What are the citizen collaboration opportunities?

That question was one of my notes in reading Peter Block’s Activating the Common Good – Reclaiming Control of our Collective Well-being.

This was a weirdly serendipitous read, recommended by a friend and occasional colleague with whom I share professional interests in learning and change. (More on the weird part, at the end of this post). The book came at a moment when I’ve been noodling the practice and design of community listening, and wrestling with how to frame the effort of listening in a way that challenges the status quo.

Block’s Common Good articulates a framing that is a very useful critical view. It also does something that deeply connects to my design mindset: It provides examples and articulates principles of practice about convening and co-creating. The how we do it details matter; it’s praxis, the practical application of theory.

The framing centers around contrasting society’s current dominant narrative – which Block tags as the “business perspective” – with the potential of a common good perspective.

Block summarizes the business perspective as. “We can have infinite growth on a finite planet. Markets are the fairest form of exchange of things. Prices tell the truth when unencumbered by government. More income equals more happiness.” In this perspective our primary role is consumer. We can see this even in our civic lives, where local governments frame their efforts as “services.” We – the community – then step into our role as consumers and demand more efficient, or less costly, or higher quality services. This is how we live out our roles within the business narrative.

Block contrasts this with the common good perspective: “…the belief that we can produce rather than purchase our well-being… that citizen-leaders can and are inventing ways for themselves and their neighbors to be safe, produce a local and inclusive economy, produce good health, produce and distribute a secure and local food supply, care for people on the margin, live out social justice, care for the land, and do a better job of raising children, especially if they are not ours. These are the outcomes and right measures of our well-being.” In this perspective our primary role is citizen. In this role we believe we have the “cooperative capacity” to produce well-being for ourselves and others. We build relationships and collaborate.

Two subtleties about these perspectives struck me as I read Block’s book.

The first is that he does not outright reject the business perspective. The principles and practices of this perspective can and do generate value and good outcomes. What he asks us to do is recognize the dominance of this narrative across our lives and how it nudges us away from “what economist Mark Anielski calls ‘genuine well-being…’ the levels of trust people feel in those around them, the satisfaction and sense of security people feel where they live, the level of help and support people receive from neighbors, the trust and confidence people feel toward local governance and leadership, and whether people feel secure in the amount of money they have to lead a life they desire.”

The second subtlety is in recognizing the habits we create to rely entirely on “the people in charge” to impact our well-being. Block even points to town hall meetings – something I’ve also noted – as an example of this habit. The leaders of town hall meetings play the role of power-holders and problem solvers. We participants dutifully ask questions and advocate and expect the leaders to deliver. Even in the best-intentioned cases, Block notes, town halls and other “public engagement” meetings limit our capacity to co-create. They rely on the convener to define and direct the dialogue and to take accountability for resolving the challenges. This, really, is the central issue about which I have been writing. We need to move toward real co-creation and “nothing about us, without us.”

Naming and comparing the business and common good perspectives establishes a useful framing for my effort to explore community listening and co-creation. The book’s examples of what the common good perspective looks like in practice helps inspire how to do the design part – bringing the perspective to life. Here are a few illustrations of the kinds of solutions that emerge from applying “cooperative capacity” as the core design approach:

• An urban church in Indianapolis changed its approach from delivering standard programs – food panties, tutoring, etc. – to hiring a crew of young folks as Roving Listeners. The listeners job was to talk with folks in the neighborhood, find their gifts and talents, and then connect them with others. A mutual aid kind of marketplace.
• A local media enterprise in Detroit focuses on in-depth reporting on examples of work that is creating positive outcomes within the neighborhoods it covers. It’s appreciative inquiry journalism.
• An affordable housing advocate reframed property ownership and affordability to “home security.” It’s “I want to be secure where I live. I don’t need to own it.” The model she created engages renters in an apartment building to do some of the building management work (maintaining common areas, screening applicants, etc.) The savings are past back to participants in the form of cash: $5,000 if they stay for five years. The routine builds stability in the tenant community and helps individuals build wealth.

Block also provides a number of examples on the design of events to better facilitate collaboration and co-creation. The basis of all the designs are agency and choice; participants are active agents in determining the direction of the event and its outcomes. Leaders/facilitators are conveners; their role is to provide the resources for convening. A good example of this is the Open Space meeting protocol, in which participants decide speakers and specific topics once they arrive. World Cafe is another example.

Block has created his own design elements, which he details in another book Community: The Structure of Belonging (now on my reading list). Key to the elements are questions that structure conversations and prioritize participant agency. One conversation type is labeled “Possibilities” and includes two conversation questions:

• What is the crossroads you are at in this moment about something you care about?
• The 2nd question, intended to wrap up the session: What is the possibility that you can declare a stance for?

All of this – the perspectives labeling, the design elements – comes as I will be engaging in a few upcoming events and activities related to community listening in Evanston. A piece of this is another milestone meeting, with the Evanston community, about the city’s Environmental Equity Investigation. I wrote about the significance of this effort as an outcome of the tremendous hard work done by two leaders of Evanston’s environmental justice movement.

As I go into that event, I am thinking about the question posed in the headline of this post: What are the citizen collaboration opportunities, coming out of of this effort? And how might we move forward toward a different approach – one that forefronts co-creation, local collaboration and creativity to discover paths to develop well-being through our relationships with each other?

The weird part. I first met Terry Hackett in a job interview in 2001. I was interviewing for a consulting role at Deloitte and Terry was part of the team. 9/11 happened shortly thereafter and the job never materialized. But then 3 years later we randomly reconnected in a grad school course. We became friends and occasional colleagues. I learned a lot from him. Our lives kept us busy with family and careers, but after a dozen years or so of not seeing each other much we reconnected again. Terry recommended Block’s book. The book opens by paying homage to work done by the Asset Based Community Development (ABCD) folks, whose office (at that time) was down the hall from me at Northwestern University. I had the pleasure of knowing some of its principle architects. And now – the Block book weaves the ABCD work into where I am right now, professionally. How is it possible Terry continues to drop in randomly and generate such goodness?

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The photographs which accompany these posts are taken by me, and show different settings and views of Evanston (where I live). It is a visual reminder that this is the most important setting for belonging and contributing to community: our neighborhoods, our cities.