions / conversations that encourage more effective ways of being with each other.

• People need to see how process / space / inquiry / approaches / conversations have benefit to them.

• People need systems that catalyze and support the pathways / support engagement

• The importance of language in creating those conditions

• Language must meet people where they are – be accessible to individuals at all points along the continuum of potential. 

• Modeling in community, of reframing reactive engagement around problems into creative engagement around possibilities.

• Language that talks about process in a way that resonates with people at various stages in the continuum. 

• People would need effective questions as their way of relating to the world. For now, need “skilled facilitators” – emissaries who can change the questions out in the world. That is a precondition to those questions / processes changing without each individual proactively having to change their own questions.

• People need to see themselves in the story. It must feel like we’re telling their story. “Your” story vs. “My” story.

Reflections
As the meeting pulled to a close, participants were asked to share what stood out for them.

Justin: How do we facilitate access to the concept of “process”?

Gayle: Love the concept of “pathways to participation.” And grateful to Karl for staying up so late in the UK, to be part of the conversation.

Nancy: Also loved the concept of the “Pathways to participation.” How do we create systems that support the pathways? People will go where systems lead them. When we know what the pathways are, we can provide that support and reinforcement.

Dimitri: The concept that process in itself is what creates action.

Stacy (via Twitter):  How little I know my neighbors and how restricted that makes my own community life.  My own fears of being hurt or overextended by risking real relationships with neighbours who won't go away if things go wrong.

Karl:   At the practical action end, “So, what are we going to do? What is the action plan for engagement?”  Re: reach and influence, what are out pathways? Who are the 500 people who will make the difference between our plans succeeding or failing? How will we engage those champions?  Also, we need to learn about network theory and “loose ties.” 

Nancy: Thinking the same thing re: "loose ties." Reading Beth Kanter’s book The Networked Nonprofit. “Who are the free agents? How are we letting them fly with language they can take viral?”

Hildy: Through engagement efforts that model our values and vision, we will accomplish our mission. This isn’t just a pathway to participation but to accomplishing the mission.

Jane (via Twitter): Love that the conversation keeps going back to how people in the community engage & what that could mean.

Next meeting
Per our own process – first establish what the plan must accomplish and for whom, then focus on “who to engage” and “how to engage them” – our next meeting will consider each of the “for whom’s” noted in the opening to the first meeting, asking, “What conditions need to be in place for each of them to be more engaged in ways that reflect the conditions we just noted?”

That meeting will take place on Wednesday, June 25th at 11am Pacific time. Subscribe to this blog to be notified when that meeting location is posted.  We look forward to seeing you then!!!

* The Continuum of Potential is in the R&D stages at Creating the Future. It is a conceptual framework  for bringing out the best in ourselves and others, by identifying where people are in their readiness to take action towards their potential, and then creating favorable conditions for them to step into that potential. That framework is in the R&D stage at Creating the Future. Subscribe at this blog to be notified as we share portions of that R&D work.