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Click here for a link to a Record Searchlight article Oct. 20, 2013.

What Can We Create Together?

The Knight Soul of the Community 2010 study of "Why People Love Where They live and Why It Matters: A National Perspective" concluded that what attaches resident to their communities doesn't change much from place to place:

• Social Offerings - Places for people to meet each other and the feeling that people in the community care about each other.
• Openness - How welcoming the community is to different types of people, including families with young children, minorities and talented college graduates, and
• Aesthetics - the physical beauty of the community including the availability of parks and green spaces.

Peter Block's book Community: The Structure of Belonging encourages us to focus on the possibilities and ask the question, "What can we create together?"

Questions are more transforming than answers - they create the space for something new to emerge. Some other questions are:

• What is the commitment you hold that brought you into this room?
• What is the price you or others pay for being here today?
• How valuable do you plan for this effort to be?
• Whom would we like to join us?

What is Your 2020 Vision

What is your "2020 Vision" for Shasta County communities?

What steps can we take today to create A more Beloved Community in 6+ years?

Here are some ideas (some of which we are already working on):

• Agree on core principles 
• Mapping our existing group connections
• Collaboration and community outreach - extending our connections for the common good
• Refining broad focus goals (i.e. education; sustainability; vibrant local economy; attractive, safe and downtown; mental health; etc.)
• Set up planning teams

At a Wednesday evening meeting, one of our new participants has a vision for "making their Shasta County community so attractive that their daughter will want to and be able to return after college."

What is your vision?

Collaboration

Four Stages of Collaboration 

Collaboration provides an opportunity and a challenge to bring people together in ways that are more than the sum of individuals.

Stage 1: Envision Results by Working Individual-to-Individual 

• Bringing People Together (challenge 1A) - You need to have an initiator; choose potential members; invite participation. It takes time. 
• Enhancing Trust (challenge 1B) - Choosing a convener; holding effective meetings; involving everyone in the meetings; disclose self-interest.
• Confirming Our Vision (challenge 1C) - Writing a vision statement that captures the focus 
• Specify Desired Results (challenge 1D) – thinking strategically and taking strategic action. 

Stage 2: Empower ourselves by working Individual-to-Organization 

• Confirming Organizational Rolls (challenge 2A) - Documenting progress; obtaining authority within the home organization; secure letters of commitment; clarify authority within collaboration. 
• Resolving Conflicts (challenge 2B) – Expect conflicts; clarify the issues; create a conflict resolution process; resolve the unresolvable. 
• Organize the Effort (challenge 2C) – Form a structure; determine roles;decide about staffing; secure resources. 
• Support the Members (challenge 2D) – Establish a decision-making protocol; create a communications plan; reward members in the collaboration; reward other people. 

Stage 3: Ensure success by working Organization-to-Organization 

• Manage the Work (challenge 3A) – Review the vision and desired results; lay out an action plan; create accountability standards; build collaborative work habits. 
• Create Joint Systems (challenge 3B) - decide degree of closeness; create and approve joint agreements; make needed organizational changes. 
• Evaluate the Results (challenge 3C) – value evaluation; create an evaluation plan; continually improve the work. 
• Renew the Effort (challenge 3D) – promote adaptability and flexibility; retire appropriate members; add new members; celebrate. 

Stage 4: Endow Continuity by working Collaboration-to Community 

• Create Visibility (challenge 4A) - Convey an image; promote the results. 
• Involve the Community (Challenge 4B) – teach the value of collaboration; bring diverse interests together; build leadership; hold public forums. 
• Change the System (Challenge 4C) – Understand the present system; plan changes in the system; begin to change the system. 
• End the Collaboration (challenge 4D) – understand the need for an ending;create ending rituals. 

Source:Collaboration Handbook; Creating, Sustaining, and Enjoying the Journey. By Michael Winer and Karen Ray (2012)

Why Social Media?

One week ago we set up this blog for A Beloved Community, along with a new Facebook page and Meetup service. Today we sent out our first email to 31 subscribers through MailChimp service.

A few are asking "Why do we need all this and why can't we just use the telephone, printed flyers and email with Reply All?"

The simple answer is that we hope to grow too large for just those forms of communication. Secondly, we are no longer living in a mass-market, broadcast, push-marketing world and therefore are making a conscious effort to reach out to younger generations, who are more digital-native that some of us. Smartphones and tablets are changing everything. Much communication is now done on the fly in real time.

The longer answer is that the very substance of A Beloved Community is about community building that is transparent, open source, interactive, engaging and fun. New organizations are more organic and fluid; the are more participatory and less hierarchical. Everyone's voice is important.

Although it is not always optimally used, social media (i.e. Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and other digital services) are potentially great tools for networked collaboration. Everyone can participate and add their voice and unique contribution. Good ideas can quickly become "viral", catch on and spread fast. I read one today from Aaron Hatch about "offering a student loan forgiveness program to entice college-grads to move back to Redding to spend time helping to solve some of the areas most pressing problems" - brilliant! Spread this.

A good website is no longer a static "billboard" to push something. Blogspot is a free service and also has the benefit of enabling easy reader comments to start a conversation. Hopefully we will not have to moderate or block commenters who don't understand our ethos of positive, respectful dialogue - we don't want nasty controversy like the Record Searchlight has to deal with.

Be sure to add your comment to this website whenever you agree or have something to add for the benefit of the common good. Open the underlined links in a post and in your comments on this blog include those good links you find too.

In one week our Facebook page already has 43 "Friends" and 28 are "talking about it." Likes, Comments and Shares help spread the word to friends of friends of friends and thus awareness and support grows geometrically. The key is for everyone to do their part and be engaged rather than just a passive reader.

Facebook also had events and groups, which we have not fully used. But we believe that the potential for A Beloved Community is beyond events, marches and giving support by showing up - important as they are.

When we use social media, most of us don't listen enough - we think it is all about broadcasting posts. To use the LACE acronym of Elisabeth Drescher, "appropriate practices of Listening, Attending and Connecting ground meaningful Engagement in social media..."

The RSVP function of Meetup helps in our planning. In addition to benefits such as reminders and follow-up feedback opportunities, Meetup also helps us get to know one another better and put a face with the name of someone we just met. People from other Redding Meetups may decide to join us or we may see an area where we can collaborate with their Meetup group.

MailChimp is a opt-in email service similar to Constant Contact, Vertical Response and others. It helps solve a future problem of "email fatigue" that results when too many people click the "reply all" button and we become so inundated that we stop paying attention. Nobody wants more emails in their inbox! MailChimp will allow us to easily sort emails to go just to specific groups of people.

See those little icon buttons below? Push one now and share this.

Five Core Principles

From Jan Lopez:

The five core principles of A Beloved Community are:

1.       Purpose:                      Work for the betterment of the world (includes the community)

2.       Relationship:              Set the common good above private interest

3.       Conduct:                      Consciously adhere to human virtues

4.       Sustainability:            Do what will profit you and others

5.       Decision Support:    Consult as the means of decision making

Don Brown in his book To Build Anew, explains how these core principles work (substituting “A Beloved Community” for “enterprise” ):

·         They set a worthwhile purpose for the Beloved Community (to work for the betterment of the world) – a clear worthy direction contributes to the pivotal principle of unity and to the overall objective of the whole societal system.

·         They specify the fundamental relationship between the Beloved Community and society and between those working within the Beloved Community and the Beloved Community (to set the common good above private interest).  This principle defines who and what comes first, directly reflecting the unity principle of the relationship of the parts to the whole.

·         They provide the standard of conduct for all the affairs of the Beloved Community and its members (to consciously adhere to human virtues – truthfulness, trustworthiness, honesty, justice, moderation, etc.) – how to pursue the objectives of the Beloved Community in a way that contributes directly to the goal of the societal system.  In this system, the ends do not justify the means.

·         They define the essential standard of sustainability and reciprocity between the Beloved Community and all its stakeholders (do what will profit you and others) including the environment.  In this context profit, or benefit, is measured by the value that is being added to the benefit of all.  Profit or benefit is one key visible, measurable effect of the unity principle.

·         They provide the process and structure for the most significant, prevalent and pervasive activity of every Beloved Community – decision support (consult as the means of decision making).  Consultation itself is a participative process that fosters unity and consensus as well as giving effect to the second fundamental condition of unity – an authoritative means by which decisions will be taken.

·         They provide the common unifying standards and guidelines for making consistent decisions for the direction and operation of the enterprise at all levels, contributing directly to the unity, peace and well-being of humanity.

Interdependence and Connectedness

Accelerating changes and increasing complexity (societal, economic, political and technological) is prompting greater interdependence and connectedness.

As we collectively process how A Beloved Community should best organize to become effective in bringing about positive, collaborative actions in Shasta County, it is useful to understand some of the latest trends in how non-profits are managing this change.

Shasta Family YMCA has done a good job in strategic planning, based on a model by La Piana Consulting. This non-profit consulting firm just uploaded a group of interesting videos around the theme of Doing Good in the 21st Century.

These short (5-6 minute) videos contain some jargon, as they were designed specifically for formal, non-profit organizations and philanthropies, but they also contain some nuggets to stretch our thinking. The video titles are: New Realities (the video above), Sector Blur, Diversity and Power, Generational Shift, Technology, Business Models, and Philanthropy’s Role.

How does this apply? What do you think?

Collaboration

"In this prescient 2005 talk, Clay Shirky shows how closed groups and companies will give way to looser networks where small contributors have big roles and fluid cooperation replaces rigid planning."

As A Beloved Community is being conceptualized, it must remain open source to highlight the good ideas of the many and promote them to flourish. Not every idea will take root, but the process of encouraging initiative, originality, experimentation and even failures (as well as successes) is vital. It requires collaborative, non-institutional thinking and actions.

Although it is not framed as such, I believe Redding Soup is a grass-roots expression of innovative ideas to build A Beloved Community.

Collaboration is all about using the tools of connections for the common good. 

To use a phrase from the Recent TEDxRedding, we need to start by "Mapping our Connections." What groups do you already belong to? How do they overlap in terms of people and perspectives? How can people and ideas from those groups be brought together for the common good?