Convergence V:
Structures of Change

Conversation Questions 

Set A

Monday 10:30-11:45

Church Standing for Social Change
Institutional

1. Where do we see the church engaging in social change?  mapping
2. What are the practices by which the church can lead social change?  structure
3. How do we define the role of church in social change across context?  naming
4. How can the church engage youth in social change?  invitation

Product Design - taking products to market
Institutional

1. How do emerging opportunities for mass consumer impact product design? structure
2. What design trends excite you? Which do you fear?  mapping
3. How is cause marketing changing the products we bring to market and how they get there?  naming
4. How are companies using their existing customer base to design new products and bring them to market?  invitation

Modes of Organizing
Institutional

1. Where have communities shaped/created new marketplaces or networks?   mapping
2. What models of organizing - Network/Community/Movement/Market currently enjoy the greatest popularity?  mapping
3. What principles of organizing do you hold dear?  What do you think are outdated?   naming
4. What are the new assumptions in the principles of organizing?  execution

Financial Products that change communities
Institutional

1. What products have achieved change – and it is broad or deep or both?  mapping
2. How can we measure change at a community level?  structure
3. What do product designers need to constantly remember?   structure
4. How can you invite a community into the design process? invitation
5. What possibilities do new financial products unlock?  naming

Mind-Body-Sprit
Cultural

1. What specific systems or theories make sense of the connection between mind-body-spirit?  naming
2. What is the continuum of theories you see?  How have they shifted over the last 20 years? mapping
3. What creates a solid theory? Can it be tested?  naming
4. How could these theories be more broadly shared?  invitation
5. How do the structures of healthcare, religion, and science support or block the advancement of this journey? structure
6. Where are these conversations happening, who is at the table? invitation

Seasons of Change (political, farming, growth)
Cultural

1. What marks the changing of seasons? naming
2. Where have you found power in identifying your own seasons?  execution
3. How do seasons enable change? Where do they disrupt it?  structure
4. How does the change of a season, change the conversation?  invitation
5. What is the reality of businesses/sectors/industries that have seasons? What makes them different?  naming

Set B

Monday 1:45-3:00

Transforming through travel
Institutional

1. Who has been transformed?  naming
2. Who designs transformational travel? mapping
3. What are the organizational elements that make travel work?  structure
4. Are there people who should be discouraged from engaging in transformational travel? invitation

Transformational Investments
Institutional

1. How do you create transformational investments that can scale? structure
2. What transformation have you seen? naming
3. What structures support / inhibit transformation? structure
4. What promises do our investments make to us? naming
5. How do you broaden the appeal of transformational investments?  invitation

Hybrid structures (legal forms)
Institutional

1. What are the characteristics of a hybrid structure?  naming
2. What is driving / blocking hybrid structures?  mapping
3. How do hybrid structures affect execution / management?  execution
4. What do these structures enable?  execution

Organizational Culture
Institutional

1. How do you believe you create a culture within an organization?   naming
2. What parts of your culture are most powerful?  Most destructive?  mapping
3. What effective levers for cultural change have your seen implemented?   execution
4. At an early stage of a new venture or in a more established structure, how do you intentionally shift culture by bringing in new folks?  invitation
5. How does your culture pervade outside of your walls, your communities, those you serve? Where is that harder and where is that helpful?  invitation
6. What role should the morality of the organization's leadership play in the shaping of the culture?  structure

Health Paradigms Today
Cultural

1. What are the shifting realities in preventative healthcare?  naming
2. What areas are ripe for change?  mapping
3. What would it take to roll out a competing model?  structure
4. What surprising sources of change have emerged?  mapping
5. What would we want to shift to and for whom?  invitation

Legacy as a Concept
Cultural

1. What are the components of a legacy?  naming
2. What conversations/relationships aid in intentional design of a legacy?  execution
3. Are there competing models for legacy?  mapping
4. Do conversations about legacy create strange bedfellows?  invitation

Youth Mentoring Social Change
Cultural

1. What is unleashed when the younger generation mentors?  naming
2. What elements of an environment or relationship support such mentoring?  structure
3. What do youth have to offer?  invitation
4. Are youth movements creating new organizational forms? Are they reinventions or adaptations?  mapping

Making Media Matter
Cultural

1. What media matters today?  mapping 
2. How can we make existing media serve us better?  execution
3. What emerging forms of media could matter?  mapping
4. How do we make sure new forms of media will matter?  structure

Set C

Tuesday 3:30-4:45

Conscious Collective Responsibility
Personal

1. What structures encourage/discourage collective responsibility?  mapping
2. How would a greater consciousness about our collective responsibility change thing?  naming
3. How can we encourage a greater consciousness?  structure
4. How can we draw large numbers of people into this project?  invitation

Community Fulcrums of Change and Attraction
Institutional

1. What are all the elements in a community that can tip that place to positive?  mapping
2. How can social (relationship) capital support innovation?  structure
3. Where does theory meet reality in local-driven change?  naming
4. Where are there interesting innovations in community-based change?  mapping
5. How do you invite a community into change?  invitation
6. When is it wrong to enter a community with the intent to change it?  execution

Scaling Social Entrepreneurship
Institutional

1. How do we bring social entrepreneurs to major institutions (e.g. govt)?   execution
2. What theories of change create the capacity to scale?   naming
3. Where have social entrepreneurs made the greatest success in scale?   mapping

New structures for Delivering Education
Institutional

1. How is education changing in a globalizing world?  mapping
2. Who is engaged in education questions with new perspectives?  invitation
3. What can't be taught through a structured education?  How do we teach that?  structure

Transparency and sub-prime
Institutional

1. What problems are currently being caused by the lack of transparency for borrowers?  For the financial elites?  mapping
2. What is the role of transparency in modern financial markets?  naming
3. What intermediaries create/obfuscate transparency?  structure
4. Who should be watching?  invitation
5. What would create trust in the system?  execution

The Lens of Justice and Human Rights
Cultural

1. Is there a tension between the goal of universal rights and the practices of individual communities? The goals of economic development?  mapping
2. How does the frame of human rights enable communities to respond? Where is this effective?  structure
3. Who is leading this conversation right now and who is most engaged?  invitation
4. Do we need to make sure our human rights house is in order here in the U.S. before further engagement globally?  execution

Religion and Money
Cultural

1. Where is religious money?  mapping
2. What enables this money to ‘show up’?  structure
3. What does religious money want to do in the world?  naming
4. Who are the caretakers of these funds? invitation
5. What can religious money do that other money can't?  What can't it do?  naming

Appropriating language in innovation
Cultural

1. How do you name the space you work in when it is breaking new ground?  naming
2. What  do you borrow from the past, and how? execution
3. What examples of powerful and fuzzy language do you have?  mapping
4. What are the dangers of using new language? What are the dangers in appropriating old language?  naming

Hospitality, Presence, Gracious Spaces
Cultural

1. Where do you experience hospitality and grace?  mapping
2. How do you create a hospitable space?  execution
3. How do you surround yourself with gracious people?  invitation
4. Do you need to have grace to experience grace?  naming

Set D

Wednesday 9:30-10:45

Vocation, Identity, Purpose
Personal

1. How do you know where you belong?  mapping
2. In matching skills to job (conscious leadership) how do you create what you want?  structure
3. What has been helpful to you in discerning a vocational calling?  execution
4. How can one harness the reality of “seasons” of jobs and vocations?  invitation
5. How do you know when you are working with the right (or wrong) people/community?  naming

Local, Green, Planned
Institutional

1. What successes can planned communities claim today?  mapping
2. What makes a community ‘green’? naming
3. What structures enable it to remain a ‘community’?  structure
4. How can planned communities engage outsiders in the process? invitation
5. Where do planned communities succeed?  Fail? execution
6. Is there something inherent in a "planned" community that makes it stronger or weaker than one that isn't planned?  structure

Little Transactions creating Big Social Messes
Institutional

1. What are examples of little transactions that can create big problems?  (Here's some of ours:  sub-prime mortgages, day traders, ranchers killing wolves) mapping
2. Are the individual actors behaving "rationally" in these cases? naming
3. What structures aggregate these little transactions?  structure
4. How can we get these structures to be part of the solution?  invitation

The Paradoxes of scale
Institutional

1. How do you operate differently if your constituency is national / global?  execution
2. How can large organizations remain nimble?  structure
3. Where are the tensions in scale?  naming
4. Can you go broad and deep?  structure
5. How do you make people feel welcome when you are at scale?  invitation

Visual Representation
Cultural

1. What creates memory in a visually saturated world?  naming
2. How is the continued popularization / democratization of visual tools (photo, video etc.) changing our culture/world? mapping
3. When is visual representation not the best way to communicate?  When is it most powerful?  execution

Silence and Noise
Cultural

1. When should we have not spoken?  naming
2. Where and how is  silence effective in our world?   mapping
3. What structures don't need language? structures
4. How can leaders use silence?  execution
5. Who guides us out of noise?  invitation

Understanding Risk
Cultural

1. Why are some people more risk adverse than others? naming
2. What is the risk in playing it safe?  naming
3. When is it wrong to take on risk at home, in a community, for the planet? structure
4. What is the riskiest thing you've ever done?  mapping

Set E

Wednesday 11:00-12:15

9/11 (as a transformative moment) 
Personal

1. How did 9-11 change your view of the world?  naming
2. What guided a reconstruction of a world view?  structure
3. Can you be/feel safe in our world?  structure
4. What was the cost?  mapping
5. Where is the hope?  mapping

Debt Vehicles for Nonprofits
Institutional

1. What are emerging / innovative uses of debt for non profits?  mapping
2. What structures enable more creativity?  structure
3. What are the underlying forces / challenges / opportunities that debt vehicles are attempting to harness?  naming
4. What challenges do emerging vehicles face?   execution
5. How do leaders need to be engaged in rethinking? Who are the thought leaders who are driving this?  invitation

Politics and Money
Institutional

1. How has the money in politics changed in the past decade?  mapping
2. How does the current political climate affect the opportunity for change?  naming
3. How do individuals come to care about this issue? invitation
4. What structures support/block change? execution
5. What will it take to reform campaign finance?  execution

Art (Social) Enterprise
Institutional

1. What are the sustainable business models in the field of art?  structure
2. Do art enterprises take on different forms than other social enterprises? structure
3. What are their particular challenges?  execution
4. How can art enterprises better attract funding?  invitation
5. What is unique about an art enterprise?  naming

City Justice: what about the poor in the city
Institutional

1. What models do you see having the greatest impact in helping the urban poor?  structure
2. Where has a conversation across sectors been opened up?  invitation
3. What aspects of justice are not on the public agenda?  naming
4. What structures cause poverty and can they be flipped?  mapping

Independent Workers, Small Business, Employment Patterns
Institutional

1. What are the employment trends which are impacting workers and small businesses?  naming
2. What are the impacts of a global market on employment?  mapping
3. What structures increase the security of independent workers?  structure
4. How do we invite small business owners into a conversation around their legacy?  invitation

Ideas in a Compelling Package
Cultural

1. What makes an idea packagable? What makes a package compelling? naming
2. Are some ideas too complicated to "package"?  What do you do with these? structure
3. How do ideas move, get shipped around, what directs them? mapping
4. What are the elements of a good package for an idea?  execution
5. What are good delivery systems for packaged ideas? structure

What Models do we Trust?
Cultural

1. How do we learn to trust a model?  naming
2. When has your trust in a model been mislaid and how did you discover that?  mapping
3. How do we get others to trust the models we do?  invitation
4. Are flexible models more or less trustworthy?  structure

The Power of Money
Cultural

1. How do you cope with the power of money to do good and evil?  structure
2. How has your relationship to money transformed over the seasons of your life?  mapping
3. What models do you see others using in their relationship to money?  naming
4. How can open dialogues around relationship with money be established?  invitation

Set F

Wednesday 1:30-2:45

Engaging Social Change at Home
Personal

1. How does the average family in Topeka engage in the ideas of social change?  mapping
2. What sustains a connection between personal transformation and global transformation?  structure
3. What tangibly between home economics and the concerns of a broader society? How is that made real? naming
4. To make change do you have to be daring? execution

“Slow Food” meets Large Social structures
Institutional

1. How do you know you're making a difference when you're moving a glacier?  naming
2. What are the values of slow change?  naming
3. What structures enable consistent slow change (how to you keep it recharged)?  structure
4. What leaders champion slow change? Who are the thought leaders who see the potential?  invitation

Think/Do Tanks for Social Action
Institutional

1. What are the questions that thinking about will actually make a difference?  naming
2. What practices help tie philosophical/religious statements to practical action?  execution
3. What innovative structures gain from experience in the field?  structure
4. What do these "tanks" offer and to whom? invitation

Radical Innovation - How do you Find it?
Institutional

1. What does radical innovation mean in your world?  naming
2. What are the strengths and weaknesses of currently popular models such as business plan contests, awards and fellowships?  structure
3. What are some of your favorite radical innovation stories?  naming