Collective Impact has come to Israel as I pointed out in a previous post.(Hebrew version) There are already a number of Collective Impact efforts going on or in the process of being developed in Israel.
Today, I attended a workshop put on by the Joint Distribution Committee which has its main Israel offices in Jerusalem. The JDC Israel or the "Joint" as it is called "deals with the advancement of quality of life, equality of opportunities and reduction of gaps in Israeli society. The organization works among populations irregardless of religious, national or political identity."
I spoke with a number of people in between sessions to get a perspective on what Israelis see as important about Collective Impact and the challenges of pursuing Collective Impact in Israel. Here is what I learned along with my own comments.
Guy commented that "there is a need to do Collective Impact now. The problems in Israel are too big to wait."
Israel society like American society has many challenges and like in America, there is a growing realization that today's complex issues demand more than each NGO or government institution going it alone to solve its own narrow set of challenges.
Israel civil society has what could be called an "embarrassment of riches." It has developed to the point where there are a huge number of NGO's each working with passion on their own issue. This leads to a great deal of fragmentation. I commented on this in a previous article. At the same time, there is a competitiveness in Israeli culture and a huge degree of self-reliance. Though these qualities support the Israel explored in "Start-Up Nation," outside of the entrepreneurial sphere, these qualities may get in the way of organizations and their leaders taking collective action on large-scale societal issues. Guy added, "Organizations in the various sectors working on social challenges need to have a sense of the larger whole."
Guy also commented that Israeli culture needs to change in a way that will support people to take the time needed to develop a Collective Impact effort. The Israeli culture is one where people move quickly to take action to respond to immediate challenges without taking time for reflection.
I see this quality as a strength in many areas such as responding militarily to a threat. However, Collective Impact as currently conceived requires painstaking effort by participants to build trust, work through varying individual agendas to achieve a common agenda and collaborate throughout a long effort.
Either the Collective Impact approach needs to be modified to work within the Israeli culture or the culture has to adjust to support building the kind of longer-term collaboration required by a Collective Impact approach.
The strength of Israeli culture is around "doing." What is needed is an additional strength to be developed around "being." Being successful in Collective Impact requires people able to "be" with one another. By creating the space to "be" with one another - to think, talk and reflect, sufficient trust can be developed such that people will be able to let go of their own agenda and passion to take part in a collective agenda and passion.
This parallels another conversation that I had where I learned about what is called "Spiritual Care." As Daniel explained to me, this is an alternative approach used with young challenged children that replaces the traditional approach that focuses on moving the child from one way of acting to another. In Spiritual Care, the emphasis is on just being with the child and supporting the child non-judgmentally.
I related to this because of my work with a variety of "strength-based" methods that focus on what is going well or what works with an individual or organization. These take a non-judgmental view in being with the person or organization wherever they are at the moment. The theory behind this is that by doing this, one frees up the person or organization to move on their own and to progress and develop.
I see the same theme cutting across all of these comments. There is a greater need in Israel for people to take the time and create the space to "be" with one another as they grapple with societal issues because this is the best guarantee of future development.
I attended a session as part of this workshop in which an effort was described that has to do with increasing volunteerism in Israel. One question surfaced was why don't more Israelis volunteer. Afterwards, I spoke with Rona who is working to set up an effort to make greater use of volunteers. She raised the question of what is "volunteering." She asked if someone works on a social issue on corporate time or as part of a student commitment, is this volunteering?
This may not be a question thought about much in the U.S. which has a tradition of volunteering. However, in Israel which is striving to develop such a tradition, I appreciate that this is an important and not necessarily easy question to answer. It may be that asking the question is the most important part.
My reaction to this question is that what may be most valuable is to instill a disposition towards volunteering based on the individual having had a successful "volunteer" experience of working on social issues. If this happens initially on someone else' time, maybe that is fine. I see this as developing an awareness that fulfillment can be had from helping others. However, there is another side to this as set out by Daniel Pink in "Drive" which deals with issues of motivation.
Compensating people for volunteering or rewarding people for superior efforts according to Pink has to be judiciously handled. Otherwise, the compensation or reward may act to undermine what would otherwise have been an ongoing and heartfelt contribution. Pink sees this contribution as being driven by intrinsic motivation. His book discusses how to support this.
There were many more people at the workshop and I imagine that each has their own rich perspective. Hearing the rich perspective of each might be one way of building the Collective Impact experience in Israel.
Comments