Role of the Impact Catalyst

Our work in the social impact space is often a tapestry – colorful, sometimes (seemingly) disjointed, comprising small and large disparate bits, striving to come together to create a thing of beauty and meaning and purpose.?

As I weave my way through some seminal pieces of writing, spanning the World Bank’s triad of sustainability (economic, environmental and social sustainability and the centrality of social sustainability), GRID (Green, resilient and inclusive development), collective impact (SSIR) and the role of the institutional entrepreneur, some early sensemaking emerges.

Isolated impact, that which is being created at the hyper-local level by tiny Community organizations is as precious, vital and central to achieving our vision of a resilient, equitable society as is collective impact.?The latter however is a far more complex and even vexing notion because of the multiplicity of stakeholders, interests and communities involved.?Far more insidious are the array of needs (not always understood), world views (all seemingly right) and priorities, dangerously balanced on the knife edge of differing definitions of equity and often thwarted by power balances.

And yet, given the lessons learned from the pandemic, some rude, many inspiring, even more sorrowful, striving for collective impact is a necessary, even mandatory, imperative.?Positively impacting many many lives, successfully transplanting innovations, crossing scales are the only way to ensuring that we all build back better as we progress towards our vision of a resilient, inclusive, equitable society.

And there is enough to learn from, out there, by way of failures and practices worth emulating… but in all of this, one beacon stands tall – COMMUNITY.?Its about them. Its about what they need. Its about how best they would like to be served. As passionate changemakers, who also have the ‘power’ (access to information, funding, networks) we constantly run the risk of assuming community needs, prioritising on their behalf, making decisions that we believe serve them best.?

Our constant learning, challenge, attempt has got to be –

• Humility: To remind ourselves everyday - I act on their behalf; I am merely a means
• Engagement: Striving for true understanding of the cultural contexts of the needs is the only way we will truly be able to begin to understand issues and priorities as the affected experience them
• Co-creation: The wisdom lies in the communities we serve; how do we harness it as we devise solutions that serve them?
• Accountability: Sure – we are accountable to donors, partners and so on; above all, we are accountable to the community.?How do we keep them apprised of progress and delays?

My a-ha moment happened when I read Surmountable Chasms: Networks and Social Innovation for Resilient Systems by Moore and Westley (2011).?We are all ‘institutional entrepreneurs’ – I quote from the article: The term “institutional entrepreneur” used here refers to actors or groups of actors who seek to change “particular institutional arrangements and who leverage resources to create new institutions or transform existing ones”. Some of the key entrepreneurial skills are pattern generation, relationship building and brokering, knowledge and resource brokering, and network recharging. The skills of the institutional entrepreneur are not those of the “heroic” leader. Rather they often work in obscurity to manage the emergence that they cannot actually control. They connect; span boundaries; mobilize resources of knowledge, power, and resources; recognize and generate patterns; revitalize energy; and keep alive a strategic focus. But they are, nonetheless, leaders—for all their relative invisibility.

The onus lies on us institutional entrepreneurs to ensure that we keep the spotlight squarely trained on our raison d’etre – the community.