Criterion Convergence VI: 
Language of Transformation

October 1-3, 2008

Conversation Questions

Thursday, October 2, 2008                       

10:30 – 11:45 am                    Conversations – Set A                                               

Connecting to Local Community

• Is there a shifting definition of the local community?  What is your local community and how is it defined?
• How do you structure a life which is locally connected (especially given time constraints!)?
• What invitations most successfully create connection?
• What about local communities creates intimacy?
• Why is it important to be locally connected?

Show Me the Money: How Do I Match Structures to Funding?

• How do you balance mission, risk and potential rewards in your structure?
• Have you identified methods to the madness?
• What have you found successful in asking for money through RFPs, pitches and presentations?  What has not worked?
• Do corporate or commercial partnerships help or hurt your requests?

Culture and HR Practices for Rapid Change

• What characteristics enable organizations to thrive in a changing environment – and to drive social change?
• What are the unique structures /ways to organize HR in social change?
• What does HR look like in hybrid business structures?
• Where should you focus in periods of change and transition?  For example, how does that change on boarding and training that you need to offer?
• How well does your organization reflect its mission, outwardly and inwardly?
• How do founders’ values get baked into the company’s DNA?

Leading Causes of Life

• In terms of audience receptivity to health messages, what are effective methods of communicating?
• What initiatives have recently floored you?
• What could we be doing a better job of promoting?
• Do corporations have a social responsibility in this arena?

Investing Locally

• Does local investment need to come from local investors?
• Is mission insurance critical, or is any investment a good investment?  Who decides?
• Can the availability of options for investing/impacting on a hyper-local level unlock new capital?
• Can we get beyond feel-good/self-aggrandizement to real change?  If so, how?

How Do You Name the Biggest Idea You Can Think?

• What, in your opinion, is the best way to communicate a big idea?
• What processes do you engage?
• Are there examples of this that we can learn from?
• Does scale matter?

1:45 – 3:00 pm                        Conversations – Set B                                              

You Left your Shoes at the Rally and the Science Fair is Tomorrow?  Parenthood and Balance

• How do your kids inform your work towards social change?
• Should we strive towards balance between work and parenthood or should we try to integrate them?
• What lessons are you so glad you’ve learned about parenting – and where are your current challenges?

What about the Finance Industry?

• What will be the impact of the recent shotgun marriages of the government and private sector?
• Is this the beginning of a new cycle, or of a new era altogether?
• How do these changes bode for social entrepreneurship?

The Meaning of Food

• How has the meaning of food changed?
• What models of food preparation and food movements reflect social change? (examples: raw food, fast food, slow food)
• How do food choices reflect socioeconomic status, or vice versa?

Online Collaboration

• Where is the sweet spot between combining collaboration in the real world and the online world?
• What are exciting examples of online collaboration?  What supports or enables them?
• Are there tradeoffs in moving collaboration online? If so, what gives and what gains?
• What invitations actually convince individuals to join an online community and begin collaborating?

33 Days to the Election – Politics in Turbulent Times

• What about this year’s election distinguishes it or not from previous elections?
• How has politics been changed?
• Where does politics bring hope?
• What political engagements have brought you satisfaction?  How would you dream of being involved?

Oceans

• How can we imagine the un-sustainability of the oceans?
• What are the choices we want to influence to create sustainability oceans?
• What does the end of fish mean?
• What will we learn by responding to the crisis around fish?
• What can we learn from sustainable agriculture as we learn how we respond to fish?
• What alliances need to be created to respond and who are the unlikely partners?

Caring for the Wounded While Changing the World

• How do you do direct service while building systemic change? Who does both well?
• How can the lessons learned on the street better guide the policy shapers in the state houses?
• How can the policy-shapers better generate new approaches that work on the street?
• What creates respect and relationships between care givers and policy makers?

3:30 – 4:45 pm                        Conversations – Set C

Bowling Alone

• Around what do we see new communities forming?
• What is today’s equivalent of the local bowling team?  Is there one?
• How do you try to connect with your neighbors? Community?
• What are innovative ways of bringing people together?
• Does the Internet make us feel more or less connected?

Education: Climate for Change

• What enables schools to change?
• How does school change relate to system change?
• What levers are creating educational system change?
• When and how can other stakeholders (businesses, civic groups, neighborhoods etc) play a role in creating change?
• Where is there the most hope in the educational world?

Using Creativity and Innovation for Social Change

• Take 20 seconds to yourself and write down a concern where social change and you seek creative solutions to break through inertia.
• Where do you go for ideas and creative inspiration?
• Name one great example of creativity and/or innovation that you admire? What can we learn from that?
• Can we cultivate creativity? How?

Social Conscience – Who Cares?

• Where is the outrage?
• How to grow social conscience?
• Are pain points the only place to spark action?
• What are tools to foster common interest/collective good?

Spirituality

• What role does spirituality play in social change?
• How does a connection to the transcendent change leaders?
• Do spirituality and religion go hand-in-hand?  Why or why not?
• Does the message of spirituality help or hurt that of social change?  What language communicates beyond religious divides to issues of ultimate meaning and purpose?

Bottom of the Pyramid

• What strategies have been effective in creating sustainable solutions?
• What lessons have you learned from unsuccessful BOP projects or strategies?
• Why is important for the BOP to become self sustainable? And how can we compel others to see the importance?
• How does language create mutuality or distance?

Innovative Financial Services

•  “Financial justice” like environmental justice. How do we bring financial services to underserved populations?
• What are financial services or structures that can improve social enterprises?
• How can we continue to push for risk taking and innovation in a climate of uncertainty?

Friday, October 3, 2008                                                        

9:30 – 10:45 am                      Conversations – Set D

Corporate / Non-Profit Partnerships

• What is the tension between for profit money and mission?
• What are the most effective mechanisms of mission insurance?
• What has taken these from corporate giving relationships to ones of mutual benefit?  Or, conversely, what has prevented this from happening?
• What are examples of successful corporate non-profit partnerships?  What makes them successful?

Megaphones and Portal: Grand Scale Communication on Social Change

• What makes mass communication in social change work?
• Has the democratization of media (internet) gotten masses ahead of power structures?
• Does mass communication cheapen the message of social change?
• Does it work?  Do the necessary people respond to mass communication?

Thinking About the Brain

• Where are we in unlocking the secrets on how the brain becomes mind?
• How does it affect our humanity and our sense of what it means to be human?
• If you could load your mind on a computer and live forever would that computer be human?  Would it be you?
• With this research, where do you draw the line between helping and harming humanity?

Sustainability for All

• What’s the new language of sustainability?
• How can we invite a broader group into conversations and engagement around sustainable solutions?  Who is not currently at the table?
• What are effective frameworks for sustainability?
• Where does language/class get in the way?

Community Organizing

• What leadership qualities lead to successful community organizing?
• Have the motivations for this become solely political?
• What audiences have been less participatory or less apt to heed the message?  Why?
• Name some successful organizations / campaigns.  What, if anything do these have in common?
• Can these efforts be sustained, or do they have expiration dates?  How can you keep a message “fresh?”

“Life Chapters” – Vocations, Callings and Career Directions

• Where did you see yourself 10 years ago versus where you are today?
• Is it really “who you know,” or does “what you know” play a significant part?
• Name a big risk that you have taken professionally.  If you cannot, name what is keeping or has kept you from doing so.
• What themes have woven through your life – and how might they drive your next vocational “chapter”?

Cosmopolitan: The New Metropolis

• What systems, for you, define the new metropolis?
• To achieve it, what must come first, public or private sector investment?
• Are certain areas primed to become cosmopolitan?  Why?
• Which current areas do you see falling out of favor or being marginalized?

11:00 – 12:15 pm        Conversations – Set E                                                            

Green Washing or True Change: Corporate Social Responsibility in a Time of Global Challenges

• What are the different forms of corporate social responsibility?  Which ones more impact or provide the more promise for the future?
• How can campaigns and coalitions influence corporate social responsibility?
• How do corporations move from defensive crouch to stretch?
• What amount of information can consumers absorb?  What role does independent evaluation play?

Forward to the Future: Spotting Innovation

• What are different lenses for searching out and identifying innovation?
• Where are the innovation hot spots – and how can we grow them?
• When do you know to “Trust your gut? and when is it better to develop consensus? How can we get beyond our own “boxes” to see from new eyes?

Teaching/Coaching

• Does mentoring still matter?
• What traits do you look for in a good teacher?  In a receptive student?
• In teaching / coaching, does style or substance take precedence?
• Once engaged, how do you keep your audience’s attention? 
• How to make the experience benefit equally the teacher/coach and student?

Healthcare Access

• What is the most pressing barrier to healthcare access in your mind?
• How much does scale matter?
• What will be a more successful agent of change:  government policy, social initiative or corporate involvement?
• In your opinion, who is not involved or considered in the conversation of healthcare access that should be?
• How to get large businesses to weigh in for real healthcare change?

How Do you Sell Social Investing?

• What makes funding good or even sexy?
• How do you sell within your network?
• What are the successful corollaries?
• What are the differences between celeb-driven and not (“live strong” versus “go pink”)?

Making Elephants Dance

• What are key sources of power within large organizations?
• What are the pros and cons of being a large organization versus a small organization?
• How do you coordinate heterogeneous personal mission when trying to create a more homogenous sense of shared vision?
• Better to begin the dance among rabbits and then show the elephants the steps?

1:30 – 2:45 pm                        Conversations – Set F                                    

Sustainable Leadership

• Who are great leaders in your life and what specifically made them great?
• When you have been proudest and most concerned of your leadership ability?  Where you were successful, what was your source of leadership?
• Name the challenges (personal or professional) that you see before you.
• Does a lack of success in one arena (personal, professional) affect your perception of success in the other?  Must you be a superhero?
• Does leadership in social change necessarily come with a title?
• What would play a greater role in your development into this leader:  being part of an established organization and rising through the ranks, or entering a more obscure or less settled organizational structure?  Why?

How Do We Partner, Scale and Replicate?

• What’s the value in going to scale?  What is the risk in going to scale?
• How do structures promote replication and scalability?
• What characteristics are needed for a venture to be successfully scalable?
• When is it not appropriate to bring something to scale?
• What stories of partnerships and frameworks can we learn from?
• Where and how do you find partners for your ventures?

Change Versus Transformation

• When does change become transformative? 
• What defines transformative?
• Are there any circumstances in which change as opposed to transformation is the preferred option?
• Have you ever brought about a transformation?  What did it involve?
• From your experiences with failed transformation, what are common barriers and lessons learned?

Youth: Deviance and Criminality

• Can we identify criminality versus deviance in a person’s development?  If so, what, if anything, can be done?
• What adequate deterrents in place (criminal punishment, social ostracism, etc.) to safeguard society?  What’s missing?
• What are public perceptions about the direction of deviance / criminality? Are these true?
• Are these correlated to ills in the education system?  If so, can social entrepreneurs help?

Starting a Organization from Scratch

• Most new things fail: what do you need to do to prepare yourself before you begin?  What’s the value and opportunity in NOT preparing for failure?
• How do you match the structure of your organization (non profit, for profit, hybrid) with the opportunities for capital?
• What are effective early media strategies?
• How might partnerships play into organizational starts?