Location(s)

Evaluating the Emergence of Leadership within Networks and Communities of Practice

Developing and supporting leadership to emerge within networks and communities of practice is a vast new area of practice and learning. Debbie Frieze, co-president of The Berkana Institute, will share Berkana’s approach to leadership and emergence and raise questions and present challenges that she and her colleagues have encountered when trying to evaluate the impact of their work. The Berkana Institute's mission is to “connect and support pioneering, life-affirming leaders around the world who strengthen their communities by working with the wisdom and wealth already present in its people, traditions and environment.” For more information about Berkana, visit their website at www.berkana.org and check out the paper by Margaret Wheatley and Deborah Frieze, “Using Emergence to Take Social Innovations to Scale.” (see link below)

Using Berkana’s experience as a case study we will explore the following questions:

• What tools and approaches are most promising for evaluating networks and communities of practice?
• What is being missed (not captured) by the current approaches we use?
• What else do we need to create?
• How can we connect and share what we are learning from our evaluation practices and experiences so that we can more rapidly improve our practice?

We hope you can join us! Please RSVP to Claire Reinelt by September 18, 2007. A continental breakfast will be provided.

We look forward to seeing you on the 21st for a very stimulating and important conversation! Prepare for the gathering by reading Claire Reinelt's blog post on the subject and reading and contributing to the learning questions.