Posted by Steve Waddell in Change, Net Dev on February 1, 2011

The work of Global Action Networks (GANs) as global change networks requires three types of expertise. The types shift if importance as a network evolves.

Particularly in their early days GANs lead with physical or substantive issue expertise such as …

Four Network Change Strategies for Complex Systems

Posted by Steve Waddell in Change on November 2, 2010

People easily get into arguments about “correct strategies” to realize change. Often with a little bit of dialogue, they discover that they are actually talking about complementary strategies. Then, they start to understand the limitation of their own advocated strategy, and that it cannot succeed on its own. These types of insights spurred Ken Wilber to popularize an integral approach to support a comprehensive and integrated view of the world, and to found the Integral Institute.

Six Keys to Shift from Organization to Network Mindset

Posted by Steve Waddell in Change, Net Dev on October 5, 2010

Networking as an active verb for global change is something that we are still in early days of exploring. And of course networks can come in many forms – some are purposely structured to facilitate control. But change strategies like those of Global Action Networks require a networked mindset that a great report describes as working wikily: “characterized by principles of openness, transparency, decentralized decision-making, and distributed action.”

Taking Sustainable Agriculture and Food to a New Level of Development

Posted by Steve Waddell in Change, Leadership, Net Dev on September 28, 2010

Transforming the agriculture and food system into a sustainable one is something some smart and diverse people have been working on for some time. I’ve been talking with them over the past year, and it seems to me that the system is ready for a new stage of development…but there are several blockages that need addressing.

Global Change Network Strategy for Transforming Finance

Posted by Steve Waddell in Change, Net Dev on September 8, 2010

Last week I co-hosted a small meeting of the new Committee on Transforming Finance (CTF) to advance thinking about how to bring about the transformation in finance globally that is needed to integrate social, environmental and economic concerns. Participants, led by the indomitable matriarch guru Hazel Henderson of Ethical Markets, began with the conviction that the current modest tinkering around the edges will not prevent another financial crisis in the near future. But what to do?