So I finally decided to attend an RSA AGM that wasn’t in Sydney – since I’ve been a fellow of the RSA I’ve made a real effort to attend the ones that were in Sydney. Paul, who is the Chairman of the RSA, usually organises for a speaker to follow on from the more dry parts of the AGM, and there have been some good ones (not just me, at last years AGM). Every second AGM is in Melbourne, and Liz and I used the opportunity to head off for a weekend in Melbourne – staying, not incidentally, about 10 metres from where I stayed in Melbourne when I was down here with Damian and Graham about 15 years ago.
So, Melbourne, Carlton, Graduate House. AGM, financials, the obligatory ad for the RSA Journal and welcome of new fellows, and then Dawn O’Neill. Dawn’s a high powered executive who’s worked for a large number of NGOs – most of which would be intimately familiar to you if you’ve ever had any mental health issues or known people who have. She was speaking about collective impact – the idea that solutions to ‘wicked’ problems are not likely to be simple or a matter of best or good practice, but instead are far more likely going to require complete and total stakeholder involvement, an agreement of a shared agenda, and clear steps to achieving that agenda.
Interesting stuff – I think the idea is almost common sense, but the real skill would lie in negotiating with everyone – getting everybody to sit down in the tent would be hard enough. And, of course, although NGOs often deal with charitable cases, that doesn’t mean they are any less cut throat when it comes to government contracts and funding than other for profit businesses – as Dawn said, it pays to beware of the trolls.
And of course, this doesn’t happen quickly. One example, from Cincinatti’s education system, had been in place for more than 8 years, and was only just beginning to show signs of incremental growth.
Liz and I immediately took that example and compared it with our own experience in education – collective impact – how does one do that in Catholic education? The first thing that we thought about was that there was simply nowhere near enough collaboration or cooperation. Too many petty chiefs fighting over their own little fiefdoms. So I guess the real question is how do we all change that?