“Engaging Collectively to Live Compassionately”

Collaboration is not easy. The experiences I have had in Seattle demonstrate that collaboration often goes further in conversation and theory than in the application itself. This past weekend the Compassion

Action Network (CAN) held an event to move beyond the idea of collaboration and begin “Engaging Collectively to Live Compassionately”. The event brought organizations and individuals together from the sustainability movement, compassion groups, and organizations promoting peace and love.

Collective impact acknowledges no one organization -no matter how innovative or powerful- can solve the variety of issues we currently face. But, acting together we can collectively advance our goals creating spaces that are livable, sustainable, and promote compassion.

The day began with an introduction by Richard Conlin, Seattle City Council President, and was followed by an arrangement of different conversations and activities. Our first group participation exercise was facilitated by a member of the Compassionate Listening Project and helped shift the dynamic for the conversations and interactions that followed. The exercise was to find someone in the room who you did not know and tell them your story: story of self, story of us, and story of now. The group leaders modeled the exercise first and then helped us to remember to listen to the words with not only our ears, but with our hearts. The type of community and relationship building this exercise demonstrated was unlike any activity I have ever completed. Without this type of powerful, community centered, teambuilding activity the individuals in the room would have remained disconnected. This activity brought us together and allowed us to understand not only the work each of us does, but also why we have decided to pursue it. This connection facilitated collaboration and collective action and allowed our discussions the rest of the day.

Sustainable Seattle was amongst a variety of different groups asked to hold a workshop answering the following questions:

• How is our work helping to create a compassionate culture?

• How is our work mutually reinforcing with others?

• How does our work help others here do their work?

When speaking about Sustainable Seattle’s involvement with the movement of compassion in Seattle, the Happiness Initiative is very identifiable; the project measures happiness! However, I only recently realized how deeply rooted compassion is in the field of sustainability and all the work Sustainable

Seattle does. Sustainability acknowledges the interconnectedness between all of our systems and life forms. That is to say the actions we take here, have and will, continue to affect others in distant places, whether positive or negative.

The event yielded very positive results in terms of community involvement, excitement for our project, and the opportunity to form new partnerships with individuals in and outside of the Seattle region. As part of the City of Seattle’s 10-year campaign for Compassionate Cities, CAN will hold these events every 6 months. For more information on the October 2011 meeting say tuned to http://my.compassionateactionnetwork.com.

Change Agentry for Sustainability

Why do some changes occur instantly, appear effortlessly, while other changes fail to occur at all?

Through a combination of hands-on and interactive activities Alan AtKisson’s class, Advanced Change Agentry for Sustainability, examined this thought providing insight on why change in Sustainability is different than change in other contexts and provided a “tool kit” on how to effectively produce this change.

The class began with an introduction to the ISIS pyramid. The ISIS pyramid identifies a clear process needed to induce change. The process begins with developing indicators, thinking about data and trends within the system. Once these are identified, begin building a map and identifying connections in the system you are attempting to change. After careful evaluation of the existing system you will integrate the innovation at systems key leverage points. The final step is developing a strategy to carefully and effectively communicate and incorporate the innovation into the existing system. ISIS- Indicator Identification, Systems Analysis, Innovation, and Strategy. The class reinforced change is powerful to all and it affects different people in different ways. We must know the players and stakeholders at all time.

Early in the class we examined the innovation adoption curve, discussing the importance of the “take off” phase and the different constituents involved in this process. This curve is key to understanding systems transformation. Alan uses an amoeba as a metaphor to describe the roles and relations in the process of this systems change. The innovation or intended change begins with an innovator. The innovator develops the idea, policy, initiative, and works to engage the change agent. The change agents absorb the idea from the innovator and then communicate it to the masses, beginning with the transformer. The transformers are open to ideas and are working to promote positive change, but act as the gatekeeper for the idea and are careful which idea they allow to pass through. The amoeba is reliant on the pieces in the center of the organism, in this case those are the “mainstreamers” and “laggards”. Once the mainstreamers and laggards (those following the critical mass) accept the change, it is difficult to reverse. Those who are unwilling to accept the change or don’t believe the change will occur at all were identified as the “reactionary(ies)” and “curmudgeons”. Do not spend too much time attempting to convince these parties. It is important to remember where to focus your energy throughout the change process.

The class provided five key aspects that may increase the likelihood of the idea/change to rapidly spread. These are;

Relative advantage- Is this idea better than the existing idea?
Complexity- complex ideas are difficult to spread;
Observability- Is the idea visible?
Trialability- Ideas with low trialability are difficult to spread;
Compatibility- Does it fit into the existing system?

These are several important pieces to think about as we change agents move forward with our projects aimed at producing change. To learn more about change agentry and the methods used I encourage you to look in to Alan AtKisson’s readings and publications available at http://EarthScan.co.uk.