Later this fall, Tamarack Institute’s Co-CEO Liz Weaver will retire, closing a chapter that includes many decades supporting community change, collective impact, and poverty-reduction work across Canada and beyond.
Liz is a long-time collaborator and dear friend of the Collective Impact Forum, and it has been a true honor to work alongside her as she has served so graciously and thoughtfully as a change leader, mentor, catalyst, partner, and a lifelong learner.
In this special podcast episode, Liz reflects on her career navigating the many complexities within collective change work, including:
- The importance of balancing “people and process” in collaborative initiatives
- What to consider when working within complex systems
- The critical importance of storytelling to help illustrate how change is possible
- Why it is necessary to work in collaboration if your goal is to achieve long-term population-level change
Ways to listen: You can listen below or on your preferred podcast streaming service, including Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Simplecast, iHeartRadio, Amazon, and other podcast apps.
Please find a transcript of this talk further down this page.
Resources and Footnotes
- Tamarack Institute
- The Water of Systems Change
- The Innovation Ambition Continuum by Mark Cabaj
- The Cynefin Framework: Defining a Collaborative Problem or Opportunity
- Building a Plan on a Page
More on Collective Impact
- Infographic: What is Collective Impact?
- Resource List: Getting Started in Collective Impact
Music
The Intro music, entitled “Running,” was composed by Rafael Krux, and can be found here and is licensed under CC: By 4.0.
The outro music, entitled “Deliberate Thought,” was composed by Kevin Macleod. Licensed under CC: By.
Listen to Past Episodes: You can listen and subscribe via Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Simplecast, iHeartRadio, Amazon, and other podcast apps.
Podcast Transcript
Welcome to the Collective Impact Forum podcast, here to share resources to support social change makers working on cross-sector collaboration.
The Collective Impact Forum is a nonprofit field-building initiative that is co-hosted in partnership by the nonprofit consulting firm FSG and the Aspen Institute Forum for Community Solutions.
In this episode we are interviewing a dear friend of the Forum. Later this fall, the Tamarack Institute’s Co-CEO Liz Weaver will retire, closing a chapter that includes many decades supporting community change, collective impact, and poverty-reduction work across Canada and beyond.
Liz is a long-time collaborator with the Forum, and it has been a true honor to work alongside her as she has served so graciously and thoughtfully as a change leader, mentor, catalyst, partner, and a lifelong learner.
In this special episode, we talk with Liz about her career navigating the many complexities within collective change work. We discuss the importance of balancing “people and process” in collaborative initiatives, what to consider when working within complex systems, the critical importance of storytelling to help illustrate how change is possible, and why it is necessary to work in collaboration if your goal is to achieve long-term population-level change. This conversation is a real treasure to us and we hope you enjoy it.
Interviewing Liz is Collective Impact Forum executive director Jennifer Splansky Juster. Let’s tune in.
Jennifer Splansky Juster: Hello, everyone, and welcome to today’s podcast. I’m Jennifer Juster, executive director of the Collective Impact Forum. Thank you so much for listening today.
In today’s podcast I am honored to be welcoming Liz Weaver, co-CEO of the Tamarack Institute, to this conversation. Here at the Collective Impact Forum, I often refer to the Tamarack Institute as our Canadian sister organization. I’ve had the great pleasure of partnering on a broad range of work with Tamarack over the last decade. Throughout this time Liz has been one of the leaders of Tamarack’s work, and also a true shaper of the field of collective impact and community change through her thought leadership and prolific writing.
Liz has extensive experience in leading and coaching community change efforts and is known for her expertise in community engagement, collective impact, and leadership development. She has also led in partnership with others the Tamarack Institute as co-CEO significantly growing the organization and its impact over the last decade.
Liz has announced that she will be retiring later this year, so we wanted to find a time while she is still in her formal capacity with the Tamarack Institute to have a discussion about both her career and her reflections on leading community change work. So, with that, Liz, welcome to our conversation.
Liz Weaver: Thanks so much, Jen. I’m really looking forward to the conversation today and I must say I am blushing a little bit on that introduction. It’s hard to reflect on 15 years at Tamarack but much longer in the sector.
Jennifer Splansky Juster: Well, I’d love to start by asking you a question that I actually learned from you and your colleagues at the Tamarack Institute. This is a question that I’ve always found it to be a wonderful way to help people ground themselves in a conversation and open a window for folks to connect with and learn a little bit about each other. So, I’d like to start by asking you to share, Liz, why is it important that you are here today?
Liz Weaver: Yeah, I love this question too. I always, when I use it in a facilitation or around a collaboration table, you always kind of have these kind of aha moments about what connects you together as individuals. Why is it important that I’m here today? You know, just like you mentioned that the Collective Impact Forum has learned from the Tamarack Institute, I feel like I have equally learned from you and from your colleagues and from the work that is being done across the U.S. and in other places, across FSG, across the Collective Impact Forum, and across the team. I think in many ways it’s been a shared learning journey for all of us and so it’s important that I’m here partially to give back, but partially to also kind of engage in conversation about what might be next for this work, for collaboration as a whole, for really thinking and growing together. That’s always kind of been a big motivator for me is not only the opportunity to give to, but also to get back from. So I think it’s—that’s what I’m looking forward to today is this notion. I want to turn it a little bit back on you, Jen. Why is it important that you’re here today?
Jennifer Splansky Juster: Oh, Liz. Well, thank you for asking. I think I have to answer both professionally and personally. So professionally, I would say I’m really glad to be in the conversation with you, Liz, because you have such a breadth of experience and wisdom to share on community leadership and collective community change. When you retire certainly I won’t be surprised if you continue writing and sharing your thoughts and your wisdom will live on through all of your writing and the tools and contributions you’ve made to the field. But this way we get to capture your voice sharing some of your reflections and hear from you literally via the audio. I guess personally, Liz, you’re a wonderful mentor to me and my leadership and I don’t think there has ever been a time where we’ve had a conversation where I didn’t learn something from you or leave with something new to read that you’ve recommended. It’s just a joy to be in this conversation and it won’t be the last time we talk, but maybe the last formal podcast we do between you at Tamarack and the Forum, so thank you.
Liz Weaver: Yeah, it’s interesting because it’s that exchange that what are you working on? What are we working on? Where are the synergies and where might some of the differences be and what does it mean in the U.S. context, what does it mean in the Canadian context, and then you and I get to spend time with global partners as well, place matters and collaboration for impact and then inspiring communities and also with collective change labs. So I don’t think it will be our last conversation for sure, but yeah, it’s always kind of cool to be able to have a set of colleagues where you can say, “Hey, I’m thinking about this, what are you seeing?”
Jennifer Splansky Juster: Absolutely. I know that you are always so humble, Liz, but I want to ask you if you look back at your career, what are one or two of the things that you are most proud of?
Liz Weaver: Yeah, you know, that’s such a good question. There’s one thing that precedes my time at Tamarack that I’m very proud of and then quite a few things, I think, while I’ve been at Tamarack that I’m equally proud of. But the one thing that precedes it is some work I did when I was an executive director or a volunteer center. Part of that time at the volunteer center I was able to be part of this program which was a program for national voluntary sector leaders called the McGill McConnell program. It was at McGill University and it was funding in part by the McConnell Foundation and we had—there were three cohorts of voluntary sector leaders and we spent about 18 months together and I was in cohort one.
Part of that work was, and learning was, to anchor the learning in your organization. I was able to, with a bunch of colleagues, develop the Canadian code for volunteer involvement. It was just before the International Year of Volunteers which happened I think in 2001, so I’m dating myself a little bit. But here we are in 2024 and that code still resonates with Volunteer Canada. There were a whole bunch of products that came out of it in terms of really auditing volunteer programs and deepening understanding of what it takes to have a volunteer program and really build a lot of strengths right across the voluntary sector in Canada.
So I’m really proud of that. I’m proud that 24 years later or so it still have legs, right? Sometimes you do things and you’re not really sure where they’re going to land, but that one I think is—I’m pretty proud of that one.
And then at Tamarack I think really growing the Learning Centre part of our work has been pretty important to Tamarack. You know, we’d always been an organization where we were deeply embedded in place-based work, but we recognized that it couldn’t just be inside the boundaries of the organization. In order for place-based and community change work to really resonate we had to not only share it internally within, you know, our partners who were working in communities across Canada, but how could we also open source it to share that information as widely as possible. I think, you know, that has really resonated with lots and lots of people. You know, we’ve got 50,000 people in the network, maybe more after the podcast today, but also, it’s really positioned us to have conversations with you all at the Collective Impact Forum and with global folks that are doing place-based work as well. I think those are the two things that I can—when I left Tamarack, I can point to one thing before Tamarack and the growth and the resources that I’ve contributed too during my time at Tamarack in the learning center that are, I think, pretty significant and have in some small way shaped thinking and practice.
Jennifer Splansky Juster: Absolutely. Absolutely, Liz, and that’s a good plug for anyone who has not checked out the resources and wealth of tools, resources, knowledge housed on the Tamarack Institute’s Learning Centre. Please do so. I am often pointing folks to resources there and it is a treasure trove, so, well done, well done, Liz and team.
And Liz, I already mentioned that I just think you are such a fabulous community leader and organizational leader and I’ve had the good fortune of hearing you reflect on leadership on and off over some bit of time, and I’d love to hear a few of your reflections or bits of wisdom around some of the things that you think it takes to really lead this kind of community change work. I’ve sometimes heard you refer to these as holding some polarities as part of what this leadership looks like, and I’ve heard you talk about maybe I’ll throw out a first on the polarity between—I shouldn’t say between, the balance of holding both people and process in community change work. Can you say a little bit more about that?
Liz Weaver: Yeah. I think it’s a tension more than a polarity and I do think, you know, in the current context it’s even more relevant because the pressure to meet the process objectives are very strong, especially when you have shorter term funding that is available to you or you feel like, oh, OK, I’ve got to get this done, you know. We almost bias towards that versus the people’s side of the work. And we do so at our peril because, you know, getting that buy-in, getting that deep commitment, that deep resonance about how does this thing that we’ve agreed to work on together, how does it align with your personal vision and mission and values and your organizational vision and mission and values, that kind of people engagement that why is it important that you’re showing up for these conversations or these meetings is so critical to this work, and when we don’t pay attention to the people or we pay more attention to the process we leave the people behind in some ways, and I think it is a balance of spending the right amount of time on process, which is important, but also really paying attention to who are the people that we need?
David Chrislip talks about, you know, having the appropriate people in the room. He doesn’t say you have to have everybody but who are the appropriate people for the work that you want to accomplish together. So when you do some of that upfront thinking and then you manage or you engage people in a way that builds trust, that shares power, that centers equity, that really honors the diversity of perspectives and voices in the room, you’re going to get to the things that you need to get to in a way where people feel like, oh, I can really contribute to this or I can bring wisdom to this thing that we agreed to work on collectively together. It’s always this balance of people and process and really paying attention in equal measure to both, and sometimes in more measure to one and a less measure to the other or in more measure to the other and in less measure to the one.
And so, you know, I think people who are engaged in collaborative processes almost—there’s a saying in indigenous culture which is two-eyed seeing and I think it’s almost like you need two-eyed seeing, the kind of people side of the work and the process side of the work and paying attention to both.
Jennifer Splansky Juster: What are some, if you doing a good job with two-eyed seeing, what are some things folks could look for to know if something is falling short or how do they know if they’re actually not really attending for example to the people piece as much as they ought to be?
Liz Weaver: Yeah, and I think that’s such a good question and it’s also about you as a person if you’re the facilitator of the process, right? So sometimes I think when we are at the center of the facilitation of the process, we take on more than we should and invite less in, and so one of the things that I would check myself on is have I always put up my hand? Am I, oh, I can do that or do I invite some of the other people in the room into that part of giving their gifts and sharing their expertise and engaging and really thinking about, OK, to what degree am I balancing that? To what degree are people leaning into the conversation versus leaning back?
You know we sometimes don’t even pay attention to the cues, the visual cues that we have, and it’s harder when we’re, you know, in this more two-by-two computer environment to see the visual cues but you can. So are people leaning in? Are people volunteering their knowledge and their skills? Are they, you know, asking critical questions?
I just was on a call a minute ago, a couple minutes ago, with a collaborative table and one of the things we did at the very end, and I love to use this as a tool, is I will end a meeting, people will typically end meetings with a check-up. What is one thing you really liked about the meeting but what I do sometimes is say what is one thing that happened in the conversation today that you might disagree with or want to think about more? So that’s a second or third level of learning. It’s kind of getting people to think, oh, what didn’t I agree with? How might I have felt uncomfortable, and you know you’re in a trusting space when people will bring things forward that they will share with others.
I think it is about kind of balancing those kinds of things, asking critical questions, inviting perspectives in, paying attention to how much you as the convener of the collaboration are taking on too much and not inviting the other folks in, and then it’s the degree to which other people show up for the conversation and engage in the process and offer their gifts or their strengths or their resources in a meaningful way.
It’s kind of this balance that you learn as you become more and more experienced in it but it’s also you can be brand new to the field and you can say, hey, I don’t have this perspective, is there someone in the room who has this perspective or is there someone in the room who’s feeling uncomfortable, and just kind of being curious. I think it’s, you know, I love the word curiosity because I do think it is about being curious and being reflective, the kind of curiosity and reflection that folks in this work really need to bring.
Jennifer Splansky Juster: Oh, I love that, Liz, and you’re talking about sort of the importance of the facilitator. Often, we talk about that as the backbone or some folks that are holding leadership positions like a steering committee really showing up in these ways to help facilitate the process moving forward so that’s great.
Shifting gears a little bit, another—you tell me, Liz, if this is a polarity or a tension that I’ve heard you talking about, how to navigate boundaries versus systems. So say a little bit more about that and what it means for community change work.
Liz Weaver: Yeah, I’m not sure if it’s a polarity or a tension. I think I think more in tensions but it could be a polarity where one thing is an opposite of another so if you think about systems, you sometimes think about systems as being open ended, right? You know we’re not really sure what the boundaries of the system are or people are interpreting systems. They’re coming into a group or a situation with maybe different perspectives around the systems or a different understanding or conception of what that system is whereas a boundary is pretty—is maybe a bit more self-evident although people will have different boundaries, right? Some people might have boundaries around time. Some people might have boundaries around resources. Some people might have boundaries around the things that they’re willing to share or not share, and so they feel more like they have fenceposts around them whereas systems to me often will feel like this amorphous universe of possibilities in some way.
So, I guess maybe they could be considered polarities. I think the way that I enter into things is to try to get to a shared understanding of the thing that we’re talking about, right? Systems can be overwhelming and can scale at different ways. They can scale at the scale of a neighborhood or at the scale of a community or a state or a province or a country or they can even scale at the scale of an organization. That can be a system because an organization has these loops of reinforcing parts and unreinforcing parts, and so getting to understand of what we mean by the system actually creates some of the boundaries around the system so this is where for me working at boundaries and systems as tensions can be a helpful kind of entry point.
So thinking about what are the boundaries, what is our shared understanding and sensemaking of that system, and then what do we aim to change in the system or to move forward in the system or to adapt in the system, and this is where the work of FSG around the Water of Systems Change is really helpful as a way of putting a little bit of construction around the system or maybe even some of those boundaries around the system, right? What are the mental models that we’re hoping to shift?
So I’ve a mental model about poverty in Canada but other people in the room might have different mental models given their experiences and how their lives have been shaped, and so in order for us to be able to shift the system of poverty, we need an understanding of the different mental models, the things we think about, the biases we bring to this complex issue of poverty, and then we need to come to agreement about can we even shift those mental models or do we shift our policies, practices, and resource flows which are also embedded in the Water of Systems Change. Yeah, I think it’s so interesting to me to think about what are the agreements we can come to, what are the disagreements that might surface in those conversations and then what are the good enough frames or lenses or boundaries that we put around the system so that we can begin to do something about it that can lead to positive change.
Now that’s my take on it. What’s your take on it, Jen? I’d love to kind of hear what you think about when someone says, hey, we’re working on systems change or we’re trying to transform systems. How might you think about that kind of stuff?
Jennifer Splansky Juster: Thank you, Liz. I very much agree with what you’re saying that so much is about coming to a shared understanding with whoever is in the room, and if I’m working with groups on systems change I think the first question I would always start with is, you know, what is the system that you’re trying to impact and what is—well, I should say what is the change that you are hoping to see, and then what are the set of both individuals and organizations that are influencing that outcome, and kind of start to sketch—with the group start to sketch what are the boundaries that we reasonably can impact in order to kind of get our arms around the system that we think we can achieve our goal but not have it be too unwieldly a size of a system that we probably—it’s beyond our scope of influence, and so if folks are trying to impact something at a neighborhood level, that sort of comes with typically a defined geography but you still need to think about what are the boundaries around who needs to be at the table.
If you’re working on education, how far outside of the formal education sector do you get? Do you get so far some of the what we could call social determinants of education? Are we having housing folks at the table or food security folks at the table? I don’t think there’s a right or wrong answer to how you draw those boundaries but as you said, Liz, being clear about as a group what we consider part of the system that we are convening and that we can influence, and then look to others to influence other parts of the system.
So I don’t know if that exactly answers the question either but I think it’s that tradeoff between what are you trying to achieve, who can influence those outcomes, and then if we think about the Water of Systems Change as you said, Liz, what are the different levers or strategies that we think can make a difference in achieving our goal and then who needs to be part of the work to dive into those levers, be it policy change or shifting power or shifting mental models. I don’t know. What do you think?
Liz Weaver: Yeah, the only thing I would add, and I think you’re right. I think we’re kind of coming at it from the same perspective. My colleague, Mark Cabaj, who you know as well, wrote this paper that I think is really brilliant because not only do we think about systems and boundaries and things like that but the paper is called The Innovation Ambition Continuum which is really hard to say but it’s really about how ambitious do you want to be.
So you might look to want to shift something in a system but it might only be an incremental shift that you’re hoping for versus a transformative shift, and that’s OK. It’s OK to look for incremental shifts because then your context, it might be that that’s the best you can hope for in this first round of the work or in the time that you have available or with the resources that you have available. Other cases you might be looking for a bigger set of shifts happening or you might be aiming towards transformation, and so I think what Mark did in this paper which is maybe explore some of those boundaries in a way that really looks at ambition so really thinking about what might we be able to do together, how ambitious are we?
So I think, yes, to Mark but I also think sometimes, and this is what I’ve learned from the Collective Impact Forum and also from the work at Tamarack is that it’s also OK to be really ambitious, right? So at Tamarack we have this goal of ending poverty in all its forms, and we’ve been really focused on economic poverty but that also means that you’ve got to look at affordable transportation and housing and some of those interrelated elements of poverty but you know that you can’t achieve that in a year but you might be able to achieve it in five or seven or 10 years, right?
And so having an ambition that is realistic for the timeframe that you have but then saying this ambition is tied to something bigger that we’ve going to contribute to, and if we can get enough of a movement behind it, we’re going to really get traction on this and really get to that systems transformation I think is also really important. So, yeah, I don’t know. It’s kind of like the finite game and then the infinite game. How do you pay attention to both what you can do in the finite amount of time that you have but also what can you do to get to that big systems transformation.
Jennifer Splansky Juster: Absolutely, and there’s also a geographic dimension to it, right? Like what are the—I’m thinking about Tamarack’s work as a field catalyst so there’s a recognition of the kind of change that is possible at a neighborhood level or at a state or provincial level but there are also federal programs and policies and sociocultural context that influence what happens in community so there’s also that how do things connect from one place to another in order to shift some of perhaps what might be like constraints or barriers at a national level and the interplay sort of from small to broader geography. I know you all think a lot about that at Tamarack as well.
Liz Weaver: Yeah, we really, you know, I think that that’s been something that we have been thinking about quite a bit since our 20-plus years as an organization is the how do you get to joined-up solutions in place. I know that this is also something that you think about at the Collective Impact Forum, that there’s lots of examples in Canada and the United States around joined-up solutions, whether it’s the StriveTogether movement or it’s the youth work that the Aspen Roundtable for Community Solutions is engaged in, ending poverty work in Canada and climate transitions, and I think there’s lots of folks that are doing this joined-up solutions approach but it really is about kind of thinking through how do we get—how do the individual parts add up to more than individual parts, right? How do we share the stories of impact that show that you actually can achieve population-level change.
I think that’s what we’re all aiming for in this work, is to improve the lives of individuals and communities. You can do that through lots of program interventions but you get further faster by looking at shifting policies or shifting systems in some way or joining solutions together. I think the intentionality behind those joined-up solutions and the policy influences that it can have are pretty significant or at least we’ve seen that in the Canadian context. I know there’s lots of examples in the U.S. context as well.
Jennifer Splansky Juster: What’s one good example from the Canadian context to share with folks to make it concrete?
Liz Weaver: So one that I really like to point to a lot is the child care work that is happening in many provinces across Canada. There has been work at the federal government level around ending poverty, and one of the ways that you can address both ending poverty for all families but also achieve education and employment outcomes as well because these things are not disconnected is by creating the conditions where families will have access to 10-dollar-a-day child care.
So rather than having child care that is widely unaffordable, creating the conditions where it can be affordable for all means that kids will enter into early learning environments and have good educational outcomes in those early learning environments that families will be able to enter the workforce earlier and access employment and also see their costs decrease, their family budgets increase because child care costs are decreasing but also employment benefits and employers benefit because they’re going to have access to a workforce. It’s interesting how—and it’s a poverty strategy because family incomes are shifting, and so how one policy change led by the federal government but influenced because of their attention to building a poverty strategy in Canada, negotiating with the provinces around affordable and accessible child care, having communities also say, hey, this is going to be a difficult but important solution for families.
All of those things have these splash and ripple effects in so many different ways, and so that’s a really good example. We’re not completely there yet but we’re well on our way towards that. I think that the outcomes once we fully achieve that kind of idea in Canada, the outcomes will be really great for many families, many children and many families, and I think people will point towards Canada. Not that there aren’t also other countries where they have even better examples, so France in terms of its parental supports is a pacesetter but this is a step in the right direction, I think.
Jennifer Splansky Juster: Ten-dollar-a-day child care, that’s amazing. I think to any parent on the line, the benefits are, the deep benefits and ripple effects are readily apparent for sure.
Liz, another thing I heard you talk about and I don’t know if this is distinct from what we were just talking about is balancing simplicity and complexity. Say a little bit more about that.
Liz Weaver: Yeah, it’s such—I think it’ such an important part of this work because the issues that we’re working on, particularly when they’re connected to people, so the experience of poverty is connected to people. The experience of homelessness or substance use disorder is connected to people and their families and the service providers and things like that. That makes these issues inherently complex, and they’re also complex because they play out in different communities in different kinds of ways and in different population groups in different kinds of ways, and yet we can become paralyzed by that complexity.
We can really just be overwhelmed by it all and just, you know, think about, oh, there’s nothing we can do. The solutions are too complex, and so then we tend to go to programmatic solutions, and I think from my perspective as I think about this, I think about, OK, yes, it’s complex, yes, these issues are complex but if we take the Cynefin framework, right?
The Cynefin framework identifies four different types of problems, simple, complicated or technical problems, complex problems, and chaotic problems. We take the complex thing that we’re trying to solve for, so let’s say we take poverty and we think about what are the simple parts of that problem that we might be able to bring a few people together and solve relatively quickly? What are the complicated or technical parts of that problem and where do we need to bring in some technical expertise to help us solve for that? And then where is the deep complexity, and then what are we seeing as chaotic, and how do we address chaotic?
Each of—any problem has all of those elements to it. Mostly complex problems have all of those elements to it and yet we just sit in the complexity of it, and I think there are parts of problems where we can really actually break them apart and get some progress under our belt so that we can move things forward and not just—I do think we have to sit in the complexity but I do think that there are other parts of it so that’s one way of looking at it.
The other thing that I think about when I kind of see this tension of simplicity and complexity is also in collaborative processes. So how do we make some things really simple for people so that they can really engage deeply in the collaboration. At Tamarack we use things like plan on a page, right? So you don’t need a 40-page plan. You can actually synthesize it to one or two pages what you want to accomplish together, put it on a plan on a page and use that as a way of engaging people. What do you think about this? This is roughly the direction we think we’re going to be moving forward in. Are you OK with it? Are you able to sign on? What might you contribute to the solution? Asking those kinds of questions and I think sometimes we spend so many time—so many hours trying to work towards the perfect plan when really, we just need the good-enough plan which is the simple solution.
Jennifer Splansky Juster: Don’t let perfect be the enemy of the good. It’s very useful times to harken that guidance. I love that expression. That’s really helpful, Liz.
Some folks may not be familiar with the Cynefin framework so I’ll spell it, C, Y, N, E, F, I, N, and we can put a link in the show notes but I often use the simple, complicated, complex framing to help unpack what are we trying to accomplish here? Where does it fall on that framework, and then I like how you’re saying are there pieces that maybe we could address through a more kind of technical solution like a simple problem or something that’s not easy but we have a known outcome that we can address like a complicated problem, and what is truly complex where we’re really going to have to innovate and learn as we go and bring so many different perspectives together so that’s a really helpful way to think about managing complexity.
Liz Weaver: Yeah, we developed a bit of a tool that helps people kind of break it down and try to navigate their way through. Sometimes it’s messy when you try it out a couple of times, and it’s never going to be perfect. It’s always going to be good enough so happy to share that as a tool as well. You know what I love about the word Cynefin is that it’s a Welsh word. It’s done by a guy named David Snowden. He talks about the Cynefin framework and his thinking behind the Cynefin framework but it’s a Welsh word. Loosely interpreted, I think I believe it’s of place. It’s connected to place which, you know, places are complex, and the people that make up places are complex, and so it is an opportunity to think about the context of being in a place and trying to advance place-based change.
Jennifer Splansky Juster: That’s great. I bet that tool is in the Learning Centre that we referenced earlier. Fantastic. So, Liz, if you had to take a long-term view, I’m curious what your wish or hope is for the future of place-based work.
Liz Weaver: My hope is really that we do make more progress on this population-level change that we’re hoping for, and that we’re able to articulate and tell those stories better because in the telling of those stories about the impact that we are making, that lifts everybody up, right? It shows that we can make progress on the things that we’re trying to move forward, and it can happen at the scale of a neighborhood. It can happen at the scale of a state, at the scale of a community but we need those stories so my hope is that we get better at being able to tell the stories of individual places and then better at telling the stories of joined-up solutions because I think that when we see more separation in our communities and in our places, that kind of shared story is going to be so foundational to the future of place.
I might feel a little bit kind of Pollyanna in some of my perspectives but all the people that I’ve talked to or many of the people that I’ve talked to in places kind of share the same hopes for the place that they’re coming from. They want better outcomes. They just aren’t connected to each other or aren’t engaged in conversations that might bring those better outcomes forward or don’t know how to contribute or haven’t been invited in to be contributors to that.
So my hope for the future of place-based work is that we’re able to both invite people into the conversation in a way that joins us up together more than splits us apart, and then we’re able to see more clearly because I know the results are being achieved, right? But see more clearly the impact of those results and share those quite widely because they do exist. There are a lot of people doing really a lot of work to achieve the change that they’re envisioning, and the stories are there. It’s the kind of lifting of the stories I think that is—that’s going to take us to the next level.
Jennifer Splansky Juste: That’s beautiful. Is there anything else that you would like to share that we haven’t talked about yet?
Liz Weaver: Anything else? You know I think I’d love to know what your perspective is for place-based work.
Jennifer Splansky Juster: Oh, gosh, Liz. This was not in our preparation call, and I’m not retiring for a little while but I have to agree with you that there—ultimately what we want is for residents and all folks in communities to be determining the lives they want to live for themselves and succeeding in the goals that they set for themselves, and to the extent that some of these collective processes can help uplift the hopes and dreams of community and work in partnership with organizations and government and institutions to make that possible, that would be the ultimate vision. I hope that that future exists and I hope that we can get through some of these tough, polarized times that we’re in now to see that come to reality.
Again, it might sound Pollyanna-ish but we have to envision that future that we want to see and think about how to work backwards to get there, and so I love your point, Liz, about uplifting the stories of what is happening in community, being asset based and thinking about where can we shine that spotlight and uplift those stories to share, to bring hope to others, to learn from, and to give voice to folks who are doing amazing work that might not be as visible to others so I’m there with you again. It might sound Pollyanna-ish but that’s certainly the vision that I would hope to see for the future.
Liz Weaver: Yeah, you know and I think the only thing that I would add is a reflection in both Canada and the United States that there are people that are not in this conversation, that have been kept out of the conversation because of race, because of the color of their skin, because of the perspectives that they bring because of their lived experience, and I think part of all of this is also so important for us to check ourselves and really be reflective of who is in the conversation and how do we think deeply about equity and voice and perspective around these really complex issues because we can’t change things unless folks are engaged in the conversation in meaningful ways and bring their experiences to the conversation.
It’s that kind of lived experience that I think is so critical to the shifting that we hope to achieve in our communities. It actually makes us all have to reflect on who is in the conversation, who’s not in the conversation, and how do we create conversations that are going to really shift our ways of thinking and perspectives, yeah.
So interesting. I love the thing that you brought up, Jen, about people’s hopes and dreams and how do we support the fulfilling of those for—and I don’t even know if we can support it. I think we can support it but we can also create the conditions where they are actualizing their own hopes and dreams in a way that, yeah, that is good for all of us.
Jennifer Splansky Juster: Absolutely. Liz, what are you looking forward to in your next chapter?
Liz Weaver: Yeah, you know I love traveling so I am looking forward to traveling in a way that is fun oriented, not coming into a city or a place and doing—like I like meeting people for sure but I just also would like to see places and really understand the things that make those places unique and the people in those places so I watch a ton of travel videos. I don’t know why. That seems to be what I have on my YouTube channel, is people who are YouTubers who go on planes and fly to places. Some of them go in and out of airports a lot but I’d like to be able to spend time in places and really get to know places. That’s what I have in my future I think, and I’m particularly intrigued by islands at the moment so I’ve got a couple of places that I’d like to go to that are more island oriented and see what makes up people who want to live in islands or on islands.
Jennifer Splansky Juster: Your curiosity never ceases, Liz. I love it. That’s fantastic. Well, Liz, thank you so much for today’s conversation and thank you for bringing me into the conversation. That was really fun so, Liz, we appreciate you and your leadership and your thought leadership so much. Thank you for humoring us by joining a podcast, and on behalf of the Forum and the thousands of folks who have participated in programming that you have contributed to, we thank you for your contributions and your service to the field.
Liz Weaver: Well, thank you and you know I just have so enjoyed being a thought partner with the Collective Impact Forum, with you, with Tracy, with Fay, with so many others. I don’t know if a week goes by in my calendar that I don’t refer someone to a product or a tool or a resource that you and your colleagues have developed or an approach or—I just love the way that you’re always advancing thinking so appreciate that, appreciate you guys, and appreciate just the generosity and the spirit that you bring to this work of change that I think we hold in common. We’re kindred spirits so thank you for all that you’ve done and thanks for this conversation. It’s been fun and reflective, and one that I think I’ll hold strongly.
Jennifer Splansky Juster: Thank you, Liz, and thank you to everyone for listening. We wish you well. Be well.
(Outro) And this closes out this episode of the Collective Impact Forum podcast. If you are interested in learning more about what was discussed, you can find links to resources in the footnotes for this episode. And if you’re enjoying all that we share at the Collective Impact Forum podcast, we encourage you to rate us on your preferred podcast platform, and share your favorite episodes with colleagues.
We would like to acknowledge that this episode was produced and edited on the unceded, traditional lands of the Coast Salish people, including the Duwamish, Suquamish, Stillaguamish, and Muckleshoot tribes. We honor with gratitude the land itself and the past, present, and futures of these tribes.
The Intro music for this episode was composed by Rafael Krux and our outro music is composed by Kevin Macleod.
This is Tracy Timmons-Gray, Associate Director here at the Collective Impact Forum, and your podcast producer. I want to say thank you so much for listening, and we look forward to connecting with you more in our next episode. Until next time, let’s keep working towards collective impact.
