About this event

January 25, 2016 | 8:00 a.m. to 12:00 p.m.
Check-In & Breakfast at 8:00 a.m., Presentation at 8:30 a.m.

Village Baptist Church | 330 SW Murray Blvd. | Beaverton, OR 97005

$50 NAO Members, $85 Nonmembers

(This workshop will also be offered in Eugene on January 26. Learn more.)

Presenter

Jane Wei-Skillern, PhD, Adjunct Associate Professor & Published Author, Haas School of Business, UC Berkeley

The scale of the social and environmental challenges that we face today requires that leaders work collectively on all of the leverage points of an issue. Sustained social impact at scale requires that leaders focus more on results and worry less about who gets the credit. Networks and collective impact approaches that rely upon all actors and resources across sectors to mobilize for change are viewed as some of the latest innovations in the field of social entrepreneurship. To harness the tremendous potential of networks, social sector leaders must let go of conventional wisdom and shift their focus from organization level goals to network-level impacts. Network leadership thus requires a different mindset and entirely new ways of leading.

Many of the skills that are essential for working effectively within networks are the opposite of what is required to scale and grow institutions. This half-day workshop will focus on how to lead and build cultures and structures that enable networks to thrive. Participants will have the opportunity to engage in an in depth case analysis of effective network leadership, discuss challenges and successes from their own experience, and learn some key principles to network success. The session offers participants a deep dive into network leadership and develops skills for catalyzing and sustaining networks to achieve social impact.

Key questions that we will examine in the session include:

What are networks and how do they differ from traditional organizational level approaches?
Networks can enable social sector leaders to achieve impact with greater agility, innovativeness, and leverage on resources relative to organizational scale. The process of scaling an organization poses tremendous challenges. Even when organizations manage to overcome the many obstacles to growth, and achieve appreciable scale, growth alone is seldom sufficient to achieve significant social impact. Though both networks and organizational scale can increase the scale of an organization’s impact, they draw on vastly different leadership skills and strategies.

Why networks?
While networks and collaborations of various forms are quite common in the social sector, network building as a primary strategy is often underappreciated by leaders, governing boards, and funders alike. Yet, work in the social sector is particularly conducive to network approaches for a number of reasons:

• Organizations seek to address large, complex issues that cannot be addressed by any single entity
• Organizations seek to create social value, not just organizational value
• Organizations often have dispersed governance structures
• Organizations create value that is not readily measured
• Organizations rely heavily upon tacit knowledge and expertise as well as trust and relationships to achieve social impact

How to lead and catalyze networks?

There has been a tremendous growth in interest in networks among practitioners in the social sector in recent years. Yet, oftentimes, there is a gap between aspirations to work collaboratively and effective mobilization of networks. This session will provide insights and lessons from the field that will prepare you to lead and engage in networks effectively.

Workshop Preparation Required

Participants will be asked to read a case statement and prepare answers to study questions to prepare for this presentation. The case study and questions will be provided shortly after registration.

About the Presenter

Jane Wei-Skillern

Jane Wei-Skillern is an adjunct associate professor at the Haas School of Business at UC Berkeley. Previously, she has served on the faculty at the Stanford Graduate School of Business, Harvard Business School, and London Business School. She is the author and co-author of dozens of HBS case studies, book chapters, and journal articles. She is the lead author of the casebook Entrepreneurship in the Social Sector (Sage Publications, 2007) . Her research on the leadership and management of social enterprises examines the topics of nonprofit growth and management of multi-site nonprofits, and most recently has been focused on nonprofit networks. This research examines how nonprofit leaders that focus less on building their own institutions and instead invest to build strategic networks beyond their organizational boundaries can achieve dramatic gains in mission impact with the same or fewer resources.

Jane Wei-Skillern earned a BS in business from the Haas School of Business at UC Berkeley, an MA in business research, and a PhD in organizational behavior, both from the Graduate School of Business at Stanford University.