We talk with the racial equity consulting firm Beloved Community about their approach and curriculum centered on the skills necessary for leaders to navigate change for themselves and their teams.
Navigating and managing change is key to a collaborative’s journey, but it’s also one of the most challenging as each partner’s relationship, personal history, and ability to participate in change can vary. Differences in how partners navigate change, if not recognized and explored, can make it difficult for the collaborative to achieve meaningful progress towards shared goals.
How does one lead and navigate through these varying responses to change? In this new podcast episode, we explore this question and more with Dr. Nicole Caridad Ralston and Ileana Ortiz from the racial equity consulting firm Beloved Community.
They have created a curriculum on navigating change, and we discuss the variety of skills needed to both lead and support change efforts, including:
Resources and Footnotes
From Dr. Nicole Caridad Ralston, here are some reflection questions for a change management process:
From Dr. Nicole Caridad Ralston, here are more commonly used change management frameworks:
Lewin's Change Management Model:
Main Principles: Lewin's model, based on the Unfreeze, Change, Refreeze stages, emphasizes the importance of addressing psychological resistance to change. The unfreeze stage aims to create awareness and challenge existing mindsets. The change stage introduces new behaviors, and the refreeze stage solidifies the new norm.
McKinsey 7-S Model:
Main Principles: The 7-S Model focuses on the interconnection of seven elements: Strategy, Structure, Systems, Shared Values, Skills, Style, and Staff. Alignment across these elements is essential for successful change.
ADKAR:
Main Principles: ADKAR focuses on individual change adoption through stages: Awareness, Desire, Knowledge, Ability, and Reinforcement. It recognizes the psychological journey individuals undergo during change.
Bridges Transition Model:
Main Principles: The Bridges Model emphasizes managing emotional transitions during change through stages: Endings, Neutral Zone, and New Beginnings.
Kotter's 8-Step Model:
Main Principles: Kotter's model outlines eight steps for successful change, emphasizing leadership's role in setting direction, creating urgency, and anchoring changes.
More on Collective Impact
The Intro music, entitled “Running,” was composed by Rafael Krux, and can be found here and is licensed under CC: By 4.0.
The outro music, entitled “Deliberate Thought,” was composed by Kevin Macleod. Licensed under CC: By.
Have a question related to collaborative work that you'd like to have discussed on the podcast? Contact us at: https://www.collectiveimpactforum.org/contact-us/
Welcome to the Collective Impact Forum podcast, here to share resources to support social change makers working on cross-sector collaboration.
The Collective Impact Forum is a nonprofit field-building initiative that is co-hosted in partnership by the nonprofit consulting firm FSG and the Aspen Institute Forum for Community Solutions.
In this episode, we’re exploring why navigating and managing change is a key part of every collaborative’s journey, but it can also be one of the most challenging. Each collaborative partner can experience going through change differently, and if those differences are not recognized and explored, it can make it difficult for the collaborative to achieve meaningful progress towards shared goals.
So how does one lead and navigate through these varying responses to change? We explore this question and more with Dr. Nicole Caridad Ralston and Ileana Ortiz from the racial equity consulting firm Beloved Community. They have recently created a curriculum on navigating change, and in this discussion, we go over the variety of skills needed to both lead and support change efforts.
Moderating this discussion is Collective Impact Forum director of programs and partnerships Courtney W. Robertson. Let’s tune in.
Courtney W. Robertson: Welcome to the Collective Impact Forum podcast. My name is Courtney W. Robertson, director of programs and partnerships, and I am your host. One cannot lead and engage in collaborative work without engaging in change management. There’s a give and take that requires individual and organizational shifts and how you think about and approach the work. One of the strategies for centering equity is building equity leadership and accountability. But how do you do that in a way that is truly introspective and combats the conventional ways in which we show up to lead and manage change?
Joining me for this discussion from the organization Beloved Community based in New Orleans, Louisiana, are Dr. Nicole Caridad Ralston, senior director, education and programming; Ileana Ortiz, associate director, Equity at Work. Thank you both for joining. Let’s start by having each of you briefly introduce yourself and your role at Beloved Community.
Dr. Nicole Caridad Ralston: Sure. I'm happy to get started. Hello, everyone. I'm Dr. Nicole Caridad Ralston, she/her/hers, and are senior director of education and programming at Beloved Community, which we’ll tell you more about in just a bit. In my role I have the honor of leading the team of consultants, facilitators, coaches, and curriculum builders at Beloved. So if you're ever engaging with our consulting services you are likely engaging with our team, which Ileana is also a part of. So I will pass it over to them.
Ileana Ortiz: Amazing. Thank you so much. My name is Ileana Ortiz. My pronouns are they/them/theirs, and like Dr. Nicole Caridad Ralston mentioned, I am one of the associate directors here at Beloved Community, specifically kind of in our Equity at Work wing. I'm based here in Bvlbancha, also known as New Orleans, so I do a lot of our facilitating kind in the Greater New Orleans area along with some of my colleagues, also travel sometimes, and in charge of some of the curriculum that we create, in charge of things like thought partnerships, and really working directly with clients, not only kind of putting our heads together and learning, but also working together to see how it is that they can operationalize what it is that they are learning in the space with us.
Courtney W. Robertson: Dr. Nicole, you alluded to this, and we’ve had the honor of chatting with some of your other colleagues before on our podcast platform, but for our listeners who may not be familiar with Beloved Community, what is the organization and what is the focus of the work?
Dr. Nicole Caridad Ralston: Yeah, absolutely. So we are a racial equity consulting firm. We’re also a nonprofit. We work with multiple sectors, so you heard Ileana name that they work on our kind of quote-unquote work side of the house. That means both for-profit and nonprofit businesses. We work heavily in the hospitality industry as well, and we also have a school side of the house that works with, you know, all things schools, districts, principals, etc. We, as a racial equity consulting firm, really work with organizations and clients that are at kind of a 2.0 level of readiness in that they’ve been doing this work before, right, but they're at a particular moment where they have the deep understanding of why focusing on building more equitable systems is important for their staff and communities that they serve, so they don’t need to be convinced, right, that they need support in really operationalizing it for sustainable long-lasting change. That’s, I think, our particular niche.
Outside of our education and programming team, we also have a data research impact and policy team who leads a lot of our, well, data research impact and policy. But how they interface particularly with our team, the folks that you're listening to today, is they may, in our projects, do a lot of the like focus groups or one-on-one interviews, gathering some of the experiences that are happening in the organization so that we’re really fully informed in the ways that we consult, advise, strategize, etc.
Courtney W. Robertson: Beautiful, beautiful, thank you so much for that. So you all are doing some phenomenal work and I know this both from personal experience having done some work with Beloved in my previous role, and just from knowing your organization.
In addition to the work you're already doing, you all have developed a framework focused on building a leader’s ability to manage change in a way that is antiracist and anti-oppressive. So if you could tell us more about this framework kind of approach.
Ileana Ortiz: I can totally try kind of doing this answer first. Really here at Beloved a concept that grounds us and kind of undergirds a lot of our work is the concept of believing that people change systems.
So at Beloved we believe that people are absolutely the greatest unit of change and when people embrace things like shared values, they're able to maintain systems that then amplify those values. We also believe that everyone in existence and certainly at businesses and organizations really has an obligation to make personally relevant change. So at Beloved we believe that when our leaders change that is actually how they are also then able to really accelerate structural change for the organizations that they do lead. At Beloved the systems part of that is that we also believe that the default systems in our country are doing what they were designed to do. They are designed to segregate and so therefore when we really question and challenge what the default is, that’s when we can actually start to dismantle it and build equitable systems in its place. So really kind of as a team of equity leaders here at Beloved, we process what this means together constantly, right. And this really extends to our work with partners as well as clients, but again, internally, within ourselves.
We believe that in order for folks to actually be able to dismantle systems of privilege and systems of oppression, they have to be willing to be comfortable acknowledging what their own gaps and their own growth areas or their own learning areas are. We all have to be willing to do things like talk about race, class, power, and privilege, even when it’s uncomfortable or especially when it’s uncomfortable, and this is really reflected in how we approach developing this like change intelligence course is really taking all of those things that are deeply important and kind of the cornerstones of our work, and then translating that into this change intelligence curriculum.
Courtney W. Robertson: Thank you for that, Ileana. Just so that we can be sort of grounded in this terminology rather, what does it mean within the change intelligence framework to be antiracist and anti-oppressive?
Ileana Ortiz: So, this change intelligence course, we were not the individuals that necessarily came up with the name, change intelligence, or the framework of change intelligence. When I was doing research creating this curriculum it seems like Dr. Barbara Trautlein is the person who came up with that, but then what we really did was we modified it and kind of put a little bit of a different lens on it, right? A little bit more of an intentional emphasis on making the content antiracist and anti-oppression-informed. When you kind of think about it, the concept of traditional change management can actually really butt up against a lot of what we believe and the ways that we facilitate here at Beloved, especially because we utilize very often the framework of White supremacy culture, which if you are not familiar with, we always highly recommend checking that out. White supremacy culture was the work of Tema Okun and Kenneth Jones, and it was created in 1999, and then was updated and turned into a pretty cool interactive website, I think in 2021.
And so, in doing this research, we kind of realized that change management butted up against a lot but change intelligence kind of had a more natural adaptability, and that was something that really intrigued us. And so, it really took a lot of dreaming but then also kind of operationalizing what this could look like to turn some of that on its head. And so things like traditional change management might prioritize things like perfectionism, you know, where success is extremely narrowly defined by achieving always flawless outcomes no matter what. And that can create things like a culture of fear of failure, or a culture where you're not willing to take risks or change management often could emphasize things like sense of urgency where speed and efficiency is prioritized over the people or anything else, and that can lead to lack of belonging, burnout, stress among employees, which of course, is going to have an effect and long-term impact on efficacy as well as sustainability.
Dr. Nicole Caridad Ralston: Yeah, that is spot on, and I would also add if you're looking for like some simple definitions around like antiracist, anti-oppression, and White supremacy culture, obviously, you can do a search and find so many things, but a really simple one for antiracism is thinking about, particularly in organizations, is like the action of crafting policies or practices that directly oppose racism and promote racial equity in your organization. You can start by looking at simply demographics in your organization, right, like demographics by position, who’s in leadership versus who’s staff. Even in staff roles, are certain roles kind of pigeonholed for Black, indigenous, and people of color, right? Our communities are most often put into—in a nonprofit, for example, like the community advocate role, or the community engagement role, right? In schools we see a lot of men of color as the deans that are like specifically in charge of like discipline, for example, right? So there’s these really like kind of subtle ways that racism can show up in the demographics of your organization. You can start to look at that.
Ileana Ortiz: We also often like when we do our sessions especially like our kind of like our opening session at Beloved, which is typically like the foundations of like racial equity. One of the quotes that we utilize is by the Archbishop Desmond Tutu which is, “If an elephant has its foot on the tail of a mouse and you say that you are neutral, the mouse will not appreciate your neutrality.” So kind of a little bit of what like Nicole was naming, right, is the concept of always continuing to interrogate neutrality because neutrality is not a concept that really exists in our current system of White supremacy, right, that is consistently privileging identities like Whiteness or being cisgender or heterosexual, etc.
Our perspectives are not really able to be neutral because our identities are going to always put a lens on everything we see and the way that we experience things, and so something that we definitely push our clients to do, particularly those that are in leadership, is who do our protocols and practices currently possibly benefit, and who do our policies and practices currently marginalize.
So what are things that we might believe are just the norm or just the way that it is or are just neutral, and what might need a little bit of self-reflection or feedback or interrogation from someone’s different perspective or lived experience.
Courtney W. Robertson: Thank you all for that context that I think is going to be incredibly helpful for folks listening and super helpful for me to ground in this.
So going specifically thinking about change intelligence and I know lot of it focuses on like the individual leader and using leader loosely, right, because you lead, I believe you lead from the position you're in. What does that look like? So I'm an individual who’s like I really want to like focus on how, or get better at rather how I'm leading and managing change, what then does this course and this sort of approach allow them to do? What is sort of the progress or process, excuse me, for that?
Ileana Ortiz: One of things that change intelligence kind of boils down to and one of the reasons that we liked is at Beloved we also often talk about the importance of both the head and the heart. Very often this kind of work, diversity and inclusion work, any kind of justice or belonging work, like all of these things, always tend to fall on folks that are more like quote-unquote heart-centered, but we know that a lot of these things in order to actually make them sustainable have to be operationalized, have to show up in our policies or strategies, our vendor selection, all of these things, and so with change intelligence there’s kind of like three pieces to it, right? There’s like the engaging of the heart. There’s the enlightening of the head, but there’s also this piece around the equipping of the hands.
Change intelligence really recognizes that folks need skills and resources and support to actually successfully implement and adapt to change. Equipping the hands really is a big piece of that is providing tools, training, guidance, things of that nature in order for folks to feel like they know where this is all heading.
So I would say for folks that want to get started with this, there’s an importance really of self-awareness, first to understand how it is that you actually navigate change, right. Understanding how you as the leader personally respond to change professionally but also personally can often help you better manage your emotions and reactions when there are times of transition, right. It allows you to recognize like what are your strengths and then what might be some growth areas. This awareness of how you navigate change can also help you build in a lot more empathy and a lot more openness to feedback from those both internally as well as externally in the community around what this work is going to look like, what this initiative or project your shift is going to accomplish, things of that nature. So I definitely think that that self-awareness piece has to exist, but then you also have to have things in place like not only you as a named leader, but the rest of leadership has to really be bought into this concept and this shift from going from change management to change intelligence.
Dr. Nicole Caridad Ralston: And I would just add to that, this piece that Ileana is naming, the self-awareness and self-reflection piece, is the hardest piece. This is not light work, right? I mean—and this is work that not only a singular leader or leadership team has to do but this is where you as a leadership team sometimes have to start challenging and supporting your staff in doing, right? Because change is traumatic for lots of folks for lots of different reasons, and because of the various systems that we’re working with and challenges that organizations just naturally feel, sometimes folks can get even frustrated when you’re like we need to focus on the self-awareness and the personal pieces first before we move forward because there’s urgency or a desire for action which can be valid, and we have to consistently hold this thread of like all of us have a responsibility in personal growth, in self-awareness, in improving and being aware of our own emotional intelligence, our triggers, etc., as we’re moving through this process and how we’re all holding each other accountable for that as we’re doing the organizational work is the hardest work often and so we start there and we always start with self-awareness pieces in our sessions.
Ileana named our like head and heart approach. Yes, that’s very much often coded as heart work but I think it’s both because that’s the hard stuff, right? And that’s the stuff that sometimes your leader, your named supervisor can't help you with. It’s deeply personal. They can model it like as a manager of a team I try and model that often but I can't sit there and tell Ileana like these are the things that need to—like I’m not a therapist, right? I’m not a therapist and so I think that can be a really difficult place for both staff and leadership to sit in if they’re recognizing there’s not reciprocity on either level. Like I’m doing my work but you’re not doing your work or vice versa can be a really frustrating place to sit in.
Courtney W. Robertson: Thank you so much for that, Dr. Nicole. That sparks two questions for me actually. One is around like building the culture around change intelligence and what does that look like, and a question that I think is in the same family of that is sort of—I guess where have you all seen this be most effective so what are sort of the either qualities or commonalities of organizations or spaces where you’ve seen change intelligence really like people take it up and it really permeates through the culture of their work?
Ileana Ortiz: Yeah, so again I think that first piece of self-awareness is like a big piece. The leadership commitment piece again is a very, very big piece. I think that for organizations and businesses that this is going to be most successful in is also organizations and individuals who kind of naturally demonstrate more of an adaptive mindset, and so a place where that might already be true is going to always be easier to kind of fold this into than a place where it is a larger shift from what was the norm.
You can absolutely still shift from what was the norm to something that is more holistic or something that kind of just has more of a 360 perspective on it but you have to know that with that is going to come a lot of relationship building and a lot of team building and trust and transparency in order for that to be something that passes the vibe check across kind of all of the levels of positionality and power dynamic.
I think that this really naturally thrives in organizations or environments that again naturally have collaboration, trust, transparency, open communication, regular channels of feedback, and I think that, you know, it’s most successful when internal or external shared interest partners, right? So internally folks like staff, externally folks like community members are already actively engaged and often empowered when it comes to decision making or processes or things that are going to affect them.
Dr. Nicole Caridad Ralston: Yeah, I think that’s spot-on, particularly the piece that you just named around the relationship building and community building. I think, Courtney, to your question, like to me that really stands out as where this works the best, right? No amount of change rollout is going to go well if there hasn’t been a significant amount of time in building relationships in the organization.
I take for example our onboarding process which I love at Beloved. I know I’m partial but I love it because we spend so much time deeply getting to know each other as manager and team member, and so we have an activity called the story of us, and I mean we’re talking about everything from like past work trauma that we both need to be aware of, ways that you actually do navigate change, any triggers we should be aware of. We talk about your personal identities. We talk about things that bring you joy or your biggest dreams or visions in the next five years, whatever it is. It’s a whole list of questions that it starts to lay the groundwork of deeply getting to know each other to start to build that trust. So that’s just one example but, yeah, when you said where can this—where does this work best, I think you do have to take it back to onboarding and even further back to hiring.
We have a—is it called supervisor or manager FAQ? Essentially on our job descriptions folks applying to the jobs can very quickly get to know who the manager is and can see is this going to work for me or not. So it’s this long list of things that even includes our zodiac signs so if you know for some reason you’re not going to get along with a Libra, do not join my team though I think we’re the best but, yeah, it’s got everything from zodiac signs to like what are your absolute—what are the ways that you move? What are some theories that guide your work as a manager? What do folks need to be aware of in terms of even like shadow sides of ways that you might show up and kind of the dos and don’ts of working with this person. Once someone is hired, they also create that for themselves, right? We talk about that with as they integrate with the team and with their new manager but even that I think is starting to model a level of relationship building, right? Like we’re going to spend this time to like be transparent about who you’re going to be working with. All of that starts to lay the groundwork of folks trusting, and when folks trust, then we can move them through change more smoothly.
Courtney W. Robertson: Absolutely, and the word that keeps coming to mind for me is relational, how relational this sort of approach is. So what if I am the lone wolf in my organization who’s like very interested in this and sees this as a way of us being but that’s not the culture that currently exists? What would you offer to that individual who might be interested in this being a part of their culture and way of operating?
Dr. Nicole Caridad Ralston: Yeah, I think that is a tough place to be in, right? I’ll speak for myself. I’ve certainly felt that way in past organizations and it’s exhausting. So what I would advise is that actually gives you a good opportunity to do some of the deep interrogation of self, and to start to model what are the ways that you want to show up? If you’re not able to really push the change up, what are the ways that you want to show up, and if you’re a leader of people or programs because even leading programs you're still often leading people in some way, right? How are you modeling that and practicing that as much so that it becomes a well-toned muscle? It could become well-toned enough that you’re ready to push it upwards and hold some other folks accountable or it could be well-toned-up enough where you go somewhere else that embraces that and you're ready. You’ve done that deep self-work which can be the hardest thing. You’ve done the practicing, you’re made mistakes, you’ve grown from it so that would be my advice as the first thing that kind of came to mind.
Courtney W. Robertson: Awesome. So I’m going to switch gears just a little bit because I know we’ve talked about this in the context of being in an organization but as you know, most of our audience and listeners are place-based practitioners so they’re doing work not just in their organization but within collaboratives, right, and often leading that work locally so how does this change intelligence approach translate into a collaborative space that doesn’t have the formal structures of an organization, doesn’t have the same formal authorities that would exist in an organization as well, and you have sort of a hodgepodge of folks coming together from multiple sectors, etc.?
Dr. Nicole Caridad Ralston: I think that certainly presents a unique set of challenges and opportunities, right? I think one of the opportunities which we talk about in this session is the importance of over narrating and also setting norms for the engagement with the group. That should happen with your organization, your own organization, but especially with the collaborative, and we’ve experienced this, right, Ileana? When we’re in a collaborative outside of Belovedland and we’re having to really over narrate like, hey, you all, these are some of our norms. We’re steeped deeply in trying to model what could it look like to not be bought into White supremacy culture so you know how that shows up to us? We may not respond to emails in 24 hours. If you see an OOO email, yeah, we’re not getting back to you, and it’s not personal but these are the ways that we show up. You’re going to always experience us naming the importance of like centering Blackness in conversations around change, and just heads-up, these are the things you’re going to experience from us as Beloved.
We have an entire kind of onboarding deck even that we walk outside folks through so they’re highly aware of norms but you’re going to need everyone to do that, right? And then what are some of the collective norms folks can agree on to move through this change process so that’s one like really practical place, I think, to start.
Ileana Ortiz: Yeah, I mean I think that if you already kind of have like a change intelligence plan in place, they you are able to be transparent about the ways that that looks and the ways that you operate. I think that having that is a good baseline. I also do think that when we have worked with coalitions or continuums of care of things like that, investing in capacity building that folks along the spectrum of these organizations can participate in is also really important because then it allows for folks to at least be operating from a known baseline even though the culture and the ways that they operate might be a little bit different at all of the different organizations or businesses or entities that are kind of across this. I think that as often as you can try to foster this cross-sector feedback or even better like collaboration, that goes a long way, right? So being able to leverage like diverse expertise or resources or networks and encouraging folks that are at these tables to not best practice hoard as much, right? To really share those best practices out or share their lessons learned because sometimes we can learn much more from our mistakes than from our immediate success, and so kind of creating a space where folks are willing and able to share best practices, lessons learned, innovative ideas, and that way everyone that is at that table is also sharing out that they are like open to hearing that there are other ways that things may go or operate or be. I think it’s an act of humility as a leader to share your best practices but also share what those lessons learned are.
Courtney W. Robertson: I really like what both of you have offered and what it makes me think about is, particularly as you think about collaborative spaces, where, to your point, I think it might have been you, Ileana, who—I can't remember, sorry, but like that norm setting, right? And there’s an opportunity in that to think about how do we set norms that are counter, right, like White supremacy culture that promote, you know, what am I trying to say? My brain is—
Dr. Nicole Caridad Ralston: Promote a more liberatory practice, right?
Courtney W. Robertson: Yeah, that goes beyond sort of those traditional norms that folks often set but really think about how do we—it’s almost like it’s creating spaces of inclusion and you’re doing that through a very intentional lens, and by thinking about if we don’t want this to be true, then how does that then show up for us so either doing that if you're at the beginning of your collaborative or if you’ve already done that, taking this as an opportunity to revisit some of those norms and expectations to say how do we want to operate in this space regardless of what our home bases might look like or what we might have experienced there so I really, really appreciate you all pushing those—that piece, and then the opportunity just to like be better steeped in what does change management and change intelligence look like? What is that, right? How does that show up in our collaborative spaces is what I’m hearing and receiving for this so really appreciate that.
Ileana Ortiz: Something that I often share in sessions too is that there’s this quote I heard a very long time ago and it just lives rent free in my head, and that is that there is a difference between saying that like all are welcome here and a difference between that and this was created with you in mind, and so I think a lot of organizations, businesses, coalitions, all of these things are pretty squarely right now still like, yeah, we want everyone to come and be a part of this. We want everyone to participate but not everyone has been at the table, and so the framework that has been built, the container that has been built doesn’t really fit them, doesn’t really fit them. They’re not able to really feel like they belong which means they’re not going to be able to really feel like they can take risks or suggest something that’s maybe innovative or give something that is very valid critical feedback but might be looked at a different way. So I think it’s really moving from everyone is welcome to these things were created with like you internally and folks externally in mind.
Courtney W. Robertson: Absolutely. What would you say—and I feel like you all have touched on this to a degree so even if it’s underscoring something that you’ve already named but what would you say as you all have started to integrate this into your work have been some of the lessons learned?
Dr. Nicole Caridad Ralston: I mean the first thing that comes to mind is that this racial equity work that we do in helping organizations assess their needs and then really take them through a capacity building series for their staff to understand said needs and best practices and strategies and then build plans for sustainability is quite simply change management work. We didn’t start explicitly leading this type of session though until last year, within the last year, and we’ve been around for about six years. That just always makes me giggle because we’ve been doing change management work, right? Like this is change management work but like taking the higher level of view of overly narrating that and giving folks now a framework to also input the things that they’re doing and lead their teams through this massive change that they’re trying to push forward and what’s harder than pushing forward? Often a racial equity agenda particularly in this political time and climate, right? So that’s the first thing that comes to mind.
Courtney W. Robertson: Ileana, anything to add?
Ileana Ortiz: I don’t think I’ve got really much to add there. I mean again I cannot over narrate how important it is to have folks really who are in leadership be bought into this because if leadership is not bought in, then everyone else is going to have a lot of questions that don’t have answers or the questions that are had are not going to sit right necessarily with those who are in leadership that are maybe getting asked those questions.
Courtney W. Robertson: Heard, you all heard that, right? Leadership buy-in is super important. So if this is—and I’m going to frame this question around a collaborative so if a collaborative is looking to start to engage in change intelligence or change management work more intensely because, to your point, Dr. Nicole, this work is change management work. Like by proxy you are doing that but if you want to be more intentional about how you’re doing it, what should they consider first and what are some at-no-cost resources that they might be able to dive into and even some of the resources maybe that you all offer as well?
Dr. Nicole Caridad Ralston: Yeah, absolutely, that’s a great question. Particularly for us at Beloved, our biggest free resource is our equity audit so if you are looking for—I know something needs to change in my organization but I’m not sure where to start, our equity audit which is through our Awa tool suite, you can just Google Beloved community equity audit and that will take you to Awa. It’s free to take and for you to get your general report results. Of course if you want a consultation and a deep dive into said results and some recommendations, that has a cost attached but if you want to take the equity audit and get your general report, I think that’s a really powerful place to start because the way our equity audit is set up is it has to be taken by a group of folks in the organization. Most often it’s leadership team members that represent different departments and can speak to the various departments, and so folks take it as a group and go question by question and then kind of come to a consensus as a group how we’re going to answer this. You’re not inputting any data. They’re pretty simple yes/no questions that are about data. Basically like do you have the data to back up what you’re saying, yes or no. So that practice alone bears a lot of really great conversations about things that need to shift which you then can move into like, well, how do we prioritize, what do we want to prioritize, and then start to think about rolling out a plan for change. So that’s a massive free resource at Beloved Community. Ileana, I know while you were building this you found so many resources. I don’t know if there’s any like top ones you would also recommend specific to change intelligence.
Courtney W. Robertson: And quickly, Ileana, before you jump in, with that assessment tool, is that something that the questions are framed in a way that a collaborative could do those?
Dr. Nicole Caridad Ralston: Absolutely, yes. It’s often a cross-group of folks, whether they're in the organization together, it’s always a cross-group, and absolutely a collaborative or like a continuum of care can take it together.
Ileana Ortiz: Yeah, I would say some free, no cost, and again what are we—no cost can mean like money but not necessarily like labor because we know that there is a cost to that as well and so I think that really involving shared interest partners again internally and externally across a collaborative or coalition as much as possible from the get is a really big piece of this, and ensuring that there is this variety of voices and lived experiences that are really kind of informing what these change initiatives are going to look like. So you can do things like hosting virtual townhalls or focus groups or virtual forums or things like that. These kinds of things are cheaper obviously to host virtually but they’re also great from a disability justice lens, right? As we know, COVID is real, the pandemic is definitely still around us. There might be transportation barriers for folks, all of these things so really utilizing a cross-spectrum of folks especially if you're working with a coalition of any kind, I think taking advantage of these things is really big.
I think tapping into things like any existing community resources or networks that might exist that are naturally able to collaborate or kind of fold in under this work and so that could look like partnering with community centers or professional associations, libraries, grassroots organizations, things like that, to host events, share information, and mobilize and gather support as well as feedback from community members, and I really think that change intelligence is set up again kind of naturally in a way where it’s recognizing that each organization or business that might be a part of a collaborative is going to have its own unique ways of being in its own unique culture, and so I think like being aware of that.
Everyone who is a part of that being able to share how that is true for them really can help folks understand and respect the differences that may exist and might help to really come up with something that is much more specifically collaborative or a little bit more tailored to fit and support the needs of organizations and businesses across the spectrum which again is going to be better than a one-size-fits-all approach that might just not be possible to actually operationalize at every single entity that exists in this coalition.
Courtney W. Robertson: Yes, and the thing I wrote down as you were saying that, Ileana, is combining cultures is literally what we’re doing to create a culture that includes everyone to the extent possible. I appreciate that offering.
So as we wrap, are there any parting words or anything that I didn’t ask or we didn’t discuss that you all think is important to uplift before we close our time out together?
Dr. Nicole Caridad Ralston: I think my parting words will be this work is really hard. It’s fatiguing. It’s exhausting. Whether you're managing people or managing projects, this is really difficult work, and particularly if you’re managing people, right? In space with other human souls and their trauma and their gifts and all the things that come with being a human being, this is hard stuff, right? To hold all of these things to be true and valid at once, that you have a fear of change and we have to do this thing, right? So how do we hold those multiple things to be true with still this ethos of love and care? It’s tough. You’re going to make mistakes. People are not going to see the value in the hard work that you’ve put into it even if you made a mistake and fell short, and that doesn’t always feel good. Practicing grace for yourself and for others I think is a helpful practice here, and just over narrating as much as you can to both yourself and your staff and fellow leaders what the North Star is, and chunking out as much as possible the path to get there in small digestible scaffolded ways can be the path that is kind of the most ease focused but can also feel very slow, right? And that’s another thing to hold, and so Ileana will laugh but my tagline is it’s complicated. This work is complicated but if you're doing it with, I think, care and discernment and with a high level of self-awareness, you're doing good work even if it can feel slow, even if it can feel like folks aren’t giving you grace, even if it feels like you can't see the end of the tunnel, keep going.
Ileana Ortiz: I love that. I don’t have anything of my own personal words to add but I think a quote that came up for me a lot as I was building this curriculum out and in general kind of always stays with me is like a quote by Audre Lorde who—she says you do not have to be me in order for us to fight alongside each other. I do not have to be you to recognize that our wars are the same. What we must do is commit ourselves to some future that can include each other and to work toward that future with the particular strengths of our individual identities, and in order for us to do this we must allow each other our differences at the same time as we recognize our sameness, and so, you know, there’s no way that I could top the brilliant words of Audre Lorde but wanted to share that kind of as a kind of closing thought that really encapsulates a lot of what we’re doing here and what we’re doing in our day to day.
Courtney W. Robertson: Yes, great spaces that bring out the best in both of us, yeah. Thank you all so much. How can our lovely listeners remain connected to your work, follow your work, connect with you all if they're interested in more deeply exploring about the change intelligence work or any other aspect of your work? Where can they connect with you?
Dr. Nicole Caridad Ralston: Yes, you can connect to us in a lot of ways. Our website, wearebeloved.org, is a great way to start. That’s where you can also find that equity audit that I mentioned, and you can find our contact information as well. We’re also on social media so you can find us at wearebeloved_US on Facebook, on X, is that what Twitter is called now? And on Facebook so wearebeloved_US. I think that’s the best way.
Courtney W. Robertson: Awesome. Thank you. It’s so odd calling Twitter X now. I’m not used to it but thank you all so much. Thank you for this very heartfelt conversation. I appreciate both of you, Ileana and Dr. Nicole. Thank you for your gifts of expertise, time, knowledge today, and I want to thank our listeners for your continued support of the Collective Impact Forum podcast.
(Outro) And this closes out this episode of the Collective Impact Forum podcast. If you are interested in learning more about what was discussed, you can find links to resources in the footnotes for this episode. And if you’re enjoying all that we share at the Collective Impact Forum podcast, we encourage you to rate us on your preferred podcast platform, and share your favorite episodes with colleagues.
We would like to acknowledge that this episode was produced and edited on the unceded, traditional lands of the Coast Salish people, including the Duwamish, Suquamish, Stillaguamish, and Muckleshoot tribes. We honor with gratitude the land itself and the past, present, and futures of these tribes.
The Intro music for this episode was composed by Rafael Krux and our outro music is composed by Kevin Macleod.
In Forum news, we’re excited to share that registration is open for our fall workshop series titled "Essentials for Collective Impact.” This is an online workshop series focused on building practical knowledge and understanding around four key areas that support collective impact efforts. These focus areas are collaborative planning and engagement, building a data culture within your initiative, implementing and strengthening community engagement, and avoiding common challenges that can stymie the work of collectives.
You can register for the full series of workshops or just the topics that interest you most. You can find out more about this online workshop series in the events section of our website at collectiveimpactforum.org.
This is Tracy Timmons-Gray, Associate Director here at the Collective Impact Forum, and your podcast producer. I want to say thank you so much for listening, and we look forward to connecting with you more in our next episode. Until next time, let’s keep working towards collective impact.