My mind is full of thoughts about network start-up issues, since I’ve been asked to help develop a new global one that brings together academics and corporations for sustainability.  The experience illustrates four lessons about the exploration stage and initiation stage of the four network development stages.  Elements of those first two stages were combined into a “Step 1″ through the end of this year.

The lessons emerged last week at a first meeting in Milan with a luminary group of  about 20 academics.  It was organized by the indefatigable Maurizio Zollo who heads up the Center for Research in Organization and Management (CROMA) at Bocconi University, a leading European business school.

Lesson 1: Be passion-driven and work-focused

Happily both of the lead speakers who are known for their profound thinking spoke to these issues…the indomitable Simon Zadek and the quietly centered Ed Freeman.  Such people have lots of great choices about how to spend their time, and giving outlet for personal passion is required to engage the quality of leadership necessary to give life to an influential global network.

And you’ve got to know what you want to achieve.  The global academic-corporate sustainability field is extremely crowded:  the Global Compact (PRME), the Global Reporting Initiative, the Principles for Responsible Investment all have their own such networks;  as well, there are others such as the (formerly European) Academy of Business in Society and the Globally Responsible Leadership Initiative.

In this case, distinctive purpose was easily identified because of historic inter-personal ties for many present, participants’ own expertise in network development, and by the year of preparation led by Maurizio.  The group’s critique is that sustainability is being integrated into corporations much too slowly.  To change this, the group’s interest concerns (1) advancing knowledge about organizational learning and change towards sustainability, and (2)  actively supporting organizations’ transition towards their own model of sustainable enterprise.

The group coalesced around Step 1 of six months that will produce leading comprehensive case studies.  These will provide key insights as the basis for any future action.  (Click on photo of meeting participants and key to increase size).

Lesson 2:  Think “community-development”, not “governance structure”

I always get worried when people talk about “governance structure” in the abstract.  It should arise out of the need to support a community of people to do work and experience from doing the work.

Community development requires not just clear articulation of, and commitment to, the group goal, but also with respect to goals of distinctive stakeholder groups’ and individual participants’ goals.

In this case, community will be developed through interactions that produce the case studies, their analysis and definition of future action.  What’s needed structurally to do that work?  Nothing much.  There’ll be a call for proposals, networking to get the needed global complexion of research centers to respond, and organizing of an event to discuss the cases.

However, to optimize the potential for a successful Step 2 does require some more work.  There must be some community development work done with the proposal submitters, and infrastructure must be in place to immediately follow-up and support the outcomes of the next meeting.  I have participated in far too many “event-focused” initiatives, that have poured attention into organizing a meeting only to be insufficiently prepared to support the passion and ideas that arise out of it.  The result?  Dissipation of energy and lost opportunity.

For Step 1 CROMA will lead administration, and the key investors – ABIS, Bocconi and INSEAD – will form the organizing committee.

Lesson 3:  Use leading tools

I arrived on the scene a bit late, and the initiative could not make use of some of the tools that would have helped a lot.  In particular, significant energy was spent to identify research centers and corporations to participate in the initiative.  The approach was the classic “who do we know”, and building out from there.

One problem with this approach is that it is very labor-intensive.  Another is that it is necessarily limited by current connections…and often to produce the needed innovation requires going beyond these.  But perhaps the biggest problem is that this comes from a “building” approach that can badly alienate people, rather than a community-weaving approach.

This is a crowded issue field.  The project’s success requires “weaving together” current activities in new ways…the “building something new” approach of asking others to “join us” will inevitably provoke hostility from people who have been working in the field for some time and will say “why don’t you join us!”

Mapping using web crawls and social network analysis supports a weaving strategy, by heightening understanding of who is already working in the issue arena, their current relationships, and how to complement their activity.  As well, it can be much more economical and comprehensive.

Lesson 4:  Integrate reflection, learning and flexibility

These terms might be summarized with one word:  emergence.  That’s a key quality of networks successfully dealing with complex challenges.   Networks are complicated – there are lots of players, relationships, goals and activities.  However, change networks are also complex:  they don’t really know the “answer” to the challenge they are addressing, and what they should do.  What does a truly sustainable corporation really look like?  The network must stimulate questions and processes that produce an ever-more effective set of actions.

At the Milan meeting I heard people describe this more explicitly and with greater comfort than I’ve ever heard before.  I guess academics deal better with uncertainty than most (although their weakness is that they more often have trouble with taking impactful action).  The result?  They were fine throwing out the original proposal for Step 1, and totally redefining it around the case development process.

So one of my own learnings in this case is the value of having academics involved in these early stages of development.  Originally corporate-types were invited to them meeting, but they didn’t show up and that is probably just as well.  They would have been frustrated with the conceptual development discussions.  However, their presence at the next meeting with the cases is critical, for Step 2 to be successful.  This emphasizes the importance of developing the cases collaboratively with the corporations, and the value of meetings designed around what I call Action Learning Development.

In his follow-up email to the Milan participants, Maurizio commented “As an Italian saying goes, ‘the good day can be told from the early morning’.  Well, there could not have been a better early morning for the long and exciting day ahead of us.”  I agree!