00:14 MONIQUE BLOUGH, HOST:
Welcome to Responsible Disruption. I'm Monique Blough, your host. Today we have two extraordinary guests with us: Claire Reid and Heather Senecal. Claire Reid is the Chief Impact Officer at United Way of Greater Capital Region. Claire plays a pivotal role in shaping the organization's strategy for equitable community investment, with a strong focus on social justice, philanthropy, systems thinking, and collaborative learning. She leads initiatives like participatory grant-making and the region's first social innovation and systems thinking fellowship. Claire is also at the forefront of advocacy for equitable policy and narrative change. Our next guest is Heather Senecal, the Director of Learning and Evaluation at United Way of Greater Capital Region. She is also the facilitator and convener of the Summer Meals Collaborative, a collective impact platform addressing summer hunger for kids and teens in the greater Capital Region. Heather supports the United Way's system change efforts, working on initiatives such as the Family Neighborhood Resource Centers, Learning Collective, and the Lumosity Collaborative. She brings developmental evaluation methods into practice, fostering a culture of mutual learning and adaptive change. In today's episode, we'll discuss adaptive cycles and their crucial role in social innovation. We'll explore the dynamics of systems change, innovation's role in driving such change, and how the adaptive cycle framework can help us understand and navigate these complex processes. Welcome to you both!
01:54 CLAIRE REID, GUEST 1:
Thank you. Thanks.
01:57 MONIQUE: I'm really looking forward to this conversation and exploring your insights and the experiences you've had since starting on this important journey. So, why don't we start by exploring the concept of systems change? Claire, for our listeners, what is systemic change, and why is it crucial for addressing the interconnected challenges we face?
02:23 CLAIRE: Thanks, Monique, and thank you so much for having us. We're really excited to be here and have the opportunity to share. So, systems change, as I understand it, is really about advancing equity by shifting the conditions that hold a problem in place. In this way, I like to think of it as a process, an outcome, and a prompt for us to consider how our own worldviews impact how we think about change. This last part is really important because systems change requires that each of us recognize that we are all part of the systems we engage with—both individually and organizationally. How we think can affect change for good or bad. It's often contrasted with individual-level change. One way I've heard it put, which I like, is that rather than helping people beat the odds, systems change is about changing the odds altogether. So, both are important. We want to make individual-level change so that people can be healthier and live well now, and we also want to change the root causes that hold those sticky problems in place.
Another tool I find really useful when thinking about systems change to make it tangible is a well-known illustration by FSG. It's an inverted triangle: at the top are the policies, practices, and resource flows—this represents structural change. In the middle are the relational changes, which involve relationships, connections, and power dynamics. At the point of the triangle is transformative change, which encompasses the mental models that shape how we understand and think about a problem and its solutions. Systems change requires change at all three levels: the structural level, the relational level, and the transformative level. I think arguably the hardest part is the transformative aspect, as it is deeply ingrained in our worldviews and takes the longest to achieve. Should I go into an example now?
04:20 MONIQUE: Sure, absolutely. I think sharing an example brings the definition to life.
04:26 CLAIRE: OK. And I think one thing I'll say with systems change is that it's easy to stay up in the clouds, but it is very applied. I think all of us are engaged in systems thinking and systems change work often, even though we might not call it that. I think that's important because it can feel daunting, but that's why I like breaking it into those three levels. So, one example that Heather and I are excited to share is how our organization, the United Way of the Greater Capital Region in New York State, shifted to take on systems change work about six years ago. The CEO of the organization, Peter Gannon, and our board recognized that the way we were doing things was not having the impact we wanted. We had sort of a more traditional input-output model. While we may have been improving things in the short term for some people—which is important—we weren't shifting the conditions that held those problems in place generationally. When both of us started, we were not looking at a new program but rather a new way of framing and understanding the problem: how we think about it and how we need to show up internally and externally as an organization. We began by looking internally. As I mentioned at the beginning, in systems change work, you have to examine your own thinking and behavior within the system.
We looked at what structural changes we needed to make to center equity, everything from changes to our requests for proposals, the kinds of questions we asked, to our review process and who was involved in it. What did that look like? We also considered what and who we fund, replacing traditional reporting with collaborative learning, and changing resource flows to ensure that we're investing equitably in communities that have been historically disinvested. Then, we assessed what relational changes we needed to make.
Who did we know, and who did we not know that we should know? What kinds of relationships did we have? And then the transformational change: how could we shift the narrative around what philanthropic work is, what our role was, and what the grantor-grantee relationship looks like? This part is really important for us as well—how could we nurture the capacity for systems thinking and systems change work more broadly in what we call the impact sector? So that led us to launch an internal process, and we had a wonderful facilitator named Sarah Lynn Hotchkin. We started with a bunch of really big questions; we didn't actually have any answers at that time. We just had these questions about how we could do this kind of work. I want to say that we received some early-stage funding from the Bank of America, and I want to emphasize that because it is very hard to find funding for this early inner systems work. You don't know what the result will be, and you can't promise, you know, "Oh, it's going to result in this XYZ change." But we do know that just not doing anything also carries risk. That was important. We also heard from partners that they never had time to think and were always putting out fires, going from crisis to crisis. They didn't have enough resources to set aside to flesh out some of the great ideas that they had, and we think that's also a systemic problem in the sector.
07:57 CLAIRE: And so from that grew the Lumosity Collaborative that you referenced. It was a systems change fellowship and seed money, and again, we counted on wonderful facilitation from another woman named Marjorie Brands. That was really intentional muscle building for early-stage ideas. We were very specific about investing in the early stage. So, again, the process and the outcome in social change and systems change work— the early stage, I think, is where we see the most inequity because it’s often the most vague. The only organizations that can put aside money and time for that are the larger organizations that can fund the cost until they get proof of concept, which is then when maybe a funder would step in. We focused on that early-stage idea because we believe that great ideas are everywhere, but the opportunity to explore them is limited. So that’s a little bit rusty, I'll say, but it continues to impact how we work as an organization. Lastly, it also led us to think about how funding itself could be social change and how it could be an innovation that’s more than just a tool. I think that’s how we’ve been thinking about it. Again, that changing of thinking—money as a grant, okay, but how could money also be a framework for how we think about change, power dynamics, and goal setting? That led us to introduce things like participatory budgeting and some other initiatives. So, I’ll stop there just to say it’s a continuous process, and we are still learning a lot and exploring systems change and how we can continue to grow in that way.
09:33 MONIQUE: I think that's such a great example because a it makes it tangible, but I think it also gives us an opportunity to lean into this understanding of not only the importance of systems change, but the difference between systems change and incremental change, because as you went through your list in your example you can see many things that that needed to be done. You know at that incremental level in order to get to that you know bigger change. So why don't we spend a little bit of time talking about you know the difference between systemic change and incremental change and why it's really important when it comes to solving some of these large scale deep rooted challenges that people are facing or communities are facing.
10:16 CLAIRE: OK, I can start us off there. That’s a great question. I think incremental changes are tweaks, but changes around the edges. They are important. Sometimes, I think with that term, it gets thought of as, “Well, you know, who cares about those changes?” But they are important. For example, increasing the number of grants you give to organizations that have been disproportionately underfunded or changing your granting period from one year to five years—those are incremental changes. They are important, but they won’t address the underlying root causes that you’re trying to tackle. For instance, you might increase the number of hours that your food pantry is open, which is very important and will increase access, but it won’t change why certain folks in our communities continue to lack access to the foods that they want or need. So I think that systems change and incremental change really underscore different ways of problem-solving. Generally, when we go about problem-solving, we do our research and look for best practices. We ask experts for their opinions and seek insights from those closest to the problem to see how the issue shows up. This can be effective when the problem is simple and clear. We talk about the known knowns—there are best practices in place, and we know what to do to fix it. One challenge, for example, that we've worked on here is period poverty. The high cost of period products and programs that don't allow them to be covered causes many not to have access. It's not a complex problem, so we can use this simpler problem-solving approach. Simple, but it’s...
12:04 MONIQUE: Yeah, the process by which you don't know.
12:06 CLAIRE: Yeah, exactly. Then there are sort of complicated problems where we have known unknowns, so we know what we don’t know. The relationship between cause and effect needs some expertise, and we know where we’re going to find it. An example of things that we're working on is advancing tax credits that promote equity. We know the kind of expertise we may not have; who do we go to, and how do we build that together? How do we link that to policy? I think where systems change comes in, and why we have been focused on building this capacity ourselves and more broadly, is that we need to unlearn the habit of applying those kinds of problem-solving approaches to complex problems like poverty, homelessness, and health disparities. We have a lot of unknown unknowns, and a lot of philanthropy is focused on those. We want to see systems change, but we go about it by advancing incremental change as if we knew all of the causes for that problem. For instance, in our work on maternal racial health disparities, we know some of the causes, but not necessarily all of them. The kinds of questions we ask drive the kinds of solutions we create. In our work in philanthropy and in the impact sector, we really want to be asking different kinds of questions that help us understand that complexity. We want to make incremental changes, track them, and understand them, always keeping our eye on that longer-term root cause and how the two interplay. I think Heather has a fantastic example to share around this with the Summer Meals Collaborative.
13:50 MONIQUE: Yeah, I'd love to hear that, Heather again, examples make this information so much more tangible, I find. Are these theories that we work in?
13:58 HEATHER SENECAL, GUEST 2:
Yeah, absolutely, and I'm happy to share. So, you know, at the Summer Meals Collaborative and with summer meals in general, it's a program that essentially ensures that children who receive school lunches and breakfasts have access to breakfast and lunch during the summertime when school is out of session. It's a federally funded program implemented locally with school districts, community-based organizations, and other partners. We've been working together for over ten years on this approach to ensure that every child in our community who receives lunch or breakfast during the school year also has lunch and breakfast during the summer months. One of the big things we realized last summer was that we kept thinking, you know, our goal was always one-to-one: every child during the school year, every child in the summer. We realized that we are an incredibly efficient group of organizations; we know how to run the programs. Despite that, we are never going to reach our goal of one-to-one because there’s just no amount of tweaks on the margins that will get us there. The policy isn’t really set up to ensure that every child is reached, and the infrastructure around that policy isn’t designed to serve every child.
Once we had that realization—oh, it’s not something we’re not working hard enough at; it’s just that the model is set up in a way that doesn’t allow us to do this—we understood that we needed to transform not only how this program is planned out and resourced but also how we message our work in the community. We need to bring more partners into this work so that everyone can see how they can play a role in nutrition security. We've even broadened our perspective beyond just a summer meal to encompass a “summer nourishing experience,” which includes, of course, meals as an important component, along with enriching activities for kids.
You know, drawing that connection involves looking at the intersections of nutrition and positive childhood development outcomes, recognizing that it's about nourishing the mind, body, and spirit. In order for us to actually do that, we have to transform how we think about summer nutrition programs in our community, state, and country. Some of that involves bringing in more partners and additional resources, but a lot of it is also about transforming the policy and the infrastructure surrounding that policy to enable this change. Because, again, the way it's currently set up just doesn't allow all those pieces to fall into place.
16:56 MONIQUE: Right. Yeah, that's a great example. I think both of the examples you've shared, and our diving into the beginning of this conversation around systems change and incremental change, really highlight this notion of changes around the edges. Both of your examples speak to these small things that we're doing, but in fact, they're not small—maybe gradual, which helps us lean into what it means to think about shifting the entire system. So I think those are both really relevant and tangible examples. Why don't we dive into the notion of how both of these change processes or frameworks help us think about innovation? Claire, you provided some great examples as we kicked off the podcast today about innovative new ideas looking to disrupt existing systems. I would also say, Heather, your Summer Meals Collaborative speaks to that as well. Many of our examples and conversations will overlap and dovetail, but I'd really like to take a second to talk about instances where you've seen innovation disrupt existing systems and become a force for change, making those transformative shifts that we're looking for.
18:17 CLAIRE: Thank you for that insight. For me, one of the key pieces of social innovation is that it has to profoundly change something. This notion of change at its core, rather than just around the edges, is essential. Social innovation can be a process, a relationship, or a product or program that significantly alters the basic routines, power dynamics, or beliefs within a given system.
One important point to make is that innovation does not have to be something entirely new. Sometimes, innovation gets misconstrued as being a brand new idea that emerges out of nowhere. It often gets confused with creativity. For example, I could paint the walls of this white room with multi-colored polka dots, which would be very creative, but it wouldn't necessarily change anything about the experience itself.
A great example I want to share relates to where Heather and I are currently located: the Blake Annex. This is a mission-aligned co-working space that United Way launched a couple of years ago. The Blake team often refers to it as a social purpose real estate initiative. It's an intentional creation of space to bring together like-minded individuals from different types of organizations. These individuals aren't all from the impact sector; we have funders, grantees, public sector representatives, and private sector individuals, all of whom share a mission-aligned thread.
The idea is not just about physical co-location. While that is part of it, it could remain superficial if we don't leverage that proximity to create something more impactful. It's really about how building on this closeness can foster collaboration and creative thinking. There have been partnerships and relationships developed here that likely would not have happened had we not been in such close proximity. Additionally, this space changes some of the underlying perceptions around what work in the impact sector looks like. Many of our partners, including Heather and myself, have experience in both the funding and implementation sides of the impact sector.
You know, I think often we have this notion that the infrastructure has to be not very nice—you're in some dingy room with furniture that somebody gave away because it's not very nice anymore—and you don't want to invest any of the funds. So, this is a spectacularly beautiful space, decorated by local artists with lots of light, and we share the cost of that. So, that's profoundly, I think, changing it. And I think what this builds on, and this is another aspect I think for innovation, is the notion of an abundance mindset. This is not a new idea, but we have buried it in many places and replaced it with a scarcity mindset, where there's never enough money, there's never enough partners. There are groups A, B, and C, and abundance, rather, is an intentional effort to see connections, to build connections, and to see what we can do—the power that we can create when we do something together. Like the example of the summer meals, it's not just a bunch of organizations doing what they normally do and sharing that information. So then, just one other idea I wanted to share in this space around the not new is that we see a lot of great work happening in the food justice and food sovereignty space, and much of what's happening there builds on long-standing values and practices of Indigenous peoples and Indigenous nations and their relationship with the Earth—the natural world understanding of us as stewards. And we're seeing this, you know, taken and uplifted, of course, by Indigenous peoples and Indigenous-led organizations as they always have, but also growing and scaling to other kinds of organizations and spaces. So, that's just some of my thoughts around innovation and why I think it can really help drive the systems change efforts.
22:37 MONIQUE: I really love the example of just co-locating a bunch of organizations because, back to what you said, and Heather, I'd be really curious as to what your experience has been since you're there too. But we have this notion that, yes, innovation is not only new but extraordinary when, in fact, it can be, you know, as simple as bringing a group of individuals that, you know, are mission-aligned to create these collisions that are unexpected because you get to work in this space together. But yeah, Heather, I'm curious about what your experience has been.
23:12 HEATHER: Just a great example to share. I mean, I was in—we have a community kitchen—and I was in the community kitchen, and you know, a new member was there, and you know, they just, you know, as normal human interaction, “Hi, how are you? It's nice to meet you, so and so,” and, you know, learning a little bit more about their work. And you know, they were talking about, you know, one of our kind of goals is to increase access for communities that are traditionally left out of, you know, open spaces, green spaces. And you know, how do we, you know, understanding those communities and understanding, like, the different challenges and barriers they face, you know, to accessing open green spaces? And I shared that, you know, we have this fantastic research initiative that really, you know, collects a lot of data, and we look at what does access and community look like? You know, how do we define that? And so that just became like, “Oh, we should talk. We should figure out a way to work together.” And you know, it's not like both of us are bringing different pieces of information to the table, but we're all, like, so we're connecting dots, right? And we're making those linkages that are so important. And when we think about, like, systems change and, you know, connecting in and figuring out what those levers are and what are those areas that, you know, we can apply some pressure in a positive way to, you know, to get to that equitable change piece that Claire was mentioning earlier—like, the ability to just do that. I wouldn't say unexpectedly, because again, like, that's why we're here is to have those, but you know, that's just an example of, like, how that process works in our—in the Blake Annex. And then, you know, it's also the atmosphere here, like the sense of welcome and inclusion here is, you know, I think another driver of that work that we all do together. And, you know, being able to welcome community members here and, you know, where we're located downtown, easily accessible. You know, it's all part of that laying the groundwork in that environment of how we do our work together.
25:22 MONIQUE: Love that! I appreciate it—not by accident, however. There, I think we've seen, you know, instances where sure, you can gather a group of people together, but if you don't come with, you know, the intentionality or the mindset of abundance, like you said there, or the opportunity to see growth around you, the proximity may not inspire that change. And so I think all of those conditions that you've been able to create really lend themselves to that. I love that. And I think, you know, in our work, there are many opportunities to consider how we need to be open to change, you know, responding to opportunities and being adaptive. And so I think it would be a great opportunity to speak to one of those frameworks, which is the adaptive cycle, and it can be really quite useful when we're thinking about how we have to shift, whether it's, you know, large-scale shifts in systemic change or, in fact, how it plays in our incremental changes that we're experiencing. And so Heather, why don't we dig into that a little bit, and maybe you could define the adaptive cycle for our audience and talk about how the framework really helps us to understand some of these dynamics.
26:36 HEATHER: Thank you, and I love this question because it, to me, is like pulling the theory into practice. So for the adaptive cycle, you know, I really learned about it through a variety of different ways. I read about it in the Developmental Evaluation textbook, and I heard other systems change agents talk about it. So it's one of those things where you start hearing it all around you; it starts percolating, and then you learn about how it applies to some of the bigger questions that we were having, as Claire referenced earlier—like some of the internal questions that we were sorting through and working through—and how that could help us with some of those questions and really create, whether it's the frameworks or different ways for us to measure and think about our work. So, in brief, the adaptive cycle looks like an infinity sign. If you think about it that way, you can envision it in a four-quadrant format.
If you look at the bottom left quadrant, we can call that the growth part of the cycle. In the growth part, you’re really looking at a period or a stage of rapid expansion. When we think about innovation, this is the fertile ground in which your ideas, programs, or initiatives are starting to grow. You’re allocating resources, time, and people to pull those ideas and nurture them. What you’re really thinking about is: how is this working? What are the adaptations that we’re seeding? How is the context reacting to this? Ultimately, what are we learning? The reason why you’re asking those questions is to understand and figure out if this is an idea that we want to continue to grow and scale or if it’s something that is just really suited for this place in time and doesn’t need to be scaled. Depending on how you answer those questions or the data that you’re collecting to help you answer those questions, if the answer is yes, it can be scaled, you’re essentially transitioning to the next stage in the cycle. However, those transitions are not guaranteed. You might not want to transition, and there’s also an element of perhaps you kind of get trapped in that cycle. And you know, there's these traps are throughout the cycle.
And depending on where you are, it’s the different type of trap that you might encounter. Traps can be barriers; they can be resistance or rigidity to changing or adapting. So again, it’s not guaranteed that you’ll transition. But if you are able to navigate through that, and the data and other learning that you’re conducting is telling you, "Yes, it’s time to scale," then you would move into the conservation stage, which would be your upper right-hand quadrant in your infinity sign. This is one in which the idea, program, or innovation has been scaled and is running at full steam. You have really allocated and locked up a lot of resources to ensure this program is operating at its intended capacity. At this stage, for innovators and program managers, the question isn’t, "Is this working?" but rather, "How is this working?" It’s almost like that’s the “so what” question in evaluation: "So what happened? So what are the results?" That’s what you’re really collecting and gathering in this stage. The question you need to be constantly asking yourself, or at least building into your data and learning, is, "What is changing in the context in which this program, idea, or initiative is operating, and what adaptations might be necessary so that we are changing with the context?" If that isn’t happening, or if you’re not really surveying and thinking through what is changing in the environment around you, and whether your program is still meeting the intended outcomes or goals because of all the changes in the environment, then you can get trapped in what’s called the rigidity trap. You get trapped in, “Well, this is how we’ve always run the program.”
This is how it’s always done, and we don’t need to change because it’s working. But if you’re not checking in with the context, or the environment around you, or the culture around you to see if this is continuing to have the outcomes we intended or needed, then you can get stuck there. A lot of times, it becomes, “No, this program is great; it has done some tremendous things.” But it has served its purpose. It’s no longer necessary, or the context has changed so much that the program itself, the innovation, or the initiative needs to be completely rethought or redone. At that point, you would move into the bottom right quadrant, the release stage. This is when you’ve released your assumptions, your original idea, and the resources. One thing to really stress—and we talk with all of our partners about this—is that release isn’t failure. It’s not that you didn’t achieve what you set out to do. It’s about really releasing the things that aren’t working and freeing up those resources so that you can devote them to something else, perhaps another idea that you’re seeding or want to explore. This is the time when you are doing a lot of questioning around lessons learned.
So again, it’s not about, “What did we do wrong?” but more about, “What are we learning? What assumptions didn’t prove true? What do we need to let go of so we can start something else or something new?” What other partners do we need in this work, or what other areas in the system do we think we can influence? Those are the types of learning questions you need to be asking yourself rather than dwelling on, “What did we do wrong?” I think a lot of times that’s the trap organizations, innovators, and other groups get stuck in—they think, “Well, we must have done something wrong.” It’s just recognizing that release isn’t failure; it is truly about releasing and letting go of what wasn’t working so that you can move on to something that could have even greater outcomes.
The final aspect of our infinity loop and our adaptive cycle is the reorganization or exploration stage, which is in the top left part of our quadrant. And that's a lot of time where, you know, we saw in our Luminosity Collaborative those early-stage ideas that Claire was talking about—those wicked questions that people come in with around the innovation or the systems change they're working on. In this area, in this quadrant, you're really looking at asking questions like: What is a realistic timeline for us to demonstrate this idea’s potential? What resources do we need to assess the potential? What other partners do we need to bring to this work? What assumptions are we testing here that help us understand whether or not we can grow this idea, innovation, or initiative? So when we talk about the adaptive cycle, that's how I like to frame it out for our partners and really help them understand that at the different stages in the cycle, you have different questions to ask, different data to collect, and different ways of thinking through your work. This helps you better understand the systems change process you’re engaged in.
34:49 MONIQUE: I think that explanation really helps clarify how systems evolve and really need to adapt over time. It might appear extremely complex, but when you break it down into those four quadrants or phases, it can be more digestible or easy to consume. I also love the questions you've outlined, Heather, about what to consider at those stages. We can include all of that in our show notes for our listeners so they can reference that material. Moving into practicality, I think it’s important to explore how we can take the adaptive cycle and turn it into something actionable. I know you’ve applied that framework on many occasions, possibly in your Luminosity Collaborative or other initiatives. Could you speak to that?
35:39 HEATHER: Yeah, so when we started out with Luminosity, we knew that we were going to have to think about a different way to understand the systems change process. We knew that the traditional log frame and logic model evaluative practices weren't going to really capture all the dynamic elements of the social innovation work that our partners were doing, and it also wasn't going to help us internally answer some of the bigger questions that we were grappling with. As Claire mentioned, how is funding itself an innovation? We weren't going to be able to answer that by simply saying, "Well, we funded X number of partners," because that wasn't really going to answer that question for us. So we thought about what tools we could use to understand the process of systems change and its outcomes. We applied both the adaptive cycle in the Luminosity Collaborative and also used other developmental evaluation methods, for example, the inquiry framework, which involves looking at the "what," "so what," and "now what" processes, building a framework around each of those questions. If we came in with each partner's wicked question or questions and assumptions that they were testing, we would go through the "OK, so what?" process. For instance, if we were looking at funding as an innovation, what are some of those assumptions? And then, what are we not talking about or thinking through? We built that out for each of the partners. For example, when we were creating our internal learning framework, we laid out our learning questions and then put them through this inquiry framework every other month.
So we really built in that iterative reflection process to help us capture all the changes between each reflection cycle. For us, this was intentional because a lot of times, you get to the end of your project, program, or funding cycle, and the question is, "What happened?" You can really remember where you started and where you finished. We wanted to ensure we could capture all of those changes over time, along with the reasons behind those changes, what informed them, and the data that drove our decisions. We also considered how assumptions changed or how shifts in the context influenced our program. For example, we started this program a year ago, and suddenly, A, B, and C happened, which caused us to rethink how we wanted to run this program or how this initiative needed to change or adapt. This framework allowed us to capture all of that. We took many of those questions and built them into the adaptive cycle. We did this by taking each of the quadrants and breaking down the learning questions I mentioned earlier even further for our partners. For example, in the growth stage, we asked questions like: What ideas are you acting upon and why? What resources are you identifying that make your idea worth pursuing? And how are you acting on the data you are receiving? What are you doing with it? How are you using it? How's it feeding back into your learning, and how is it informing your future?
And what partners and connections are contributing to this work? We asked that at the midpoint and then again at the endpoint, and we did that for each of the quadrants. Those were just really good prompts, not only for our partners but also for ourselves to think through. If this was our question when we came in, how is it changing? How is our understanding evolving? What data are we capturing, and what learning is contributing to the changes and adaptations we’re making? What does that mean for us going forward? Then we would go through the cycle all over again at the next reflection point. That's how we used it in Luminosity. We've also applied it internally; we held a team meeting to look at all the different programs that we either fund, contribute to, or are part of. We examined what we are growing, what we are seeding, what we need to release, and what we are really sustaining. It helped us understand where our resources and time are locked up and allowed us to assess, "If we want to grow this, then we need to consider that if we’re locking up all our time and resources over here, we probably won’t realistically grow this this year or within this funding cycle." So, what does that mean for us? Are we okay with that, or do we need to make some adjustments? It was a really helpful tool both internally and externally.
41:17 CLAIRE: Yea Yeah, I’m just going to. And so I think I just wanted to lift this up because this has been tremendously helpful for us as an organization, and I think it’s an important aspect to include in this system. You may have gathered from Heather's description that this takes time. That’s something we learned and, in all honesty, also struggle with—you have to budget time for this. It has to be seen as just as productive as some of the more traditional work you might be thinking of. It can be really hard, especially for smaller organizations that are busy doing so much while wearing many hats. For anyone listening who is a funder, this also means we need to invest more in people. A lot of funding is tied strictly to programmatic inputs, but it’s not just the programming inputs that facilitate this kind of learning and systems change work; it’s people. So, the staffing, skills, and the contributions people can bring to this work are essential. We need to find time for that. I think this connects to the notion of growth and scaling. I wanted to highlight some work done by a woman named Tatiana Fraser from the System Sanctuary, who talks about "scaling deep." What Heather is describing is really this slow, steady work, including the internal work of deepening relationships, enhancing understanding, and recognizing the importance of context. This deepening process is just as important as the other forms of scaling that get more attention—scaling up to impact policies, scaling out to be replicated—but it’s slow and it’s not flashy. It’s a process. Again, this goes back to what we said at the very beginning: systems change is a process. This part has just been, you know, really, really tremendous. I've loved being able to take the time to dive deep into that adaptive cycle. It's also an example of something that's not new in the sense that it’s really inspired by the natural world.
43:46 MONIQUE: You know, we use the adaptive cycle as well in many instances. But I wouldn't say that we've adopted it to the depth that you have. However, I do think it becomes one of these elements or conditions that we need to go through to truly understand what we're wanting to change. If we're going to look at resiliency, innovation, and long-term sustainability, it feels like one of those things we need to do to enable transformation. I don't know if you would agree with that, but I’d love to explore a little bit about that. What factors need to exist in order to enable transformative shifts to drive systems change? What have you learned in your work, and what have you seen with your partners?
44:38 CLAIRE: I think that this notion of time is a big one. You need time. Often in this sector, grants or grant cycles are one year, maybe two years, or three years, and you're supposed to have demonstrated full results. There's not a lot of space to say, "Well, actually, I let go of all this stuff, and none of this really worked as I had intended. Instead, I'm doing this." That is not encouraged by many funders and, in fact, can lead to folks losing funding. So, we need to think differently about this notion of time while also not losing the sense of urgency. The problems that we're dealing with—people are hurting now. That's why I like the adaptive cycle too. There are very tangible short-term things that you can be doing to make things better now so that people can be healthier now and can be a part of that transformative change. If folks are unwell in the biggest sense of the word, they can't prioritize being a part of that systems change because they have other pressing needs. So, I think this notion of time is critical. I also believe that resources, including financial ones, are essential. It certainly helped us; I mentioned we got that early group, and we also received some funding from MacKenzie Scott that allowed us to build that out. That's how we used our funding: to work with partners to say, "Take this idea and run with it, and keep learning around it." Next week, we're hearing from two partners about health equity through transportation and food as a universal language. These are not things that can be solved in a year. But the resources to do that are crucial.
The other thing I'll say is that we need to change our understanding of so-called risk. I think this is a big challenge in our sector. One of the traps that Heather references is, "Well, we've always done it this way; we can't change it," or "We can just make this tiny little change." From the perspective of those in a funder's position, often saying, "Well, you have to have proof of concept. I'm not going to fund this until you can prove without a doubt that this will work," is not fertile ground for problem-solving differently. We need to think differently about what might have transformative potential. Those are some of the questions we ask: What work can you do that makes you think, "I can't prove it, but I do have a reasonable basis to say this idea has legs? I think there's something to explore here." So it's not just a whim; it requires a solid foundation. Embracing the notion of being a little more comfortable with ambiguity is crucial. Using this learning process helps us stay on track and determine what we need to keep doing and what we should maybe not focus on as much.
47:43 MONIQUE: Thanks for that, Claire. And I'd like to, Heather, I'm curious if you have any final thoughts on this.
47:50 HEATHER: Yeah, I mean, I would just echo what Claire said about the notion of risk and being comfortable with it. We're not talking about risk in the sense of making hasty decisions; we've put a lot of thought into this. Part of the risk we've embraced in our role as funders is the belief in the process. We recognize that even if the outcome isn't what we were hoping for or planning, we value the process itself. We're willing to use our investments to learn more about that process because, even if things don't work out as we originally envisioned, we gain valuable lessons. For example, if we're aiming to change health equity through transportation, we might discover that certain strategies aren't effective in this context. However, we also might learn that other approaches hold tremendous potential for change. We wouldn't have gained that insight if we hadn't embarked on this journey. Ultimately, it’s only a failure if you don’t learn. What we've embraced in our work is the idea that as long as we're learning throughout this process, we are successful. This understanding helps us to better navigate how we can create positive changes in the systems within our communities.
49:20 MONIQUE: I love that. Claire?
49:22 CLAIRE: I would just add, too, that I think another enabling factor for creating systems-level change is holding space for collaboration. These otherwise disparate, great ideas can remain disconnected, resulting in a lot of good concepts happening in different places, but that’s as far as they’ll get. If we can focus more on creating opportunities for people to come together—not just for information sharing, although that is important—but to connect in different ways, those ideas can potentially merge into something powerful. For example, we see these great initiatives related to mutual aid, like free food fridges, free period pantry products, and free little libraries. The question is, how do these connect to form a profound change in our collective responsibility to care for one another? It's not guaranteed, but how might we connect those great ideas to truly shift perspectives and practices? I’d also emphasize that this collaborative work can’t happen in isolation. Having people you can work with is incredibly valuable, and it’s fantastic to have a supportive network for this process.
50:52 MONIQUE: I completely agree; there we always say innovation is a team sport, and I think you’ve articulated that as well. The Luminosity Collaborative speaks to that. You know, the summer meals, like many of the examples you've really shared with us today, help us understand how this manifests in the real world. Right? So they're not just these might be, could be; they truly are, you know, solutions or opportunities that you've created. And really helping our listeners understand how you're addressing some of these complex issues interconnectedly. And that's, I think, one of the key things I'd like to leave with our listeners from this conversation. I have so many tidbits that have come out of this. You know, I'm really left with this notion of space in time, which Claire you've spoken to, you know, creating a system of understanding. I mean, I'm excited to keep exploring future conversations together. Your expertise is greatly appreciated. It will really help our listeners—pardon me—understand how to think about systemic change and how it can truly drive changes in innovation.
52:04 CLAIRE: Thank you so much. It's really been an honor and a privilege to be here.
52:08 HEATHER: Thank you. Again, this is a wonderful conversation. Thanks for sharing with us.
52:13 MONIQUE: And if you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe on popular platforms and follow us on your favorite social media platform so you don't miss an episode. Your support helps us continue to bring valuable content and inspiring conversation.
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