LEARNING, ADAPTING, AND MAINTAINING ALIGNMENT OVER TIME

To keep community change on track and running smoothly, good managers are always adjusting, pushing, tweaking, and problem-solving. What is needed isn’t midcourse corrections so much as ongoing efforts to develop and improve the work as it unfolds. Because there is no model for success, the work is very experi- mental, and managers learn by doing and by trial and error. As Susana Vasquez, program director of the New Communities Program, explains:

I get “smarter” about the work because I am constantly getting informa- tion about what happens in diverse neighborhoods with diverse actors. I learn from it all, am constantly adjusting. Everything I do is action, reflec- tion, adjustment. . . . We ask for grant reports and have a monthly report back. We are in constant communication with the lead agencies. Scribes are sent out, people tell us things, there’s a flow of information constantly. As this manager observed, feedback, assessment, and learning need to be constant activities, not just a periodic response to reporting requirements or an end-of-the-program evaluation. Especially when relationship building is a key aspect of the work, managers need multiple sources and types of information in addition to formal reporting data—including from staff who spend time in com-

munities, interacting with residents and organizations to gather information. The organizations highlighted here typically hold internal reviews every month during cross-departmental team meetings and strategy sessions. (Some meet more often and some, such as Jacobs, hold quarterly retreats for top management as well as monthly staff meetings.)

Managers recommend going slowly, not starting everything at once or “be- coming comprehensive” too quickly. It is better to start with a solid core and then broaden the effort gradually as experience and capacity increase. This can mean expanding the array of programs or projects included in the change ef- fort (as Jacobs, New Song, and NCP neighborhoods all did) or expanding the geographic scale and focus of the work (as Harlem Children’s Zone and Jacobs have done). The important thing is to break up the work into manageable chunks. Going more slowly also allows organizations and initiatives to build trust and support as they go along. Developing a reputation for success helps to build a constituency for the work, increase engagement and interest from other stake- holders, and create a pool of partners for each new project or phase of the work. And expanding gradually allows managers to apply newly learned lessons to the next phase of work.

A related approach is to pilot-test a program or approach in order to gauge its success, work out the kinks, and fine-tune before rolling it out on a broader scale. The New Communities Program, for instance, was based on a model developed by the Comprehensive Community Revitalization Program in New York, which LISC tested in three Chicago neighborhoods and further adjusted before launch- ing in a total of 16 neighborhoods. Communities of Opportunity similarly piloted its integrated case management system with a subset of service providers before launching it citywide.

It is equally important to reassess the effort periodically. As Jennifer Vanica, president and CEO of the Jacobs Center explained, “About every three years you have to rethink how to manage the work to make sure that you’re still moving in the right direction, because over the course of the three years it has gotten bigger, it’s gotten more complex, and things have changed. You really need to streamline things regularly in order to stay entrepreneurial.”

For example, the University of Pennsylvania created a real estate develop- ment strategy matrix that identified how the university would need to rethink its investment strategy and role as real estate market conditions shifted over the course of the university’s initiative. At the start, when Penn was virtually the only investor, it had to be willing to absorb full risk in order to stimulate and incubate the market forces. But as the university’s investments stimulated other inves- tors to come into the market, its share of the overall investment and the amount of risk it had to take on fell. So it had to review its strategies in the light of the changing market conditions (Rodin, 2007).

Above all, managers and intermediaries have to be adaptive. Nimble, flexible, fast were the terms used repeatedly by managers to describe the skills they and their staff members need for community change work. Because flexibility and ad- aptation are “the name of the game, and things are always changing,” staff have to be comfortable with uncertainty. Staff can’t be too wedded to any particular way of doing business, and they have to be able to admit to mistakes and acknowledge that they don’t have all the answers. “We’ve learned that we have to find people that are willing to be very flexible. If you want to know what you will be doing every day, this is not the place to work,” a CBO director said.

Effective management of community change efforts—internal alignment—is highly dependent on local contexts, conditions, and capacities. While there are no cookie-cutter solutions to the challenges, good practices and principles have emerged to help leaders manage partnerships and community relationships, learn and adapt, and maintain alignment over time.