June 2023 Newsletter: Public Innovators Unleashing a Chain Reaction
Our work has shown that impact happens when we catalyze and unleash a chain reaction of actions and ripples that spreads like a positive contagion over time throughout a community. It is not comprehensive plans or one-size-fits-all solutions that lead to change in a community. Change occurs when the innate potential of a community is unleashed. It occurs when people start small, perhaps even as small as launching a book club, and grow the chain reaction over time.
PUBLIC INNOVATOR SPOTLIGHT: YOLONDA Williams
Yolonda Williams was just a few months into her cohort of Leadership Clarksville when the position of Executive Director became available. Confident in her vision of what the program needed, Yolonda threw her hat in the ring. By April, just a month before completing the program herself, she had assumed the leadership role.
Yolanda has been involved in The Harwood Institute’s community initiative in Clarksville, TN for three years. Drawn to the Institute’s work due to her belief that “community is bigger than those seated at the table,” she spearheaded local work on the report, Clarksville-MoCo Stepping into the Future, during her tenure as the National Commander of Women Veterans of America. Now, as an outcome of that report, she’s an instrumental member of the Youth Mentorship team, working to ensure there is a strong network of mentors and support for the community’s young people.
By her account, her vision for Leadership Clarksville has been heavily informed by her work with The Harwood Institute, “I’ve always thought about others, but learning the practice of Turning Outward has helped me refocus on ‘Who else is not here? Who else is not impacted? How can we continue to make things better for a bigger group of people?’.”
She applied this thinking In her first months on the job as she oversaw the application process for the next cohort of the leadership program. Her desire is for the program participants to be more representative of the community as a whole. During the recruitment period, she went into the community to speak to people who may not have seen themselves in the program to encourage them to apply. She believes that her identity as a Black woman veteran, and her involvement in the program as a participant and now as its director, allowed the people she engaged to see that the program “may not be all this or all that, but it’s open for everybody. I think it’s going to turn some corners for our program.”
Looking forward, Yolonda is eager to further engage the community with Leadership Clarksville. She recognizes that there are a large number of small businesses, entrepreneurs, minority-owned businesses who cannot afford the tuition or to take the amount of time off needed to complete the program, but who could benefit from the knowledge imparted. She plans to explore how to make this information more accessible to these folks. She also plans to re-engage the more than 1,000 program alumni around where the program and the community can go next.
Yolonda also recognizes the challenges of the role. The program, like the community, is facing a need for change, which has been met with resistance. And in a town “where everyone knows everyone” navigating interpersonal politics can make it hard to get things done. In some of these situations, she has employed the ASK Tool, “It’s been foundational. When I’m talking to someone and I don’t see things moving, I turn to those questions.” As Yolonda has learned, if you put the aspirations of the community first, you can find common ground to get moving, “We don’t have to agree, we don’t have to like each other, but if the goal is to build new roads or open another school or feed the homeless, if we can agree on what that is, we can work together towards that.”
A Book Club Steps Forward in DeSoto County, Florida
For some educators in DeSoto County, Florida, what started as a stop on the Healing & Hope Tour turned into an opportunity to step forward for their community.
Carrie Fuller, a retired educator and business owner who helps nonprofit organizations with grant writing, was one of the many attendees who left Rich’s speech inspired to take action in their community. Armed with copies of Stepping Forward and Unleashed—which participants received from The Patterson Foundation as part of the event—Carrie and about eight other attendees decided they wanted to continue working on the ideas put forward by bringing people together to discuss their roles in the community. They used Stepping Forward as a guide.
In DeSoto County, change is an uphill battle. The county is one of the poorest in Florida, is extremely rural, and, with a high Hispanic population, faces significant language barriers between residents — all of which make widespread community-led action difficult. Still, Carrie and the other members of the book club were up to the challenge, “We knew we had a lot of barriers, but we wanted to come together to see what we could do to help the community come together.”
The group that formed to discuss Stepping Forward was made up almost entirely of educators, including a former superintendent, current classroom teachers, and a local librarian. The group’s background in education ended up being their strongest feature and their biggest barrier; as Carrie pointed out, “We’re educators, so we want to change the world… but [we knew] we really weren’t going to be able to change the whole system.”
Using Stepping Forward and the practice of Turning Outward, the group began brainstorming smaller ways they could have an impact in their community. Carrie is creating a common calendar among DeSoto nonprofits so the organizations could better coordinate with one another and maximize their impact in the community. Another member became a coach for new international teachers in the school system, working with them to find housing, get to appointments, and acclimate to the new area. “[Stepping Forward] made us realize that you don’t have to change the system,” Carrie said, “but you can do small things that can help the community come together and maybe feel more in tune with each other.”
Eager to hear more about the real-world implications of Stepping Forward, the book club invited Cheri Coryea from The Patterson Foundation to one of their sessions to speak about the Harwood Community Conversations taking place in DeSoto. Cheri witnessed firsthand the dedication the group had to becoming catalysts for change in their community, “People are really wanting to try to come together in a way that is intentional about aspirational and positive things.” Inspired by the reading group’s actions, Cheri began reaching out to her own contacts about forming book clubs and finding other ways to step forward in DeSoto.
Though the reading group is finished with Stepping Forward, its members are still in contact as they find new ways to engage with their community this summer; and the group is in talks to meet in the fall to discuss Unleashed. For this set of educators that wants to change the world, Carrie says, their greatest takeaway from Stepping Forward was realizing how small efforts can lead to major results. “That was the biggest thing. You didn’t really have to solve the problem — you just had to identify steps that you could take that would help.”
Take Your Practice Farther with the Unleashing Impact Virtual Lab
The next offering from the Harwood School is just around the corner! The Unleashing Impact Virtual Public Innovators Lab kicks off on August 28, 2023.
Led by Rich Harwood, the Lab has been designed to meet you where you are and take you farther than you’ve ever gone before. The brand-new content incorporates what we’ve learned about creating and sustaining change from our 30-year impact study, our work in communities around the country, and feedback from past participants to give you what you need to unleash, grow, and spread a chain reaction of actions throughout your community.
If you are familiar with the Harwood approach—from a previous Lab, using our resources, or even from working with a friend or colleague—and are committed to strengthening and invigorating your community work, this lab is for you!
Over five highly interactive weekly sessions, you’ll learn how to unleash a chain reaction, how to grow civic culture, how to engage in civic learning, how you show up, and how to stay grounded to lift off.
Go Deeper with the New Basics Webinar Series
Last month, we launched a new webinar series, “The New Basics with Rich Harwood.” The quarterly webinars feature new, bite-sized content designed to help you quickly and practically accelerate and deepen your work. The highly interactive webinars are a chance to connect with Rich and other members of our growing national network of public innovators to learn about and discuss integral concepts, our newest reorienting ideas and tools; how these ideas have emerged from our work in communities over 35 years; and how they can help you get moving.
The first webinar focused on the key mantras, which represent our work boiled down to its most essential components. View the recording on our website or YouTube channel to learn about the mantras and their origins in our work, how the mantras can help you get moving when you’re feeling stuck, how to incorporate the mantras into your life and work on a regular basis, and how you can use the mantras to build allies. The webinar, like the mantras themselves, is meant to be shared—send the link to your colleagues and allies in the community.
The next webinar in the series will be held on September 14 at 12 pm Eastern. It will cover the Harwood North Star, our essential roadmap that helps you stay true to where you need to go and to stay grounded in what’s important in this approach. Join Rich on the webinar to deepen your understanding of the components of the North Star and discover concrete ways to implement it in your work.