When navigating cross-sector systems change work that centers young people, how do you maximize your efforts and wisely invest your time, talent and funding?

So often, we see intermediary organizations and place-based initiatives spending copious amounts of time, money, and resources reinventing the wheel. The constant cycle of crafting plans, generating steps, and recreating materials can be draining, both financially and energetically. However, changemaking efforts do not occur in isolation. Existing work within communities and systems serves as a foundation for change. To truly maximize efforts and make solid investments of time, talent, and funding, we must shift our focus towards leveraging existing resources and building upon them.

Over the past decade, our team has developed a model that draws on research and practical experience with various clients. Enhance the impact of your changemaking efforts by:

• Maximizing your resources

• Empowering your people

• Modeling your shared processes

This framework offers some clear DO’s and DON’Ts of systems change work within multidimensional, place-based and cross-sector partnerships.

Do: Maximize Your Resources

DON’T jump to create new resources. DO invest your time into aligning existing resources and tools.

This is not the first time this problem has been addressed. Funders, programs and initiatives before you have worked on this. Spend your time pooling what exists. Tap the knowledge that is already present. Sure, it may need to be updated. It will need to be uploaded to a shared drive or project website. But the heart is already there.

Supplement the existing tools with current documentation of what is working. There is plenty—almost too much—ivory tower research that points to what “should” work and what “could” work based on experiments, surveys, history, other communities, and academic papers. What is happening right now in your community that is working or has real potential to work? Document that and share it across the partners and participants. Capture resources that participants are creating on the ground.

DON’T send out emails with resources. DO invest in developing a shared cloud system or website.

I can’t tell you how many systemic change initiatives we’ve come across who do not have a website, shared cloud-based drive or even a shared list serv. Really! Don’t expect that sending one email with your PDF handbook is going to cut it. It’s not. Once the receiver of that email takes a different job, nobody has the tool any longer. Plan that people are coming and going in this work. Create a fluid space for resources to be shared.

Maximize the resources by collecting existing and user-generated tools, handouts, strategies and documents; ensuring they are accessible, relevant to the shared purpose, and timely; and, editing them to reflect only the very most important information in the simplest, clearest, jargon-free language.

Remember that if the tools, guides, curricula, train-the-trainer, policies and procedures, program models, job descriptions, contacts, templates, etc. are not accessible and shared across all partners—nobody can use them. What good are they, then?

DO: Empower Leaders

DON’T assume the leaders have all the knowledge and skills needed. DO invest in building the skills, mindsets and methods of the people doing the work.

Continuing the momentum of changemaking requires leadership capacity development at all role levels. Everyone involved in the initiative needs to fully understand and find alignment with the vision and values of the work. Every person is a critical piece of the initiative’s success—just like bees in a hive. Each person needs to share a networked leadership and systems perspective so they can see how they relate to the larger purpose. And, of course, navigating systems change work truly does require deepened emotional intelligence and fuller openness to engage in self reflection, conflict and co-regulation. To empower individuals in your initiative means engaging a capacity building framework and/or team to support the personal development of changemaking leaders.

DO: Share Processes

DON’T ignore how you do this work. DO intentionally engage the processes you’re trying to support across your system.

Changemaking work is about change. It’s essential for leaders to have a clear vision of the horizon and the skills to steer the ship and navigate the waves. Through your work, mirror and model the exact ways this initiative is going make change. Live those changes within the microcosm of how you navigate the work. If your changemaking work seeks to build community, you must be in community with all co-leaders of the initiative. Model the culture, the trust, the belonging you hope to launch forward through this work within each and every action and interaction you make. Ensure that the work of the initiative is facilitated with a ‘guide by the side’ approach…not as a sage on the stage. And, make sure how you are working is grounded in the current context with a commitment to continuity. There’s a difference between doing activities in order to meet a deliverable requirement and doing activities with the goal that the work will continue, adapt and replicate.

DON’T focus on funder deliverables. DO focus on how you perpetuate ways of working that will continue.

This is by far the biggest trap we’ve seen our clients fall into. The systems change work falls to the side because of a funder deliverable deadline. Yes, all nonprofits do fancy footwork to align their work and funders’ interests. It’s messy. It’s draining and it can be outrageously wasteful of time, talent, effort and funds. It is essential to continue dialogue with funders about the real purpose of your systems change efforts—it’s not to create a shiny thing. It’s to ultimately define and perpetuate new ways of being and doing. So, if money is attached to creating a program, a deliverable, a product, make sure that you are constantly connecting that thing back into its real purpose.

Some advice here: expect that any and all material will not be used as-is. Plan for it to be adapted. For instance, don’t say you’ll create a curriculum. Create a template for a curriculum so that participants in the initiative can tweak, customize and tailor for their unique situations. Don’t agree to do a bunch of trainings. Create a facilitation guide, slide deck and online train the trainer so participating organizations can adapt and offer to their teams. Seek investment to support partners in defining the values of the initiative and its guiding principles for capacity building. That will move the needle much further and faster.

Summary

When you focus your capacity building system to support leaders, processes and resources, you ensure that the knowledge, actions and spirit of the initiative will continue gaining momentum—even as everything else continues to change.