Headline in HBR May 2010 issue reads: SoL revolutionizes world's organizations with powerful capacity building techniques.

This was our lead-in, as SoL's Capacity Building Committee convened a group of 30 SoL Capacity-Building Stakeholders in Boston, May 10/11, to think together about what we'd like SoL's Capacity-Building programs to look like in the future.  Tony Rollins and Jean Tully facilitated the 2-day gathering.  The group consisted of Governing Council members, Core Course and Foundations for Leadership Facilitators, consultants, researchers, organizational members, SoL Staff, and the Capacity-Building Committee members.

The group focused the first day on creating a shared vision of the future state of SoL's Capacity-Building programs.  On the second day participants surfaced mental models and systems structures that could be hindering capacity-building efforts, identified the high-leverage opportunities for change, and then created specific action plans going forward, including the required new mental models for success and making commitments to ensure that needed actions are taken.  The output from the first day can be viewed by anyone in the SoL Community by clicking on the links below. The output from the second day is split across several folders, 1 for each working group:  Infrastructure; Capacity-Building as a Process, not an Event; and SoL as a Network, Community as Source.

There will obviously be a lot of work required to realize all that this group imagined.  It is our hope that the broader SoL community will take an interest in it, get engaged with it, and help to continue shaping what happens with SoL Capacity-Building in the months and years to come.  Please join us on this journey.  We will have much of the work of the group available for the Community to see at the SoL Annual Meeting, June 28 - July 1.  Stay tuned for information about how to engage with the work.  We WILL need everyone's help to make it all happen.

At the end of the first Day, each participant responded to 3 questions that were captured in a Learning Journal for the working session.  Click here to view the Learning Journal.

After the Visioning work from Day 1, a summary of the highlights & trends noted by the facilitators were:

• The NY Success Story - written to back up the headline above as an example of the contribution SoL Capacity-Building programs can make
• The distinction between Individual Transformation and Organizational Transformation, & how one does not necessarily lead to the other
• The differentiation between capacity-building as an Event vs. Capacity-Building as a Process
• Acknowledgement that we need an expanded instructor staff for core programs; i.e., move away from the Expert Model for Capacity-Building.  Possible methods for development include:
  • Train-The-Trainer programs (expanded instructor staff for core programs)
  • 2-in-the-box development programs at SoL (where an experienced person shares role responsibility with a novice in the role)
• Learning through application on the job rather than in a classroom;  i.e., peer groups, coaching, 2-in-the-box
  • focus on learning that is applied, actionable, with accountability

The group then identified the 4 high-leverage areas to focus attention and action on going forward.  They were:

Capacity building should be grounded in work.

• Individual vs. organizational change
• Event vs. process
• Increased demand for REAL work
• Additional core offerings on Organizational Change (not just Individual Change, like what we have now)
• with measurement, further capacity-building, dissemination - Applied Learning Process Cycle

 Clarify SoL's role as Capacity-Building source

• SoL as a Business -> SoL as a Network
• Expand beyond the Expert Role as Capacity-Building (CB is more than the Expert teaching others)
• Expand our capacity to Build Capacity

Infrastructure and Decision-Making to support new approaches to Capacity-Building

Membership Outreach and Diversity (this group melded into other groups)

• connecting to the younger generation
• create truly open, accessible, diverse, holistic approach to capacity-building

We think that captures the essence of the meeting; the details would be overwhelming.  Please join us in helping to realize the possibilities for Capacity-Building, which will certainly help us to realize the possibilities for SoL.

Output from Day One:

Learning Journal. Vision Day

CB Vision 2010

Refined Shared Vision

HBR Cover, May 2010

HBR May 2010 Article

Output from Day Two:

Workgroup 1: Capacity Building as a Process Organized Around Real Work (not an Event)

Workgroup 2: SoL as a Network, Membership as Source

Workgroup 3: Infrastructure Requirements

Capacity Building Working Group members enter here