A Tale of Two Hope Machines, 9.3.2.B

Some valuable things UCP as a whole seems to know. Notice the references from www.ucp.org to longevity and history.

Advocacy and Public Policy

UCP has a rich history of building and participating in coalitions and collaborating with other organizations in pursuit of national public policy goals.

At the national level, UCP has expertise in, among other things, monitoring and keeping abreast of what’s going on at all levels of government (laws and policies), crafting  legislative agendas for the Federal Government, and producing The Case for Inclusion (an annual ranking of how well state Medicaid programs serve Americans with intellectual and developmental disabilities).

Affiliate Network

UCP's strength as a national network grows out of a long history of service to Affiliates as an advisor, supporter, and partner. 

UCP has an impressive track record of helping its affiliates succeed. "UCP Affiliates receive products, solutions, and opportunities to network and share information and expertise with other service providers and advocates." Since 2009 in particular, affiliate growth and development has become even more of a priority. UCP’s new MISSION DRIVEN CONSULTING piece offers: business model, strategic planning, executive recruiting, development department redesign, change management, and other services. (Said services take advantage of knowledge stocks that exist within the affiliate network, and amongst UCP staff and volunteer board /committee members.) MISSION DRIVEN FINANCE works with affiliates to solve financing challenges. Activities include lending money and providing financing for a variety of purposes, including construction and facilities acquisition.

Of course the affiliates themselves -- 100 strong -- rely upon their own knowledge stocks to provide: housing, physical therapy, assistive technology training, early intervention services, individual and family support, social and recreational programs, community living, state and local referrals, employment, employment assistance and advocacy...

Public Education and Outreach (PE&O)

UCP’s knowledge of disability issues has been accruing for more than sixty years. 

UCP's Public Education & Outreach (PEO) efforts include two primary components: Public Education Resources and Public Education Campaigns. Here are a few PE&O offerings within those groupings that rely on “knowledge stocks”:

One-Stop Resources Guide. I’m sure lots of know-how and know-what have gone into the ways in which the resources (Education, Employment, etc.) are structured; the way content is acquired /edited /filtered /etc.; the relationship-building that those activities entail...

UCP as news provider, news aggregator. UCP is set up to produce a set of electronic publications -- from scratch -- that people like me rely upon for steady flows of different types of information about: assistive technology, health care, and more. Publication titles include: Limitless, UCP SmartBrief, and Full Spectrum.

Online communities. UCP has the wherewithal to be able to offer the online resources and communities, e.g., My Child Without Limits, we began to scrutinize in section eight.

Other

UCP National no doubt depends on many other knowledge stocks to sustain itself, stocks pertaining to: how to manage a health (vs. say, some other type of) non-profit; how to successfully organize and integrate its key departments; how to capture corporate sponsorships; how to host events; how to raise funds from donors... 

*  *  *  *  *

LET'S SHIFT GEARS and move from this (crude) attempt to account for UCP's knowledge stocks to a similar search for knowledge flows.

A Tale of Two Hope Machines, 9.3.2.A

Looking for disability-related services and organizations near you? No need to fret or look any further. UCP has compiled a “comprehensive, one-stop shop of resources for every U.S. state and territory.” IT'S DONE ALL THE FILTERING FOR YOU. No need to worry about quality or quantity, either. UCP’s “knowledge of disability issues has been accruing for more than sixty years.” It's a source you can trust.

Accruing means adding. Accumulating. Stockpiling. Stockpiling knowledge in this case. Which leads us to KNOWLEDGE STOCKS.

John Seely Brown defines 'em as “what we know at any particular time.” Knowledge stocks are embedded in – maybe I should say they reveal themselves in the forms of – things like product or service offerings, proprietary technologies, and unique insights into how to organize production or marketing activities.*

The State Resource Guides I alluded to above are products of UCP’s Public Education and Outreach (PE&O) wing. As such, I think it’s fair to deduce that PE&O is organized – at least in  part – to “protect and capitalize on existing stocks of knowledge.” My questions, then: 

In what other ways is UCP organized to do this? (i.e., protect and capitalize...) What else does UCP know now that it's banking on being able to use to generate value going forward? 

I’m going to throw some things out in the next post that I think could reasonably be called UCP knowledge stocks. An exercise in classification it'll be.

To what end? 

Making what UCP knows more explicit may help to signal where to look for new opportunities, where to look to innovate, where new approaches may be in order...

A ways down the road.


*I think of Michael Porter’s value chain definition: a chain of activities that a firm operating in a specific industry performs in order to deliver something valuable (product or service)

A Tale of Two Hope Machines, 11.2

Next we want to try to get some sort of a handle on UCP’s operating context, first by asking and attempting to answer a set of questions about where the organization is and how it got there — then by doing the same regarding where it wants to go and how it’s going to get there. 'N case you’re keeping score at home, posts related to what’s happened will begin with “11.3.A.” Posts related to what’s coming will begin with “11.3.B.”

The aim of this inquiry? In David Hurst’s words, to develop “a coarse-grained, moving picture of the past, present and potential futures of the organization -- the questions it has to answer and the choices it has to make.” 

The interest here is not in finding and addressing clear-cut, technical sorts of issues that a consultancy like Gartner, Inc. is better suited to address (e.g., how to complete this or that technology-enabled initiative). Instead, it's in having a go at some of the more complex, systemic, and messier questions – questions which may have more than one answer from which to choose. 

The asking I have in mind to do should, ideally, be a communal process (involving UCP stakeholders of all kinds) and be viewed as an opportunity for learning and growth. 

The best I can hope to do on my own, from a distance, is get the ball rolling.