Leading Change Network

The LEADING CHANGE NETWORK is a community of practice: organizers, educators, and researchers developing leadership, developing the capacity of change constituencies, and improving organizing practice by continual learning.

• We develop leadership equipped to accept responsibility for enabling others to achieve shared purpose under conditions of uncertainty.
• We develop the capacity of change constituencies, especially the rising generation, to organize: identifying, recruiting, and developing leadership, building community around that leadership, and building power from the resources of that community. We focus on five core practices: relationship building, storytelling, strategizing, structuring, and action. We organize change over time as campaigns. We achieve scale through cascaded leadership.
• We improve organizing practice by continual learning based on systematic reflection, practice oriented, research, and ongoing training, adaption, and collaboration

Rooting our work in values of equality, mutuality, and dignity, we work across widely diverse regional, cultural, and institutional domains, a unique opportunity to deepen our understanding via cross- contextual learning.

Program

• We encourage development of “nodes of practice”, native to domains in which they are working, such as the Middle East Organizing Initiative, Serbia on the Move, the New Organizing Institute, and Organizing for Health.

We support teaching of our basic organizing curriculum at colleges and universities, including Harvard Kennedy School, University of Massachusetts, Amherst, Holy Cross College, Providence College, and Syracuse University.

We develop “distance learning” opportunities including Harvard’s “Leadership, Organization, and Action” course, the New Organizing Institute’s New Organizing University, and Organizing for Health’s ReThink Health.

We facilitate participation in workshops, projects, and campaigns that contribute to building ongoing capacity in a particular domain, develop leadership, or afford unique learning opportunities.

We organize deep learning conferences to bring together practitioners, educators and researchers to share experience, build the network, and focus on key challenges. In June 2012, we held our first Learning Conference with 79 participants from 8 countries.