For over a year now, the Collective Impact Core has been totally revamping the way we come together and do our work. We realized that many of our practices were simply the default “this is how we do things.” They definitely weren’t intentional and were sometimes even at cross-purposes with our values and mission. As we reached the end of this season of change, we realized another thing – Our meeting agenda and the way we create it needed to change, too!
We went about creating a new agenda the way we always do things – by involving the people affected by it! Workgroup Representatives and Workgroup Members were all invited to take part in an Agenda Design Workshop. Over three sessions, we used Catalytic Thinking to ask questions like “what would a good agenda look like?” and “what do we need to create that good?”. By asking these questions, Workgroup Members came up with all the conditions we needed to meet for an agenda to be in line with our values. This included things like:
- a focus on diversity, equity, and inclusion
- a willingness to explore new ideas
- consensus around the community’s needs
After the workshops, the Backbone Organization continued the Catalytic Thinking process. We asked “what actions will create this condition?” for everything we came up with in the workshop. Then, the Backbone Organization combined all these actions into our new agenda!
Our new agenda format is something we’re pretty excited about. This format lets people suggest topics for each meeting and then prioritize which topics to talk about. Doing this shares the power to create our agenda with everyone affected by our meetings. It also makes sure that every topic gets the time it needs. We’ve never seen or used anything like this before – and it all came directly from you! Thank you!
You can continue being a part of our agenda creation in two different ways. One is by suggesting topics for any of the Core’s upcoming meetings. You can do this by commenting on the post for each meeting right here on our blog. The other is by exploring and using the tools we’ve posted on your own. You can find those tools under the “Resource Library” on our website. Hopefully they’ll inspire the way you think about, design, and use your own agendas! Let us know what you think about the new agenda in the comments below. We’d love to hear about how these tools are working for you!