Beth’s Blog

Wikimedia: Networks + Strategic Planning = Big Yes

Guest post by Carole Martin

Sue Gardner of Wikimedia Foundation and Eugene Kim of Blue Oxen Associates paired up during Monday’s session to describe the approach they took during Wikimedia’s planning process. It quickly became obvious that by engaging a wide array of their volunteers in strategy formulation, they created an uncommon opportunity to educate community members about strategic thinking and inclusive processes in a networked world. Why does this matter? These skills are vital to making the most of what we’ve got and arguably, the more people who possess them, the better. What level of input has informed your strategy?

Chaos versus coherence

Seems counterintuitive, but to really make sure what is being heard from those outside an organization whose big ideas and solid thinking could fuel change and powerful outcomes, some parts of a planning process may be best served by being a little open-ended.  If it is so tightly designed that it cannot adapt to any surprising opportunities or ways of thinking that emerge from it, it may be a little hemmed in.  So much about network work relies on pushing our tolerance for letting go and listening – deeply – to what is being said to and about us before formulating a strategy. Getting this notion into a planning process can be transformative (and from Sue Gardner’s perspective, result in losing sleep on occasion, wondering about what would come from their decision to be inclusive). It can re-shape perspectives in a big way. What is the right balance between hanging onto core strategic ownership of what you are arguably responsible for and adapting to what you are being told?

Process and outcome

Sometimes, the process is the outcome. If the goal is to connect, learn and build relationships and trust, the right planning process can achieve this. Usable input and data are important, of course – but a planning process can be just the right thing to forge new ways of doing. The Wikimedia story illustrates this beautifully. The deepened their connections to loyal users and contributors while simultaneously reaching into markets they were under-serving to seek input and build new loyalties. How can this approach be used to advance collective action, thinking and commitment to other ends? How can it help you achieve what matters most in your situation?

Carole Martin

Open Source Strategic Planning

Note from Beth: Since the concept of working in Networks is can be hard to explain to newcomers, learning from case studies, stories, and examples can be illuminating. The design was to share this learning was amazing. In the morning, each of the ten case study presenters gave a 5 minute “teaser” about their case study or what one presenter called “showing a little leg.” After lunch, conference participants got to to choose two presenters to spend an hour with in a small group to ask questions and deepened the learning.   Paul Connolly, who has been a guest blogger on this blog before,  covered the session on Open Source Strategic Planning.   The session was also covered on the Working Wikily Blog,  ”Doing the conventional, unconventionally”  by Anna Muoio.

Guest post by Paul Connolly

How do you devise a future strategy for a diffuse Internet-based global movement?   In a deliberate, organic, and aggressively inclusive manner, advised Sue Gardner, Executive Director of the Wikimedia Foundation, and consultant Eugene Eric Kim, at Grantmakers for Effective Organizations’ “Growing Social Impact in a Networked World” conference yesterday.

The Wikimedia Foundation ambitiously envisions a “world in which every single person on the planet is given free access to the sum of all human knowledge.”  While Wikipedia is the fifth most visited web site, its budget and staff is relatively small and it relies on 100,000 contributors across the world to create and edit content.  The organization invited anyone, including these volunteers and its millions of readers, to help develop the plan.  In 2009, the foundation began by harvesting almost a thousand proposals for future directions from community members through online crowd-sourcing.  They then formed task forces to consider various options and make decisions, using a consensus-based model.  Certain people were encouraged to be involved in these groups to ensure that under-represented voices, especially from the southern hemisphere, were heard.   Online input was supplemented with face-to-face local meetings around the world.  Next, consultants helped facilitate an asynchronous process involving a wide set of stakeholders using an online wiki to write and edit sections of the plan.

Gardner admitted that at certain points the non-linear and emergent collaborative planning process was ambiguous and frustrating.  She sometimes feared that the “crowd” of Wikimedians might go down the wrong path and make some unwise decisions.  Ultimately, she realized that the highly participatory process resulted in a robust strategic plan that articulated goals and initiatives through 2015 to stabilize infrastructure, increase participation, improve quality, and encourage innovation.  She also knows that it is truly “owned” by Wikimedia’s broad community.  ”You have to understand that leaders may not know the ‘right’ answer and have faith that if you gather the right people and facilitate their decision-making well,” Gardner observed, “they will make smart decisions.”

Paul Connolly

Paul Connolly is a senior partner and chief client services officer at TCC Group, a national management consulting firm that provides planning, evaluation, and capacity-building services to funders, nonprofits, and corporate citizenship programs. His areas of expertise are philanthropic effectiveness, strategic planning, organizational capacity building, evaluation, and social enterprise.  He can be reached at pconnolly@tccgrp.com

What Mesh Businesses Should Support Philanthropy?

Click for Twitter Summary of Mesh Session

Guest Post by Stephen Downs

The Mesh
Laura Efurd sent this tweet during Lisa Gansky’s discussion of the mesh concept at the GEO Growing Social Impact in a Networked World conference. Great, provocative question. Gansky’s Mesh is based on the concept that unused value = waste and that information networks enable real-time brokering between customers and that unused capacity. So neighbors can share leaf lowers and snowblowers, companies can tap programmers for discrete jobs rather than everyone owning (or permanently employing) their own.

Philanthropic Functions
Efurd’s question demands an examination of the functions that philanthropies need to tap — functions that could be commoditized and procured and delivered over a network. A number of standard philanthropy business processes, like financial due diligence, come to mind. Obtaining expertise for peer review also comes to mind, though one could argue that that function has always been mesh-based in the sense that foundations tap experts that they don’t employ for short, just-in-time (on a good day) reviews. However, no one to my knowledge has organized a service/platform that would rapidly connect program officers needing reviews to suitable subject matter experts, who happen to be available, complete with a reputation management / feedback system. Are you listening LinkedIn?

On-demand Advocacy
Marty Kearns, of Netcentric Campaigns, has a more intriguing answer to Efurd’s question. Marty runs PreventObesity.net for the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (my employer). The platform he’s building contains information on 60,000 people (the “base”) who are interested in advocating for a variety of policy changes to combat childhood obesity. Because there are numerous policy changes — ranging from removing sugar sweetened beverages from schools, to investing in supermarkets in food deserts, to adding sidewalks to residential areas — that can help to alleviate the problem, a variety of advocacy organizations, often with different and even non-overlapping purposes, can find value in engaging the base in their respective campaigns or calls to action. Rather than each of them building and maintaining their own lists, the advocacy organizations can use PreventObesity.net in an on-demand, mesh-like way.

The Importance of Scarcity
In my mind, one of the biggest obstacles to having mesh-based services for philanthropy is the lack of scarcity in philanthropy (or at least in the larger foundations). Scarcity, as the conference heard in the morning from Stephanie McAuliffe, can have a very positive effect — in her example producing a crucial collaboration to support post-abortion women in Pakistan. Scarcity can also drive people and organizations to mesh-based solutions. If such businesses are to emerge (and please — I’d love to know what might already be out there), foundations need pressure to be efficient. For smaller foundations this pressure might be more acute and that could create the needed demand. It would be interesting to see if larger foundations started to rent out their underutilized capacity to meet it.

Thanks Laura (and Lisa) for stimulating these thoughts. I’m sure I’ve only captured the tip of the iceberg of possibilities. What mesh businesses would others create for philanthropy?

Steve Downs is the chief technology and information officer at Robert Wood Johnson Foundation