NetworkWeaving on Twitter

I have created a Network Weaving List on Twitter. This is to follow those who focus on network weaving/building/organizing/mentoring/coaching/facilitating/etc. This list is not about network analysis nor network mapping.Please see what is being tweeted and send me a DM to my @orgnet account if you would like to join.The three authors of this blog are all active on Twitter: June, Jack, and ValdisCome join us as we weave conversations and networ...

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Funding in a Networked World

As the funding landscape shifts at the rate of the economy, many funders are rethinking, if not reinventing, the way they approach their missions and success metrics.There continues to be a whole genre of problems and issues in every market and community that persist specifically because of the fragmentation and competition among funder grantees. Many funders are realizing that systemic issues cannot be impacted by any amount of fragmented or competitive efforts.This is not to say that there isn't value in the kind of fragmented and competitive efforts supported by funder RFP and award contests. Much good has come from these over the past decades, but there is a glass ceiling of impact and outcomes that can only be broken through with new kinds of collaborations between and among providers.More...

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Dynamic & Static Affiliations

In every network, people cluster by affiliations. These are affiliations based on shared transactions, ideologies, interests, adversaries, demographics, and histories.And there are two basic types of affiliations, dynamic and static. In static affiliations, people cluster with an intention to protect the membership and characteristics of their affiliation. Sociology sometimes refers to these as "strong cliques" where people feel a relatively strong/sticky sense of loyalty to one another and the basis for their affiliations.In dynamic affiliations, people cluster with an intention to grow and evolve their cluster's membership and characteristics. They are more loyal to the kind of inclusion and diversity that allows the cluster to emerge as a self-organizing, adaptive ecology of connections.When...

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The 4 Laws of Networks

The more we understand about networks, the more amazed we become at their immense and inscrutable power and elegance, starting with the fact that networks do not have "centers" or "boundaries" and act more like complex adaptive systems than orderly hierarchies. Getting things done in networks barely resembles the rules of getting things done when the whole is divided into power, knowledge, and responsibility haves and have-nots. Best and worst of all, networks do not "play by the rules" because they are intrinsically too fluid and self-organizing for that. And because of that, they tend to be far more incubatorial than traditionally designed organizations and social structures when it comes to innovation and resiliency.So are they simply random fields of chaos? Hardly. The more we intentionally...

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Non-Profit Boards as Thriving Networks

Why is that we've arrived at the place where so many of people consider the term "dysfunctional non-profit board" as a redundancy? Especially when so many non-profits are struggling to survive and their communities value them more than ever. From a group design perspective, board dysfunction is both an unnecessary and talent-wasteful practice to continue.One of the most common indicators of really poor board design is when boards "look forward to the new board president,� incorrectly thinking that a change in leadership could possibly compensate for poor board design.Following the design principle that "things always perform the way they're designed to perform,� the only way for a board to perform better is to better design the structure and functionality of the board. Then, when a board is...

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Rethinking Competition in a Local Living Networked Economy

As more communities move toward a vision of local living networked economies, the whole conversation about the nature and value of competition comes into question.The invitation for local living networked economies emerges from commitment to the profoundly provocative and transformational question: What can we do together that we can't do alone?Competition is one form of network connection on a continuum of possible connections. On the other side of the continuum is collaboration and in between are co-opetition, niching, and complementarity connections.In competition, we�re committed to the eat-or-be-eaten demise of other market providers. In co-opetition, we team up with a competitor on a project or offering that serves us mutually, agreeing to compete on everything else. In niching, we serve...

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