Collective Impact and Phases 2 and 3 of RCCI Recent Collective Impact research shows that beyond the conditions needed, three additional focal points are critical (Senge, Hamilton, Kania, Recognize that spontaneous connections between groups emerge slowly, or not at all Holley, 2002). Network weavers are needed. These individuals intentionally and informally create new interactions between groups and sectors, building the connective tissue for collaborative work. Understand the process and set initial conditions—the time, and relationships—that go into creating Collective Impact. Look for collective intelligence to emerge through a disciplined stakeholder and community engagement process. The nature of this intelligence is unpredictable, but crucial both community ownership of the vision and insight into the systemic barriers that need attention. additional learnings from Collective Impact initiatives over the past few years inform our work in Rapid City. We are intentionally supporting the efforts of the natural network weavers in the city, while developing new weavers who can be mentored by the existing ones. We are informing the community about this important work. We continue to create and build the relationships and trust that will be needed in the coming years as RCCI moves into Phase 3 and beyond. Currently we are in Phase 2, which includes attention to creating and developing systems maps and models for the city. Systems and ystems apping in Rapid City Jay Forrester, the founder of the system dynamics approach to systems thinking we are using, speaks of the “counterintuitive behavior” that complex non-linear systems exhibit. He illustrates this by citing the large number of government interventions that go awry through aiming at short-term improvement in measurable problem
symptoms but ultimately worsening the underlying problems—like increased urban policing that leads to short-term reductions in crime rates but does nothing to alter the sources of embedded poverty and worsens long-term incarceration rates. Another systems thinking pioneer, Russell Ackoff, characterized wisdom as the ability to distinguish the short-term from the long-term effects of an intervention (Ackoff, 1989) The question is, How does the wisdom to transcend pressures for low-leverage symptomatic interventions arise in practice? (Senge et al., Forrester). RCCI recognizes this challenge and is taking the extended time to better understand the city’s systems in order to make more effective long-term decisions. We are following the maxim that to go fast you have to go slow. Currently we are engaged in a process of mapping the interconnected systems of City. At the end of a ground breaking 3 day workshop in late May 2016 with more than 90 civic, business, nonprofit, faith, and government leaders, and a number of citizens, we created work streams to address closed loops within the systems. Over a series of iterative sessions sectorknowledgeable stakeholders are co-creating maps and models of the sector under the direction of our two facilitators. We are creating systems maps of a number of sectors and their intersections and intend to run simulations for some. By doing this, the community can recognize the interconnections between sectors. The modelers’ expertise comes into play at this point. There are only a few expert systems modelers in the world who have worked on community-based systems. This field is new, though growing rapidly. Concurrently the Emerging Leaders Fellowship is engaged with community members around a vision for Rapid City 2025. A vision statement with strategies to address Rapid City’s basic issues will be collaboratively crafted at the end of Phase 2 and will serve as a guide for Phase 3 and beyond. Phase 3 will attend to: improving services by weaving the network long-term strategic planning align strategies into mutually reinforcing activities