I’m pleased to share this guest blog post from John Tener, my dad, who has been an inspiration to me in his persistence in working for positive social change over decades. “Tommy” Menino, 20 year-long mayor of Boston, died a month ago… He was eulogized and buried on November 3, the day before the election. … Read more
Author: btener
Art of the Start: Strategic Questions to Build Focus and Engagement
As I write this, I am on my way to a gathering of practitioners who work on networks approaches for large-scale social change, sponsored by the Garfield Foundation. We’ll be discussing the “art of the start” – how to navigate the early stages of an initiative. This is timely, as lately I have seen some… Read more
Join us at the Better Together Summit, October 24th in Maine
We are excited to be working with the New England Environmental Education Alliance and the Maine Environmental Education Association to facilitate a Better Together Innovation Lab. This interactive day will be held at Pineland Farms, in New Gloucester, Maine, a 5,000-acre working farm and business and learning campus. Creating healthy, resilient, sustainable communities requires all of… Read more
Seeing Systems and Getting to the Roots – Lessons from Ferguson
In the stream of tragedies and controversies that come through the media, certain stories seem to “get to me” and I have to follow them further. The death of Michael Brown in Ferguson, the response on the streets, and the response to the response on the streets, was one of those stories. The national and… Read more
Building Interaction and Networking into a Traditional Conference Format
Most of us know well the traditional conference format of a speaker or panel at the front of the room, rows of chairs, speakers offering prepared remarks with Powerpoint slides, followed by some Q&A with the audience. Interest is growing in ways to organize conferences that enable more interaction, connections, and learning among the participants. As… Read more
Open Sourcing Social Change
Most philanthropic work for social change is focused on investing grants in organizations as the unit of getting work done. The challenge is that for many issues and places, multiple foundations and/or government are investing in organizations pursuing disconnected initiatives, leading to silos that don’t talk to each other and competing organizations working in the… Read more
Crafting a Value-Add Strategy for a Network or Collective Impact Initiative
Several clients recently have asked us to help with strategic planning. The more I have worked with networks and cross-sector initiatives, I have seen the limits of the traditional way of thinking about strategy. Typically, a strategy will be for one organization to look out at the world, assess “strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats” and… Read more
The Multi-Dimensional Benefits of a World Café
I recently co-facilitated a “taster” to explore a variety of ways of designing meetings to more fully engage the collective intelligence of the group. One of the techniques we explored was the World Café. About half of this group had participated in it before and here were some of their key concerns: World Café had… Read more
The Better Alternative Not on the Table
Last fall, I was driving and heard a snippet of a news story that has stayed with me. I was listening to a reporter in Syria talking about the opinions of “people on the street” in Damascus amidst this civil war. She said that they are faced with the choice of the brutal dictator Assad… Read more
The Art of Participatory Leadership
I had the opportunity to participate in a gathering called The Art of Participatory Leadership, which is defined as “an intensive 3-day event where you experience and practice a set of simple, yet powerful, processes for building community, facilitating powerful conversations, building strong partnerships, and leading change.” While I have experienced several of the approaches… Read more