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For more information about the synthesis please contact Claire Reinelt.

Synthesis Outline

Section 1: Why are network approaches to leadership vital for the social sector? What are the consequences of the dominant leadership model for the social sector?
Check out a related blog post by Claire Reinelt: "Leadership in the Social Sector: Why We Need Change"

Characteristics of the dominant leadership model

• Leaders set direction and hold people accountable for achieving goals
• Leaders champion causes and hold the vision for others who follow them (e.g., leaders influence followers)
• Leaders are the levers of investment to transform organizations, change community dynamics, and influence policy
• Hierarchical organizations are the vehicle through which leadership achieves its goals
• Leadership focus is on the internal operations of the organization not externally on the mission (Wei-Skillern and Marciano, 2008)
• Control is the key to quality (Wei-Skillern and Marciano, 2008)

Assumptions

• Leaders with power and authority are the most effective levers for stabilizing and sustaining organizations and for leading change

Consequences

• Uses position and authority to maintain power
• Places focus on a small number of leaders (when a much larger number of leaders is needed)
• Reinforces the structure of the social sector by investing heavily in organizational leadership (e.g., significant number of leadership investments focus on sustaining and developing executive directors or senior leaders of nonprofit organizations)
• Reinforces patterns of inequality through the exercise of power-over relationships deeply rooted in race, age, gender and class
• Preserves the status quo by using existing organizations to lead change (change happens slowly through existing organizations)
• Costs of hierarchy and bureaucracy are high.
• Getting to scale is limited

Networks provide a very different structure for organizing and disseminating resources that have the power to be more efficient and responsive to the environment.

Benefits of network approaches to leadership

• Uses resources more efficiently
• Nonprofits that pursue their missions through networks of long-term, trust-based partnerships consistently achieve more sustainable mission impact with fewer resources than do monolithic organizations that try to do everything by themselves (Wei-Skillern, 2008)
  
• Adapts more easily to changes in the external environment
• Provides more fluid and open access to information, resources, and knowledge across boundaries
• Builds relationships based on openness, transparency, trust and personal accountability
• Reduces costs of participation and coordination
• Allows for greater innovation and experimentation
• Failures are less costly than in organizations
• Reach and influence are broader, connect more people
• Outcomes are scalable

Section 2: What network forms are being experimented with? What are common leadership challenges in catalyzing and unleashing networks?

Experimental network forms

• Partnerships.
  
• "Networked nonprofits forge long-term partnerships with trusted peers to tackle their missions on multiple fronts. Unlike traditional nonprofit leaders who think of their organizations as hubs and their partners as spokes, networked nonprofitleaders think of their organizations as nodes within a borad constellation that revolves around shared missions and values." (Wei-Skillern and Marciano, 2008) Inter-organizational and multi-sectoral partnerships are often more efficient at utilizing resources with greater impact by integrating resources and actions around common goals. (Examples include AECF’s Leadership in Action Program, Others?)
• Open architecture. (Lawrence CommunityWorks)
• Co-investment structures. (Tides Center, Impact Brokers)
• Communities of learning and practice.

Network leadership challenges

• Trust and transparency. (IISC)
• Defining who “we” is.
• Decision-making. When the power of decision-making no longer rests in authority and position, leadership takes more democratic forms that ask people to participate actively together in making informed decisions. This leadership behavior is not natural for many.
• Accountability. When accountability is no longer vested in the person in charge, everyone becomes accountable to each other.

Section 3: What is network leadership in the connected age?

Characteristics of the connected age (Duncan Watts, Allison Fine)

• Complexity
• Interconnectedness
• Networks trump hierarchies (Allison Fine, Momentum)
• "Sustainable social change is going to come from those organizations that engage, facilitate, and strengthen their networks rather than organizations that push out strategies and messages to a passive audience."
  
• The rise and spread of the Internet and social technologies
• The limitations of top-down organizational approaches
• Fundamental change in how groups are formed and work gets done
• Speed of connections
• Distributed leadership

Characteristics of healthy network leadership

• Push power to the edges
  
• "The more decision-making you push away from the center, the more powerful a networked effort becomes." (Fine, 2006)
  
• Distribute leadership
  
• "The most passionate network members do more work but the less passionate members are critically important for sharing information widely with their own social connections." (Fine, 2006)
• Line staff need to become leaders and take responsibility for results in network-centric organizations. (Fine, 2006)
• Lightweight governance (Surman)
  
• Adaptive
• Self-organizing
• Emergent
• Self-authorizing
• Innovative
• Experimental
• Learns from failure
• Lets go of control
• Dances with the system (Donella Meadows)
• Open and transparent
• Focused on relationships
• Creates only forms that are needed (e.g., adhoc, “form follows function”)
• Weavers make connections

Examples of network leadership in the connected age

• The Obama campaign
  
• Berkman Center research
  
• Beth Kanter’s blog

Section 4: What changes in leadership development supports are needed to catalyze and unleash the power of networks?

• Focus on purpose, cultivate presence and let go of judgment (Otto Scharmer)

• Focus on relationships and trust-building (Bill Traynor)
• “To catalyze the network, you have to invest in relationships.” (Eugene Eric Kim, 2009)
• “Fun matters. It’s about harnessing the enthusiasm of the crowd, not just the wisdom.” (Beth Noveck)

• Identify and resource emergent opportunities (Bill Traynor)
• Learn to work wikily (Monitor Institute)
• Think in systems (Donella Meadows)
• Create and learn from system experiments (e.g., the Sustainable Food Lab)
• Use innovative communication platforms and tools
• Encourage next generation leadership
• “The next generation will intuitively understand networks...Real change will come from people who have already internalized the new ways of behaving.” (Roberto Cremonini, Barr Foundation, 2009)
• Support small group action
• “If you want to know how new interesting useful ideas are going to come from, don’t look at crowds and don’t look at individuals, look at small groups of smart people arguing with each other.” (Clay Shirky, 2009)
  

Section 5: How can evaluation support learning about network leadership and transform the potential for collective action?

Traditional evaluations seek to render definitive judgments of success or failure. They measure success against predetermined goals and position the evaluator outside the process to assure independence and objectivity. Traditional evaluation design is based on a linear cause-effect logic model with the aim of producing generalizable findings across time and space. Evaluators hold themselves accountable to external authorities and funders who want them to look for what does not work and provide an explanation for why. External evaluators decide the evaluation design without input from those who are part of the program or initiative. As a result traditional evaluation design often engenders a fear of failure (Patton). Traditional evaluation privileges the voices and opinions of those who are in positions of power and authority (Leiderman, Hanh Cao Yu).

An evaluation approach that catalyzes learning, transforms the potential for collaborative action, and supports innovation and development needs to be based on different principles and assumptions. Recent work by Michael Patton on developmental evaluation outlines the following principles:

• Provide on-going feedback throughout the evaluation process
• Generate learning that supports direction or affirms changes in direction
• Evolve measures and monitoring mechanisms as goals emerge and evolve
• Integrate action and reflection as part of team learning process
• Capture system dynamics, interdependencies and emergent connections across the network
• Produce context-specific understandings that inform ongoing innovation
• Derive accountability from the network core’s deep sense of fundamental values and commitments
• Stay in touch with what’s unfolding
• Respond strategically
• Collaborate to insure the evaluation process matches philosophically the process of how work gets done in the network
• Encourage a hunger for learning among network members

Some promising methods for evaluating network effectiveness and assessing network value are:

• Social network analysis Visualize and map connections and relationships so that network members can understand their position in the system
• Collective storytelling A number of storytelling methodologies are being developed to tell stories about the network and engage in collective meaning making about their significance
• Case studies
• Results-based accountability

Some promising approaches for sharing and disseminating evaluation learning include:

• Knowledge sharing wikis (www.kstoolkit.org)
• Webinars
• Audit and assessment tools
  
• Blogs

Bibliography
Fine, Alison. (2006) Momentum: igniting social change int he connected age. San Francisco: John Wiley and Sons.'
Wei-Skillern, Jane and Sonia Marciano. (2008) The Networked Nonprofit. Stanford Social Innovation Review.