Category Archives: Network Startup

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.

Investing in Networks , Network Startup

When Networks and Funders Meet

Peter Plastrik

Lessons for Funders Investing in Networks

A funder’s money is a powerful force for controlling the people or organizations building a network. There’s a natural tendency for network builders to defer to the source of money. So the funder may have the power to dictate the design—purpose, membership, governance, and other elements—of the network. And the reasons to exercise this power may be reinforced by the funder’s desire to claim credit for whatever the network achieves. But sooner or later, control and credit have to become more distributed among the network’s members. As the authors of “Cracking the Network Code: Four Principles for Grantmakers” noted: “ Funders succeed with networks by providing sufficient resources to support the network without overpowering it.”

From our work with networks and funders, here are a few do’s and don’ts for funders, in particular when starting up a network:

  1. Don’t dictate the network’s purpose; co-create it with potential and existing partners. If a funder directs a network’s purpose and activities, network members may comply to get the funder’s money, but they wont feel committed. As a result, the network may not perform well and it’s not likely to be generative. Better to develop things in consultation with network members so it meets their needs too.
  1. Be open to surprises; don’t try to pin everything down. Early in a network’s life, it’s unwise to put its development on a production schedule and to commit the network to specific outcomes and timelines. Funders have to be patient enough with the network to invest in its front-end collaborative capacity and allow it to forge its own direction.
  1. Let network membership expand naturally through members’ connections, not through funder dictates. When a funder determines a network’s membership, several things can go wrong. It may assemble members who are not personally committed to the network or are not ready to collaborate effectively. Their primary relationship will be with the funder that selected them. The funder may manage the addition of members to suit its needs, rather than allowing expansion to occur naturally based on the members’ desires to add connections that create value.
  1. Intentionally dilute the funder’s power over time. Instead of maintaining control over a network, a funder should help develop a network governance structure in which it is just one of many decision-makers, but still can provide leadership.
  1. Don’t override network members’ concerns or interests. It’s natural for network members to defer to a funder, especially when the funder is being insistent on something. Instead of pre-empting challenges to their thinking, funders should participate in the network’s decision-making process and learn what others are thinking, without forcing others to acquiesce to their wishes.
  1. Patience is essential and will be rewarded. Building a high-performing network is a marathon, not a sprint. It takes time to get started well, to build capacity, and then produce impact. Funders have to be willing to support the underlying capacity and operations of a network before expecting results.

There’s more advice and more detail in Connecting to Change the World , the “Bonus Track” section.

Comedy Blog , Network Startup

Networking (Dogs Do It!) vs. Network Building

Peter Plastrik

dogs networking We found this depiction of networking at Dog Mountain in Vermont , where Stephen Huneck’s gallery/chapel/gift shop contains countless delightful images of canines.  Dogs checking each other out by sniffing each other’s butts: a social behavior, networking. Every dog does it, and so do we humans, though usually in other ways.

We point out in chapter 1 of Connecting to Change the World that people network with each other for many purposes. As Aristotle pointed out long before Facebook made it easy to befriend with just a click: “Man is by nature a social animal.”

But being good at networking is not the same as being good at building a social-impact network. Most people have networking in their blood. But network building is a practice ; in involves particular ideas, frameworks, methods, techniques, and tools—practical knowledge that works. Much has been learned about this practice from the recent experiences of network builders themselves and from the experiments and insights of researchers in mathematics, physics, sociology, biology, computer science, and other disciplines.

Knowing how to build a network doesn’t require a graduate degree, but it involves much more than just going with the flow. The practice of building networks—designing, starting, managing, and evaluating them—can be learned and mastered.

Network Design , Network Startup

Starting a Network? Eight Design Issues to Consider

Madeleine Taylor

As more social change agents and philanthropic funders consider building networks, rather than organizations, to achieve their goals, they have to figure out what’s involved in successfully starting a network. Usually, in our experience helping to start dozens of social-impact networks during the past 10 years, the founders and funders know some, but not all, of the network design issues that have to be worked through at the beginning—and what they don’t consider can come back to haunt them.

There are two creation stories for networks of organizations or individuals seeking to achieve a social-impact goal. In one, the network bursts into life out of an unpredictable mash-up of like-minded people who share a problem, get together to see what will happen, and then invent a common path forward. They share a belief that pooling their resources and collaborating might get them what they want, but they don’t know what they’ll do together. In the other story, the network is managed carefully into existence, the result of analysis, planning, and negotiation. The founders initiate the process to achieve more impact by getting organizations to collaborate. But to engineer the collective effort they have to analyze the problem they want to solve and its causes, and determine who should be involved in solving it, what they should do together, and how to do it.

Whatever the different origin of social-impact networks, the start-up tasks for designing them are essentially the same. Our experiences with network startups has allowed us to identify eight design issues that network builders should address during the start-up process:

  1. Purpose : What is the network’s reason for being?
  2. Membership : Who is eligible to become a member, what are the membership requirements, and how many members will there be?
  3. Value Propositions : What will be the benefits of membership—for individual members and collectively?
  4. Coordination, Facilitation, and Communication : How will network members link and work with each other?
  5. Resources : What is the network’s funding model?
  6. Governance : Who decides what the network will do, and how do they decide?
  7. Assessment : How will the network monitor its condition and performance?
  8. Operating Principles : What rules guide the network’s culture?

Quite often we find that network founders have anticipated some, but not all, of these design issues. For each issue, there may be many options and there’s no one right choice—there’s the choice that is right for the network you’re building. Network-building practice isn’t based on applying a one-size-fits-all formula. It involves selecting from a repertoire of possible decisions and actions, based on an understanding of the network’s situation. Take, for instance, the design of network membership. You have to decide who is eligible to become a member and how “open” or “closed” the network will be; how many members to have and whether to cap the number or allow growth; whether there should be several categories of members with different benefits and responsibilities, or just one category; and what the requirements for participation there should be.

We explore each of these eight design issues in depth in the second chapter of Connecting to Change the World: Harnessing the Power of Networks for Social Impact, and offer practical advice about how to handle them. Because some of the issues re-emerge later in a network’s life or persist from startup to finish, we also examine them closely in later chapters on managing a network’s development and resetting a network’s design.

Successful networks are designed—they don’t just happen. Knowing a network’s essential design issues and how to make—and when to change—design choices is a crucial part of the practice of building effective social-impact networks.

Network Design , Network Management , Network Startup

Network “Backbones”: The Three Levels of Coordination

Peter Plastrik

At a network’s start-up it’s useful to think through what sort of support network members need and are likely to need in the future.  In our experience there are three coordination roles in network building: logistics, operations, and strategic management–and it’s rear for a network to need all of these roles filled right out of the starting gate. (Network coordination is one of 8 network design elements discussed in chapter 2, “Start Me Up: Designing a Network.”)

Logistics involves setting up meetings, conference calls, and other ways for members to engage with each other; tracking and documenting network activities, decisions, revenues, and expenditures; creating and distributing essential information such as a directory of members and contact information.

Operations typically involves other duties, such as running a website and other external communications; facilitating group processes of members; documenting network decisions and activities and managing an archive of network documents; administering the network’s finances; helping members to draft proposals for funding; and orienting or on-boarding new members of the network.

Strategic management is a higher level of responsibility focused on helping network members, especially those with governance duties, make and implement decisions about the network’s development. this could include managing relationships with outside partners and funders, supporting members who are undertaking initiatives for the network, and creating and modifying network plans.

Guest Blog , Network Startup

Leading a Network By “Making It Up As You Go”

Maggie Ullman

Maggie Ullman is co-founder of the Southeast Sustainability Directors Network

Two of us started a network because we wanted to magnify our voice through building a team with aligned values and we wanted to help the South catch up in terms of urban sustainability by building capacity in our region. Our one allowance: permission to make things up as we go. It wasn’t until reading Connecting to Change the World that I realized our allowance is actually the bedrock of our network.

What does it mean to “make it up as you go” when stewarding a network? The book’s “Bonus Track” with advice to network engineers articulates my favorite points on this concept very well:

1) Don’t dictate the network’s purpose; co-create it with potential start-up partners. We didn’t need to have complete clarity on our networks purpose, in fact if we did we risked building a group of people who may participate but not feel true ownership. Co-creation of a network isn’t something you achieve at a place in time during a strategic planning session, it is something that evolves.

2) Be open to surprises; don’t try to pin everything down. Surprises can present risk, which can be scary. My tendency is to think through the potential risk and plan to avoid it. In network building I’ve learned surprises can be hidden opportunities. For example if we pinned down the content focus of the network to green infrastructure and energy efficiency programs we would have completely missed the opportunity to share knowledge, align strategies, and produce guidance on green business recognition programs, an interest that emerged through member conversation at an annual meeting.

3) Lead, but allow others to co-lead in organizing the network. This is the hardest one for me. Traditional leadership can look like a strong person who is out in front paving the path for others to follow. The more leaders from a network who participate in creating the purpose and do the work to organize the members, the more generative the network is.

Guest Blog , Network Startup

I Hadn’t A Clue About What Organizing Networks Really Required

Morley Winograd

I started reading Connecting to Change the World right after I had successfully launched an initiative to make college tuition free by 2020. I figured that accomplishing that task would certainly qualify as trying to harness the “power of networks for social impact.” Our organization, Redeeming America’s Promise, had a website and was deep into Facebook and Twitter publicity so we certainly believed in the power of social networking. I thought it was just another wonderful case of serendipity in the world that had led one of its authors, Pete Plastrik, to send me an advance copy at that particular moment in time.

Although I wasn’t wrong about the serendipitous nature of the arrival of this wonderful book in my life, I quickly discovered as I read each chapter with increasing interest, that I hadn’t a clue about what organizing around networks really required and just how powerful such generative networks could be.

Still, the sequence of decisions that Connecting to Change the World suggested leaders of such networks need to make bore a remarkable resemblance to the decisions that our group had had to make as our idea went from a dream to a possibility to a real movement in a little over a year. Furthermore, the evolution of the nodes of such networks, from connection to alignment to production, that the book described was exactly the strategic challenge we were about to confront in our own development. And the detailed advice on how to nurture and grow such networks seemed to me to provide us with an invaluable tactical roadmap on how to go about our work over the next six years. That’s when I realized that if we or anyone else was planning on creating a community-based, bottom up initiative for change, we might as well follow the advice that the authors provide based on their own experiences in taking on such challenges in order to do it in the most effective and efficient way possible

It’s too early for me to report that the epiphany I had on the plane when I picked up Connecting to Change the World has led us to sustained success and the creation of a generative network. Our own mission statement makes it clear that it’s way too early to claim victory for our cause.  But reading the book did reinforce my belief in serendipity and gave me a greater feeling of confidence that we will achieve our goal.

I look forward to reading more stories from leaders who followed the path provided in this book and learning even more lessons on how to succeed in making the world a better place, together.

Morley Winograd is President of Redeeming America’s Promise .

Network Startup

Letting Go of Control

Peter Plastrik

Copenhagen—John and I came to this lovely city in June to help start a global network of 17 cities focused on deep carbon reduction. As happens with many social-impact networks, the initiators of this network organizing were not the potential members, the cities, themselves. Instead, three intermediary entities had come up with the idea of building the network and planned the first organizing meeting and a funder had invested the resources to get going. It was a classic case of network “engineers,” as we call them, doing the early heavy lifting in building a network. But, as we detail in “Bonus Track—Advice for Funders and Other Network Engineers,” right after Chapter 2 about starting up networks, there are perils. And most of them were present at the Copenhagen meeting.

The fundamental issue is control —whose network is it? And the most important task for engineers is to recognize the need to relinquish much or all of the control they have at the beginning, and then actually to do it. As we explain in “Bonus Track”— There is nothing wrong with engineers exerting strong influence over a network’s design, but if they are too heavy-handed or persist in controlling things for too long, their networks may never become highly engaged or generative; the members will just wait to find out what the engineer wants.

With this in mind, the Copenhagen meeting organizers had heeded the first of “10 Lessons for Network Engineers.” Specifically, we had talked with each potential network member about the network’s purpose, the first design issue that a network must resolve. We had designed the meeting to allow the potential members to develop a consensus about what they wanted the network to do, rather than just ask for agreement on what we thought it should do. To help this along, we had identified a handful of potential purposes and organized time for the potential members to explore them. In other words, we tried to implement Lesson 1: Don’t dictate the network’s purpose; co-create it with potential start-up partners.

After the meeting, we took what had been said by the potential members, who had agreed they wanted to work together, and developed a set of concrete potential activities for the network. And we sent that out for feedback through a Survey Monkey that allowed each potential member to indicate which, if any of the activities, they felt strongly about and which they didn’t care about. With that feedback in hand, it was possible to draft a proposed statement of purpose, first year objectives and priority activities—and then send that out to the members for further feedback. At the same time, about a third of the members volunteered to serve on a steering committee to start to take over decision making.

It’s a deliberate, iterative, and somewhat slow process. But it starts with the engineer recognizing that as members buy in, you can shift control into their hands and start trusting the network.