Bob Brown of Michigan State University is using Strategic Doing to assemble a core team of leaders to redevelop devastated neighborhoods in Flint, MI. In this presentation, Bob provides background to this work and explains why Strategic Doing works. According to Bob: "In neighborhoods besieged by complex, wicked problems, Strategic Doing creates hope through the power of taking action with the assets or gifts that we already possess.  In that moment when we combine assets we begin to tell a new story of opportunity and possibility.  Strategic Doing gives us the power to change our lives, our neighborhoods, and our communities."

1. Strategic Doing
September 5, 2013
Bob Brown
Michigan State University

3. The Big Picture

4. In Battle Creek, People Are Working to:
•
•
•
•
•
•
Improve education and cut dropout rates
Create a zero tolerance for violence
Eliminate blight and create healthy green spaces
Help people achieve financial stability
Promote healthy behaviors
Reclaim neighborhoods and increase their
vitality

5. All of These Efforts Run Smack into Messes
The educational mess
The poverty mess
The healthcare mess
The public safety mess

6. What’s a Mess?

7. Complex Messes
A system of interacting complex problems

9. The Long Standing Violence Mess
Battering of Children
Increase in Post Traumatic Stress Disorder by
witnessing acts of violence
Insensitivity of court personnel
(towards battering)
Sense of isolation
Felonies
Historic underinvestment in poor
neighborhoods and
neighborhoods of color
Rape and sexual assault
Poor Housing
Fear for one’s personal safety
(inability to resolve
conflict without violence)
Economic flight from
distressed neighborhoods
Alcohol and violence
Misdemeanors
Overburdened hospital
emergency rooms
Little or no Arts & Culture
Feelings of inequality and powerlessness brought
on by racism, classism, age discrimination,
ethnicity discrimination, cultural background
discrimination
Physical and psychological abuse
Depressed economic conditions
Mass media sensationalizes violence
Unsafe
Neighborhoods
Youth bitter and hopeless about future
Domestic Violence
No Jobs and Money

10. New Understandings:
Complex problems behave in ways that make more
straightforward programmatic solutions less
effective
The past does not necessarily predict the future.
Small changes can create large and sometimes
unanticipated effects
Preskill and Tanya, 2012

11. New Understandings:
Producing specific outcomes at a pre-determined
time (a grant period) is difficult
Predicting all possible outcomes that might occur
(United Way funding proposals) is difficult
Sequencing outcomes in the same way that a welltested, stable program intervention can (Logic
Model) is difficult
Preskill and Tanya, 2012

12. A Challenge However Remains
Even with this increased understanding,
the challenge of working in messes
remains: Getting from here to there
without getting lost or overwhelmed
along the way

13. But Here Where It Gets Tricky
Within the pathways of dealing with messes not
only do we take action to address:
•
•
•
•
simple situations
complicated situations
complex situations
And potentially chaotic situations

14. Those taking the actions live in:
–
–
–
–
simple situations
complicated situations
complex situations
And potentially chaotic situations

15. Chaos

16. In chaotic situations people
are just trying to survive,
we do whatever it takes

17. Complicated

18. In complicated situations things are either
socially complicated or technically
complicated
When things are socially complicated we build
relationships and create common ground to
increase our social agreement
When things are technically complicated we
experiment and coordinate expertise to
increase our technical certainty

19. Simple

20. In simple situations we just trying to follow
the recipe – evidence-based practices.

21. Complexity – the land of Messes
Characterized by high uncertainty and high social conflict (high uncertainty
about how to produce a desired result fuels disagreement, and disagreement
intensifies and expands the parameters of uncertainty.)

22. Complexity
Causal connections are intertwined, entangled, and overlapping

23. Complex Situations
cause-effect relations are unknown and, in principle, unknowable before
effects have emerged.

24. Complexity
Uncertainty and unpredictability are part of the innovation process
•

25. Living in the Land of Complex
Messes: Flint, Mi

26. The Zone of Complexity in Flint
Starting in the late 1960s Flint has
suffered from 50 years of disinvestment,
deindustrialization, depopulation and
urban decay, as well as high rates of
crime, unemployment and poverty.

27. The Zone of Complexity in Flint
• 1978: 80,000 GM
employees
• 2010: 8,000 GM
employees

28. The Zone of Complexity in Flint
• May 2002, Ed Kurtz
appointed as the city’s
st Emergency Financial
1
Manager

29. The Zone of Complexity in Flint
•2010 Headline:
Flint still is number one
for violent crime in the
nation

30. The Zone of Complexity in Flint
• November 2011: Governor
Snyder appointed Michael
nd
Brown as the city's 2
Emergency Financial
Manager

31. • But we are numb to words
and stats
• Here is the Zone of
Complexity in Flint – my city
in pictures

52. But Most of Us Are Overwhelmed With
the Sheer Scope and Complexities of
These Issues
So we fall back on a set of rules and standard
operating procedures that predetermine what we
will do
Effectively short circuits our ability to work across
simple to complicated to complex situations or
messes
Patton, Developmental Evaluation, 2011

53. So What’s the Response – Is There a
Key?

54. • We can address messes
• But traditional programmatic approaches aren’t
creating impact
• We need Social Innovation to impact messes
Preskill and Tanya, 2012

55. What is Social Innovation?
Novel solutions to social problems that:
• Are more effective, efficient, sustainable, or just than
present solutions
• Creates value that accrues primarily to society as a
whole rather than individuals
• Crosses sectors,
• Involves changing the dynamics, roles, and
relationships between many players,
• Challenges conventional wisdom about the nature of
the problem and its solutions
Preskill and Tanya, 2012

56. Your Social Innovation: Project 2020
• Working together, we champion ideas and
initiatives that move this community toward
excellence.
• We exist to create a coalition of groups and
individuals who are connected, coordinated,
mutually supportive and working toward the
greater good.

57. Project 2020 – a network of people
• Getting on the Same Page
• Moving Levers
• Changing Outcomes

58. Achieving Your Vision Will Require:
• Thinking Differently
• Behaving Differently
• Doing Differently

59. Strategic Doing

60. What is Strategic Doing?
used to develop & implement strategy
based on collaboration and open networks
asset based (using what you have)
leads to shared, measurable outcomes and
a roadmap to follow
Strategic Doing is being taught across the nation

61. The background and theory of change

63. Hierarchies are limiting

64. Networks can help get things done

65. Networks are all around us
Who makes
the iPhone?
Wizard of
Oz made in
1939 by ONE
company
Spider Man 3
made by 56
companies in
a network
A network
made by
Apple

66. Moving from old to new

67. Strategic planning

68. Link, leverage and align

69. Paradigm shift

70. New ways of thinking

71. New thinking: the two economies

72. New thinking: the two economies

73. New thinking: understanding networks

74. Network structure & combining networks

75. How networks emerge and grow over time

76. New networks can move older assets
to new opportunities

77. The network effect

78. New ways of behaving

79. Growing trust takes time

81. Balance leadership and direction

82. We move in the direction of our conversations

83. Developing a civic space important

84. New ways of doing

85. Strategy

86. Strategic Doing

88. Managing a network and getting things done

89. Build a strong foundation with a
balanced civic portfolio

90. Choosing a strategy, evaluating complexity and payoff

91. Using Networks in Flint
“A
partial solution to a whole
system of problems is better than
whole solutions of each of its
parts taken separately.” (Ackoff,
1999, p. 324)

100. Elements of Healthy Neighborhoods
• According to the Institute for Comprehensive
Community Development, “Neighborhoods
are complex systems that require many
elements to work well, from decent housing
and safe streets to employment opportunities,
good schools and access to shopping, health
care and other services.

101. Responding to the Mess of Flint
Neighborhoods
• Use a new, more holistic approach to community and
neighborhood development.
– Blends human, community, and economic development
– Provides the supports needed for healthy transitions from birth
to adulthood
– Is grounded in research
– Acknowledges the natural challenges to healthy development
but recognizes that these challenges are more difficult without
the proper supports
– Offers guidelines for realigning investments for collective wellbeing
• Facilitate a process that creates action based on available
resources and assets

102. Goals
1.Improve communication among and between stakeholders at all levels.
2.Proactively address conditions in Flint neighborhoods that give rise to crime,
social disorder and fear of crime.
1.Re-establish a city-wide sense of community with a shared responsibility.

103. Working to impact the lives of youth, and families by
“Creating Community with a ZERO Tolerance for Violence”
in neighborhoods of high need

104. Neighborhoods
Without Borders
(NWB)
We are mothers and fathers, sons and daughters,
grandmothers and grandfathers, business people and
pastors, educators and students, administrators and
workers coming together in a grassroots and
community effort to significantly improve the overall quality of life in Flint neighborhoods.

105. Flint Lifelines
Building
Neighborhood
Capacity

106. In Flint, We Work to Link, Align, and
Leverage Across Networks
Lifeline
Ceasefire
Building
Neighborhood
Capacity
Community
Action
Edible Flint
Flint
Neighborhoods
Neighborhoods
Without
Borders
Flint
Neighborhoods
United
Flint Area
Congregations
Together