Last week’s blog began answering the question that many in multi-stakeholder change networks hear :  “So what is it you actually do?”  I wrote about the first two activities of such Global Action Networks (GANs) listed in the Table, and now I’ll explain more about the other four activities.

Networks, Learning and Research

Learning is a core part of most GANs’ work, since how to realize their goals is not always obvious and participants’ capacity to contribute to reaching them must be developed. However, GANs often have a remarkably underdeveloped sense of this work. At a meeting of GAN staff who had roles in developing knowledge and learning, they all said that they had very few resources and learning outcomes and strategies were poorly defined. Nevertheless, GANs put an enormous part of their resources into learning, when all the meetings and time in conversation to develop knowledge and capacity are taken into account.

Learning is a key activity of the Global Compact, as it develops lessons to share amongst companies on how the UN principles it promotes can be implemented. It is also a key activity of the Global Partnership for the Prevention of Armed Conflict (GPPAC), which similarly organizes participants into regional learning groups and shares lessons across them.

For the GANs in health care, research is a particularly important activity. Often this is a traditional type of research:  half of the Stop TB’s 10-year work plan concerns R&D for new vaccines. The GANs support collaborative development of this research, bringing together government, civil society, and commercial organizations with their distinctive expertise and capabilities.

Networks, Measuring and Certifying

Certification is a popular organizing strategy to realize change. Production of goods and services is assessed in terms of social, environmental, and economic standards, and GANs certify whether those standards have been met. The International Social and Environmental Accreditation and Labelling Alliance (ISEAL) is an association of GANs, including the Marine Stewardship Council, Social Accountability International, and the fair trade groups associated with the Fair Labelling Organization.

Several GANs make development of impact measurement frameworks and infrastructure a core part of their work. Although the Global Reporting Initiative does not actually get involved in measurement or certification, it develops the frameworks for companies to assess their impact in terms of social, economic, and environmental outcomes. And in fact, most ISEAL members do not actually do the certification, although they certify the certifiers. Transparency International also has an important measurement program, with its Corruption Perceptions Index that rates countries. And The Access Initiative’s (TAI’s) core strategy has to do with the broader measurement concept of “assessing” countries’ fulfillment of their commitments in the Rio Declaration to access to information, participation, and justice in environmental decision-making.

Networks and Financing

The Global Water Partnership (GWP) exemplifies a GAN formed by donors who want to give scale to their efforts by pooling financial resources. The network has been supported financially by many developed countries. For these funders, the GWP is an economical way to achieve the overall goals of promoting social equity, economic efficiency, and environmental sustainability, by improving the way water is managed and developed.

This pooling of financial resources is at the heart of most of the health GANs, like the Global Alliance for Improved Nutrition, the Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunization, and the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis, and Malaria. The latter is financially by far the largest of any GAN: in the 8 years following its 2002 founding it had approved funding of US$ 19.3 billion for more than 572 programs in 144 countries.

As well the GAN structure often facilitates approaching funders.  For example, GANs can put together proposals that cover a much larger geographic area and be of a much large scale than their individual participants or regional components.  This can make them more attractive to the funders.

Networks and Advocating

GANs’ advocating strategy usually resembles a co-learning approach across traditional divides, rather than a traditional lobbying and pressuring strategy. This is demonstrated by TAI. TAI takes a learning approach when conducting “assessments” of governments’ performance vis-à-vis their commitments to provide access to information, participation, and justice in environmental decision-making.

Although NGOs are in control of TAI, “TAI members recognize that governments are not monolithic; they are filled with allies and opponents,” comments Joe Foti, TAI Associate. This leads to a diversity of TAI advocacy strategies with the goal of governments co-participating in the actual process of assessing. TAI country coalitions find that it usually helps to conduct the assessments in close relationship with a supportive government agency, such as the national Ministry of Environment that is usually weak on finance, political power, and science. In Thailand the TAI coalition includes an institute sponsored by the King of Thailand, which gives it legitimacy in government eyes. And in Africa, the TAI-Cameroon representative was actually asked to advocate to other governments and speak on his government’s behalf at a UNEP Governing Council meeting on access to information, participation, and justice in environmental decision-making.

Of course GANs integrate these six strategies. For example, The Climate Group focuses in particular on bringing together local and state/provincial governments and business. One project demonstrates the effectiveness of outdoor LED lighting with city government. This requires bringing together LED experts, financial institutions to finance the city’s investments, and local government. Bjorn Roberts, Corporate Partnership Manager for The Climate Group comments: “We make (climate change) a compelling topic for all, and put it on their agenda. The conversations don’t happen unless people are put together.” Through The Climate Group, a local city project becomes a global pilot. It combines the strategies of shared visioning of green cities, system organizing by bringing together the diverse partners, learning with the pilot, financing through developing new financial instruments, and advocating with other cities to follow the pilot.

This table aims to provide an analytical tool for networks to ask questions about their own strategies.  What are they doing in each area?  Which ones are they strong in?  Which ones should they develop further.  I hope you find it helpful!

If you are starting or working in a network, you should use new mapping technologies to “see the whole”.  Knowing who is working in your field and their relationships is key for good strategy.  In a previous blog, I briefly introduced several mapping technologies.  Now I’ll give more details about one of the easier and quicker ways to map:  using web crawls.   They give a view of the structure of the “virtual (digital) world”, that is becoming an increasingly good description of “real world” relationships as the internet develops.

“Hyper-links” embedded in organizations’ web-sites that link to another organization’s site can be gathered through web crawls of internet sites.  A map such as in the diagrams below can then be generated to describe organizations’ virtual relationships.

I did this with the Global Organizational Learning and Development Network (GOLDEN), using the Issue Crawler developed by Richard Rogers at the University of Amsterdam.  The mapping was driven by the GOLDEN goals in terms of key stakeholder groups.  It aims to bring together leading academic research centers and businesses to spur attainment of sustainability.  The issue arena can be labeled “academic-corporate interactions for corporate sustainable responsibility (CSuR)”. The founders speak in terms of engaging 50 research centers and 250 corporations within a short time.  “Community organizing” is not framed as a goal, but it is an implicit activity to realize the goal.

Network Development Rule 1

Rule number one in initiating a network is to understand that someone is always already working in the issue arena…and to identify them if possible.  As in most cases, some of the leaders in the issue arena are among the founders of the new network—although they’re all academic CSuR leaders.  And as is also true in most cases in global networks, they are mainly older white men (like me!).  To realize a global network with all the complexions that implies for the issue, mapping can help enormously.

Issue crawls begin by identifying key URLs – referred to as “seed URLs” – relevant to your issue arena. In this case, I identified networks of organizations of two major stakeholder groups that are working CSuR.  First to note is that the issue arena is already quite crowded:  I identified 9 existing academic-business CSuR networks including ABIS, GRLI and UNPRME.  Also I identified 14 business CSuR networks including Business for Social Responsibility, the International Business Leaders Forum and the World Business Council for Sustainable Development.

Using these 23 seeds to conduct crawls produces data about URL connections and maps that display connections visually.  Some notes on “reading” the maps:

• Always remember you are looking at the virtual (digital) world of relationships.  Although it increasingly aligns with the real world, particularly for global issues, idiosyncrasies remain.  For example, educational institutions are much more reticent to link to external URLs than, for example, NGOs.  And some simply have much less developed web-sites in this regard…EABIS, for example, does not have outlinks;  GRLI has outlinks, but not for its institutional partners (but note that importance of a URL is suggested by inlinks –  links directed at it from other URLs).
• Nodes are sized according to the number of inlinks .
• Nodes’ relative locations are the product of their links and those of others in the network (nodes they are “closest to”).
• The maps here are all co-link ones which means they show nodes with two or more links in the network.  As well, they display the top 200 nodes’ links for the seed URLs (there are actually only 112-118 nodes in these maps, since some nodes have multiple links).
• In these maps I’ve color-coded the seed URLs for each map:  red for the academic-business networks, green for the business CSuR networks, and purple for multi-stakeholder networks (explained below).

In Map 1 (click on the map to enlarge) only eight of the seed URLs are among the top 200 nodes.  The map suggests two centers (clustering of big nodes):  one around intergovernmental organizations like the UN and World Bank, and another around multi-stakeholder networks, in particular the Global Compact and the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI).  This leads me to do additional runs that:

1. Exclude the IGOs…I perceive them as “background noise” that is masking the relationships in the issue arena I want to describe;  and
2. Include as seeds the URLs of multi-stakeholder networks’ (Global Action Networks’…GANs’) that are clearly working in the issue arena:  the Global Compact, the Principles for Responsible Investment, the Global Reporting Initiative and Transparency International.

Map 2 is a run excluding the IGOs.  It shows the business CSuR (green) nodes as central, the academic-business CSUR (red) seeds as fewer and more peripheral (suggesting the importance for them of their linkage to IGOs rather than business CSuR networks), and reinforces the idea that the GANs should be included because of their centrality and size.

Map 3 also includes the GANs as seeds (purple). We can see that there are more academic-business (red) and business CSuR (green) network seeds (10), which also supports the decision to include GANs and exclude IGOs.  The seeds for the business CSuR networks and GANs group, which would be expected as they tend to link to each other and the same organizations.

The Map 3 academic-business CSuR networks (red) are comparatively small, non-central and dispersed; three are really part of an educational grouping that suggests their orientation towards educational institutions is significant stronger than towards businesses (if they were balanced, you’d expect to see them with the GANs);  the two Asian ones are quite different with Asian associations.

Each of these maps is accompanied by several types of data-base outputs summarized in this excel spreadsheet.  For example, Columns B-C list all the nodes in the network (I set the maximum at 600 nodes) by inlinks;  another data output even gives lists by web-page, to identify locations/people within large organizations that are relevant.

In a run using snowball analysis (rather than co-link) the crawl retains URLs with at least one link from seeds.  Run with the three stakeholder groups, this produced a list of 5317 URLs (Column D).  And other maps show these by geography which more helps identify, for example, research centers in China. GOLDEN is particularly interested in particular geographies, like China.  More runs can be done for China in particular, and using Chinese-language web-sites.

Web Issue Hyper-Link Crawls and Strategy

So here are some ways all this work helps strategically.  It gives:

1. A feel for the domain structure…the “ecology” of relationships.  Who is dominant?  What are the groupings that are important to understand for success?  The maps help create a network perspective, by giving a visual association with the abstract “space” in which an initiative is working.
2. Strategic options…who to partner with and “reweave” the nodes so they can realize a network’s goals.  Everyone has their own “network” of relationships, but how do we broaden this perspective and who should we prioritize to engage?  GOLDEN’s founding academics obviously want to partner with corporations.  But should they do this by weaving together existing networks?  By going directly to corporations?  Some combination…and if so what?  The data bases are particularly helpful in identifying potential partners.  They include many education institutions and corporations and their linkages, to help identify who would likely be most interested in becoming involved in GOLDEN, and who would come with the richest network.  The snowball crawl, for example, identifies 5317 potential partners…although only a small fraction of these will be of interest to GOLDEN, it is a universe of options that is much more comprehensive than traditional snowball methods.  Should the IGOs be actively considered as partners?
3. Strategic clarity…what would you like the issue arena/map to look like after your intervention?  What are the “holes” in the map where relationships should be forged?  Today the map does not have “GOLDEN”;  what would the map look like in three years time if GOLDEN is successful?  This has an “impact evaluation” suggestion, thinking that GOLDEN’s inlinkage placement on the map in a few years can be one way of assessing its success.  As well, this helps guide questions about partnering priorities and web-site development.
4. Communications…who are the gatekeepers? Who should GOLDEN “get on board” to facilitate communications?  Naturally enough, many nodes concern communications.  This includes social media web-sites, publishing ones and traditional media ones.  This is very useful for development of a communications strategy.
5. Other…there is much useful information.  For example, maps show foundations and resource-organizations working in the issue, to help define a funding strategy.

Of all the benefits, however, perhaps the greatest is simply helping people to think more in network terms.  Although not as helpful in this regard as something like value network analysis, web crawls are a great step forward.  And of course if you’re interested in me helping you apply these types of analyses to your situation, email me!

Probably no skill is as central to multi-stakeholder networks as the ability to connect across differences.  For Global Action Networks (GANs), this means connecting between individuals and organizations with diverse cultures and ways of perceiving the world.  And it brings up difficult-to-talk-about topics like “love” and “the spiritual”.

Cobus de Swardt, Managing Director for Transparency International, describes this on a very personal level that he experienced when he was in prison in South Africa for his opposition to apartheid.  He was 18, and facing the prospect of being raped.

“I don’t think you can engage violence with someone you truly love…and so I ask ‘what does this mean?’  That if there’s a true bond with these people, I won’t get raped…so I’ll have to really work to act on this bond.

You can’t act out that you have a bond with somebody…if you think that they’re a total jerk, racist, then this will fail.  I had to overcome something within myself.  You have to seek out the common humanity with someone who you dislike, you might disrespect and have very negative feelings towards…you can’t “act out” that you have positive feelings.  You need to truly believe it.  For me that was my own biggest achievement because I had to overcome all my own prejudices.  The process to social justice is in many ways more challenging to overcoming your own prejudices than the big social justice issues you fight on a big stage.”

This might seem very distant from the tension that comes with connecting between organizational sectors (government-business-civil society).  However, many of the same leadership challenges arise.  There is strong tendency to exaggerate, create stereo-types, and even vilify others in contrast to one’s own position and organization.

A Human Dynamics and Multi-Sector Perspective

One powerful insight that has helped me overcome this tendency arises from my work on identifying distinct attributes of these organizational sectors. When I matched this to the Human Dynamics work of Sandra Seagal and David Horne on individual learning styles, I understood that the sectors tend to be aggregations of different learning styles – physically-centered for business, mentally-centered for government and emotionally-centered for civil society.  This insight provides an invaluable way for people to understand their differences so they can meaningfully work together.

From this perspective, people in business tend to simply “make sense of the world” (learn) in a very different way than people in the other sectors – no one sense-making approach is “right”;  rather, they are complementary and collectively represent a whole-world perspective.  However, these different sense-making approaches create enormous conflict, and GANs need to develop their competency to create collaboration across these learning styles to realize success.  Seagal’s work has actually been integrated into the Swedish education system, with children being taught how to communicate across these learning styles.

This connecting also has a spiritual component that is brought out by another GAN leader and good friend, Sam Daley-Harris.  Sam transformed himself from an orchestra musician into an organizer of what is one of the most important global networks addressing poverty:  the Microcredit Summit Campaign.  He and Muhammad (Grameen Bank) Yunus began working closely together 18 years before Yunus won the Nobel Peace Prize.

I commend to you an inspirational 18-minute You-Tube video Poverty, Purpose, Pitfalls, and Redemption.  Sam speaks of bringing meaning and purpose to one’s life by connecting with others and “taking action when you see something needs to be done.”  He describes original micro-credit motivations involving “redemption”, as defined as “restoring (finding) one’s honor and worth, and setting one free.”

An on-going challenge for GANs is to maintain these love and spiritual components that are necessary for the critical work of GANs to create deep connections across difference.  How can they cultivate these qualities and bring together  bureaucratic, profit-maximizing and self-righteousness orientations…and realize effectiveness in their global change drives?  Some of the answers lie with Human Dynamics and leadership that reflects love and spirit.

Some people think that our global future rests with reforming the UN.  That presents a depressing challenge.  But change often comes in the form of a skunk works[1], and that’s what UN Secretary General Kofi Annan created in 2000 with the Global Compact (GC).  The return on his $10,000 investment in the very competent Georg Kell and John Ruggie was on display last week at the GC’s 10^th anniversary.  And with it, was an embryonic display of our future global decision-making processes.

The Compact is a strategy to give life to the idealistic UN values about labor, human rights, the environment, transparency…the 10 Compact principles that are wonderful statements that the UN has produced, but has proven pretty ineffective at realizing.  The Compact is specifically focused upon corporations and engaging them to actively integrate the principles.  Although technically controlled by the UN, the GC’s success depends upon being responsive to a multi-stakeholder Board.

Over 1200 people participated in the New York Times Square hotel meetings that lasted 2-1/2 days.  It was labeled the “Leaders Summit”, an event occurring every three years.  The theme was “Building a new era of sustainability”.  Preparations totally pre-occupied the GC for many months.  The event itself was rather ho-hum, with some weaknesses:

• A vapid Accenture report that was widely criticized for its methodological weakness and self-promotion about enlightened corporate views of sustainability.
• Old white males dominating…but it was an accurate representation of the current corporate elite.   There was a sincere and modestly effective effort to bring in diversity:  geographically it was somewhat diverse (reflecting travel costs);  although technically there was diversity to include academics, NGOs and government types, they were not generally of a critical ilk.
• There was no meaningful “decision-making” role for participants that would build a true sense of ownership.
• Obliging people to stand with the arrival of the Secretary-General really inserted an anachronistic protocol into a forward-focused meeting.

Never to be discounted at these events is their occasion to build important inter-personal ties…the active community building.  The main activities consisted of panels highlighting Compact participants’ perspectives, punctuated with round table discussions for the greater 1200 with a variety of stakeholders.  These helped connect across different perspectives.  However, the range of participants and the rather superficial GC connections of many…I had new GC members who were a Namibian banker on one side and a Managing Partner of a small Danish law firm on the other…made discussion pretty superficial.

It led me to wonder if the GC’s national networks can be made the focal meeting participants, giving them a role in GC policy, planning and decision-making through the event.  This could ground the event in much more substantive issues with much better-informed and engaged people, as some other Global Action Networks do with global meetings.

Nevertheless, the meeting was better than what the UN usually produces.  It demonstrated that the knitting together of Global Action Networks into a new web of multi-stakeholder change networks is advancing rapidly.  Transparency International, the Principles for Responsible Investment and the Global Reporting Initiative were active presences, and Social Accountability International’s Eileen Kaufman was a vocal participant.  These form a group of GANs reshaping corporations’ future, complementing a health care group of GANs operating out of Geneva.

But perhaps most importantly the meeting produced a sense of forward-momentum.  I heard criticism that the Compact was not offering anything to companies leading in sustainability action.  And then a segmentation strategy was presented to create a space specifically for leading companies.  The Global Reporting Initiative and the Global Compact announced an alliance that will respond to the criticism about emptiness of the current reports by companies on their performance in terms of the principles.  And John Ruggie, on behalf of the UN Human Rights Council, presented a very well-received new strategy framed by the concepts of “protect, respect and remedy” to replace the ridiculous era of corporate self-regulation on the issue.

I must admit that I continue to have great unease about inertia vis-à-vis sustainability, however. The Compact’s goal of increasing from 6,000 to 20,000 company signatories in 10 years seems rather uni-dimensional and lacking in aggressiveness. We still seem to be nibbling at the edges of the transformation challenge.

Reflecting this, a meeting theme was the need to take meaningful action on a bigger scale and in greater depth.  We’d better hold ourselves all accountable for achieving that when we reconvene in three years for the next Compact Leaders Summit.

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[1] A protected experimental space where the usual rules and procedures of the sponsoring organization do not apply.

To realize large-scale change requires really good large-scale conversations.  With tens and even hundreds of millions of people.  I remember the 1980s’ innovative format of satellite-fed televised town hall meetings with citizens of the US and the Soviet Union talking directly to one another for the first time.  They made a huge impression and broke down stereotypes.  Although social media and the internet allow much richer exchanges, by-and-large they have been pretty unimaginative.  But Patrice Barrat of Article Z and the Bridge Initiative in Paris, is pushing the boundaries with a new just-launched production!

Patrice integrates social media, mobile phones, video, television, email, web-conferencing, and other technologies to create conversations about critical issues.  He starts with a citizen with a compelling question and brings them to Presidents, Prime Ministers, CEOs, Executive Directors and other leaders to ask their question.

For example, he did a production with the Global Fund to Fight AIDS and a South African AIDS-infected child.  She asked the question “Why must I die?” Busi – a south African activist – carried her question to G8 participants Gordon Brown (UK Finance Minister), Paul Wolfowitz (World Bank President) and Kofi Annan (UN Secretary General).  The exchanges went on the web, which spurred others to add their own videos and written commentary;  after a conversation of several months, a film was produced integrating the contributions.

Patrice is a journalist animateur whose work reflects three principles:

1. Place film-makers/journalists at the service of citizens of the planet to help them ask questions that affect their lives…journalists bring the powers-that-be to the citizens to answer citizens’ questions.
2. Have the stories unfold publicly by placing video episodes on the web, before making the film for TV.
3. Remember that investigations don’t tell the ultimate truth about an issue…all issues are interactive amongst stakeholders.  It’s an evolving truth;  the story is always an evolving process.

After working for years as an award-winning journalist, Patrice began in 1999 to experiment with his approach, which is named MadMundo.tv.  He is maintaining the cutting edge with the second phase of a research project that brings together Article Z, telecom Sofrecom-Orange, business school HEC, and the Institut de Recherche et d’Innovation (IRI) of Beaubourg.

Just Launched

That second phase just launched last week.  With a team of a couple of dozen people he is piloting a monthly series of conversations for the French-German television network Arte.  The pilot is about the financial crisis in Greece.   He begins with a 28-year old Greek university graduate, Maria, who earns €700 a month, and her question. “Why should I suffer from the economic chaos?”  And for others:  “What if that happened to us?”  Maria will pose her question to such people as the Prime Minister of Greece, the President of the European Central Bank and the head of the International Labour Organization.  Every day there will be a new web-site video and commentary, to spur responses from others on-line.  And at the end of the month there will be a 52-minute TV production.

Patrice’s favorite MadMundo.tv production was a series with a Brazilian named Geraldo who was out of work and asked Lula before he was President “Who benefits from profits?”  Two years later when Lula was President a second series was done with Geraldo.  But this time there was difficulty in getting a meeting with Lula until Patrice met him at an airport and showed him Geraldo’s picture.  “He turned to the camera and said ‘Geraldo you want to know about globalization and profits?’  Lula started explaining how capital flows across borders and that people can’t cross borders…Geraldo was very proud that Lula still talked to him even indirectly.  They met directly later.”

A third series with Geraldo asking “Who can I trust” did not end so happily as Lula was embroiled in a corruption scandal.  But it took Geraldo’s question to the head of Transparency International, Romania, Burkina Faso and the UK.

Many leaders would dismiss Patrice’s request for an interview as a traditional journalist, but are much more interested in meeting with a citizen.  Sometimes it doesn’t turn out happily for the leader.  The citizen who met Kofi Annan commented that she was not impressed. Patrice explains that “Some people at the UN said (to Patrice) ‘We thought you were a friend.’  But that’s what the character had to say.”

What’s changed over the years?  One thing is that Patrice’s approach is recognized as legitimate and doable.  There’s a form of competition even, with YouTube and other on-line video exchanges. And Patrice has moved from a more journalistic style “to a style where you feel the character is really meeting someone.  It’s a series of discoveries and encounters.  It’s not made for an audience just to understand an issue, but to understand the questioning of the characters with their eyes and their evolution (in relation to the issue).”

Of course a big bi-product is strengthened community around the issue with greater participation and understanding about how to influence it.

Want to try creating your own MadMundo conversation with Patrice?  He estimates the cost between €120,000 – €160,000.

The world’s premier alliance of multi-stakeholder change networks is reviewing standards that operationalize their change strategy. The ISEAL Alliance is the global association for social and environmental standards.  Members include the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC), the Marine Stewardship Council (MSC), Social Accountability International (SAI), the Fair Labelling Organization (FLO: fair trade) and the International Federation of Organic Agriculture Movements (IFOAM).

You know ISEAL organizations by their labels:  Fair Trade’s on coffee, MSC’s on seafood,  FSC’s label on paper and wood products. ISEAL’s Impact Code helps define what to measure and how to measure in order to be awarded the labels. Highly relevant is the work of 2009 economics Nobel Prize winner Elinor Ostrom.

The Change Strategy

The change issues are sustainability and economic justice.  A basic Code element of the change strategy is multi-stakeholder engagement.  This produces a “whole systems” perspective about how companies’ actions impact social, environmental and economic outcomes. This is a big change from the traditional exclusive corporate focus on its own financial welfare.

Currently the standard does a good job of defining who stakeholders are.  However, how they must be engaged is defined under the very general concept of “consultation” that raises questions.

For MSC and FSC, certifiers who meet certain standards are hired by a “client” (usually a forestry or fishery company) to determine whether certification standards are being met.    Typically certifiers interview stakeholders individually and there is not necessarily a collective meeting of stakeholders.  Nor is there any requirement that a multi-stakeholder group be developed to manage the fishery/forest or ensure the certification standards are being met between the certification renewals.

This is distinctly different from the strategy of the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria (the Global Fund) and the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (EITI).  The former only accepts funding applications from multi-stakeholder groups;  the latter, a spin-off of Transparency International, requires that applications for “validation” of transparency standards come from multi-stakeholder bodies.

“EITI offers a platform for dialogue to discuss transparency issues,” Tim Bittiger, EITI Regional Director explained to me.

The Nobel Prize

Ostrom won the Nobel Prize for her analysis of economic governance. The media release announced her win this way:

“(Ostrom) has challenged the conventional wisdom that common property is poorly managed and should be either regulated by central authorities, or privatized. … She observes that resource users frequently develop sophisticated mechanisms for decision-making and rule enforcement to handle conflicts of interest, and she characterizes the rules that promote successful outcomes.” (Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences 2009)

She spent decades studying successful resource management at the local level by multi-stakeholder groups.  Most of ISEAL’s members are multi-stakeholder networks at the global level, which reflects their theory of change.  This would lead you to expect that they would find this a compelling arrangement locally, as well.

Empowerment

Paddy Doherty who is managing the Impacts Code review process, says that ISEAL members talk about the importance of “empowering” stakeholders.  This suggests the importance of creating new governance arrangements locally where differences can be worked out, and collective planning and heightened standards can be advanced.

As might be expected, there is already experience with cross-stakeholder groups locally.  FLO deals with cooperatives that cross the traditional labor-management divides.  MSC Project Manager Amanda Stern-Pirlot comments that: “If a fishery has certification conditions (i.e. has to make improvements over the course of their certification) often the cooperation of others is needed to fulfill these conditions, particularly when improvements to management systems are needed. In lots of situations, having a good collaborative relationship with stakeholders outside the client group is essential.”

Multi-stakeholder Platform Issues

The idea of forming multi-stakeholder groups for certification raises skills issues. Typically certifiers have traditional auditing expertise (eg.: from Arthur Anderson) and would not be equipped to handle some of the dynamics and associated goals.  Making multi-stakeholder platform development would require a very different set of competencies.

Doherty raises the valid point that the Global Fund and EITI are dealing with different situations:  handing out large amounts of money in the one case, and working with large corporations and governments in the other.  However, maybe this simply suggests a modified strategy to foster formation of a multi-stakeholder group.  It could be made a condition of renewal of certification, for example, so the initial certification ushers is contingent upon a plan and commitment to develop a local platform.

The big product and attraction to multi-stakeholder platforms is their ability to coordinate their very distinct resources and capabilities, and challenge each other’s parochial perspectives, to produce very wonderful innovation…to do what none of them could imagine doing on their own.  This is the type of change that is required to realize the objectives of ISEAL Alliance members.  This has been well-documented, including in my last book Societal Learning and Change:  How governments, business and civil society are creating solutions to complex multi-stakeholder problems.

Until 30 April 2010 you are invited to contribute your ideas for improvement, discuss key issues, and propose changes to the code.

When John Ruggie was describing his work with the UN Human Rights Council (UNHRC) to reduce corporate-related human rights abuses, I couldn’t help thinking “do we really need another global network on this issue?  Would it be better to think about possibilities of them working together more closely?  Is this simply another case of ‘government’ wanting to “be in charge’, and resistant to joining others?  Or are the current networks too tied to their own identities to look at the bigger change opportunity?”

The UNHRC takes its definition of Human Rights from the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, adopted in 1948.  It presents a broad definition, including rights to education, to work, and to a standard of living adequate for health and well-being.

Competitors?

Is this definition sufficiently relevant to the numerous existing global, multi-stakeholder networks that are working on human rights issues with a particular focus upon corporations? Also in the broad arena are:

• The UN Global Compact, distinguished by its UN leadership, and its focus upon development of a “learning space” for corporations to integrate 10 principles into their operations including human rights and labor standards principles.
• The Global Reporting Initiative, distinguished by the formal absence of government and GRI’s work to create a framework integrating all others, for corporations to report their social, environmental and economic impacts.

In the labor rights arena, there are:

• The International Labour Organization, distinguished by its formal government participation in addition to NGOs, labour and business that make up others;
• Social Accountability International, distinguished by a workplace/plant-level certification strategy;
• The Fair Labor Association, distinguished by a buyer-driven strategy of American universities that want the goods they sell to meet certain standards;
• The Ethical Trading Initiative, distinguished by a strategy focusing upon supply chains of major corporations.

And then there’re other networks that could easily move into this arena, like Transparency International with its concerns about corporate corruption.

Time to Reassess Development Stage?

The question about current powerful options for reducing corporate-related human rights abuses is related to how the “issue domain” is analyzed in terms of its “development stage”.  In this case, its development stage of the “issue domain” (human rights and corporations) rather than the individual networks.  The networks began by focusing on distinct “pieces” of the emerging global puzzle…they’ve been experimenting with and developing particular strategies for over a decade (with the exception of the ILO, founded in 1919).

Maybe now is the moment for the networks to reassess their learnings and strategies, and to think how to really scale up for impact.  That doesn’t necessarily mean a merger which in many ways is contrary to “network thinking”…it might be best to have relatively distinct strategies and networks, but with a collective understanding of how they relate and their “piece” of the puzzle.  This is already happening to some extent with the GRI-Compact relationship.

In an organization world, the interests of organizations as institutions are dominant.  In a world of multi-stakeholder global networks, the vision for a field is dominant and the question of “role” is central.  What roles do we need played for the human rights-and-corporations domain to be healthy?  Undoubtedly the lessons from networks to date would reveal these, and provide the basis for developing a more effective collective strategy.  One way to get at this role question is through Value Network Analysis.

As the networks push for membership expansion, the NGOs and corporations in them are going to increasingly raise the questions about why there are so many and why they would want to participate in several networks.  That question was the original drive behind the founding of the GRI with respect to triple bottom line reporting.

This suggests that perhaps the key intervention of the UNHRC is to create greater “coherence” and “alignment” of these numerous initiatives.  It could convene them around the shared elements of their visions…and be a joiner and part of a greater movement, rather than the old-fashioned “lead and control” thinking that often makes government such a difficult partner.

Core Competencies for Networks: Webinar March 31 9am EST, 3pm CET

Global Networks in China: Webinar April 7

We can easily be overwhelmed by the complexity of large networks where there are  many different organizations and people involved. Clearly “seeing” relationships between organizations, people, and key concepts is important for successful network strategies.

To vastly enhance and speed understanding of these relationships, I’ve worked with various forms of “mapping”.  Network maps are diagrams of lines or arrows (representing connections) and nodes (representing individuals, organizations, ideas) that can visually communicate tremendous amounts of information much more easily than volumes of text.  Here are some approaches I’ve found useful:

Web crawls

This approach maps and analyzes relationships between URLs.  This gives a picture of how organizations and issues are connected virtually that is increasingly important in any strategy.  Since URLs are usually associated with organizations, crawls quickly identify organizations working in a particular issue system.  The crawls maps links on one web-site to another webs-site.

Example: Working with a tool developed at the University of Amsterdam, we did crawls to identify networks in the global finance system for the Global Finance Initiative in order to identify key organizations and people to develop a change strategy.  Map 1 is of NGOs engaged in the global finance debate;  it suggests that surprisingly they do not have well defined relationships with perhaps the most influential players in global finance, including the Bank for International Settlements and the Financial Stability Board.

Map 1:  Web Crawl

(Click on map to enlarge view.)

Social/Organizational/Inter-Organizational network analysis (SNA/ONA/IONA)

This is classic social network analysis applied specifically to understanding relationships within and between organizations. The existence and relative importance of relationship, connections or communication flows between individuals and organizations is described by these approaches.

Example: When the Global Reporting Initiative considered its strategy for developing a South African network, we used social network analysis.  This produced Map 2, which shows distinct groups of organizations.  This emphasizes the importance of weaving the groups together, and the value of working with organizations that are well-connected in the groups.  Another product was a guide on how to initiate a network.

Map 2:  Inter-Organizational Social Network Analysis

(Click on map to enlarge view.)

Value Network Analysis (VNA)

Key roles and value outputs in an issue system are defined through VNA, helping to shift stakeholder mindset toward a network perspective beyond their usual organizational or institutional focus.   This approach has been developed by Verna Allee. It is available for immediate access and applied use at http://valuenetworks.com/.

Example: When the European Commission wanted to understand how to enhance the process of innovation, we applied VNA using the ValueNetworks.com application to produce a report with four archetypes (models) for moving from an academic idea to a product for a consumer, with important policy implications.  Verna emphasizes the importance of including both contracted tangible exchanges such as money, and intangible ones such as information.  This is illustrated in Map 3

Map 3:  VNA map of innovation

(Dashed lines are intangibles, solid lines are tangibles.  Click on map to enlarge.)

Strategic Clarity Mapping (SCM)

SCM generates a mutual understanding among diverse players’ of their respective strategies to address an issue – including their mental models about change strategies.  This approach has been developed by Jim Ritchie-Dunham of the Institute for Strategic Clarity.

Example: When CARE in Guatemala pondered the increasing poverty, despite its best efforts for many years, we used SCM to change the strategic relationships of CARE, and shift it from project-level to system-level strategies (from building wells to creating a system to build wells).  Map development is documented in a learning history I wrote.

Another examples is with Youth Employment and Sustainability (YES), a Global Action Network.  Institute for Strategic Clarity Vice President Luz Maria Puente worked with YES’ Latin American region, to support the region’s and the sub-countries planning.  It revealed both distinctions between the countries’ strategies to help them learn from one another, and identified weaknesses and strengths of their strategies.  Map 4 shows how Chile and Mexico develop entrepreneurial skills, so young people can start their own business, by providing them support through an incubator system.  This work with YES is described in a Working Paper just published today.

Map 4:  SCM Complex view of poverty

(Click on the map to enlarge.)

A key contribution of these mapping approaches is their ability to generate strategic discussions.  People can see links that they can question, and discuss how to strengthen them in a very strategic manner.  They identify key leverage points — points that will help “move” the entire system because of their connections to other points.

Web crawls are definitely the easiest to undertake.  SNA and VNA and SCM in particular are best developed collaboratively with system participants.  With this approach, even the SCM insights and outputs are well understood.  You can find a paper comparing these methods here. And join me for a free webinar March 17 to further explore these methods;  you can find more webinar information here.

I was leading discussion by a half dozen executive directors of Global Action Networks on the topic of competencies critical to success when we turned to the question of resource mobilization.  I was surprised that none of the leaders thought of financing as a major issue for them, in comparison to the other competencies.

“But what if you think about barriers to your network really flourishing and realizing its goals?” I asked.  That moved the issue of financing to the top of the list of challenges.

The question of financing is wrapped up with stage of development discussed last week and featured in a webinar March 3.  At early stages, less money is required and the question is about finding a venture investor to explore possibilities.  Later stages require more funds and a sustainable business model.

Gathering finance information is very complicated for a network, since it requires defining what part of the network the data cover. As networks develop, most increasingly depend upon sub-parts (regional, particular program) raising their own funds.  In May last year I surveyed 11 networks[1] ranging from 8 to 15 years of age with the initial question:

What was the total income (revenue) that came to/through the Secretariat for the most recent fiscal year including funds that may have gone to other parts of the network?

The response ranged from $500,000 to $11.4 million, with the average of $3.6 million.

Sources of Income

But the finance question is also wrapped up in strategy.  Being multi-stakeholder, the networks could be expected to have tax-based contributions from government, civil society-based funding from foundations and revenue generation from services and fees.  Table 1 gives responses to the question:

Please indicate the approximate percent of funds that flow to/through the Secretariat that come from the following sources.

Most networks perceived potential conflicts of interest with business revenue generation.  One way the Global Compact addresses this is with a foundation to receive business donations;  the foundation does not fund core Secretariat costs, but only the broader network.

Reasons for Funding

Strategy also raises Secretariat-network relationship questions.  For example, Transparency International Secretariat’s role in putting together up to 30 National Chapters for joint funding proposals has recently increased dramatically from less than €1 million a year to more than €5 million.  Table 2 gives responses to the question:

Please indicate the approximate percent of the types of funding/reasons for funding.

These global networks are all really producing “global public goods”…something funded at the national level through taxes.  Substantial global network funding comes through taxes with funding from donor agencies like DFID and multilaterals like the World Bank.  However, as Ernest Ligteringen who heads up the Global Reporting Initiative commented to me, it is fitting a round peg in a square hole.  A much more robust solution must be found to do the important work of global public good financing with categorical national tax transfers or a global tax.

What are your experiences with financing?  What sort of more robust solutions should we strive for?

We depend on networks to voluntarily provide information like this, for on-going development.  If your network is not listed below as a participant in the survey, please have someone fill out the survey by clicking here.  Data is for the 2008 fiscal year, and individual responses remain confidential.  The survey takes only an hour.

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[1] Building Partnerships for Development in Water and Sanitation, Global AIDS Alliance, Global Knowledge Partnership, Global Water Partnership, Global Reporting Initiative, International Federation of Organic Agriculture Movements, Mountain Forum, Sustainable Food Lab, The Access Initiative, Transparency International, Youth Enterprise and Sustainability

…GWP, TI, GRI, TAI, Global Compact, IUCN

In a new new study of four Global Action Networks (GANs – multi-stakeholder change networks), Pieter Glasbergen concludes that involving government is key to success. “First, mainstreaming of concepts can only be realized by governments or by their recognition of the private governance mechanism as an alternative tool to solve a collective action problem. Second, governments are also important because most GANs operate in an issue field with many competing private and public initiatives.”

However, governments are usually more difficult than businesses or NGOs to involve in networks as peers.  That’s for two reasons:  because they usually think of themselves as “being in charge”…after all, their key role is making laws and regulations with the power to enforce them.  And then there’s that thing called bureaucratic process…often part and parcel of “due process” to protect rights, transparency and accountability.

Networks have diverse strategies to involve government.  Some like the Global Water Partnership they have active control through their Board;  in others like the IUCN they are partners in governance.  But some networks simply try to avoid government in governance…look at The Access Initiative (TAI) and the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI).  They purposely don’t have any place for government in their global governance. But look a bit closer, and you see important government connections.

TAI is giving life to Principle 10 (P10) of the Earth Charter which promotes participatory processes in environmental decision-making.  Think “access to information” and “public reviews of environmental disasters”. Most countries in the world have signed onto the Earth Charter, and that’s TAI’s hook:  working with governments to realize their Principle 10 commitments. But globally TAI is governed globally by NGOs, out of concern that they must protect the integrity of their work, which includes holding governments accountable to their Earth Charter commitment.

TAI takes a “learning” approach when conducting “assessments” of governments’ performance and aims to engage governments as participants.  “TAI members recognize that governments are not monolithic; they are filled with allies and opponents,” comments Joe Foti, TAI Associate.

This leads to a diversity of TAI strategies.  One is that TAI gains government legitimacy and help because it receives funding from the government agencies such as the UK Foreign and Commonwealth Office.  TAI country coalitions find that it usually helps the national Ministry of Environment to have civil society on its side because the MoE is usually weak on finance, political power, and science.  Judges in Argentina and the Ministry of Information in Mexico also have helpful roles.

In Thailand the TAI coalition includes an institute sponsored by the King of Thailand, which gives it legitimacy in government eyes. And in Africa, the TAI-Cameroon representative was asked to speak on the government’s behalf at a UNEP Governing Council meeting when the discussion was about adopting the draft guidelines on implementation of P10.

The GRI has developed a different strategy as it promotes environmental-social-economic reporting, by business in particular. Governments aren’t members because of a concern that they will turn the learning spaces of a voluntary initiative into a regulatory space that would reduce openness to experiment.  However, the GRI has obtained “legitimacy” with government by forming an alliance with the UN’s Global Compact to encourage companies and corporate responsibility organizations to support the synergistic platforms of the Compact and the GRI.

The UN Global Compact is playing this role with other networks as well, such as Transparency International.  The Compact is an initiative with businesses to align their activities with UN principles.  The UN imprimatur of the Compact opens government doors for the networks, without taking on other baggage.

The Global Compact – a multi-stakeholder network “of” the UN – has one of the most interesting government strategies of any global network.  “We knew it was important to leverage the good parts of the UN – the ideas of peace, development and human rights – and yet avoid falling into the trap of the machinery,” says Compact Executive Head Georg Kell.  “But how to do it, we didn’t know.  It evolved over the years.”

Today the Compact has public advocacy and executive branch support through the role of the Secretary General as Chair of its Board;  it has the legislative support of the General Assembly and protection from undue individual country influence through a resolution of support the GA passes every two years;  and it has access to the vast UN system at the national and global levels through an Inter-Agency Working Group that includes the UNEP, the UNDP and other UN agencies.

What are your experiences and strategies networking with government?

Announcement: TAI recently undertook a network-wide process to review and redefine its approach, strategy, and governance.  The process will be the topic of a webinar with TAI’s Director and the change process leaders.  Join us on Feb. 17, 6:00am US/Canada Westcoast;  9:00am Eastcoast; 14:00 UK, 15:00 Europe, 21:00 Philippines/Malaysia.  Go to https://sas.elluminate.com/m.jnlp?sid=831&password=M.D319BCA09CFB90E9673E7225D80F0E