DRAFT

On Community December 17, 2012

Part I - Context
What is this document?
These notes are an attempt to create an integrated point of view about community and community engagement, specifically in Detroit. The views are my own (i.e., not representative of my company), but these ideas have certainly been informed and shaped by many other people, books, articles, in addition my own experiences and experiments. Ive tried to leave out forays into tangential topics as much as possible, for brevitys sake (though I suppose this memo is by no means brief). That being said, please let me know if additional detail in any of the areas would be interesting or helpful. My contact information: neil.tambe@gmail.com | 248.648.1817

Why do we want a community anyway?

I often find that why? is the most difficult question to answer, but the most important one because common purpose is a prerequisite for collective action. The many reasons for community, in my view, fall into two categories - providing pleasure and unleashing potential: Providing pleasure: communities exist to make people happy and enjoy life. This could range from providing opportunities for social interaction or opportunities to experience wonderful things like art, sport, ideas, etc. Unleashing potential: communities exist to help people develop themselves and others so that they have more ability and confidence to pursue their goals and dreams.

As a matter of transparency, I personally believe that unleashing potential is much more important than providing pleasure because with unleashed potential comes agency, and with agency comes less suffering. Consequently, strategies to develop communities should focus on (and measure) agency. Moreover, what really makes a difference in peoples lives, I think, are acts of agency which happen in private (e.g., a neighbor that watches your kid if you have an emergency or a shopkeeper who keeps a watchful eye on kids playing in the street). If these assumptions are true, we should be crafting strategies and building programs which deliberately impact agency, and measure the impact based on how behaviors in peoples private lives change. We need communities that dont let people slip through the cracks, and that work is done in private, not in public. I dont think we should be satisfied simply by thinking of success in community engagement as making connections, building capacity, and fostering participation. All those things are important, but they dont extend far enough. Connections, capacity, and participation are a means and not an end the outcome we drive to should be individual acts between individual people which demonstrate agency and that investing in others our friends, families, and neighbors agency also matters.

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On Community December 17, 2012

Forgive me for expounding on a question thats rather academic, but the notion of agency will be a recurring theme throughout this point of view. Also, when I observe or participate in community programs it doesnt always seem like there has been deep deliberation on what the purpose of the program is or if its a purpose worth pursuing1. I think thats a big miss when its the case. We dont have enough time, resources, or energy to invest in programs which sound cool but dont have purposeful design or impact.

What is a community?
I find it difficult to think about big concepts without a framework. Heres my construct for what a community is. As I see it, a community is a very special instance of an organization in that just like organizations, communities attempt to take a vision (which is informed by a narrative) and convert it into impact. There need to be enablers to convert vision into impact, and luckily these enablers can be built or shaped by formal institutions: I think these enablers for change agents to leverage can be grouped into three categories: 1. Goals clear direction and focus on achieving an impact with the necessary feedback and reflection to improve 2. Connections strategies and systems which facilitate the rapid flow of ideas, people, and resources (e.g., forums, approaches to teaming, attempts to create serendipity) 3. Infrastructure the basic set of assets needed to accomplish goals (e.g., physical space / tools, virtual systems to collect and share knowledge, systems and programs to motivate people) Because social problems are wicked problems that mutate in the middle of solving them, I think feedback loops are inevitable and make the reevaluation of narrative, vision, and community enablers absolutely necessary to do in real time. Anyway, I think a community works like this2:

Enablers (for agents) Community Narrative Community Vision

Goals Connections Infrastructure
Action Impact

Of course, Im speaking broadly here and lumping thoughtful community programs with the rest. I dont mean to imply that this is a universal truth. There are definitely social entrepreneurs which seem to have thought deeply about purpose. 2 In brief, I think narrative and vision are different in t his way: narrative are the values and the why, whereas vision is the how. Narrative is fundamentally about belief and vision is fundamentally about how to pursue action. Also, this is an example where I cant take credit for all these ideastheres a paper coming out from The Center for the Edge and these some of these ideas are adapted from the work we did there.

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Part II Observations
With this framework, and the assumption that agency is what the purpose of a community is, here are a few observations about each part of the framework. Of course, each topic below could warrant many pages worth of discussion! Ive left a tidbit of an idea in each section, as well; I think its counterproductive (and not very collegial) to analyze and criticize ideas without offering potential solutions.

Narrative
Ive been thinking a bit about discussions about narrative, specifically about leveraging local narratives, spotting trends, investing, and innovating. What I think is puzzling is that Im not so sure there is a clear narrative in Detroit, and if there is a narrative, there doesnt seem to be a singular one. Rather, there are probably separate narratives for different sub-groups within the city (e.g., Old institutions and power centers, new yuppies, longstanding residents, communities of need, etc.). This is making it difficult to really build an informed and engaged community because a singular narrative isnt guiding collective action, broadly speaking. In my opinion, the implication here is that the narrative has to be shaped and uncovered more. Moreover, I dont think the narratives we have are necessarily the ones we need, especially for case of communities of need (because the prevailing narrative for communities of need, but all groups to an extent, seems to tell individuals that their agency is limited or must be channeled through large institutions). We need to uncover our existing narratives further and articulate new ones, likely around agency. If we cant do this, I think any vision thats pursued is bound to ineffective and likely to be unsustainable without autocratic coordination or spending lots of money. In a sense, the narrative we havent isnt truly a narrative because narratives require inclusive participation in shaping and living out the narrative, and I dont think thats happening today. In my view, there are large swaths of people that arent able to participate, for very practical reasons assuming theyre invited to participate in the first place (e.g., digital divide, no time, focused on basic needs). Additionally, I worry that the way large institutions operate constrains and controls how people participate in shaping the narrative. This undercuts agency because it connotes that the only way to participate in shaping the narrative is on the terms provided by large institutions. To have a narrative thats truly representative of a community it has to be fully inclusive and participants must be able to shape the narrative with as few prescriptions as possible. If not, then the narrative would probably be disingenuous or easily manipulated. Idea tidbit: What about having a year of stunts done in conjunction with other partners and institutions which allow people to participate in creating artifacts which develop and convey narrative? I havent thought too much about it, but what about having participatory public art, story telling sessions, or photo capture apps/websites (or perhaps lots of other things) organized around a central theme which empowers people to share or do something about what they believe Detroit is all about? It could

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On Community December 17, 2012

even be open source so that people who want to create their own stunts could do so with the guidance of the sponsoring organization (t has to be open to anyone, it has to be participatory, etc.).

Vision
What I worry about when it comes to vision, is that very few social entrepreneurs (or anyone) are going directly after the systems and institutions affecting big, gnarly social problems3, as opposed to building capacity to address big, gnarly social problems. Sometimes Im skeptical that social entrepreneurs on the ground are going after ideas that are bold enough to make a difference. Why is this the case? I personally dont think our average level of talent is high enough to go after big problems. That being said, I think we do have the potential talent in our community today, its just untapped. As I see it, there are a few ways to go about developing talent: 1. Acquire it we could do this, but this is probably expensive and unsustainable. Besides that, if we dont have an environment which talent develops rapidly (or is functional enough for talent to want to stay) the talent thats acquired will probably atrophy or leave quickly. 2. Train it there are lots of incubators for different things, which is great. But, training talent requires expert trainers, which is probably difficult to count on if there arent experienced social entrepreneurs to begin with. If theres not a deep bench of experienced mentors and/or peers, training talent through things like incubators will probably be slow and ineffective. 3. Grow it the best way to develop talent quickly, I think, is to go after bigger challenges, make mistakes, and learn from experience. Because talent develops fastest through experimentation, I think the best way to engage the young, social entrepreneurs transforming Detroit would be to give them challenges, create the space for them to push the envelope (and fail), and help them share knowledge and feedback with each other so that everyone can learn faster. Moreover, I think the initiatives that are pursued have to be more inclusive and participatory. Social entrepreneurs have to develop their talent, but so do others in the community. The activities that social entrepreneurs pursue need to do more just than get community members to show up, the activities need to transform community members themselves, even if its in small ways. Engaging social entrepreneurs isnt enough to move the needle, I think, unless those social entrepreneurs programs intentionally provide opportunities to allow others to participate actively (whether it be in large or small ways) and develop themselves alongside social entrepreneurs. Doing so would raise the level of talent and capability in the city much more rapidly than investing in incubators and the like, it would also start changing the narrative in the city because more people would be pulled out of the woodwork and into community affairs. More people would be inspired to have agency. Idea tidbit: This is a super small idea, but Ive heard of events called failure fests, which encourage people to share how theyve failed. I think conveying that its okay to fail is one of the necessary first steps in priming social entrepreneurs to go after increasingly complex problems. Why not have a fail
3

Big and gnarly problems, as I mean them are problems that transcend a single issue area or sector. These are big issues like homelessness, crime, economic development

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fest? What if social entrepreneurs were even rewarded for failures when they shared their learnings with others?4

Enablers
Here are a few thoughts on the various enablers I mentioned in the framework above. Infrastructure It seems like theres quite a bit of people investing in physical space, which is great. What might be a next step is to explore ways to make existing spaces more accessible for broader use. Talking to a handful of shop owners here and there, I feel like they are pretty open to opening up their spaces when not in use. The biggest infrastructure gap, in my opinion, are forums (either virtual or physical) for knowledge sharing. The Urban Innovation Exchange, Publius, and DetroitWiki are good attempts that seem successful (though I dont know their usage statistics) but more thinking is probably needed here to make these platforms more effective or more widely used. Maybe virtual platforms need to be combined with physical ones. When talking about infrastructure, its hard not to ignore the digital divide and digital literacy. All the social problems that entrepreneurs are trying to solve become much easier (and cheaper) to solve if they can be addressed with information. Unfortunately, that requires everyone to have access to the internet. I havent studied this too closely in the context of Detroit, but Im glad this is something some foundations have supported. Its crucially important and I dont understand why others arent shouting from the rooftops about it. Not having access to information is an enormous hurdle to creating informed and engaged communities, in my opinion. Idea tidbit: Rethinking the traditional meet up or panel discussion so that its more open and participatory could be a good physical platform for knowledge sharing. The point is not for people to learn from a panel of experts but to share with each other and interact throughout the session itself. This approach to knowledge sharing probably also allows participants to make connections with each other that arent sustained by the central organizer. 5 Connections Ideally, passionate teams of people could form around specific issues quickly, build solutions, and quickly dissipate to pursue other endeavors. This approach is advantageous, because it forces extreme focus, channels resources directly at problems, and inspires people to move quickly. In most organizations (companies, communities, or otherwise) the ability to marshal teams together is controlled and expected from central organizers. I think thats the case in Detroit as well. I think a lot of potential social entrepreneurs (especially people who work in corporate jobs) probably rebuff

4 5

This has since happened, but it wasnt announced at the time I wrote this. Full disclosure: this is a bit self-serving to mention because some friends and I are exploring this. But, I think its still a good idea, regardless of who pursues it.

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opportunities to engage in solving social problems because its taxing to work through large institutions. I dont think it has to be the case. Idea tidbit: Why not support and fund a setup for small teams (that arent necessarily tied to existing organizations and institutions) to pursue small challenges on a fixed timeframe. The sponsoring institution could provide some money on the back end for successful prototypes and help these teams get access to mentors or community members for data collection. Goals One of the biggest enablers thats missing, for all organizations, is real-time feedback. I think it would be incredibly hard to run any organization (social sector, government, or private sector) without having data to make adjustments. Talking about metrics, is probably a 100-page thesis in itself, but heres a small idea Ive just started noodling on. Something thats very convenient for private sector organizations is that they can use prices to get feedback directly from their customers. This is because forcing a customer to have to make a tradeoff, signals to companies how valuable their products are to those customers. They can compare the price they charge (and thus the revenues they generate) to their costs and make a decision on what products and services are worth providing. Unfortunately, social sector organizations dont have anything akin to a price signal where customers have to make a tradeoff to truly indicate value. I think that makes it really hard for social sector organizations to have the feedback they need to evaluate if their programs are working. Idea tidbit: Ive only been thinking about this for a few weeks, but why cant we artificially create a price signal for social sector organizations via an information market or some other scheme? Id need to do a lot more research to figure out how this might work, but it seems like an interesting idea. Of course, operational metrics and outcome-based metrics are crucially important as well and I have some ideas there, but, I wanted to mention this thought because Im curious if you all have heard of anything like a price signal for social sector organizations.

Impact
As I mentioned before, I think the true measure of impact is observable behavior which happens in private. Attendance at events and click-through rates on forums are merely proxies for what were really after - cultivating agency. Id also reemphasize that a cohesive narrative has to exist (and probably be reoriented) otherwise I dont think well ever get the impact we want around community engagement and agency.