Fifth Annual
Social Innovation Summit
Friday, October 31, 2014
The following document is an overview of the MetroMorphosis Fifth Annual Social Innovation Summit, held Friday, October 31, 2014.
Fifth Annual Social Innovation Summit Overview 10.31.14
A History of the Event
Organized annually by MetroMorphosis, a Baton Rouge, Louisiana, nonprofit, the Social Innovation
Summit grew out of founder Raymond Jetsons participation as a Fellow in Advanced Leadership
Initiative (ALI) at Harvard University. Through this program, Jetson, a former member of the Louisiana
House of Representatives and current pastor of Star Hill Church in Baton Rouge, acquired a different and
empowering framework for understanding his own experience and capabilities in the environment in
which he worked and lived. Later that year he embarked on an idea to share his newfound knowledge
with others in his home city. In 2010, prior to forming MetroMorphosis, Jetson invited his ALI cohorts
to join members of the Baton Rouge community in what eventually took shape as a social innovation
workshop. Approximately 150 Baton Rouge citizens convened with the Fellows at the retreat. The
workshop yielded a 24-page document titled Imagining a Better Baton Rouge: Starting a Different
Conversation about Familiar Issues. The concluding section of the document, Turning Talk into Action,
generated a number of actionable ideas focusing on numerous subject areas. Better Baton Rouge ideas
that grew from the event included: a mobile farmers market to provide the inner city community access
to fresh food and produce, an asset map of the city, a medical legal partnership and more. The workshop
also led Jetson to form MetroMorphosis. Since 2010, subsequent events have been held, each focusing
on advancing the initiatives from the first summit.
The 2014 Summit
Although the core mission of MetroMorphosis is working on persistent community challenges in inner
city neighborhoods, the organization realized that bringing together such a stellar cadre of participants
like Harvard faculty and numerous ALI Fellows would serve to benefit the entire Baton Rouge community.
The 2014 event is the first summit to remove focus from Better Baton Rouge to engage citizens in a
conversation about creating higher-performing organizations that respond to complex issues across our
entire community.
The ultimate goal of the summit is to provide access to information and ideas that will strengthen
community organizations and create opportunities for collaborative efforts that lead to enhanced
performance.
Fifth Annual Social Innovation Summit Overview 10.31.14
Framing the Conversation and Event
Dr. James P. Honan opened the event with an overview of Advancing Collective Impact and High
Performance. Dr. Honan has served on the faculty at the Harvard Graduate School of Education since
1991 and is also a faculty member at the Harvard Kennedy School. In addition, he serves as the Co-Chair
and Senior Associate Director of the Advanced Leadership Initiative (ALI). Dr. Honan shared that, like
many in the room, he has participated in a myriad of idea sessions and workshops in his career
revolving around the topic of social innovation. Although many of these events generated inspirational
ideas, they often failed to provide traction for the concepts outside of the room. He posed, How do we
advance those conversations and help organizations that are committed to a cause move forward? How
do we transition into actual practice? His answer is simple, yet challenging. We must begin as a
community to recognize that there are issues that can be better solved by acting collectively.
In the next phase of the summit, participants would split into smaller groups to focus on specific issues.
To frame those conversations, Dr. Honan broke down how organizations should function in order to best
achieve collective impact and high performance.
What Constitutes Collective Impact and High Performance?
The following characteristics are exhibited by organizations that are embracing collective impact and
high performance.
Individuals and teams are focused on mission achievement that is both tangible and measurable.
The organization achieves broad, deep improvement in the communities in which it operates.
However, often a single organization may not be able to do this alone.
There should be a focus on economic development and a desire to try to monetize the impact. As
an example: If we provide great educational opportunities to all young people in our area then they
might in turn acquire the credentials, background, knowledge and skills to contribute in significant
ways to economic development.
An organization should assess its best work and its impact on and with partners and
collaborators. How would partners and collaborators comment on your best work?
Fifth Annual Social Innovation Summit Overview 10.31.14
Ways of Thinking and Doing
Next, we have to get down on the ground level, which is more interesting and aspirational. How do
we think about it in a practical matter on the ground, which will come out of the groups?
In order to move forward, an organization must have a strategic plan to which it aspires. This is
the price of admission to get to the larger issues.
New and innovative programs, initiatives and projects must be implemented. Funders are looking
to support interesting ideas, and employees and young students are attracted to organizations that
innovate. However, while an organization aspires to new projects, it should never lose sight of
achieving the fundamentals of its plan and completing day-to-day work.
Partnerships and collaborations are important. Organizations should try to maximize efforts and
work with others because often, the problems we are working on are so complex that no one
organization can solve them or address them. There is a certain humility that comes with that
realization, but it is very powerful.
Leadership
Strong leadership is vital. The following are characteristics good leaders must embrace.
Good leaders are discourse shapers. As a leader, it is important how you frame issues, questions
and priorities to make these clear to team members. How this takes place really matterswhether
its in a speech, on a website or in a staff meeting, you frame the issues to explain the question or
highest priority on which your team needs to work. Collectively, this becomes even more important.
Leaders use their convening authority. All leaders possess this, but you must maximize peoples
time and reward them with substantial content to move forward and meet challenges.
Outstanding leaders build and deepen leadership capacity. The more leaders you create increases
the likelihood of high performance. Its hard for a nonprofit to outperform its board. Leaders use
their influence to develop other leaders and appoint them to boards to educate them. Ultimately,
these new leaders will advance their skill set to perform some of the bigger work.
Solid leaders identify and access resources. If an organization is underfunded its not going to work,
so its leader must optimize his or her skills to accumulate resources and then skillfully prioritize what
gets funded. While funding is important, one area of resources often overlooked is volunteers. A
nonprofit cannot function alone with just its staff. To broaden reach and engage citizens we use
convening authority to attract volunteers. A leader must make his or her organizations work open
and welcoming, engage the community and make sure to communicate clearly to connect people to
the work and show how citizens can get involved.
Fifth Annual Social Innovation Summit Overview 10.31.14
Conditions of Collective Impact
There are ground rules for achieving optimal collective impact.
Initially, organizations must have a common agenda and clearly determine what the participants
are trying to achieve...together.
There should be shared measurement. What is it that we want to hold ourselves accountable for
and who will be assigned specific tasks?
Mutually reinforcing activities are very important. Sometimes organizations work at cross
purposes, which is counterintuitive to achieving positive collective impact.
Continuous communication is vital. Groups cannot meet once to move forward.
A strong backbone of support will help to guide the movement as it gets bigger. A core group of
support will keep everyone on the same page.
A Description of the Process
At this point in the summit, participants were separated into four groups covering the topic areas of:
Innovation, High Performance, Leadership and Collective Impact. Facilitators leading each group spent
approximately 10 minutes on introductions and outlined the upcoming process, while reminding the
participants of the summits focus on collective impact and advancing high performance. In each room,
the participants were further divided into three groups and given five minutes to individually answer a
question provided on an index card. Each person then posted their answer on a designated flip chart in
the room and collectively discussed their responses amongst their group for 15 minutes.
Upon completion, each group narrowed down key takeaways and designated a speaker to provide this
information to the entire room. At that time, the floor was opened for additional discussion and full
feedback on each question. Facilitators then spent 10 minutes wrapping up the session with any final
feedback.
After concluding the workshops, the MetroMorphosis team, summit leaders and facilitators convened to
review the main ideas taken from each breakout group. An overview of the most salient points was then
presented to all participants with time for audience feedback and questions for each.
Fifth Annual Social Innovation Summit Overview 10.31.14
Feedback and Summary
Because the workshops were brief, intense brainstorming sessions, numerous ideas were captured on
the cards and flip chartssome of which went on to be discussed in detail and others, due to time
constraints, were not. However, to provide the deepest account of the workshop, all of the ideas are
listed below in bullet points under each question. Subsequently, all categories conclude with a summary
and a specific targeted activity that provides an opportunity for the community to engage in
collaboration.
ISSUES IMPACTING OUR COMMUNITY
The following question was the only one consistently asked in each of the four workshops (the other two
questions differed in each).
Q1: What issue(s) impacting our community do you believe present the best opportunity for
collective action?
Education, poverty and inequality appeared at the top of the list in all four groups. The following were
also consistently mentioned in no particular order: urban sprawl, homelessness, blight, transportation,
healthcare, adult literacy, parental involvement, access to healthy food, mental and behavioral health,
HIV/AIDS and crime.
INNOVATION
Q2: What are the critical actions necessary for organizations to think differently about how
they do business?
Be willing to overlook turf and relinquish control.
Be open to change.
Identify people with different perspectives and bring them to your organization. Embrace the
cultural differences and strengths of others.
Form periodic brainstorming or think tank sessions.
Listen first and be open to change when possible.
Admit mistakes and propose solutions.
We cannot focus only on disruptive innovation. We need to nourish innovation and support
the programs that are workingfigure out how we sustain and scale rather than work on
one-off solutions.
Infrastructure organizations like LANO must partner with grassroots and newer programs to
build administrative support and revisit outcome measurements.
Fifth Annual Social Innovation Summit Overview 10.31.14
INNOVATION
Q3: How do we convince grant makers that risk, innovation and process are worth funding?
Identify new problems.
Look at possible collaboration between similar nonprofit organizations to identify new
problems and then approach grant makers, challenging them to look at things in a new way.
New social challenges require new ideas, flexibility and potential failures.
Show the trend nationally and the need for the research, and include how the effort will be
sustained.
Incorporate innovative ideas and products that have global competition to support local
innovation (local growth) or benefit.
Give examples of positive outcomes.
Include benchmarks in grants.
Trials can be beneficial.
Identify diverse and committed partners.
Show how your passion and enthusiasm are both connected to the funder... let them see the
harm of not supporting an initiative as well as the benefit.
This group determined that the best opportunity for collective action through innovation is hard to
define. All of these issues are interconnected and linking them together is the key. The only way to
address them is through communication. In the nonprofit world, groups take leaps and often fail. The
group agreed that identifying failures is a resounding way of showing that value can be gained even
when things dont work. The idea of a Failure Festival was generated to share mistakes with a group
so that everyone can learn.
Targeted Collaborative Activity: MetroMorphosis will host a Failure Fest for participants to share
mistakes made on individual and organizational levels. Through this event, the community can learn
valuable lessons from mistakes.
Fifth Annual Social Innovation Summit Overview 10.31.14
HIGH PERFORMANCE
Q2: What are the key challenges to an organizations performance in the Baton Rouge area?
Reluctance to accept of national standards as opposed to state or local
Gaining public trust and alleviating mistrust by key community representation on board
Lack of funding by partners is causing lack of technology.
Politics
Finding, attracting and retaining a skilled staff
Lack of synergy and collaboration combined with a territorial mindset
Lack of effective leadership instilling the vision in the whole team
Lack of commitment to the cause by individuals or the entire team
Lack of ethics
Absence of a common language or best practices standard across various organizations
No system in place to easily identify the various organizations and resources available that
will allow for greater collaboration
Failure of leaders and staff to take ownership for understanding the ins and outs of their
organization and how it operates
Fifth Annual Social Innovation Summit Overview 10.31.14
HIGH PERFORMANCE
Q3: What training opportunities and other resources and support are needed?
Staff is more open to training with the adoption of a top-down approach (training must begin
with leadership).
Great leaders, grow leaders (effective mentoring)
Aligning interest to execute common goals
Link organizations to work for the same mission especially overcoming obstacles of
intended beneficiaries in the health/medical system.
Coordination among community and other organizations. Repurpose and communication
with people working on the same problems.
Maintain focus and avoid mission drift while collaborating with others. Identify the common
mission.
Exploration of the following topics to develop core competencies that will equip staff to
become highly productive and ethical leaders:
- Integrity
- Innovation
- Compassion
- Performance
- Relationships
This group highlighted education and homelessness as two areas that would benefit from high
performance. Focused efforts to eliminate some of the key challenges that inhibit performance and
increasing the number of training opportunities are ways to provide a better landscape to enhance
execution.
Targeted Collaborative Activity: MetroMorphosis will engage interested parties to evaluate opportunities
for collective impact efforts in the areas of education and homelessness.
Fifth Annual Social Innovation Summit Overview 10.31.14
LEADERSHIP
Q2: What types of leadership skills are critical to organizations in our community being able
to respond collectively to the complex issues impacting the BR region?
Critical leadership skills...develop competencies with a common language for leadership.
Provide theme-based action steps.
Leaders must be skilled in: developing strategies, fundraising, collaboration, listening and
communicating, technology.
Leaders need to possess: ethics, fortitude and perseverance.
Leaders should be: transparent and move beyond their own agendas and egos.
Leaders must embrace conflict resolutionsome people see conflict as a negative going
against the agenda of an organization, but sometimes it can be a positive.
Q3: How do we create a pipeline of emerging leaders within organizations?
Provide development for employers, board members, senior leaders, and program staff
members.
A pipeline will not happen without the commitment of the leaders here.
This group made the observation that our community currently has a variety of different leadership
groups and programs in place, such as: The Chamber, Forum 35, Jr. League and others. A singular
Leadership Development entity should be created to spearhead these efforts, develop a list of common
leadership competencies and create a pipeline of emerging leaders. This group will ensure that
leadership efforts are maximized and the leaders we produce are tailored to meet the specific challenges
of our community. In addition, the group believes it is important to collectively assemble leadership
alumni from across the city to create a strategic plan that would lead to a singular vision and a mission
for our city. Finally, our community must look beyond young professionals as emerging leaders and
cultivate them sooner, such as in high school. The idea of a Youth Leadership Summit was suggested.
Targeted Collaborative Activity: MetroMorphosis will begin the process of implementing leadership
strategies by convening various community leadership programs and alumni to discuss relevant
competencies for nonprofit and other leaders.
Fifth Annual Social Innovation Summit Overview 10.31.14
COLLECTIVE IMPACT
Q2: What steps are necessary to increase the undertaking of collective action in our
community?
Convening authority
Funding for backbone organizations
Focus on connections.
Remove egosagree and establish mutual respect.
Understand the need for collaboration.
Create a platform for stakeholders.
Establish community awareness.
Invite other organizations.
Identify resources
- Define clarity
- Maximize organizations strengths
- Outreach
- Strategic plan
Community organizations
Common agendacast net in same direction
Identify bottle necks to other organizations
- Top-down leadership
Become more effective leaders
Less talk/more action
Engage the community
Develop an overall structure and prioritize needs that should be addressed.
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Fifth Annual Social Innovation Summit Overview 10.31.14
COLLECTIVE IMPACT
Q3: What training opportunities, technical assistance or other resources are necessary for
organizations looking to embrace collective impact?
Leadership and development
Research asset mapmore authentic
- Community awareness of resourcespeople should have a better awareness of
where to go for resources.
Strengthen structure/people
Involve more community people
Collaboration
Training specific to leadership, planning and strategy
Plan for infrastructure and communication
Establish a common short-term goal
Begin with the children
Education background
Transparency
Cross community leaders
This group stressed the importance for collaboration in our city. We need more ensembles, not
soloists. We must remove egos and agree to respect each other. Trust is an important asset and
collaboration moves at the speed of trust. The group highlighted the great need to strengthen
relationships and awareness of all organizations, and create a common agenda to ensure we cast our net
in the same direction. The team also noted that there are many organizations with overlapping missions
and strategies, and learning more about the activities others are performing in the communityan
inventory of work and resourceswould prove extremely beneficial. The team suggested creating a
Network or Asset Map to identify gaps, highlight points of collaboration and show others working in this
arena or on particular issues? A resource such as this will also be beneficial for government entities as
well as volunteers. A similar model to review is the LINK Platform that Shreveport created.
Targeted Collaborative Activity: MetroMorphosis plans to Identifynetworks among summit attendees
and support dialogue to determine the valuable next steps toward creating a network or asset map for
the community.
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Fifth Annual Social Innovation Summit Overview 10.31.14
Summary
The MetroMorphosis Innovation Summit assembled over 200 community and nonprofit leaders for the
singular purpose of discovering ways to enhance performance and outcomes by working together. In
that, the event was a resounding success. Future achievement will be determined by participants and
those who use the ideas in this document to advance these and other initiatives that tackle the
challenges and needs of our community. There are a myriad of ideas and initiatives that are waiting to
be born and MetroMorphosis pledges to act as midwife to them, but it is up to everyone in the
community to deliver them, grow them and see them through.
If you have thoughts, initiatives, ideas or comments please let us know. Additionally, if you would like to
be a part of any of our targeted collaborative activities, or simply want to get involved, please contact us.
Contact Information
225-663-2198
[email protected]
4242 Government St, Baton Rouge, LA 70806
MetroMorphosis
@metromorphosis1
@metromorphosis
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