What are the inter-connected pieces of field infrastructure NCP has been building?
ADAM/FLICKR (CC BY 2.0)
“There is an art to flocking: staying separate enough not to crowd each other, aligned enough to maintain a shared direction, and cohesive enough to always move toward each other. (Responding to destiny together). Destiny is a calling that creates a beautiful journey.”
The NCP Lab is an experiment in flocking. In how to bring together a growing set of diverse field leaders who share a common vision for a transformed economic system and provide them the support to develop an interconnected portfolio of ideas to move towards that future. The Lab has allowed us to practice the “art” of seeding action that is more coherent and connected to long-term transformation. To claim a shared direction. To stay separate but aligned. To explore action that is grounded in experimentation, learning and adaptation as a way to navigate the complexity of our economic system—to navigate a beautiful, audacious and wickedly hard journey.
The Lab is just one (key) part of NCP’s broader goal of testing what it takes to provide infrastructure for a healthier field working on transforming the economic system. We’re taking a minute to reflect on the Lab’s role as a piece of field infrastructure, to understand the broader picture of what we’ve built together and what it might allow us to build next. The most critical output of NCP is a set of “assets” that we’ve come to describe as the evolving “NCP Stack.” This stack is built with components that together:
demonstrate a new type of field infrastructure and intervention ecosystem to tackle wicked problems (we’ll share more about this in our next Lab Note),
require ongoing care, attention, and funding to remain vibrant as individual assets and interconnected with each other,
exhibit a “compounding effect” over time as the interactions among the assets (vision + community + ideas + clusters + new financing mechanisms) create the conditions for new activities to emerge and more leaders to be engaged
The assets that make up the NCP Stack have been built through significant investment of time, energy and resources. It is NCP’s deeply held view that we both need to value and provision these often-invisible assets, the interconnected root system of transformation. The foundation of the stack is the foundation needed for any large-scale transformation, and a step often bypassed in the rush to get stuff done: an evolving shared vision for a transformed economic system. This vision was co-developed by a diverse community of leaders weaving a variety of different perspectives, different (and often divergent) theories of change and theories of action into a rich tapestry that could hold their collective aspirations.
Below we illustrate the “layers” of this stack and provide more detail on what each is and what it allows. It’s important to see this stack as a whole system of intervention. Not to think we can disaggregate the pieces to pigeon-hole into existing change strategies or pick and choose to support one component here and one there. They work together. They depend on each other. This is about funding and supporting a whole system of intervention—the layers and the spaces in between that hold the whole.
SHARED VISION
A co-created vision for a transformed economic system that each community member sees themselves in, is orienting their organization’s work towards, and helps call in others to the growing NCP community
Provides long-term, shared direction of travel that can inspire and cohere a diverse array of efforts, organizations, roles over time – even as the system context changes—building an adaptive movement ecology needed to address wicked problems
Supports ongoing individual and shared sensemaking about why the current economic system needs to change and the barriers to achieving transformation
A shared vision isn’t just a set of words illuminating possibility. The process of generating it cultivates both trust and understanding among leaders, critical enabling conditions for system health. And all of these assets enable the discovery of more connected ways of working together. The vision stands as a beacon for a range of distributed activity to exist in more coherence and coordination—and helps increase the awareness among typically siloed actors, again, a precondition for system transformation.
GROWING COMMUNITY
Comprised of an intentional diversity of leaders and organizations developing shared vision and strategy to see themselves as a field and a greater whole
Cultivating increased inter-personal trust, discovery of common ground, appreciation for different approaches, strategies, and tactics as an important end-unto-itself
Increasing the understanding of other networks that NCP community members are a part of (climate, democracy, racial justice, etc.) and building bridges “outward” to those communities
Nurturing more trusting relationships and appreciation of each other’s diverse approaches is a necessary pre-condition for more connected work. Supporting a growing community happens “within” NCP and the leaders who align with this work and happens “beyond” as we build bridges to other “new economy” networks across the US.
LAB + PORTFOLIO
Developing leaders’ independent but interconnected set of ideas purpose-built to activate their shared transformative vision
Building the collective capacity for field-level strategy making and decision-making to understand priority barriers/leverage points and invite (new) leaders and efforts into the community
Providing the structure and resources for field leaders to be able to devote time, reflection and planning towards ideas that are nascent and more transformative, collaborative, experimental
Building an integrated portfolio of interventions and set of specific ideas helps bring the transformative vision to ground and illuminate more tangible and actionable pathways toward it. Creates more actionable entry points for field leaders, funders and other networks of actors to engage with the NCP community and vision.
CLUSTERS OF COLLABORATION + IMPACT
Clusters are an emerging area of design and practice within the NCP community and key area of focus as we look ahead.
Multiple different groups of ideas are emerging from the Lab process. Leaders who have been developing their own ideas have started to identify potential pathways for more connected ways of working together over time
Prototyping the supports and resources so that this shared intention can serve a few goals: inform leaders’ individual organizational work, support existing and/or new bi-lateral partnerships, and/or launch multi-lateral action among many organizations
Creates a structure and the supports for capturing and sustaining multiple areas of momentum (and intention) coming out of the Lab process
Clusters elevate and accelerate specific areas most important to community members today and allow them to continue committing time and effort to this shared work. Our hypothesis is that clusters will create opportunities to bring lessons from implementation of ideas back to the broader community, to continue engaging in shared sense-making and then inform the independent and decentralized work happening across the community.
SYSTEM HEALTH FINANCING
Financing system health is an emerging area of design and practice within the NCP community and key area of focus as we look ahead.
Purpose-built, holistic funding structures that provision the “enabling conditions” and supports for the “stack” to operate with minimal friction, cluster leaders are motivated to work in more connected ways, allows the intentional integration of more systemic practices, etc.
Builds the capacity and agency for more collective field leadership—for leaders to actively sense the system they operate in, develop shared visions and intent, engage in ongoing sensemaking and the development of integrated actions, and to do this as a collective
Significant pools of resources and funding structures that complement the predominant “point-solution” approach in philanthropy and impact investment today
Innovations around how to finance system health work are desperately needed. Funding at the ecosystem level means attracting and deploying investment that recognizes and is directed towards three sources of value — the proximate project, enabling conditions, and system health outcomes. We need to value and resource the enabling conditions that support an ecosystem of activity as much as we value and resource direct outcomes.
The NCP Stack has evolved as NCP has evolved. The main engine of NCP’s work has been to sense emerging field needs and adapt to meet them. To build and support an underlying field “utility” within the economic system change terrain.
How does this mean we need to act? NCP has played a range of roles in building this ecosystem intervention—from sensemaking, convening, catalyzing, cohering, mobilizing, strategy making, fundraising, analyzing, incubating, funding, cheer-leading. What’s the “job description” for that kind of work? While we love adrienne maree brown’s urging to learn the art of flocking, at NCP we ask ourselves a slightly different question: How can we operate more like trees? Specifically, how can we operate like Pando?
Pando is an Aspen grove in Utah that is one of largest and oldest living organisms on the planet. Pando spans 106 acres. Connects over 47,000 trees. Weighs 13 million pounds. And is estimated to be 14,000 years old, with a root span that would reach halfway around the world laid out end to end. Pando’s success, scale and sustainability depends on its interconnected and “invisible” root system that supports all trees through a range of critical activities. This system coordinates energy production for the distributed grove, supports communication, facilitates nutrient transfer, operates as the grove’s defense and regeneration mechanism. Pando supports the health of the whole grove, not just the growth of an individual tree. So the question truly is: How do we act more like Pando?
Pando is the Latin word that translates to “I spread.” It is a perfect description of Pando’s strategy. It is a perfect description of NCP’s strategy. We think of NCP’s health and success as inextricably linked to the field of economic system change’s health and success—and critically, to the health and success of the individual leaders and organizations in it. We focus on spreading the shared vision for a transformed economic system as a way to engage others and support greater alignment across the field; incubating and launching a set of experiments so we can learn and adapt our way towards system health; sharing learning, building awareness of the system, and feeding the critical human connections and trust that will increase the probability of a healthier economic system. That’s what we think engaging with wicked systems requires.
In our next NCP Note we’ll explore the lessons that have emerged from developing the NCP stack which are informing our work going forward.
[1] “What is Emergent Strategy?” in All We Can Save: Truth, Courage, and Solutions for the Climate Crises edited by Ayana Elizabeth Johnson and Katharine K. Wilkinson