Background

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Comprehensive Community Initiatives Changing
Our SystemsAbbotsford. June 6, 2007.
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• Tamarack is a charitable organization dedicated
  to helping citizens build prosperous and healthy
  communities.
• Through its Learning Centre, Tamarack works with
  its partners to build on their experience and
  develop practical tools, resources and learning
  techniques that can strengthen local efforts to
  address community issues.
• For more information on Tamarack, see the
  organizations website at www.tamarackcommunity.ca
  .

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Communities Taking Care of Themselves Throughout
History
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Slipping Stalled on OurQuality of Life

• Widening income gaps
• Increase in gang and youth violence
• Brittle ecosystems
• Health systems under siege
• Marginalization of entire parts of the community

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The Dark Side of the Parking Lot
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You don't see something until you have the right
metaphor to let you perceive it. Thomas
Kuhn Believing is seeing. Karl Weick
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Complex Issues
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Types of Community IssuesThe Stacey Matrix
Far from
Agreement
Close to
Far from
Certainty
Close to
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Simple
Far from
Agreement
Simple Recipe
Close to
Far from
Certainty
Close to
10
Technically Complicated
Far from
Agreement
Technically Complicated Expertise, Knowledge,
Relationships
Simple
Close to
Far from
Certainty
Close to
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Socially Complicated
Far from
Socially Complicated Relationships, Power
Agreement
Simple Plan, control
Technically Complicated
Close to
Far from
Certainty
Close to
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The Zone of Complexity
Far from
Zone of Complexity
Socially Complicated
Agreement
Technically Complicated
Simple
Close to
Far from
Certainty
Close to
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Eight Features of Complex Issues

• Multiple inter-related root causes
• Multiple stakeholders
• Difficult to frame
• Emergent, adaptive, unpredictable
• Unique
• Paradoxes dilemmas
• Difficult to eliminate
• Long-term in nature

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Chaos
Chaos Massive Avoidance
Far from
Socially Complicated
Zone of Complexity
Agreement
Technically Complicated
Simple
Close to
Far from
Certainty
Close to
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"Stop trying to change reality by attempting to
eliminate complexity. David Whyte
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Some Implications
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• From Physics Envy To Biology Envy

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Organizing for Complexity

• Complexity
• Difficult to frame
• Multiple root causes
• Multiple stakeholders
• Emergent
• Unique
• Paradoxes, dilemmas
• Difficult to eliminate
• Long term nature

• Emerging Response
• Good enough framing
• Cross boundary comprehensive
• Collaborative flat
• Adaptive learning
• Customized responses
• Transparent coping
• Moving the needle
• Incremental changes

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Changes in the Way We Work

• Leadership Management
• Governance Accountability
• Planning Implementation
• Policy Design Administration
• Learning Evaluation
• Community Investment
• Communication
• Community Mobilization Organizing

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Question

• What are some of things we need to do to
  effectively plan and implement an effort to move
  the needle on complex issues?

Stay in Table Groups
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Planning ImplementationTwo Approaches
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A Framework for Ending Homelessness in Red Deer
Upstream
Downstream
Homeless
At Risk
At Risk
Healthy Community (Primary)
Systems Prevention (Secondary)
Emergency Prevention (Tertiary)
Rapid Re- Housing
Follow up Support
Emergency Shelter
Tool Kit for Relationship Development -- gt
Personal Capacity Strategic Areas to build
Capacities and Accessibility Education,
Housing, Relationship, Employment, Training
Income, Health Care Methods Public Education
Awareness, Outreach, Strategic Data,
Infrastructure, Policy and Advocacy Evaluation
Looks Intergenerational, Positive for Community,
Positive for the Individuals Affected
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Living Portfolio of Strategies
Strategy Research Selection Process
The Living Portfolio
Initial Pool of Strategies
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Question

• What are some of things we need to do to
  effectively evaluate our efforts to move the
  needle on complex issues?

Stay in Table Groups
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Complex Environment
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Intervention
Insert action into the system
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Unpredictable Outcomes
EMERGENCE
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Evaluation Approaches
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Emerging Methodologies
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Opportunities Niagara

• Testing the contribution of various organizations
  involved in a collaboration to launch a housing
  project.

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Moving Forward
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Jane Jacobs

• The sign of a healthy community is one that
  self-corrects when the institutions and
  responses that worked in the past no longer suit
  new circumstances.

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Meg Wheatley

• While self-organization calls us to very
  different ideas and forms of organizing, how else
  can we create the resilient, intelligent, fast,
  and flexible organizations and communities that
  we require? How else can we succeed in organizing
  in the accelerated pace of our times except by
  realizing that organizations and communities are
  living systems?
• This is not an easy shift, changing ones model
  of the way that world organizes It is work that
  will occupy most of us for the rest of our
  careers. But the future pulls us toward these new
  understandings with an insistent and compelling
  call.

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Robert Putnam

• Our job now is not to blame. It is to create.

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Discussion

• Does this way of describing complex issues,
  collaboration and comprehensiveness change the
  way think about the work? If so, how?
• What new questions emerge?
• What are the implications of viewing the work
  this way?

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Comprehensive Community Initiatives Changing
Our SystemsAbbotsford. June 6, 2007.