New Leadership Network

Transforming a community's future through networked action.

Workbook

FOR ANYONE LEADING COMMUNITY CHANGE, THIS BOOK IS FOR YOU

A toolkit for 21st century social change

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EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

What’s Inside

This workbook is broken down into nine different chapters. These chapters are intentionally designed to help provoke thought and facilitate discussion for many different types of system change concepts. The first four chapters tell of the who, why and how of this book. Chapters 5, 6, and 7 educate about the Arc of Learning. The remaining chapters discuss how to take the knowledge, resources and tools you have as a leader or funder and to put it to action.

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EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
TOOLS & RESOURCES

Online Resources

We’ve created a tool library that presents the mash-up of resources we used to help leaders lead systems change.View the Tools Library Here.

Stay Connected

The New Leadership Network, funded by the James Irvine Foundation, brings together diverse emerging leaders across issues, sectors and generations to learn, build relationships, collaborate and innovate for a better future for their region.

The Network launched in California’s Fresno County in 2013 and in Stanislaus County in 2016.

Open Impact is a strategic advisory firm partnering with philanthropic leaders to envision, design, and accelerate the work of social change.

The With/In Collaborative works alongside leaders to re-imagine, re-design and re-align the systems that no longer work for our communities. We work nationally with visionary conveners, funders, networks and community leaders.

WITH GRATITUDE TO THE FUNDERS OF THIS WORKBOOK

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Chapter 1: The Need for New Leadership

In chapter one, we make the case for what broad challenges to leading social change the New Leadership Network was designed to address. Across the country, communities are facing complex social and systemic issues that are scaling faster than our approaches to solving them. Leaders, regardless of sector, are asking: Just how can we collaborate and re-create more equitable social systems? How will we need to change as leaders to get this work done? We explain how these trends helped shape the story of the NLN design.

Chapter 2: Understanding Local Context

In Chapter 2, we share more about the two NLN communities and what they taught us about the conditions that must be present for a place-based network to take root. While these communities are unique, they have challenges in common with towns and communities across the United States: income stratification and poverty, a changing economy, dysfunctional politics, structural racism, etc. We explain how these issues helped shape the NLN strategy.

Chapter 3: Curriculum and Design

In Chapter 3, we highlight the theories, frameworks, tools, and approaches that we believe are essential to creating collaborative networks capable of systems change–and describe how we curated this interdisciplinary content to form the NLN curriculum and program. We also share the I-We-It framework that became shorthand for our theory of change and guided our choices along the way.

Chapter 4: Getting the Whole System in the Room

In Chapter 4, we start diving into the nitty-gritty of network building by explaining how we identified and selected the right leader-participants, picked a backbone organization to partner with, and assembled a talented facilitation team to lead the work. As this chapter drives home, who is in the room is as important as the curriculum.

Chapter 5: Convening 1: In.Formation

In Chapters 5-7, we walk through the NLN's arc of learning and how it unfolds across the three convenings that comprised each cohort's core experience. Each three-day convening has its own goals and purpose, with each session playing a key role in building relationships, skills, and momentum within each cohort over the course of six months.

Chapter 6: Convening 2: The Learning Journey

In Chapters 5-7, we walk through the NLN's arc of learning and how it unfolds across the three convenings that comprised each cohort's core experience. Each three-day convening has its own goals and purpose, with each session playing a key role in building relationships, skills, and momentum within each cohort over the course of six months.

Chapter 7: Convening 3: Integration

In Chapters 5-7, we walk through the NLN's arc of learning and how it unfolds across the three convenings that comprised each cohort's core experience. Each three-day convening has its own goals and purpose, with each session playing a key role in building relationships, skills, and momentum within each cohort over the course of six months.

Chapter 8: Embedding and Sustaining the Work

In Chapter 8, we talk about sustaining the NLN network after the cohort convenings and what we're learning about how to keep the work, the connections, and the engagement of a network alive after the formal program ends. Ultimately, for each network to realize its full potential, it has to embed in the local community and not remain dependent on outsiders.

Chapter 9: Measuring Impact

In the Conclusion, recognizing that this work is constantly evolving, we share our emerging lessons, talking frankly about both the challenges and the opportunities of building collective leadership for systems change. We also reflect on how these ideas might be applied to other contexts, before concluding with parting thoughts for the field.