Category Archives: Network Development

Network Development , Network Management

F2F: Designing the Network Meeting

Peter Plastrik

There’s probably no more important event in a network’s life than the convening of network members, whether it happens annually or more or less frequently. Most fundamentally, face-to-face/in-person meetings are a golden opportunity to build and strengthen connections among network members and connectivity dictates the vitality and capabilities of a network. The Urban Sustainability Directors Network’s former managing director, Julia Parzen, understood this and how it was different from a “conference.” When USDN’s leadership was designing the network’s first annual meeting, she recalls, “People started saying, ‘We’re coming to your annual conference,’ and I’d get really annoyed and say, ‘We don’t have an annual conference. We have an annual network meeting and the purpose of it is to help people get to know each other and find people with common interests.’”

The network convening is so important that we dedicated seven pages in Connecting to what we called “customized weaving” and this advice about designing F2F Meetings:

  • Make increasing connectivity an explicit objective of the meeting.
  • Make enough time for members to connect, not just work together.
  • Leave room for network members to invent on the spot what they want to do together.
  • Promote what members are doing and what they know; don’t over-rely on outside experts.
  • Increase members’ awareness of the network.
  • Find out how much connecting has happened.
Network Development , Network Startup

Emerging Social Dynamics in a Network

Peter Plastrik

In the early life of a network—the first year, say—how can you tell how well it’s doing?

Right off the bat there’s observation: what does a network gathering look like, feel like, sound like? I’ve been in network annual meetings where newcomers to the network were astonished about how much energy and exchange network members put out—and the sheer amount of noise in the room. Even more astonishing, the members maintained a high level of energy for day after day. At the end, maybe they were exhausted—but during their time together they were passionately committed to giving and getting as much as they could.

Hidden in all that energy is a clue to what you’re really looking for if you want to gauge the network’s condition. It has to do with what makes a network tick, as we explain in chapter 1 of Connecting : two social dynamics—reciprocity and shared identity—emerge and are amplified by the network’s decentralized structure.

Reciprocity is a behavior, but it is driven by an emotion: a commitment to the success of others on their own terms. In a strong network, members don’t just know each other well, they are committed to each other’s success, and will take action on behalf of others. When you survey network members ask them how committed they feel they are to the success of other members and how committed they think other members are to their success.

Shared identity is also a feeling, a sense of common cause, mutual interest, alignment, and of belonging to something—literally, being a member. When you survey members ask them how much they feel they are a part of something larger than themselves, something communal.

In a network’s start-up phase, it takes time for members to develop a deep commitment to others in the network and a feeling of belonging and alignment in the network. But its emergence is what network builders should be watching for.

Network Development , Network Leadership

Necessary Conditions for Transitioning A Network

Peter Plastrik

Working with a large network that is transitioning from being a grantee network supported and guided by a single philanthropic foundation into a self-sustaining network without the funder, I developed a set of questions for the network members to focus on as they consider how to build their future together. The first two are about the necessary conditions for moving through the transition prompted by the funder’s pending exit.

  1. Is there a committed, connected core of network leadership that wants to “cross over”?
  2. Is there strategic clarity about the need for and purpose of a network ?

It seems likely to me from observing the online chatter in the network that there is a group of members who are passionate about transitioning the network and are prepared to provide some leadership for the process, even though for now they don’t have a shared framework.

Less clear to me and perhaps more difficult to do, is how to accompany passionate leadership with strategic clarity about the network’s purpose and value added within a context–an infrastructure–that has many organizations, institutions, and other networks. What is this network going to be about? How does it add value to its members? What is its collective value?

Answering these questions comes before worrying about the many other elements of network design: membership rules, governance, resources, etc.

Investing in Networks , Network Development , The Network Building Field

Collaboration? Grantmakers Love It, But Most Don’t Fund It

Peter Plastrik

Most grantmakers believe it’s important for funders to coordinate funding and actions with each other, but when it comes to supporting collaborations by their grantees a majority of funders acknowledge that they never or rarely do. That’s the conclusion from a new study of funders by Grantmakers for Effective Organizations (GEO). For several years GEO has promoted the idea that funders can use collaborations of nonprofit organizations–networks, in particular–to achieve greater impact.

In chapter 2 of Connecting to Change the World: Harnessing the Power of Networks for Social Impact , we describe some of the reasons that funders are wary of investing in networks even if they are intrigued by the idea. For instance, they may wonder precisely how a network will get anything done, who in a network can be held accountable for results, and how to evaluate a network’s performance. As some grant makers have grown comfortable with investing in networks, they have supported the development of tools for other funders, such as a framework for evaluating networks produced by the Center for Evaluation Innovation and Network Impact .

But it’s also up to network builders to help potential funders understand more about the case for investing in networks and how to overcome reasonable concerns. In chapter 2, we offer several tips for doing this in addition to providing a brief scan of revenue sources for networks:

  • Pitch the potential impacts of your network, not just its network-building processes.
  • Anticipate funders’ many questions about networks–and be ready to answer them.
  • Show funders the value of the network members’ voluntary effort.
Network Case Study , Network Development

Study of Government Roles in Building an Energy Conservation Network

Peter Plastrik

We haven’t worked with many government-instigated networks, so we were quite intrigued when Andrew Peterman, a sustainability consultant for Arup, shared with us an intriguing assessment of a large-scale energy efficiency networ k of businesses engineered by the U.S. federal government: “ Balancing Act: Government Roles in an Energy Conservation Network .”  (Peterman is a co-author of the study. See his blog about the study. ) The network’s purpose: to stimulate development of a stronger market for energy efficiency.

When I talked with Andrew, we realized that most of the frameworks he used to analyze the network mirrored frameworks used in Connecting to Change the World . For example, he differentiated between the “private” and “public” goods the network created–which reflects our distinction between individual and collective value propositions that a network seeks to satisfy.

The core of Peterman’s research focused on identifying the multiple and shifting roles that the government played in the life of the network as it evolved.  The government started as the Commissioner of the network, but also played these roles: Interpreter, Marketer, and User. Peterman examined each of these roles in detail. “Each . . . possessed a different configuration of resources, motives, and relationships with other organizations . . . These roles emerged or adapted to address the disparate interfaces and needs of the network.” Andrew’s analysis provides another dimension to the evolution of a network. In our chapter 4, “Network Evolution,” we look closely at the evolution of a network’s connectivity structure and capabilities. And in our “Bonus Track” we examine the ways that a network “engineer”–like the federal government in the case Andrew examined–can engage in network building. Thanks to Andrew we can add the evolution of an engineer’s role to those frameworks.

Guest Blog , Network Development

Understanding a Network’s Development and Evolution

Julia Parzen

Julia Parzen (former Managing Director, Urban Sustainability Directors Network)

I think I am the low-ego weaver that is described in Connecting to Change the World .  When I helped to co-create the Urban Sustainability Directors Network (USDN), my intuition probably was already good.  Let the members drive the network and do the work.  Listen closely to needs and opportunities. Broker connections.  Create “Ah ha” moments.

Still, I didn’t really understand network development and I especially didn’t understand network evolution.  From the authors of Connecting to Change the World I learned how to watch the network itself rather than just the people in it, notice the changing patterns of connections, and understanding how to interpret them.

I would have asked some questions because I am a question-asker by nature.

  • Who’s connected to whom? Are new connections forming? Who’s not connected but could be?
  • Are members getting value from their connections?
  • Are network resources flowing to high-energy networking opportunities?

I would not have been methodical about asking these additional questions:

  • Where are the hubs and brokers?  How can we assist them?
  • Where are the bottlenecks? Can we eliminate them?
  • Is the intensity of connections changing in ways that demand new network structures?
  • Are relationships deep enough that the network can move beyond information sharing to joint production?
  • Are clusters emerging? Collaborations advancing?

Asking these questions at least every year when USDN repeated its network-mapping became second nature.  In fact, I asked these questions much more often in weekly staff meetings where staff together reviewed the data on participation, satisfaction, and impact.

A network truly is a base for many different activities over time, but someone has to notice when members are ready to be offered a new opportunity or organize around more complex outcomes, as well as when they are done with existing activities.