Social Change – Page 4 – The Thrivable Society

5 Ways to Save Yourself from Relationship Overwhelm

photo credit: 1Happysnapper (photography)

Social Media is transformative and magnificent. It is also time consuming for most people, and it can lead to relationship overwhelm. You find so many amazing people out there who share your belief, interests, passions, and humor.

If you are trying to create more space in your life for what matters most to you, here are 5 ways you can save yourself from relationship overwhelm.

Time allocation. Create office hours – during a set time, you connect to people. Maybe it is 8-9am or 4-5pm every day. Maybe it is 2 days a week. How many hours do you want to give it? Maybe you have 5 hours a week, and you track how many you use. Experiment to find the method of time management that fits you and your lifestyle. Do what works.
Rings of priority – who is in the center, who is on the periphery? Make sure to give time to those people that really matter. Filter your social media feeds, so you always can see what they are up to. Be clear with yourself what your criteria are for being near that center loop of connections. The periphery is important too, as a resource for bringing in new information. Find balance for yourself. Don’t cut it off…but don’t get lost there either. What will help you hold that? Is it a container of time? A medium of communication?
Make a request. Share with your network your aim to manage your relationships so you can be a better friend and contributor. Say something like, “I cherish you and the wonderful connections I have, AND, in order to be a better friend, I want to be more careful about how I am giving attention. Can you please consider if contacting me is urgent, important, or valuable? I hope this helps us improve the quality of our connection.”
Make REGULAR sacred space – no tech, all family, or even all alone time. Hold it as your recharge time. Budge anything on your calendar before you give this up. Think of it as your morning oatmeal. Without it, you can’t bring your best self to the world. I don’t mean sacred as in religious practice. I mean sacred as in – never give this up. You are too important in your life not to make time for yourself. I have done this for years, and found it really rewarding. Oh, and do communicate to your connections that you have this boundary so they can respect it. They will hold it ONLY to the degree that you take it seriously.
Think in longer time frames and make daily decisions on those frames (and not the minute to minute ones). Think of what you want your life to be like over the next 5 years. What can you do today that helps you have that life? What is un-necessary, superfluous, repetitive (doing it twice or more isn’t adding value or enjoyment)? Imagine wiping your calendar completely free. No obligations. What do you want really and truly to add back in? (This often happens when you have a major crisis happen – it gives you permission to start over.)

“What are you going to do with this one wild and precious life?” ~ Mary Oliver

Wowed by Structure Lab

by Thriver

Structure Lab – the place to learn what structure to ask your legal advisor for. It can also be useful for foundations, investors, and others working with social benefit start-ups.

I feel wowed. I have been reading about structures for social benefit start-ups and considering my own for years now. I felt like I had a pretty good idea. Now I feel like I have a clear map. I even know what signs to look for.

photo credit: PharCyder

A hearty thank you to Joy Anderson, whose breadth of experience and warm comfortable facilitation style made the day fly by delightfully. I appreciate clarity. Now, I see more clearly the people collaborating with me and the roles they play. I understand better the vehicles for getting funding (and the structures those work with). And I grasp better what the asset types of the organization are and who I want to own and control them. I also gained clarity about some of my fears! Let me share with you some of my key learnings:

No one owns a nonprofit. You can’t do investment vehicles with equity. And you can’t close them easily.
Certain core factors drive decisions at different layers of your structure from the legal form to the governance structure. And governance structures can help manage mission/vision holding.
Understanding what makes the IRS nervous helps uncover which structure will work for your organization.
Foundations and investors avoid making their heads hurt. Your strategy for structure can help reduce their confusion and headaches.
The last two are about understanding where those relationships fit on several values matrices. Knowing where you are in relationship to them, helps you communicate. Understand where you are on those matrices helps more smoothly facilitate many of your relationships.
The difference between PRIs and MRIs.

photo credit: seier+seier+seier

Key questions and explanations allow participants to create solutions that fit their situation.

Some structures are easy to start or end, and others are hard (read, take time or capital). Consider where you will encounter resistance and what benefit that will bring you. Choose the resistance in a legal sense and resistance in the market that is right for you and your endeavor.
It is hard enough to describe a new enterprise. Consider that when choosing a form – what structures do people understand.
Clarity about the roles different relationships play and the degree of formality of your agreements support each.
The management of your assets and your access to capital dance with the structure of your organization. There is a complex choice set that doesn’t neatly fit a decision tree.
Consider the exit plan. It has implications in the structure. Do you plan to sell the org? What if you get hit by a bus?
Don’t be seduced by scale nor lured in by the idea of wild profits. What is the right approach for the appropriate growth of your organization. Yes, it has implications for certain structures.
Mediate the concerns of one level of structure (for example LLCs at the legal form level) with tools of another level (for example, governance and agreements).
When creating hybrids, there are benefits and drawbacks to the 3 simple forms (and
one complex form). The workshop explains what each one is useful for.

photo credit: quapan

There is more, but this hopefully gives you a sense of the information provided. The approach of the workshop is playful, and the process allows for each person to understand their specific needs and values.

We also delved into L3Cs. They were legalized in January for Illinois. We discussed what makes them useful as well as what the alternatives are.

I wanted to come away with a clear decision on how to structure thrivable.org. I have that decision. I also know now how that can change over time, and what my plan can be for the organization(s) over time. Best of all, I feel equipped to manage the unexpected, in terms of structure. So I feel resilient and flexible structurally.

Way to go Criterion Ventures!

Transformative Structures

by Thriver

I read the latest issue of Beyond Profit magazine on my flight to the west coast. I was headed to Beyond Social Media conference. What I most enjoyed reading was about going beyond existing structures. For years now, as part of several startups with varying degrees of social good intent, I have pondered over appropriate legal structures. It was so exciting when BCorp certification came out. Finally something to say that an organization was for-benefit with rigorous criteria. However, BCorps were, at that time, just a certification. We still had to operate in the space of either for-profit business (but working on double or triple bottom line outcomes), or as a nonprofit. The very name nonprofit annoys me. It is so far from being aspirational in purpose. It is framed by the profit issue and not by what drives a nonprofit — the mission to serve.

The first article I devoured discussed advances in hybrid organizations, Blended Value: Weaving Profit into Social Mission through Hybrid Models. Which states,

In the nomenclature created by Pamela Hartigan and John Elkington in their book, The Power of Unreasonable People, there are three categories of social enterprise: leveraged nonprofits, hybrid nonprofits, and social business ventures. As these categories indicate, where there is no single legal form that meets the need of an entrepreneur, they create their own: engaging in profit-making activities within a nonprofit, yoking a nonprofit with a for-profit, or creating a profic-making subsidiary within a non-profit.

photo credit: pshutterbug

Several states in the US have adopted new L3C legislation. L3C’s are low-profit, limited-liability companies designed to help foundations comply with program-related investment rules (as foundations push to use more than 10% of their endowments toward mission/program related opportunities). As a long-time advocate for mission-related investing, I was really excited to see L3Cs enter the market. However, they have not been tested with the IRS enough to build deep confidence in their worth and security.

And to be frank, this is really about confidence, trust, security. And while the B-corp certification acts as a “trust-mark” according to the article in Beyond Profit, it is not legally binding the way legal structures are. These legal models are all about trust! Founders want to be sure that the organization survives with the original intent (to make a profit or to serve the public). Combining the two is transforming the legal system and the structures we use to create organizations. Beneficiaries of a service also want to trust an organization to do what it is structured to do.

Lakra, citing the preconceived notions people have about certain structures, said. “You wouldn’t use a non-profit courier company, nor would you trust a for-profit company to provide HIV education to the deaf.”

We know we can trust that a for-profit company, no matter what gloss and cover elides it, will be driven by the need for revenue. They will be generous, helpful, and good citizens to the degree that serves their “rational actor” in the market approach. And a well-meaning entrepreneur can end up selling a for-profit business and seeing the core values get wrecked in the pursuit of revenue. Creating a structure that ties the organizational activity to a social mission is tricky. There are paths through it. And legal forms are actually more complex then just “for-profit” and “non-profit” lead us to think. There are member-owned organizations and cooperatives of different flavors. To create a legal structure that the founder and the public can trust to be consistent requires some expert advice.

I am off to get mine. March 3rd, I am going to Structure Lab, a workshop held by Criterion Ventures at innovative cities around the United States. I am told the workshop involves a game (and I love games!) as well as focused help on my particular concerns, so I can walk away much more clear about what organizational structure meets my needs.

I have some serious transformation in mind. I need a transformative structure to match, please.

Shift Happens

by Thriver

The question is “How does it happen?” And also “How can we encourage it to happen?”

Yesterday, I said on twitter:

Questions I have been pondering for years now: what brings about an aha? what gets people to shift? how to get unstuck and take action?

Which is something I have been reflecting on since my early days of working with Drake Zimmerman on coaching and philanthropy. Or maybe it comes before that…going back into my childhood when I became fascinated by the brain (thanks PBS). In any case, it all came up again earlier this month when I sat down at a cafe with Clay Shirky. We had a powerful hour of mutual brain picking. He said he had just finished writing his next book and a question he was still mulling over was how do we get people to move between these spaces he had discerned and laid out for me.

photo credit: h.koppdelaney

Aha’s are those bright moments where the light bulbs flash on in the brain, and we suddenly see something in a way we had not seen it before. Sometimes this happens when we have a near death experience or a cherished one is ill or dies. Maybe it is a near miss or a sudden revelation. It can come from stillness and reflection. @SusanLipshutz shares, “Sometimes awakening, clarity comes from getting shaken up via an activating event that threatens the comfort zone, opens heart~”

@butyes declares, “an aha actually IS a shift–it’s the FEELING of an insight which changes the situation–and may make action possible.” So aha’s are a form of shifting, but not the only form. Shifting can also happen through determination and persistence. We can shift our habits. We can shift our views through reasoned argument. Sometimes shift is what gets us unstuck from the place we are or the way we are.

So I asked – what gets people to shift and take action. And the response was so useful, let me share it with you here.

Pain and the Away-From

Some people pointed to what gets us to wake up and move away from something. For example, @philwoodford said, “Usually a metaphorical gun barrel pointing at someone, in my experience.” Similarly, @brainsturbator asserts, “System Shock is the Currency of Consciousness Change. Why does the roshi smack the seeker?” Perhaps even an accumulation of is necessary, as @ValdisKrebs describes, ” enough knowledge/pain/processing have to accumulate for a tipping point or a spark to lead to aha/action.” And @nicolerufuku shared that “rock bottom forces a shift.”

Personally I don’t think we give enough respect to hitting our rock bottoms. For me they have been rich places for remaking myself and give me a lot of courage to take on new challenges (as I know I can survive failure).

@OctaviaMoon suggests that it can take a variety of things, “bottoms, even highs, loves, money….spiritual awakenings.” She goes on to say that, “yoga is a beautiful thing…takes you into the body where you might be stuck and makes things less literal.”

What I was expecting to hear from others but didn’t was something about carrots. I hear the pain and sticks method can work. Do carrots work too? Can we lure people to shift and get unstuck?

The Emergent Shift

Sometimes shifting is about not looking directly at what needs to change, instead it is about letting the mind rest. I think of this as letting the unconscious resolve things by putting the conscious mind elsewhere. @gordondym replied, “For me, it’s shifting attention to something simple, and/or thinking of something completely unrelated.” @butyes speaks to the emergent shift from another angle when she says, “but the aha itself–that often comes when one becomes still on the other side of worrying at the problem. In stillness there’s room to sense a little niggling glimmering something, and sit quietly with it, until, ‘oh!'”

Conditions for Shifting

While we may not want to cultivate the negative experiences that can make us shift, and perhaps we want to be more active than allowing an emergent shift, what can we do for ourselves and others to foster shift and get unstuck?

@HollyE4S offered a series of conditions that can help shifts happen:

Openness to grace
Openness to change
Action begets Action. Easier to shift in something that is already in motion.
Connect with others who are taking action
Learn first steps

Which reminded me of something I think I was first exposed to from @ken_homer and comes out of world cafe – find and take “a simple elegant next step.”

Looking back on my training as a coach, it feels like so much of our training was in developing competency with tools to help people shift or get unstuck – modifying beliefs, shifting frames and seeing multiple perspectives. I will review some of those in a post just for that.

What other ways to notice shift happening? And what can we do to spark it?

Rogue Waves

by Thriver

I saw an article on rogue waves not too long ago. And it really inspired me visually to think about how we compound upon each other.
Wikipedia describes rogue waves:

Rogue waves (also known as freak waves, monster waves, killer waves, and extreme waves) are relatively large and spontaneous ocean surface waves that are a threat even to large ships and ocean liners.^[1] In oceanography, they are more precisely defined as waves whose height is more than twice the significant wave height (SWH), which is itself defined as the mean of the largest third of waves in a wave record. Therefore rogue waves are not necessarily the biggest waves found at sea; they are, rather, surprisingly large waves for a given sea state.

We have some rogue waves amplifying trends. As Taleb says, we live ever more in a land of extremistan (Black Swan).

The Draupner wave, a single giant wave measured on New Year's Day 1995, finally confirmed the existence of freak waves, which had previously been considered near-mythical (from Wikipedia)

Let me explain a bit more about Rogue Waves before saying why I appreciate the metaphor so much.

In this LiveScience article, Choi describes the formation of rogue waves:

Normally a large wave breaks up into smaller and smaller waves over time, until the viscosity of a fluid damps out these small waves. Now the scientists demonstrate the opposite can happen in fluids — tiny waves can concentrate together to become abnormally large waves “that emerge surprisingly quickly,” McClintock told LiveScience.

Tiny waves, you and me, can concentrate, resulting in an unexpected giant wave. This is more than you and I adding up. This is a shocking single large event. This is not really a tipping point, where the system reaches some threshold and changes state.

What I appreciate about this as a metaphor is the thought of the consolidation of forces. It helps us grasp at something that I feel is crashing in on us. A wave in one system is coming together with a wave in another overlapping system, compounded by another wave in another related system resulting in a freak wave. Will these waves be forces of good? Will there be waves of destruction that compound too? I think yes to both.

The wave of climate change meets the waves of peak oil and financial crisis and consumerism. Boom. The wave of awakening-to-purpose compounds with social enterprise and social entrepreneurship, microfinance, spend-down philanthropy, and healthcare innovations. These are choppy waters. How these waves will interact is anyone’s guess. Which will amplify another? Which will deflect or reduce another? Will there be smooth waters ahead? Do we return to regular waves and patterns? Do we get a rogue wave? And does that change us?

Positive Deviants

by Thriver

I really love this term. It seems to hold contradiction in itself, as our (at least my own) conception of deviants is usually a negative one! To deviate, however, simply means to do differently. So ask the question – where is someone doing something different that has a positive impact? Here is a lovely article on the power of positive deviants.

photo credit: Torley

What I love about this story is how it highlights letting change come from within a community. We may know from the outside of a community that behaviors x, y, and z would help them. However, trying to impose those activities tends to fail. When we find those that are within the community that are doing things differently than the others that align with the behavior shifts that would lead to longer life or greater health and opportunity, we can point to those and allow peer influence (remember your Cialdini) to work its magic.

Where is positive deviance in your own life? Where do you do something right/well that you want to do in other areas of your life? Where do you see positive deviance around you? How can you encourage more of what works?

I first heard about this term about 5 years ago – from two mavens: Drake Zimmerman and Tom Munnecke. Nods to them both.

SIDENOTE: My concern here – the caveat, is using this sort of methodology to export culture. Helping people learn how to make money and thus join OUR system may not be what is most useful to us or to them. This is a case in which we might look inside our own culture and find positive deviants. Who is able to live best while relying on financial capital the least? How do they do that? Rather than – if everyone in the world has more money, we will all be better off. The whole poverty alleviation project is a misguided ego-centric approach to better world building. Make people better off – regardless of whether that involves money or not. And do not measure “well-off” by monetary standards. Some of the poorest people I have seen own the biggest houses, fastest cars, and handle the most money.

Solution-Focus

by Thriver

How much time do you spend in each of the following states?

Oh, look, that isn’t working! See how it isn’t working? Did you notice this part over here doesn’t work either?
Hey, I am trying to fix this, can you hand me a lever?

Many of us get fascinated by the first state. Point to all the facets of what is not working. And there is a way that is valuable, as we design new ways of working that address and transform those issues. We need to know what we are looking at.

And, we can get lost in seeing challenges. Stuck in a state of awe and overwhelm. When do you pick up a lever and start creating something in response to the challenges you perceive? What stops you from doing more of that? Who can you ask to help you get started?

I admire those go-getters that not only fix or improve something but also totally trick it out. My mom didn’t just make me a prom dress, she used the scraps to make a cape, a purse, and a garter (all while I was doing my hair). No, I am not posting pictures. 😛

Avoid the overwhelm of what isn’t working. Focus on a solution you can dig into. And see what you can do to trick it out and make use of what you have.

I would love to hear your stories about making more of your resources and the power of solution-focus. Please share with us.

Social Entrepreneurs on Social Media

by Thriver

I saw this in my twitter stream today:

RT @zyOzyfounder: Cool way to follow 182 social entrepreneurs on Twitter http://is.gd/4hQrB via @montero

And I admire and follow tons of people on this list. However, it claims on that link to be comprehensive. And I am quite sure that there are more social entrepreneurs on twitter than that. Now, it may depend on how you define social entrepreneur. Are you thinking bottom of the pyramid business? Are you thinking poverty allieviation? Are you considering only organizations or individuals who have revenue streams? Are you thinking just of innovations (focused on the entrepreneur portion of it)? Do you want to include people who are passing around information about social entrepreneurship, even if they are not themselves the entrepreneur? Or do you just want those making the impact on our social spheres? I included in my additions (see below) people who are in my twitter stream that I think of as “in the realm of” social entrpreneurship. They would show up somewhere on my social entrepreneur network map. Maybe they serve the sector, maybe they add to the conversation, maybe they are emergent, maybe they are bridging between social entrepreneurship and green issues. I did try to steer away from theorists who are innovating tools and tech for social entrepreneurs – that is a whole other list.

I didn’t get everyone I follow that didn’t make the 182 listed. I included some I didn’t think should be missed. Who else would you add?

I recommended:

rmchase – founder of zipcar

IdentityWoman – innovating in identity and around women’s issues

indabamf – innovating on philanthropy

Silona – innovating in government tools and civic community

sbraiden – engaged in socent conversations for 5+ years (Omidyar.net-ian)

18percentgrey – creating online space for social good

byrnegreen – green MBA, start-up socent

gbolles – biz partner to Kevin Doyle Jones

amoration – socent in gaming space

neddotcom – ned.com, nedspace, nedwater – socent leader on omidyar.net community

ChristinasWorld – ashoka fellow, life in africa, social media socent on collaboration

nuance_intel – collaborative space/incubator for socent

DorotheeRoyal – organicnation.tv

davidhodgson – greenmba, ideahive

justinmassa – movesmart.org

weaddup – green identity and action innovative small biz

appropedia – open source shared tech

Fund Thrivable.org kick-off

by Thriver

After three years of exploration and network building, writing and discussion, planning and processing, Thrivable.org is just about ready for kick-off. We will have a soft launch to our friends and collaborators this month (August) and will run a pilot for three to six months.

While I have self-funded the development until this point, the work is for the commons. And if it is to be our shared organization and movement, then it must expand beyond my effort and my funds. We own this work together.

Are you willing to make a commitment to becoming thrivable? Buy me a virtual cup of coffee to keep me alert on this effort.

Have you already felt the effects of my work and the emergence of thrivable? Pay it forward for others.

My sincere gratitude for your faith in this emerging idea and project. Thank you for your commitment to a better world for all.

Currencies and Wealth Acknowledgement

by Thriver

Oh, I have been sniffing around the edge of this field for years now. I am not a core participant, but I keep tabs on folks working in the field. So today I got a request to intro someone to the thinking in that area. I thought I might share it with all of you!

What am I missing? Who are your favorites? What is needed?

* Arthur Brock – alt currency, might have stuff on targetedcurrencies.net (leading edge, unfortunately the info doesn’t flow and follow as fast as he thinks and works, best to talk directly)
* Eric Harris Braun – Openmoney.info (conceiving wealth in multiple forms and building meta-currency system)
* Timebanks and the work of Mark McDonough (long standing community time sharing system)
* Charity Focus and anything Nipun Mehta works on, like Karma Coins (innovator in currency practices and games)
* Art often recommends Money by Greco as a good intro read
* Michael Linton and his pal Ernie Yacub do a lot of community currency: CommunityWay
* Tara Hunt, online community builder, is coming out with a book on Whuffie reputation as currency) this year
* and don’t forget Cory Doctorow: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Down_and_Out_in_the_Magic_Kingdom which is a great start.

I would love to hear your thoughts. Currency conversations are very alive right now, given the economic crisis. More attention is being given to what systems can work both as alternatives and in addition or alongside “money” as we currently know it.