Why Our Nonprofits Need To Network (With Other Nonprofits)

I have a problem with today’s cerebral palsy (CP) interventions and treatments: they’re barely making a difference. Typically they result in only 4-10% lifetime gains or improvements* and that’s not good enough. I want to see those numbers doubled or tripled -- pronto. 

But -- 

Can anyone tell me who’s in charge of upping the percentages? With whom should I get in touch? 

One might guess that the responsible party is one of the twenty-five (25) or so US-or-Canada-based nonprofits whose mission has to do with improving outcomes as they relate to CP. The fact of the matter, however, is that no single organization is responsible. Nor could it be. The challenge – how to dramatically increase the effectiveness of our interventions – is way too complex. Too many layers and uncertainties are tied to it.

It’s actually a great example of the kind of “wicked” problem that’s best tackled by a network. One of countless such problems our special needs communities face.

Wicked problems don’t have one right solution. They’re solved through trial and error, consensus decision making, and experimenting-and-learning your way to what works. Networked collaboration is the most efficient way to share the associated costs, risks, resources, etc. And our new digital infrastructure can make it all the more efficient.

The great promise of networked collaboration is that everybody wins. Each participant “gets better faster” by working with other participants. The objectives of all stakeholders are advanced while the larger issue /shared problem is addressed. The authors of The Power of Pull also stress the value of long-term relationships that are often fostered: "As participants get to know each other and find that they share similar ways of looking at their endeavors, they start to trust one another, which prompts even deeper levels of collaboration (and tacit knowledge creation) around the difficult challenges they share." 

Of course, success depends on how well you collaborate, i.e., on how well the work itself is orchestrated. There are plenty of big thinkers out there sorting out the various management approaches being taken, trying to uncover best practices, etc. Here, in closing, are two good examples and potential resources for you:

• The Tapscott Group is actively exploring methods for making collaboration happen both within organizations and via multi-stakeholder networks. 

• FasterCures has been studying ways that networks of organizations are collaborating to expedite biomedical research. Its Consortia-pedia provides an in-depth look at the "research-by-consortium" trend and is loaded with information meant to help guide and inform emerging and existing collaborative efforts.

*  *  *  *  * 

Nonprofit networks are among the most powerful forces that an organization can channel for the greater good.

Forces for Good: The Six Practices of High-Impact Nonprofits

*per Dr. Iona Novak, Head of Research at CP Alliance

ROUND NINE: Where Are Our Dreamers?

I have a dream that someday we'll have a much bigger, much more focused, and much more effective community tackling the challenges we associate with childhood neurological and /or developmental disorders. And I have a strategy. One that has much to do with mobilizing parents and family members of the millions of kids with said disorders.

To execute the strategy? 

We’ll need to be more specific about who we are as a community and what our dreams are. We’ll need to be clearer about the work it'll take to get from here to there.

RE: the latter, some of my recent posts* have been on the snarky side in that I've called our nonprofit leaders on the carpet for doing a poor job of engaging us parents in their mission-specific work. That'll have to change, too --

Perhaps along these lines:

A few days ago, Cynthia at Reaching for the Stars sent me a wish list of about a dozen of her "human capital" needs, e.g., for a pro bono grant writer. (I pasted her entire list here.) My thoughts when I read it? Perfect. This is just what the doctor ordered. Openness from a leading CP organization about its "to do"s.

How come?

I'm sure a ton of our good ideas for improving outcomes as they relate to CP -- probably a majority -- never become official projects and never get acted upon. What a crime. Cynthia, though, has in a sense brought her would-be projects to life. She's given them forward motion and taken a positive step in the direction of getting them done.

Now, why couldn't the untapped and collective genius of our community-in-the-making help RFTS meet those needs? 

I believe it could. And then some. The same goes for meeting the brainpower needs of the hundreds (and hundreds?) of related organizations out there. In fact, I’d like for each of them to send me a dozen** of their "help wanteds" just like Cynthia did. I'd like to add them to this mind map and then invite our parents to have a look...

And consider pitching in. 

My bigger vision is to create an engine, of sorts, for turning our dreams for our kids into realities. My dreams. Cynthia’s. Yours.

As it stands, the map is a repository of requests-for-help /calls-to-action that some of our orgs have made public over the past eight (8) weeks. It's only sparsely populated and it's lacking in other ways. Do you see, though, how it or something like it could make it easier for us to more fully join in each other's dreams?

What if a million parents could browse through thousands of different "opportunities to help" and work an hour per month chipping and chopping away at them? Advancing our projects in ways large and small. How much farther ahead could we all be then?

*See Perturbed and Everything's Peachy. 

**Or more than a dozen. To inch my own dream closer to reality, I can think of more than a hundred things I'd like to do. I keep a detailed and running list. Many of the items on it could be broken down into small tasks. Hardly any of it would require a rocket scientist to complete...

PRE-FIGHT: Let's Glove Up

Here's how my pea brain's mind's eye sees things:

ON ONE HAND

We have various organizations and institutions, for and not for profit, that are committed to fighting the Cerebral Palsy fight and improving outcomes as they relate to CP. 

To me, they look to be doing bang-up jobs: pounding away at key challenges and opportunities; landing their share of punches. Becoming...thanks largely to advances in fields like genetics and robotics and brain science...encouraged and emboldened -- even to the point of believing that theirs-and-ours is a winnable battle. Even in the previously inconceivable sense that CP will someday be both preventable and curable. 

I'm excited along with them. 

I'd be a lot more excited if I knew that their various visions were about to be realized, say, this week. Even a year from now would be a more than acceptable time frame. 

Unrealistic? Could never happen? 

Maybe. 

Who's really to say? 

At a bare minimum, I don't think it's too overly whacky to suggest that big things could conceivably happen in the CP arena sooner rather than later and that, furthermore, we all ought to open our minds' eyes -- wider than they are now -- to what's possible. 

ON THE OTHER HAND

Over the past few years, I've immersed myself in enough management writing to have at least a feel for who the more influential thinkers are and what they're thinking about. What interests me most is their work on helping organizations get smarter and better, faster. (much of which is intimately tied to disruptive technologies like cloud computing, social media, mobile, and big data)

How're they doing? 

They're figuring things out. They're making discoveries. They're experiencing some wins. 

Many of them are fired up about what's possible, too. 

I'D LIKE TO RECOMMEND

We in the CP sphere should take greater advantage of what those management gurus -- those business brainiacs -- have to offer. 

Why's that?

Because CP has been kicking our butts. 

No offense to any one individual or CP organization, but -- we need help. All the help we can get. Why fight with one hand tied behind our back if we don't have to?

The good news is that the products of those folks' energies and efforts are more widely and readily available than ever before. They're there for the taking. So, too, are the opportunities for making personal connections. Accessing them, and attracting them to us and our "defeat CP" cause, should be straightforward.

We'll have to strive as a group, however, to become more:

1. OPEN

At the risk of exposing my own biases and nincompoopery, I am (via this post and this blog) putting myself out there in hopes that someone will come along and help me become a better / smarter CP fighter. Our orgs need to follow suit. To "get back," we need to give. We need to offer up our challenges and opportunities, our responses and results -- the whole of it -- to critical thought and commentary. 

May be worth taking under advisement:

• We should resist believing we're on the right track and therefore in no need of new and different ways of thinking or acting. The truth is, our mental models, e.g., our strategies and roadmaps and visions, are laughably small relative to the enormousness of our challenges. 

• Like CP itself, the problems we face are complex. In the words of David K. Hurst, "good questions are (often) better than good answers." Wisdom begins with an admission of ignorance. 

• A lack of funding doesn't have to slow us down. Money's just one of many resources we may acquire, mobilize, leverage, etc. 

• Keep this in mind: “There are always more smart people outside your company than within it.”* The staff at SUBWAY this month is wearing t-shirts that read "Make Us Better / Take Our Survey." If the biggest corporations are looking every which way for better ideas, we should probably be doing the same.

2. FINDABLE/ LOCATABLE 

I hope to be able to use this blogspace to make our leading CP organizations more visible to leading management thinkers -- and vice versa. My little mission is to facilitate connections. Very-best-case outcomes, to my way of thinking, would involve collaborative problem solving and co-creation activities between both sides. (both "hands") To that end, I invite participation. 

So, for example, to:

• Cynthia @ Reaching for the Stars: If you want to share your views here about what you believe it'll take to build "a foundation of hope for children with cerebral palsy"; if you want to name your pains; if you want to go public with your lengthy "things to do" list -- either directly or indirectly through me -- you're more than welcome to!! 

• John Seely Brown and John Hagel @ Deloitte Center for the Edge: You wrote in The Power of Pull (2008) about "Harnessing Pull to Change the World," and specifically about mastering pull "at the individual and institutional level to achieve much broader impact in economic and social arenas." I welcome either or both of you to use this forum to teach us how to beat CP. Feel free, in other words, to stop by and solve our problems for us!!

There's also a Twitter component to this. It'll be devoted to more of the same (as above) but revolve around a particular, pick-up-the-pace goal. 

I want things to move faster. Way, way faster than we're generally envisioning now. Using a (crude?) boxing analogy, I hope to be able to look at the next year as if it were a 12-round fight -- with an intention of knocking CP on its duff by the end. As Chief Inciter, I'll report on how the fight's progressing and do whatever I can to influence things in our favor. My tweets and interactions will be directed at the level of the organization, but anyone's more than welcome to follow along @KnockOutCP.

CLOSING

`A la Ralph Waldo Emerson, David Weinberger writes in Too Big To Know (2012): 

We thus do not yet have any good idea of what cannot be done by connected humans when working at the scale of the Net. 

We truly don't know what can or can't be accomplished. 

So...

Why not get ready to rumble?

Round one's set to start on June first.

*quote attributed to Silicon Valley icon Bill Joy (co-founder of Sun Microsystems)

A Tale of Two Hope Machines, 9.3.5.B

Got edges?

Conventional wisdom says an ailing organization should aggressively cut costs and /or develop new products and services to raise revenues. UCP's done both of these in recent years. To minimize operating costs, the former UPC of Central OH merged with another nonprofit (that also serves people with disabilities). On the revenue side, the national office has introduced at least three significant new service offerings...

Assuming for a minute it's done all the COST CUTTING it can do -- organizationwide, affiliate network included -- I want to focus this post on the GROWTH side of the UCP equation. 

"When organizations speak of pursuing growth, most are speaking of product- or service-level innovations produced in the core of their organization." 

The word "core" is key here. The authors of The Power of Pull contend that innovations derived from core operations are offering diminishing returns these days. Marginally improved, marginally differentiated products and services aren't moving the dial. As it relates to UCP, their concern would be that improvements of that ilk would likely not generate enough dough to make up for any losses the organization is experiencing due to reduced government support and /or increased competition.

(Do LIFE LABS, Mission Driven Consulting, and The World CP Challenge represent just marginally improved or differentiated services? If so, are they destined to provide  mediocre-at-best returns? If not, are there additional things UCP could do to ensure their sustained effectiveness? I hope to make those sorts of questions the subject matter of the next post.)

JSB et al. would counsel against pursuing marginal returns. It's not sensible, they write, "to keep pushing harder and harder on existing resources with minimal gains." 

If this is the organization's m.o., it should consider looking to the edge and learning to innovate at a more fundamental, institutional level -- for at least three reasons: (1) there's a good chance market opportunities are being missed (2) pursuing edge opportunities can be relatively less costly [because you're leveraging external resources] and (3) significantly, UCP would develop new institutional capabilities in the process.

If things are "difficult" for UCP, that's a sign that more changing and adapting need to be done. Changes in management mindsets are likely in order.* What the authors offer is a pragmatic pathway to making said changes and to improving, specifically, UCP's ability to learn.

In the next post I'll try to characterize and categorize some of UCP-National's innovations. Then, after that, I'll go into how UCP could inch itself closer to the edge.

*Question for UCP top managers to ponder: Do you consider it your purpose to be an orchestrator for your people to connect and learn from others, i.e., to improve their performance?

A Tale of Two Hope Machines, 9.3.5.A

Back to this JSB-JH3 approach, the one that hinges on the pursuit of edge opportunities: Should UCP have a closer look?

"Yes," if it:

• is interested in getting better faster 

• is turned on by the prospect of capturing "market opportunities that are appearing more rapidly than ever and that present large upside potential." (Note: Disruptive technologies -- social media, cloud computing, mobility, big data analytics, etc. -- figure prominently in the authors' formula but said opportunities aren't for technocentric industries alone; they're open to organizations of all kinds.) 

• has challenges to overcome. 

To the last point, this new approach is 's-much-as-anything an antidote to poor performance. It's for counteracting the effects of "The Big Shift," which is tied to globalization and rapid advancements in technology, and which has "dramatically intensified competitive pressures on firms over decades." More specifically, it's for organizations whose tried and true solutions ain't cuttin' it. It's for organizations whose core processes are in need of transformation.

Is UCP feeling performance pressures?

I don't have a lot to go by. My impression, however, is that UCP *is* being exposed to performance pressures. From UCP-National we have the President and CEO telling us the economics of providing services for disabled children are "difficult." At the affiliate level, I know (this is my lone example) that UCP of Central Ohio merged a few years ago with Goodwill Columbus  in order to lower operating costs -- which it had to do because it was unable "to raise the money it needed to thrive." 

These may be signs that performance improvement is imperative and not just something that'd be nice to achieve. I keep hearing about steady declines in government support. Are these actual, or threatened? At which levels of government? As for the effects of globalization and technology advances, I wonder: is UCP is seeing second order effects like service life-cycle compression and /or donors becoming more fickle in their giving patterns?

Obviously, I need to continue to learn about the nature of UCP's challenges. In the meantime, though, I'll proceed from the glass-half-full perspective that says new opportunities are springing up faster than ever. In my opinion, UCP should be open to any evidence that may exist to the effect that it could do better by making changes. It should be open to new opportunities and to looking, if need be, in new places for them.

Like edges. 

More about those, next.

A Tale of Two Hope Machines, 9.3.4

Here's where things get interesting, where we start to try to apply The Power of Pull's "new approach to value creation" to the actual, real-world workings of UCP. 

"When we serve people with disabilities and their families, the economics of it are very difficult. We know that here in the United States we've been experiencing an economic downturn. It creates very difficult challenges for us and our service wing, and for the programs that we provide." 

Stephen Bennett, UCP CEO & President*

*  *  *  *  *

This (below) -- on the whole and in a nutshell -- is John Seely Brown & Co.'s advice for organizations facing "difficult challenges". I'll explain how it's derived in a sec.

In order to thrive in a post-Big Shift world, individuals and institutions should consider how they move from innovating at a product and service level (i.e., flooding the market with new, marginally improved products) to innovating at an institutional level.

Okay:

In "A Tale...9.3.2B" I pointed out how UCP repeatedly touts its own history / longevity as a selling point. When it dawned on me that it does that, I went back to The Power of Pull and unearthed this sentence: “What we knew yesterday -- either as employees or in terms of what our institution as a whole knows about its business -- is proving to be less and less helpful with the challenges and opportunities we confront today." 

"Our history" is proving to be less and less helpful today.

How much less helpful? 

So much that the need to make significant changes has become imperative for most organizations. And the real bummer? Cutting costs and developing new, marginally differentiated products and services in attempts to raise revenues probably isn't going far enough. 

We can collectively kiss business as usual goodbye.

Q1: What is going far enough? What will work? More specifically, where are the rich new sources of growth to be found?

A1: On the periphery of the organization. Resist messing with your core operations, the authors say. Seek out "edge players" instead.

Q2: Why edge players?

A2: Because they're more likely to introduce you to new insights and help you more rapidly develop -- ready for this? -- new knowledge stocks.

Q3: Aren't knowledge stocks old hat? 

A3: No, it's hoarding and fixating on them that's to be guarded against. An organization actually makes hay from its knowledge stocks. (People value the One-Stop Resource Guide, for example, and that leads them, in turn, to donate to UCP.) It’s a balancing act. "As clockspeed increases, refreshing the stocks of what we know by participating in flows of new knowledge is fundamental to performance improvement. Stocks are both a means and an end to participation in knowledge flows."

So:

Participating in flows of new knowledge on the edge is the way to go. 

Is it the way UCP should go?

Hmmm...

One thing I don't know is to what extent UCP may need to enact major change, i.e., how badly it needs to transform its mindset in order to survive and prosper in tomorrow's world. (Here I'm trying to juggle thoughts about both UCP-National and its larger affiliate network simultaneously. No doubt a ridiculous thing to try to do.) It depends on its competitive situation**. If things are still "difficult," due either to Big Shift forces of globalization and rapid advancements in digital technology OR to a down economy, then major change may be needed and JSB's answers / approach may be advisable.

That's one way of looking at things. 

Say, on the other hand, though, that the situation has eased -- that things are returning more or less to normal and it's no longer as hard as it was 2-3 years ago for UCP to serve its customers. (i.e., that it's not imperative to make major changes) If that's the case, might the authors' notion of innovating at the institutional level still be worth exploring simply because it's a better way of doing things, a better way of creating value?

'S'far as I'm concerned --
Until and unless cerebral palsy and UCP are done away with, we need to continue to look for better ways of doing things. 
Alluding to the very beginnings of this series and rephrasing this post's biggest question: 

Could innovating at the institutional level make UCP a better, more effective hope machine?

I think there's a distinct possibility that it could. So, in subsequent posts I'll keep probing:

• Why might growth opportunities for UCP be brighter on the edge(s)? What about in those areas where, unlike for-profit firms, UCP faces very little or no competition: is it better off trying to innovate around its core operations and processes? 

• If choosing to participate in flows of new knowledge on the edge seems prudent, then -- what's the prescription for doing it right? What would innovating at the institutional level look like at UCP?

In addressing those, I'll want to scrutinize some of UCP's more recent innovations: how to categorize them, how to think of them in light of the authors' advice, etc. Here I'm thinking of the World CP Challenge. I'm thinking of Mission Driven Business. I'm thinking of Life Labs. (all on the national level) And -- while I don't think it qualifies as an innovation -- the Emerging Leaders Academy is related and comes to mind, as well. I also hope to be able to address it vis-a-vis JSB.

*source: UCP Annual Report '10-'11

**I hope to be able to give more thought to UCP's competition in section 11. Notes to self: Red Treehouse competes in some ways with UCP. And, three categories of affiliate-competitors that come to mind are (1.) independent therapy clinics (2.) intermediate care facilities, and (3.) hospital comprehensive CP programs.

A Tale of Two Hope Machines, 9.3.3

KNOWLEDGE FLOWS: Interactions that (1.) create knowledge or transfer it across individuals; (2.) occur in social, fluid environments that allow firms and individuals to get better faster by working with others

So, if I read a white paper and its author's "brainstuffs" are thus mingled with mine -- am I participating in a flow of new knowledge? Does the fact that I can get back to him or her via e-mail make that a social and fluid environment?

I'm not in love with JSB & Co.'s definition because it doesn't really help me understand why knowledge flows are becoming so all-important. ( Organizations must "accelerate a shift to a very different mindset and to practices that treat knowledge flows as the central opportunity.") And, don't most of us already participate in knowledge flows? Isn't that what people do? I'm sure everyone at UCP-National, for example, is learning on the job...

What's the big deal?

Before I try and answer, I want to take a stab at identifying how and where UCP may presently be participating in flows of new knowledge.

First, two particular "social, fluid environments" o' theirs beg my attention: 

• In its role as a news provider, PE&O is right where the action is -- processing information; moving it from the newsmakers to the rest of us -- on a daily basis. (Think SmartBrief.)

• Online communities like the one found at www.mychildwithoutlimits.org are HELPING MEMBERS HELP OTHER MEMBERS by enabling knowledge transfers that support, inspire, etc.

Surely UCP is participating in knowledge flows in these cases, no?

Well, on closer inspection...

No. I'd say that knowledge is flowing but that UCP isn't really participating -- at least in the sense of trying to better itself in the process. It's acting in both cases as a middleman, facilitating the transfer of knowledge. The actual contents (of the news and online-community-exchanges) may just as well be widgets. 

Where else could we look for evidence of UCP's participation in knowledge flows? Maybe this is a cop-out, but, the fact of the matter is that it's hard to get a glimpse of them from the outside. Knowledge flows are by definition dynamic and fluid. They're happening at the edge; they've yet to be made explicit. That said --

How about Twitter, Facebook, or the like as places to look?

COME TO THINK OF IT THERE WAS A LIFE LABS BLOG POST having to do with its practice of browsing for events to attend outside of the assistive technology arena. (in search of "different perspectives on solutions for people with disabilities") This may have been a clue that Life Labs is routinely participating in knowledge flows. 

And for actual evidence that it is?

Life Labs recently announced that it's formed a partnership with the AbleGamers Foundation to co-create mobile accessible gaming stations. (link to announcement) This may someday prove to be an example of how it pays to participate in knowledge flows. From its site: "Life Labs already has a major UCP affiliate interested in several of these mobile gaming stations and is excited to be able to offer the station to the general public once a prototype is completed."

*  *  *  *  *

There's still lots of fuzziness surrounding these notions of stocks and flows. I think it might be helpful, next, to reopen JSB's PLAYBOOK for PERFORMANCE IMPROVEMENT IN A POST BIG-SHIFT WORLD  (a.k.a. THE POWER OF PULL) and see exactly how they figure in.

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, 9.3.1

UCP has developed a comprehensive, one-stop shop of resources for every U.S. state and territory. Never scour the Web again for bits and pieces of disability information and resources from disparate sources!

That second sentence jumps out at me – it prompts me – every time I see it. Invariably it causes me to think of knowledge stocks and knowledge flows, and the central roles the two play in the meditations of John Seely Brown, et. al. 

One of that bunch's biggest ideas goes like this: 

It used to be that organizations could win by: (1) knowing valuable stuff, and (2) extracting value from -- while simultaneously restricting access to -- what they knew. Nowadays, however, that approach isn’t cutting it. Why not? Mostly because “in a world changing at an increasingly rapid pace, the half-life of these stocks of knowledge is depleting at an equally rapid pace.”

The new way to make it as an organization is to shift the primary focus to flows of new knowledge. 

“It’s no longer about what you know,” they say, “but rather, what relationships you have and what you can learn from these relationships.” 

UCP was founded in 1949, when the older ways had just begun to hold sway. Obviously, the organization has evolved over the years. (Witness its ongoing efforts to keep up with changes in information technologies.) Are its mindsets and practices, however, all the way up to today’s speed? That’s the sort of thing I want to delve into in this sub-section. 

Additionally, I’d like to know: 

• In what ways is UCP organized around the notion that value comes from protecting and capitalizing on existing stocks of knowledge? 

• How and where is it participating in flows of new knowledge? 

• How might it stand to gain by implementing JSB’s ideas? 

• Is there a systematic way to go about doing that?

You may have noticed that I haven’t been mentioning Red Treehouse. Reason being? At some point herein I want to zero in specifically on UCP’s Public Education & Outreach (PE&O) offerings. In my opinion, those are similar enough to (all of) Red Treehouse’s offerings that, if anything useful comes of the zeroing in, both organizations will be served.

*what we know at any particular time

A Tale of Two Hope Machines, 11.0

If Red Treehouse and UCP are puzzles, then my main interest really is in how all the pieces – new information technologies and their uses included – come together. 

For the past few years I’ve been learning about various comprehensive management approaches. The holy grail, as far as these things go? A foolproof set of steps even a fool like me could follow to steer an organization to success. A reliable road map. A “framework for frameworks” capable of subsuming any of the myriad of mental-models modern-managers use to address challenges and opportunities.* 

There’s a relatively new approach that has my attention now. I think it has a lot going for it, i.e., it makes sense to me. Even though it’s not prescriptive in a “do these specific things and you’ll win” way, its recommendations are right in line with those expressed in The Power or Pull (section 9) and Too Big To Know (section 10). So it also makes at least some sense to transition to it at this point. 

What I want to do is take it for a spin. Apply it as best I can to UCP and Red Treehouse. Not just for kicks, though. I want to help make both organizations better. Maybe this approach could be beneficial. Becoming a hope machine implies having a formula, after all. Maybe this is the one? 

Let’s explore.

*Gartner’s formula for becoming a social organization, for example, would fit within.

A Tale of Two Hope Machines, 9.0

The Power of Pull, initially published in 2010, just now out in paperback, is one of my favorite books of the last few years. In this section, I'd first like to overview it broadly-shallowly-quickly and then relate two of its big ideas narrowly-deeply-deliberately to Red Treehouse and UCP. 

Here’s how I see things unfolding:

9.1: OVERVIEW /KEY CONCEPTS

Thesis. “To get better faster at whatever it is you do, you’ve got to be supported by a broad array of complementary people and resources from which you can pull what you need to raise your rate of performance improvement.” 

Three levels of pull. Pulling is about accessing (searching), attracting (making serendipitous connections), and achieving (collaborating). The last set of practices entails participating in what the authors call creation spaces -- which are akin to Gartner’s collaborative communities. 

Success formula. Use pull techniques to: (1) define compelling trajectories for change, (2) provide leverage to the passionate individuals who are attracted to these trajectories, and (3) amplify the impact of these individuals. 

9.2: SHAPING STRATEGIES

"By grasping how pull works we can build institutions that can act as platforms to catapult change, and maybe even transform the world in necessary and far-reaching ways." 

Should UCP pursue a shaping strategy, i.e., should it attempt to reshape the CP arena on a global scale? Based on the BIG SKY PROJECT vision of the future for people with disabilitiles, is UCP already moving in this direction?  

Inquiring minds want to know. 

9.3: KNOWLEDGE STOCKS AND FLOWS

The authors contend that the sources of economic value are moving from "stocks" of knowledge to "flows" of new knowledge, and that we must "accelerate a shift to a very different mindset and to practices that treat knowledge flows as the central opportunity and knowledge stocks as a useful by-product and key enabler." 

What are the implications for UCP and Red Treehouse?

I can say already that the implications are huge. Our new ways of knowing impact everything these organizations do. In posts 9.3+, I'd like to look closely at UCP's Public Education & Outreach (PEO) efforts -- and then use that as a springboard for exploring David Weinberger's new book about "networked knowledge" (Too Big To Know) in section ten.