Embracing Emergence - Collective Impact Forum
Embracing Emergencehow Collective impact addresses Complexity
About Collective ImpactNo single organization alone has the ability tosolve the world’s most challenging problems.Collective Impact occurs when actors from different sectors commit to a common agenda forsolving a specific social or environmental problem. FSG’s Collective Impact services includedesign and launch of initiatives, facilita tion ofstrategic efforts, and development of shared measurement systems. Learn more at www.fsg.org.About FSGFSG is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit consulting firmspecializing in strategy, evaluation, and research.We help organizations discover better waysto solve social problems. FSG was originallyfounded in 2000 as Foundation Strategy Group,and today works across all sectors in every regionof the globe, partnering with corporations, foundations, nonprofits, and governments toachievecritical social change. Learn more at www.fsg.org.
Embracing Emergence:How Collective ImpactAddresses ComplexityCollective impact efforts are upending conventional wisdom about the manner inwhich we achieve social progress.By John Kania & Mark KramerOrics, the risk of multiple self-anointed these solutions can scale up by spreadingrganizations around the backbone organizations, and the peren- to other organizations.world have begun to see col- nial obstacles of local politics. We believe,The problem is that such predeterlective impact as a new and however, that the greatest obstacle to mined solutions rarely work under condimore effective process for success is that practitioners embark on tions of complexity—conditions that apsocial change. They have grasped the the collective impact process expecting ply to most major social problems—whendifference our past articles emphasized the wrong kind of solutions.the unpredictable interactions of multiplebetween the isolated impact of workingThe solutions we have come to expect players determine the outcomes. Andfor change through a single organization in the social sector often involve discrete even when successful interventions areversus a highly structured cross-sector programs that address a social problem found, adoption spreads very gradually,coalition.1 Yet, even as practitioners work through a carefully worked out theory of if it spreads at all.toward the five conditions of collective change, relying on incremental resourcesCollective impact works differently.impact we described earlier, many par- from funders, and ideally supported by The process and results of collectiveticipants are becoming frustrated in their an evaluation that attributes to the pro- impact are emergent rather than predeefforts to move the needle on their chosen gram the impact achieved. Once proven, termined, the necessary resources andissues. (See “The Five Conditions of Collective Impact” to right.)The Five Conditions of Collective ImpactCollective impact poses many chalCommon AgendaAll participants have a shared vision for change including alenges, of course: the difficulty of bringcommon understanding of the problem and a joint approach tosolving it through agreed upon actions.ing together people who have never collaborated before, the competition and Shared MeasurementCollecting data and measuring results consistently across allparticipants ensures efforts remain aligned and participants holdmistrust among funders and grantees,each other accountable.the struggle of agreeing on shared metJohn Kania is managing director of FSG, focusingon inspiring social sector organizations—both individually and collectively—to achieve excellence in their work.He has led dozens of strategic planning and evaluationefforts for foundations, nonprofits, corporations, andgovernments.Mark Kramer is founder and managing director ofFSG, overseeing the firm’s overall vision and direction.He is widely published, speaks around the world, andhas led consulting engagements across all of FSG’s areasof focus. Kramer is also a senior fellow at the HarvardKennedy School.Mutually ReinforcingActivitiesParticipant activities must be differentiated while still beingcoordinated through a mutually reinforcing plan of action.Continuous CommunicationConsistent and open communication is needed across themany players to build trust, assure mutual objectives, and createcommon motivation.Backbone SupportCreating and managing collective impact requires a separateorganization(s) with staff and a specific set of skills to serve asthe backbone for the entire initiative and coordinate participating organizations and agencies.1Stanford Social Innovation Review
Embracing Emergence: How Collective Impact Addresses Complexityinnovations often already exist but havenot yet been recognized, learning is continuous, and adoption happens simultaneously among many different organizations.In other words, collective impact isnot merely a new process that supportsthe same social sector solutions but anentirely different model of social progress. The power of collective impact liesin the heightened vigilance that comesfrom multiple organizations looking forresources and innovations through thesame lens, the rapid learning that comesfrom continuous feedback loops, and theimmediacy of action that comes froma unified and simultaneous responseamong all participants.Under conditions of complexity, predetermined solutions can neither be reliablyascertained nor implemented. Instead,the rules of interaction that govern collective impact lead to changes in individualand organizational behavior that createan ongoing progression of alignment,discovery, learning, and emergence. Inmany instances, this progression greatlyaccelerates social change without requiring breakthrough innovations or vastlyincreased funding. Previously unnoticedsolutions and resources from inside oroutside the community are identified andadopted. Existing organizations find newways of working together that producebetter outcomes.Leaders of successful collective impact initiatives have come to recognizeand accept this continual unfolding ofnewly identified opportunities for greaterimpact, along with the setbacks that inevitably accompany any process of trialand error, as the powerful but unpredictable way that collective impact works.They have embraced a new way of seeing,learning, and doing that marries emergent solutions with intentional outcomes.such as poverty, health, education, and as the outcome of elections—cannot bethe environment, to name just a few, in- known in advance. Furthermore, any soluvolve many different interdependent tion requires the participation of countlessactors and factors. There is no single government, private sector, and nonprofitsolution to these problems, and even if a organizations, as well as a multitude of insolution were known, no one individual dividual citizens. In these circumstances,or organization is in a position to compel emergent solutions will be more likely toall the players involved to adopt it. Im- succeed than predetermined ones.portant variables that influence the outTaken from the field of complexity scicome are not and often cannot be known ence, “emergence” is a term that is usedor predicted in advance.2 Under these to describe events that are unpredictable,conditions of complexity, predetermined which seem to result from the interacsolutions rarely succeed.tions between elements, and which noPredetermined solutions work best one organization or individual can conwhen technical expertise is required, trol. The process of evolution exemplifiesthe consequences of actions are predict- emergence. As one animal successfullyable, the material factors are known in adapts to its environment, others mutateadvance, and a central authority is in a in ways that overcome the advantagesLeaders of succesful collective impactinitiatives have embraced a new way of seeing,learning, and doing that marries emergentsolutions with intentional outcomes.position to ensure that all necessary actions are taken by the appropriate parties. Administering the right medicineto a patient, for example, generally givespredetermined results: the medicine hasbeen proven to work, the benefits arepredictable, the disease is well understood, and the doctor can administerthe treatment. Much of the work of thenonprofit and public sectors is driven bythe attempt to identify such predetermined solutions. In part, this is due tothe expectations of funders and legislators who understandably want to knowwhat their money will buy and predicthow the discrete projects they fund willlead to the impacts they seek.Unlike curing a patient, problems suchas reforming the US health care systemcannot be accomplished through predeComplexity and Emergencetermined solutions. No proven solutionIt would be hard to deny that most large- exists, the consequences of actions arescale social problems are complex. Issues unpredictable, and many variables—such2Stanford Social Innovation Reviewthe first animal has developed. There isno ultimate “solution” beyond the process of continual adaptation within anever-changing environment.To say that a solution is emergent, however, is not to abandon all plans and structures.3 Rather than deriving outcomes byrigid adherence to preconceived strategies,a key tenet of addressing complex problems is to focus on creating effective rulesfor interaction. These rules ensure alignment among participants that increasesthe likelihood of emergent solutions leading to the intended goal. Consider, forexample, how flocks of birds are able todemonstrate such amazing coordinationand alignment, with thousands of independent bodies that move as one, reacting together in nanoseconds to changesin geography, topography, wind currents,and potential predators.4 Scientists havediscovered that just three simple rulesgovern their interaction: maintain a mini-
Embracing Emergence: How Collective Impact Addresses Complexitymum distance from your neighbor; fly atthe same speed as your neighbor; andalways turn towards the center. All threerules are essential for flocking. When theyare in place, it is as if all birds collectively“see” what each bird sees and “respond” aseach bird responds.5The five conditions for collectiveimpact similarly serve as rules for interaction that lead to synchronized andemergent results. A common agenda,if authentic, creates intentionality andenables all participating organizationsto “see” solutions and resources throughsimilar eyes. Shared measurement, mutually reinforcing activities, and continuouscommunication enable participants tolearn and react consistently with the common agenda to emerging problems andopportunities. Meanwhile, the backboneorganization supports fidelity by thevarious cross-sector players to both thecommon agenda and rules for interaction.When properly put into motion, theprocess of collective impact generatesemergent solutions toward the intendedoutcomes under continually changingcircumstances. As with evolution, thisprocess is itself the solution. And, as witha flock of birds, effective collective impactefforts experience a heightened level ofvigilance that enables participants to collectively see and respond to opportunitiesthat would otherwise have been missed.scope conceals many opportunities. Collective impact efforts, however, sharpena community’s collective vision. Havinga shared understanding of the problemand an appropriately framed commonagenda increases the likelihood that communities will see relevant opportunitiesas they emerge. The novelty of workingwith people from different sectors bringsa fresh perspective that encourages creativity and intensifies effort. This, in turn,can motivate more generous supportfrom both participants and outsiders. Therules for interaction from collective impact create an alignment within complexrelationships and sets of activities which,when combined with shared intentionality, causes previously invisible solutionsand resources to emerge.In 2008, for example, the city of Memphis, Tenn., and Shelby County initiateda multi-pronged collective impact initiative called Memphis Fast Forward thatincludes a focus on improving publicsafety called Operation: Safe Community.After three years, cross-sector stakeholders looked at data regarding progress inpublic safety and concluded they weremaking good headway on two of threepriority thrusts: policing and prosecution.Unfortunately, they saw little progress inthe third area of violence prevention. Theparties agreed to double down their efforts and re-tool the plan for prevention.Three months later, the U.S. DepartmentCollective Vigilanceof Justice announced the formation of theIt is commonplace to bemoan the insuffi- National Forum on Youth Violence Preciency of resources and solutions needed vention, with federal support availableto address the world’s most challenging to communities aspiring to higher levelsproblems. As successful collective impact of performance in prevention activities.efforts around the world are discovering, Memphis Fast Forward quickly jumpedhowever, the problem is not necessarily into action and, three months later, wasa lack of resources and solutions, but our one of six communities nationwide to beinability to accurately see the resources selected for funding.and solutions that best fit our situation.The leaders of Memphis Fast ForwardWhen each organization views the could not have anticipated and plannedavailability of resources and the range for the new resources that came from theof solutions through the lens of its own Department of Justice. Had the participarticular agenda, the resulting kaleido- pating organizations been acting in iso-3Stanford Social Innovation Reviewlation, they most likely would not havebeen aware of the new program, and evenif one or two solitary nonprofits knew ofthe potential funding, it is unlikely thatthey could have mobilized a sufficientcommunity-wide effort in time to win thegrant. Collective impact enabled them tosee and obtain existing resources thatthey otherwise would have missed.The vigilance inspired by collectiveimpact can lead to emergent solutionsas well as resources. In 2003, stakeholders in Franklin County, a rural county inwestern Massachusetts, initiated an effort called Communities that Care that focused on reducing teen substance abuseby 50 percent. A key goal in the commonagenda was to improve the attitudes andpractices of families. The initial plan wasto “train the trainers” by working with acadre of parents to learn and then teachother parents. Unfortunately, in 2006 and2009, the data showed no improvementin parental behaviors.The initiative then decided to try something new: a public will-building campaign designed to reach all parents of 7ththrough 12th grade students. The initiativeworked with schools to send postcardshome, and with businesses to get messages on pizza boxes, grocery bags, papernapkins, in fortune cookies, in windows,on banners, on billboards, and on the radio. The initiative had also come acrossan outside research study showing thatchildren who have regular family dinnersare at lower risk for substance use, so theyincluded that message as well.Leaders of the effort were payingclose attention to the campaign to determine which messages had any impact. Through surveys and focus groupsthe initiative discovered that the familydinner message resonated strongly withlocal parents, in part because it built onmomentum from the local food movement, the childhood anti-obesity movement, and even the poor economy thatencouraged families to save money by
Embracing Emergence: How Collective Impact Addresses Complexityeating at home. Armed with this evidence,the initiative went further, capitalizingon national Family Day to get free materials and press coverage to promotethe family dinner message. As a result,the percentage of youth having dinnerwith their families increased 11 percentand, for the first time since the effort wasinitiated seven years earlier, FranklinCounty saw significant improvementsin key parental risk factors.6The Franklin County example demonstrates how collective impact marries thepower of intentionality with the unpredictability of emergence in a way that enablescommunities to identify and capitalize onimpactful new solutions. In this case, thefailure to make progress against an intended goal prompted both a new strategy(switching from parental train-the-trainergroups to a public awareness campaign)and a search outside the community fornew evidence based practices (family dinners) that supported their goal of reducingparental risk factors. This clarity of visionalso enabled the initiative to capitalize onunrelated and unanticipated trends in food,obesity, and the economy that emergedduring the course of the work and amplified their message.In both of these examples, the ongoingvigilance of multiple organizations witha shared intention, operating under therules for interaction of the collective impact structure, empowered all stakeholders together—flexibly and quickly—to seeand act on emerging opportunities. Theintentions never changed, but the plansdid. And in both cases, the resources andsolutions that proved most helpful mighthave been overlooked as irrelevant hadthe stakeholders adhered to their original plans.It may seem that these two exampleswere just “lucky” in coming upon the resources and solutions they needed. But wehave seen many such collective impact efforts in which the consistent unfolding ofunforeseen opportunities is precisely whatdrives social impact. This is the solutionthat collective impact offers.Collective LearningThe leaders of both the Memphis andFranklin County collective impact initiatives learned that they were not makingprogress on one dimension of their strategies. Of course, nonprofits and funderslearn that they have unsuccessful strategies all the time. What was different inthese cases is that the rules for interactionestablished by collective impact created acontinuous feedback loop that led to thecollective identification and adoption ofnew resources and solutions.Continuous feedback depends on a vision of evaluation that is fundamentallydifferent than the episodic evaluation thatis the norm today in the nonprofit sector.Episodic evaluation is usually retrospective and intended to assess the impact ofa discrete initiative. One alternative approach is known as “developmental evaluation,” 7 and it is particularly well suited todealing with complexity and emergence.8Developmental evaluation focuseson the relationships between people andorganizations over time, and the problems or solutions that arise from thoserelationships. Rather than render definitive judgments of success or failure, thegoal of developmental evaluation is toprovide an on-going feedback loop fordecision making by uncovering newlychanging relationships and conditionsthat affect potential solutions and resources. This often requires reports ona weekly or biweekly basis compared tothe more usual annual or semi-annualevaluation timeline.The Vibrant Communities poverty reduction initiative in Canada has successfully employed developmental evaluationwithin their collective impact efforts tohelp identify emergent solutions and resources. Facilitated by the Tamarack Institute, which serves as a national backboneto this multi-community effort, Vibrant4Stanford Social Innovation ReviewCommunities began 11 years ago witha traditional approach to accounting forresults based on developing a logic modeland predetermined theory of changeagainst which they would measure progress. They quickly discovered that veryfew groups could develop an authenticand robust theory of change in a reasonable period of time. Often the logic modelbecame an empty exercise that did notfully reflect the complex interactions underlying change. Tamarack then shiftedto a more flexible model that embodiedthe principles of developmental evaluation. They began to revise their goalsand strategies continuously in resp
Embracing Emergence: How Collective Impact Addresses Complexity Collective impact efforts are upending conventional wisdom about the manner in which we achieve social progress. By John Kania & MarK KraMer JOhn Kania is managing director of FSG, focusing on inspiring
same social sector solutions but an en-tirely different model of social progress. The power of collective impact lies in the Embracing Emergence: How Collective Impact Addresses Complexity Collective impact efforts are upending conventional wisdom about the manner in which we
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