This post is a departure from my usual content. With NEWHAB, we hired Management HQ to provide support to our network. They wanted to highlight how a network approach could be beneficial to their members and invited me to write an article for their newsletter. This is the article, cross-posted from their site. In […]
This post shares my own definition of a network approach, the organizational and cultural shifts that make it successful and more accessible today than it was a generation ago, and bonus benefits of using a network approach. I want to thank the many people who have informed my thinking and offered different ways to convey this. First, Beth […]
This is cross-posted on Christine Capra’s blog. I’m nerd enough to love data, and I understand how much information isn’t available to me when I look around a room. I WANT TO KNOW! Knowing is magic. In my first practicum about network weaving, coordinated by June Holley and Kristin Johnstad, I learned about network mapping […]
Invitations are powerful. Invitations signify who is invited, and powerfully indicate who is not. Invitations communicate who is valued, who is part of the in-crowd, and who is not. (Do you still remember that third grade birthday party you didn’t get invited to and how it stung? Or the friend who didn’t invite you […]
Vox asks, “Can low-income housing be energy-efficient and affordable?” They’re reposting from Ensia. The first sentence answers with an unqualified, “Yes.” Then they get to the interesting bit, asking why it’s so hard and, “How?” After using Energy Efficiency for All research to lay out the cost-effective opportunity of 15-30% efficiency improvements, they explore financing, scale, policy, […]
This is cross-posted from Beth Tener’s blog. Since 2014, Beth and I have had the pleasure of working together. She’s my coach/thinking partner supporting me in my role as a Network Weaver for a new national network, called Network for Water, Energy and Health in Affordable Buildings (NEWHAB.) Her consulting practice is New Directions Collaborative. She recently interviewed me as […]
Yesterday, Jessica Conrad, Community Manager with the RE-AMP Network and I shared some of our experience fostering leadership within RE-AMP and NEWHAB. We facilitated a discussion with a group of Twin Cities network weavers about why emergent, shared leadership is so important for high-performing networks, what conditions foster self-organizing leadership, and how to begin creating those conditions. […]
Energy Foundation was invited to submit a blog for the Stanford Social Innovation Review on their current network efforts — and one of the two examples is the Network for Energy, Water and Health in Affordable Housing (NEWHAB) that I’m coordinating. The three key take-aways are: Invest on the front end to establish shared purpose. […]
A couple weeks ago, I was prepping for a workshop. I knew I wanted to include a modified Open Space session at the end of the day. The catch was that I’d never facilitated or even participated in an Open Space session, and I was nervous about faking it in a room with 30 […]
I’ve been experimenting with ways to have interactive, relationship-building meetings for attendees spread across the country. One of my favorite so far combines a mix of video calls, Google Forms, phone calls and chat boxes.
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