Solving complex problems like climate change or homelessness demands intense collaboration between diverse organizations and individuals--this book offers a powerful tool for facilitating coordinated action. We face complex problems today that resist linear solutions. They involve a variety of actors, organizations, and sectors, each focused on their own piece of the puzzle. Addressing homelessness, for example, requires coordinated action from unhoused people, healthcare workers, educators, police, local governments, businesses, residents, religious institutions, and nonprofits.
This book explains how to create impact networks, structures that enable diverse groups of people and organizations to connect, coordinate, and collaborate to do more together than is possible alone. A network approach combines the strategic rigor and agility of modern organizations with the deep connection and shared purpose of communities.
Drawing oin his experience working with over 50 impact networks over the past decade, David Ehrlichman describes how to cultivate a network mentality. He then goes deeply into the five Cs of creating impact networks: Clarify purpose and principles; Convene the people; Cultivate trust; Coordinate actions, and finally, Collaborate for systems change. Given the increasing urgency of the issues we face, impact networks have never been more essential.