Designing for Civil Society

Online communities may help democratise your organisation

Once members of an organisation have the means to talk to each other all the time - instead of at occasionally meeting -  they can organise to change the way things are run. I always hoped that would be the democratic result of online communities - now my friend Ed Mitchell provides some real evidence of the possibilities.
Ed's been working over the past year or so with CILIP, the Chartered  Institute of Library and Information Professionals, to develop online communities for sharing professional practice in a fast-changing world. I gather that's worked well, thanks to the strong commitment of Lyndsey Rees-Jones of the Membership Services Unit, and other staff. Earlier this week Ed and Lyndsey told the story of how member engagement also started to impact on the governance of the organisation. You can see their slides from Online Information on slideshare and here.

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Ed expands  on the presentation in his blog post about the Membership engagement story.

There wasn’t a communities team when we started, nor processes to ensure that issues arising from the communities were handled professionally and promptly and fairly. This was an important element of our work:
How to ensure that when issues come up in the communities, the members can get the influence and support from HQ they need when they need it?
This is a strategic management question which we think is on many organisations’ horizons. Since talking about this project publicly, we have found that there are very few ‘community’ teams in HQs which are pragmatically integrated into the membership communities, so we wanted to share our findings to help others.

The CILIP Membership Services Unit, addressed this issue, and started work closely online with members. Here's what happened:

This presentation tells a simple story about how the CILIP members chose to use one of the private membership forums as a ‘virtual hustings’ in advance of their council elections, and how they managed to get support from HQ when they needed it.
The website has an election page and the individuals’ manifestos, but no space to converse with the hopefuls and to kick the ideas around, so the members set up a thread in the forums, which proved to be exceptionally popular. It gave everyone a transparent opportunity to discuss their ideas and hopes for CILIP in 2008 which had not been there before.
The members agreed that they wanted to promote the elections as much as possible and identified all the channels of communication available to them (from their own blogs to the formal CILIP communications). They felt that the CILIP website itself wasn’t promoting the elections enough and pointed this out among themselves. Within one day, the web editing team in HQ had put a banner together and placed it right in the middle of the homepage.
This doesn’t sound like a revolution, but it was the first time that the members influenced the management and got space on the homepage under their own steam.
Most organisations’ homepages are tightly controlled spaces with rather formal processes for booking space on them; otherwise there would be great tension between departments seeking the all hallowed homepage slot. CILIP is no different.
The thing to note is that these processes reflect the needs of HQ, so the members getting a say in what goes on the homepage is really quite exciting.
This was enabled because of having a communities team in HQ who were aware of what was going on in the communities and who were actively influential in HQ and who could therefore advocate for the members where suitable.

CILIP appear to be particularly open to sharing their experience with other organisations, and Ed reports that they have agreed to publish the lessons learnt document next year - previously only available to members.
Meanwhile discussion about member engagement continues at RSA, where Matthew Taylor is committed to putting the 27,000 members (known as Fellows) at the heart of the organisation. (Previous posts archived here).
After a very successful event for 250 Fellows a couple of weeks ago, project ideas are being developed by Fellows on a prototype RSA Networks online system. I've raised issues on the OpenRSA blog about how ideas about co-creation with Fellows, presented at the event, will be put into practice, and I'm hopeful we'll get some encouraging news shortly.
The shift from hierarchical to more networky structures in organisations is really difficult, and I've great admiration for the way both CILIP and RSA are tackling this. As I wrote last year, if membership organisations don't face up to the issues they could be by-passed as members do their own networking elsewhere.
For a US view of the issues see Six principles for designing an architecture of participation at the excellent We have Always Done it That Way blog. UK references on the challenges facing membership organisations most welcome. The NCVO Third Sector Foresight team have been doing some great work on the impact of technology on nonprofits, with a recent seminar reported here by Paul Henderson, but need another round of funding to keep this work going. Maybe CILIP or RSA could co-host an event with NCVO to share experience to date, and gain support for further investigation.

Technorati Tags: membership, rsa, rsanetworks

What's the role of trustees now we are networked?

The BBC's new Internet blog is proving a useful place to engage with BBC techies on how they develop new media and run bbc.co.uk. It covers hot topics like provision for Linux users, DAB, DTT, DRM, Dirac video codecs .... no, don't turn off, there's more to it than geek talk. I think it raises again the issue of governance, and how we licence-payers get to influence that we get for our money - as already highlighted by Ben Whitnall and Simon Dickson. Here's why.
The purpose of trustees and regulators is to stand on the side of beneficiaries and consumers, and make sure they get a fair deal from those providing products and services. It's a particularly important role when there's little competition, and donations or public monies are involved.
But what should the trustees do when those producing the services open up a direct conversation with their customer/beneficiaries?
That's what Ashley Highfield and BBC Future Media staff have done in setting up the BBC Internet blog, to complement existing Editors' blogs for News and Sport. It's in line with a trend for companies to use blogs to push at the corporate membrane, as Robert Scoble helped pioneer at Microsoft. There's now lots more examples, and as Alan Moore has remarked, once customers have stormed the Bastille, they don't want to go back to their boring days jobs ... or indeed, ineffective ways of complaining about service.
The BBC Internet blog is very timely because the BBC Trust - which represents licence-payers - is currently carrying out a review of bbc.co.uk, and consulting licence-payers. I recently helped run a workshop on behalf of the Trust, with colleague Lizzie Jackson and Ed Mitchell, to involve bloggers in the process. This prompted a number of blog posts - as we hoped - including one from Anthony Mayfield, who made these points among others:

The shift from channels to networks means that the concept of governance must be challenged and reassessed: Power is shifting out (not down, as some condescending types out have it) from large organisations. The BBC Trust needs to understand the nature of this change, of the shift to networks, and be clear (to itself first of all) about what that might mean for its role. The opportunities to involve and engage with the people that pay for and use the BBC and the organisation are increasing - and it's about more than just engaging with the "blogosphere". In short the Trust needs a strategy for responding to the media and social revolution going on around it. Social media is not just another channel for consultation and governance as usual.
The BBC Trust needs innovation as much as the BBC does:  The Beeb has had some stumbles of late to be sure, but I'm generally admiring of its past efforts at innovation that have been generally helpful to the new media industry in the UK and beyond. The BBC Trust needs to be an innovator too in how it carries out its duties. It needs to innovate around how governance is carried out and, I say again, what governance means in the age of network. These review exercises are, I think, carried out every five years - imagine how much larger and sophisticated online conversation will be in 2012... The techniques of engagement and listening online that the Trust uses now will be far important, perhaps even central, to any kind of meaningful review then...
Governance / public consultation needs to be *live* if it is to be relevant today: It's neat and tidy to carry out a one month consultation with stakeholders, but it is limited. People interested in all sorts of aspects of the BBC on and offline are offering their thoughts all the time. To remain relevant, and indeed legitimate, I would say that it was in the Trust's and all our interests that listening and engaging with their publics was something that was happening all the time. The BBC Trust should be thinking about a retainer for Market Sentinel, or developing their listening skills and process networks in-house. 

Nico Macdonald has provide a range of suggestions on how the BBC Trust could extend its engagement, and Anna Coghen for the Trust confirms that "We're currently looking into some sort an online meeting/aggregation// linking space."
All this highlights the wider questions of governance in a networked age, raised by Anthony. As I wrote earlier audience isn't "audience" anymore when it is online, contributing content, and now in direct dialogue with the professional content producers. Trustees are no longer mediators ... they are (or should be) part of a system of co-creation and co-governance. The Ideal Government project is discussing similar issues around the transformation of government services.

The basic lesson is let’s transform government services for the benefit of users. But the Web 2.0 way is to invite users to help co-create the e-enabled public services they want, in the style they like, and share it.

Similar issues will emerging in the world of nonprofits, where Dan McQuillan is suggesting Charities are broken and may get by-passed.
Of course, it can be argued that this is all very well when the customers and providers are online, as in the case of bbc.co.uk, but rather different in many other circumstances where the services are not digital, and the customers or beneficiaries are the other side of digital divide. In that case trustees have a particularly important role to play ... and should think even more carefully about how they ensure that they are in touch with those they represent. As so often is the case, the opportunities and challenges posed by the Internet just raise old issues of organisational relationships that need refreshing or redesigning.
Meanwhile the BBC is not standing still in its own formal submissions to the Trust review, and as Nico Macdonald reports, has commissioned essays from a number of people in the field. You can read Nico's outline here.
Direct responses can be made to the BBC Trust here until December 14.

Technorati Tags: bbc, bbccouk, bbctrust, governance

Social media supports the shadow side

Faced with questions about why blogs and other social media can make a difference to the way organisations work I haven't got much beyond they challenge hierarchies internally if people share information informally, and they punch a hole in the membrane between the organisation and members or customers. They also encourage conversations and storytelling ... help people find a voice and new roles.
These issues were discussed a lot at the recent Gurteen Knowledge cafe and continue to be raised on the Gurteen forum.
What I have lacked is some ways of tying these ideas together - now neatly provided by Lloyd Davis in It's Social Stupid. It's all about the shadow. He reports he had a moment of clarity last week while holding an open space at Online - and I think it's worth quoting at length: 

I hesitate to call it an "ah-ha" moment.  It's more of a "well....duuuhhh!" moment. Hold Tight!
All organisations have formal systems and informal systems.  You know the formal bits because formal usually means explicit - the org structure diagram, job descriptions, line (or matrix) management structures, written policies, mission statements, value statements and vision statements and the group and individual objectives (supposedly) derived from them and the behaviours that go with them - making a request, filling in a form, going to see the right person in facilities management, appraising staff performance, project and programme reporting.  They also have formal links with customers, suppliers and other organisations - official channels.  This is the bureaucracy.
The informal or shadow systems are the links between people that may have nothing to do with their official roles or structures.  This shadow organisation arises because the formal systems cannot be efficient or effective outside of certain limits.  Ralph Stacey in Strategic Management & Organisational Dynamics (dreadful title - great summary and important critique of the development of modern strategic management) points out that there are two main reasons for bureaucratic control failing to produce what it's supposed to: the adverse human reaction to bureaucracy (Yup! as I typed that previous paragraph I shuddered at ever having to be part of one again) leading to alienation, passive dependence, work without significance, deskilling and provocation of undesired or unintended behaviour.  In addition, formal systems can't deal well with ambiguity or uncertainty.  So these informal groups, unofficial ways of behaving, doing business through social activities and networking grow up to allow the organisation to operate more effectively and efficiently.  Remember too that unlike the formal part of the organisation, the boundaries of the shadow systems are permeable and always changing, making new contacts in "the industry" or "the sector" as and when opportunities arise.
Furthermore, it has been pointed out that the shadow organisation is the place where innovation and creativity are allowed to flourish.  You can't make new stuff effectively within a formal process.  Creativity requires messiness, mistakes and flexibility around time.  Innovations happen in the informal world - and, from time to time, when they are useful to the formal world, they become systematised and turned into policy or else they remain "the way we do things around here".  Note also that the organisation as a whole is the same bunch of people - just that they move over time between formal and informal modes and activities, however, my experience has been that there are people who feel more at home in the informal systems (cool dudes like me - heh!) and others who spend most of their time formally (tight-arsed pen-pushers - natch!)
Now, what came to me on Monday with a thud was that it's these informal groups and activities that are supported by "social software"  Blogs give people the opportunity to say what they want and talk about it, outside of any established order - just talk about what's on your mind.  Wikis allow for a meritocracy in collaborative documentation and policy/decision making.  Social networking tools allow you to find and foster new connections outside of the org chart.

Lloyd then explains the resistance to introducing new tools. It isn't just technophobia.

So when we take social software or social media and try to sell it (through formal channels) as a part of the bureacracy - to replace something formal, it's not surprising that we get asked about ROI and metrics and to prove "what's in it for me".  And when we just take a risk and start something as an experiment that then just works, these questions get asked less and less.

I think the shadow organisation using social media (face-to-face or online) is a great metaphor. Can't wait to hear Lloyd's sales pitch to the chief exec about supporting the darker side...

Neighbourhoods, governance and games

I'm looking forward to the conference on neighbourhood governance and community engagement organised for CDF by Kevin Harris next month. If that sounds bit challenging, but be assured that Drew Mackie and I will aim to liven things up with our Neighbourhood Governance Game. As Kevin reported previously, we had a lot of fun with a dry run last November, when groups invented semi-fictitious neighbourhoods and then planned improvements together .... or not very together.

As a simulation it was uncannily realistic. The policy people struggled with the slight vagueness of their brief and worked away at trying to clarify it without going to talk to the service reps or the residents’ groups. In one locality, the service and community groups began by swearing undying mutual support but before long had drifted apart. The community group in this case struggled very realistically to agree on things. At the other locality, the reverse happened: they began deciding independently what they were going to do, but in due course came together harmoniously and creatively. And on one side we had this exquisite example as participants worked on the timeline: in one locality in the fictional year two, the residents came up with a stack of initiatives (orange post-its - click on the image to enlarge) while the agencies' sole initiative was ‘Progress report and evaluation.’

Drew and I have since produced a brief report, which you can download as a zipped pdf here, including my favourite observation:

One participant honestly reported at the end: “we found it so difficult managing internal stakeholders we never got round to talking to external ones; we started consulting people at the end of the process as a way to generate consensus, not the beginning as a way to frame the task. Personally I was appalled by own behaviour - I started off accusing my colleagues of slipping into policybabble rather than plain english, and yet happily charged through to the end of the process without once asking anyone in the other room what they thought”.

The conference takes place at the Resource Centre, Holloway Road, London, 14 March 2006. As Kevin says:

The event will be chaired by Carol Hayden, Associate Director, Shared Intelligence. Speakers include Mark Hitchen, ODPM Neighbourhoods Team, providing an update on the government proposals; the Young Foundation's Paul Hilder giving an update on the Transforming Neighbourhoods programme; and Susie Hay, regeneration and participation consultant, discussing the importance of informal networking at local level.

On that form, the rest of the conference will be both lively and enlightening. Bookings and enquiries: Cheryl.Roberts(at)cdf.org.uk, 020 7833 1772. There's a leaflet here.

Sustainable engagement: more conversations, less committees

Kevin Harris has come up with a rather good model of neighbourhood change that ties in neatly with our recent discussions about Governance with the grain. Kevin's prescription comes down to more conversations and less committees, leading to stronger networks and, well, neighbourliness.
We had been talking with Steve Clayton and Chris Baker about the Castle Vale estate in Birmingham, where a housing action trust has successfully used over £300 million to bring enormous improvements since the early 19090s. The challenge now - as in many similar renewal programmes - is to shift from a committee-heavy style of doing things that may be necessary to handle money and big projects into something else. The "something else" still has to provide ways for residents and local interests to influence how the neighbourhood is run, not least because the UK government is pushing control of public services down to local level. However, a small and usually aging group of volunteers probably aren't going to continue to turn out to committees, forums and scrutiny panels now the big problems have been tackled, and the big money is gone. As Kevin writes:

It's obvious that neighbourhood governance makes huge assumptions about people's readiness to commit to community action. But I've stood in community centres watching people come in to find out what's happening and see who can help them; and I know they will sense and avoid any situation where they might be pinned to the wall and coerced into being treasurer of this or that committee for the next four years. If your everyday life is a complex muddle of errant kids and dodgy health, malevolent housing conditions and unpredictable income, you're probably not up for a 24 month committee commitment. If you can see how it relates to your problems though, you might be up for collectively organising something where you can see a beginning and an end. Is that obvious? Good.

What Kevin suggests, as shown in his diagram (click to enlarge), are actions that will help build people's confidence, increase the use of public places in ways that work for all, and more social interactions.

I think there are actions we can focus on to influence those conditions: dealing with disorder, promoting attachment, promoting walkability, stimulating social networks, and organising events and occasions - and maybe some others that I haven't thought of yet. Again, policy hasn't come up with this sort of list - disorder certainly, walkability occasionally, and organising events sometimes at local level. But what would policy look like if it sought to promote attachment to place (eg by addressing high levels of geographic mobility) and helped to stimulate social networks and encourage more conversations?
It does seem to me that certain outcomes are likely if we use these influences on the specified conditions. Boosting what I've called community confidence, local presence, and the frequency of conversations between residents will have a positive effect, I would argue, on getting sustainable community engagement (which of course has to be a rich mix of participatory opportunities, not a string of committees) and on community cohesion.

Put like that, it all seems blindingly obvious, but it isn't the sort of thing that you see in the action plans. It is difficult to chunk up into projects that can be neatly budgetted and tendered to consultants. It involves local groups and agencies giving a lead in the ways that they relate to local people, and to each other with a strong emphasis on openness, accessibility, delivery.... getting out there and living it, not just attending yet more meetings to talk about it. I know many groups and agencies are good at that ... but quite a few aren't. From what I've heard of Castle Vale they may be just the people to show how to do things a bit differently. Kevin and I have been invited over to talk some more, and I'm looking forward to that.

Governance with the grain

One problem with big housing and neighbourhood renewal projects is that they necessarily demand a lot of structures for management and community engagement ... but when the money goes you can end up with a lot more breaucracy and committees than you really need.
This was highlighted recently in a fascinating discussion with a couple of officers from a big housing estate that has benefitted from some £300 million of public and private investment over the past 12 years. The 10,000 people living on the estate now have much better homes, a safer and more attractive environment, rising education standards and better employment prospects. It has been done through enormous hard work by local politicians, officials and many residents who became representatives on committees and forums, and volunteers running local projects.
They were motivated by the strong desire to tackle some really tough problems in the 1990s - and the chance to have a real say in how money was spent.
But as one of the officers said, in match terms it is really only half time. There's a lot more to be done in helping people feel their regenerated neighbourhood is a friendly and safe community, and to continue to care about the improvements.
To this end there is now a neighbourhood partnership, a trust with some money still to spend, a set of forums for education, environment, health and other issues, and a scrutiny panel for residents to keep an eye on how all this performs.
The trouble is that many people are suffering participation fatigue. The core resident volunteers and committee people probably number about 30 ... and most if not all are over 60.
How to re-energise involvement and bring new people in?
I was joined in the discussion by old friend Kevin Harris, who blogs knowledgeably about neighbourhoods, informed by his Local Level consultancy work.
For the past few years Kevin and I, with another colleague Drew Mackie, have been pushing the case for informal methods to help build communities: mapping social networks, storytelling sessions, using a mix of informal events and social software, as I wrote here and here.
We enthusiastically expanded on these ideas. Instead of trying to recruit people to committees, why not consider whether these are really needed. Could their functions be fulfilled in other ways?
What's needed is ways to offer people information, help them communicate and collaborate, tell their stories, get organised - and make their voice heard when something comes up that concerns them. This could be done in large part by mapping the many networks and communities of interest on the estate: friends and families, sports, hobby and church groups, school and work networks. From this is it possible find the natural 'connectors' in communities, see where the gaps may be, and develop or enhance channels for communication and engagement.
Ah, said one of the officers, sort of going with the grain of the community, instead of trying to impose more structures? Treat people as individuals instead of consultation fodder. Exactly.
And so we came up with 'governance with the grain'. The next step is a visit to the estate, meet the locals, and see if our theories stand up to a reality check. Some may turn out to be passionate about committee meetings, but I somehow doubt if that goes for the majority.
Update: Steve Clayton and Chris Baker says they are happy that we identify Castle Vale, Birmingham, as the estate. I've written more here prompted by Kevin Harris's Model of Neighbourhood Change

Partnership problems? Get to know the people involved

I hear continuing rumblings about the challenges inherent in the UK Government's Changeup programme, where the aim is to create infrastructure support for nonprofit organisations, involving a lot of collaborations at national, regional and local level. The Home Office Active Communities Directorate is insisting that each area of support - like governance, volunteering, technology - should have only one lead consortium in order to get funding. That's already caused difficulties with one of the support 'hubs', and there's been more general criticism  of the model. Suddenly partnership - and how to make it work - is becoming fashionable yet again.

Invitation to start local e-democracy pilots

US-based Steven Clift started a campaign to promote e-democracy 10 years ago, and has been snowballing support around the world ever since. I'm glad to hear from Steven that he's now aiming to support some UK pilots, where local groups of citizens want to promote e-democracy.
Steven writes:
E-Democracy.Org is looking for citizens and Local Authorities in the UK interested in starting an online local public Issues Forum for their community. This new pilot project is part of the UK National Local E-democracy Project.
Our citizen-based model creates a facilitated online public space in the heart of real civic life. The pilots will leverage E-Democracy.Org's decade of experience in strategic and sustainable online forum development.
We will provide training, assistance, and the essential forum facilitation framework through a local Forum Manager and citizen steering committee. The new open source GroupServer technology will help us bring together a critical mass of local citizens by combining the best features of e-mail lists with user-friendly web forums.

How to play the governance game

Governance is one of those aspects of organisational life difficult to describe but easy to recognise when it goes wrong...Board members leaving in frustration, executive director and chair in power struggles, client groups feeling they don't get a say, stormy annual meetings... and that's just in the nonprofits. At a recent conference Drew Mackie and I helped participants work through those and other challenges using a simple game. The workshop wasn't quite as brisk as the communities of practice session we ran, but I think participants achieved a lot in 90 minutes. If you want to try it for yourself, here's how we did it, with some results played back to the rest of the conference that was organised by the Foundation for Good Governance. Briefly:
* Split into groups of not more than eight
* Each group invents an organisation facing tough challenges.
* Exchange the scenario with another group - giving them the task of dealing with the challenges
* Ask the groups to take on Board roles while they develop plans, and report back to everyone else
* Then ask groups to reflect on the lessons learned to report back to the wider conference
You can download here a more detailed sheet of instructions developed by Drew Mackie.

Boardroom tip: value the awkward squad too

Acting as a nonprofit Board member may be a "good thing" - but can it be fun too? Consultant David Carrington, speaking recently at a governance conference, tackled this and two other tough issues: how can organisations keep good Board members, and how can they best respond to the member who specialises in asking awkward questions?
One standard solution to many Board issues is to run away-days, aimed at building the team, engendering enthusiasm for the cause, and planning for the future. But as David reported, these deserve a reality check. Quoting one friend's experience revisiting away-day results a year on, his group found that:

• for about 25% of the action points, they couldn’t remember what they had meant or why they had come up with it
• 50% - nothing had been done
• 15% had been done but hadn’t worked or survived beyond the first time
• 10% had been done but they’d forgotten that the proposals had been decided on at the away-day – the CEO had persuaded them that they were his bright ideas!