Endless Knots

Organizational mapping, crisis mapping & disaster response

My colleague, NetAge Director Doug Carpenter, recently brought my attention to the need for better organizational mapping during major crises. This led us to take a look at Haiti, where the need for understanding who's doing what and how they connect to one another remains intense more than two years after the devastating earthquake. We believe there's broad applicability given the state of crisis/disaster preparedness and response. Here's our thinking.

 

It’s well known that crises give birth to self-organizing networks. In the panic that follows an earthquake, for example, people both on the scene – and those empathizing from a distance – step outside the constraints of their normal routines and act to set things right. Reports on how effective these networks can be are legion, whether we’re talking about the 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake and tsunami, the 2010 Haiti earthquake, or the 2011 earthquake, tsunami, and nuclear disaster in Japan.

In each situation, people quickly improvised to bring together vital information that could aid in the response. And they were effective: they put people back in touch with their families, rebuilt roads, moved food, and saved lives.

Yet the vast quantities of data that were available to assist in making these efforts more effective also served to hinder their success. We have tons of data but the systems in which that information is encased rarely talk to one another. Likewise, individuals who are experts in particular data sets are hampered in their ability to look across information domains.

One significant challenge then in crisis preparation, management, and response is how to bring meaningful and interrelated data together in ways that can be easily seen, used, and analyzed both in the immediate response and during the long-term recovery.

Organizational mapping can serve as “ground-level truth” -- a starting point for bringing together vital information. For example, an organizational map can be created to depict the U.N. presence in Haiti:

 

 

Any node in the network can be placed at the center and can be represented and described in multiple ways – who leads it, who works for it, what each person’s role is, what its purpose and goals are, who the organization serves, where the people and the organizations are located, and what they’ve accomplished.

We can also draw lines that reflect the organizations’ relationships to one another thus providing a map of the UN’s organizational geography in Haiti and a glimpse into the relative strength of this expansive network.

Next we can add other organizations, making a dent in capturing the thousands of NGOs operating in Haiti.

From here, we can layer other networks and alliances such as the web of those responsible for providing food, health care services, and infrastructure development. We can shine the light on a   specific network or look at them all at once.

Visualization is the first step. Next comes the ability to navigate the organizational terrain since the data reflect a range of invaluable information. Want to find a plant-disease expert in Port-au-Prince? A simple search makes this possible. Likewise, should you want to find the leader of a faith-based initiative based in the U.S. who is in charge of literacy programs in the south of the country, this too is possible.

The third, and perhaps most important, capability that network mapping makes possible is analysis. Using simple network metrics, it is possible to determine which networks are the most connected and which are most isolated, which areas are receiving the most attention and which are underserved. Regions that are highly connected are likely to be more resilient than regions that are disconnected. Network mapping provides this type of insight and answers strategic questions currently understood and those yet to be considered.

The network mapping application, OrgScope, is based on technology developed at Xerox PARC in the 1990s and can be attached to physical mapping systems such as Google Maps. OrgScope, combined with a crisis mapping effort, creates the possibility of being able to locate trouble spots in real-time, identify and match local resources, and significantly strengthen the capacity and preparedness of aid agencies.  Such an approach would provide multi-dimensional perspectives on any crisis, where multiple vectors are brought together in comprehensive and consistent views. It would also address one of the fundamental problems voiced by Anahi Ayala, an expert in the use of new technologies for crisis mapping, in regard to such efforts in the Haiti disaster response:

“One of the main problems that emerged was not only the need to communicate but the need for a coordinated and homogeneous message to be delivered to the affected communities. The problem was posed by the fact that as agencies and organizations were growing in number and size, all of them were trying in different ways to deliver messages to the beneficiaries of aid, with the result of many messages, sometimes contradicting each other, delivered to many people, sometimes not the right receiver for that message.”

Consistency in response stems from consistency in available information and its interpretation. New approaches such as organizational mapping make this possible and herald a new era in crisis management.

 

Occupying leadership #occupy

Without making the media the story here since the media has this recursive, repetitive pattern when it can't make sense of a story... a few words about leadership and Occupy.

Google "leadership occupy Wall Street" and you'll find thousands (6814 as of this moment) of articles like this pretty good one in the Washington Post, attempting to describe a phenomenon where something elusive is wrongly explained by its opposite.

If it's not in the article's headline, it's in its lede--and if not there, it's certainly not more than a few grafs down: The Occupy movement is leaderless ((e.g., the Post story, "What is Occupy Wall Street? The history of leaderless movements").

Many articles have grabbed this quote: "We are all leaders." And from there goes the faulty logic that if everyone's a leader, then no one is. Or, its converse by implication: Without a designated, authoritative single leader, then it's just a messy group with... and here we go: no clear purpose, no mission, confusing demands, etc and so on.

Is the Occupy movement leaderless?

Leaderless?

Absolutely not.

It's leaderful.

Many leaders, not none.

Many leaders, not one.

Years ago, University of Minnesota anthropologists Luther Gerlach and Virginia Hine (see People, Power, Change: Movements of Social Transformation) studied the social movements of the Sixties, which many writers in the past month have used as the explanatory vehicle for the leadership structure of this current global phenomenon. Most have gotten the interpretation of the Sixties wrong too, rehashing the old saw that there was no leadership in the anti-Vietnam War, women's, civil rights, gay liberation, and suchnot movements in which my generation grew up.

What Gerlach and Hine discovered (and supported with extensive research) is that social movements are networks. And networks have polycephalous--many headed--leadership structures.

Given our prevailing structures where one leader sits atop a stack holding yes/no power, we have a really hard time comprehending organizations where many people are making decisions. In Gautney's Post piece, she describes a completely different way of arriving at action: 

Occupy Wall Street’s organizational presence is the New York General Assembly or “GA,” which convenes numbers in the high hundreds at its squat-site in Zuccotti Park. Daily GA meetings are led by facilitators who rotate on a regular basis, and facilitation training is open to all. Specific issues, such as food, medical, legal, outreach, security and others are handled by working groups—also open and inclusive—that periodically report back to the GA. Instead of issuing top-down directives, Occupy groups use a consensus process in which anyone can join in the decision-making and propose an idea. Proposers must field questions, justify the hows and whys of their ideas, and engage a large-scale group discussion. Votes are then cast via an innovative system of hand signals, and proposals are revised until a nine-tenths majority approves.

How did this unelected, unhired, uncredentialed revolving band of disaffiliated thousands arrive at such a structure?

By dozens, if not hundreds, of articulate people stepping forward at different moments with good ideas about how to engage the commitment and intelligence of their peers. There is only one word for such people: LEADERS.

In the early 1990s, Andy Campbell, then an employee of the CIA who was working on the Clinton Administration's Reinventing Government program, said something to me that I've used in virtually every presentation since:

        "We can't solve 21st-century problems with 19th-century organizations."

Having studied and written about new organizational structures for the past 30 years with Jeff Stamps, I've attached a corollary to this:

    "Nor can we guide 21st-century organizations with 20th-century leaders."

"Solving" the "Wall Street problem" will not happen through traditional bureaucracy or hierarchy. As many a pundit has already said, the bureaucracies charged with curbing the abuses of greed are so tied up in their own knots (and such the beneficiaries either directly or indirectly of that greed) that they cannot disentangle themselves enough to even see solutions, never mind execute them.

We need to grow up. We need to recognize that networks--flexible, constantly-morphing, ever-linking organizations--are the structures we need to solve the phenomenal dilemmas in front of us.

Networks have many leaders. Some networks encase more formal organizations, like the ones we're all familiar with where people have recognizeable titles and clearly understood power structures, i.e. some organized groups are also showing up to "occupy."

Just a few ideas tend to link networks. As is the case with Occupy, a few simple phrases bubble up, even without the help of branding specialists: 99% for example.

Underneath it all is the thing that money can't buy (hello, Wall Street): commitment. Shared commitment was the energy field that Gerlach and Hine wrote about lo those many years ago. It's the gossamer thread that links all the Occupy sites, heaved from one to another by many many many many...

        LEADERS

Dinner with Sophia Bracy Harris

We had the pleasure last night of having dinner here at our house with our dear friend, Sophia Bracy Harris, co-founder and executive director of FOCAL (Federation of Child Care Centers of Alabama). For the past couple of decades, Sophia, a MacArthur Genius award recipient, has provided women with the skills to rise out of poverty. By-products: children with access to quality day-care while their parents can work. Over the years, Sophia's organization has developed programs that build community, dissolve racism, and develop leadership in both adults and teens.

As a young high school student in the segregated US South, Sophia was  one of the first children to integrate Alabama schools. Her family's home was firebombed.

We met Sophia in 1991 when she joined the Calvert Social Investment Fund Advisory Council, where we'd been members for a decade. I was immediately impressed with Sophia as a systems thinker and a calm presence in contentious conversations, which we had a few of over the years at the Advisory Council (which, to its members' disappointment, was disbanded in 2006).

When Katrina hit the Gulf Coast in 2005, the first person I thought of was Sophia. Many of her FOCAL clients live in areas still devastated by the hurricane. With Reed Montague, a talented staff person at Calvert, I helped mount a fund drive for FOCAL's Katrina Fund. A fair amount (never enough) money poured in quickly, providing insurance deductibles and the like for those with lives irreparably altered by Katrina.

FOCAL celebrates its 35th anniversary this year. Family, friends, and colleagues: please click here.

And, enjoy this. Tania Burger, who serves as Organization Developer for FOCAL, brought dinner to our house (the best of guests), so delicious that Pasta Lover asked Tania to share the recipe:

Secret Confessions of the Applewood PTA

Ellen Meister is a generous contributor to Zoetrope, where I met her. Over the past few years, she's let other Zoetropers peer into her experience as a first-time author with a two-book deal. Secret Confessions of the Applewood PTA came out in hardcover in '06, as did the audio version narrated by Lisa Kudrow; paperback out now. Ellen's doing a virtual book tour, meaning interviews with her in lots of places.

Jump to take Ellen's tour with her:

"I walk because I miss my mom"

Amanda Lipnack, who walked the Susan G. Komen Breast Cancer 3-Day last weekend, writes about what she learned clocking 42 miles on foot in sweltering heat.

...I also learned to honour my body and be proud of what it can do and not be ashamed of what it can't do. I couldn't walk 60 miles this weekend but I could walk 42 and that, quite frankly, is amazing. There was a time in my life when walking up a flight of stairs was a challenge and this weekend I walked up miles and miles of stairs. Up big hills and down big hills -- over fields and roads and rivers and through the pain, I kept walking. I have fought against my body for so much of life but it felt very good to honour myself and be true.

I wish such an experience on the world around me. I wish that everyone can let the noise around them disappear and focus on what is in front of them. I wish that everyone can live life as it is meant to be lived, fully and strongly. I walked behind people this weekend with signs on their back that said "I walk because I miss my mom". How can we let ourselves forget that in a moment the things in front of us that we cherish can be gone so we need to embrace and honour them in the moment.

Breast Cancer 3-Day

In a few minutes, I leave to drive my niece, Amanda Lipnack, to the start of the Breast Cancer 3-Day, a 60-mile walk through eastern Massachusetts, to raise money for research and awareness about breast cancer. The walk takes place on different weekends in different locations around the country, beginning with this one here in New England. You can join me in making a donation here. Principal beneficiary of the walk: "Eighty-five percent of the net proceeds from the Breast Cancer 3-Day benefits Susan G. Komen for the Cure, the world’s largest and most progressive grassroots network fighting to end breast cancer." I'm very proud of Amanda - and hoping she won't be too hot as it's sweltering, even at 5 am.

After dropping Amanda off: There were hundreds and hundreds of cars, all politely following instructions, leaving off thousands of walkers. As I drove away, I thought of the women I know who've had breast cancer--three very close to me who died (my grandmother, Rae, my aunt, Frances, and my high-school roommate Robin) and my friends who were treated and doing fine (PH, JB, and MDS)--and then I thought of the thousands of women (and some men) whose families and friends were walking for them. These walks and rides and swims are powerful networks of support, love, and concern--and very good engines for raising funds for research. I hope everyone reading makes a donation now, while it's fresh in your mind.

They love horses, don't they?

[Photo by  Paul Garber, courtesy, Muir Heritage Land Trust]

I'm always amazed at how committed and creative people are when pursuing their passions. Here's a great example of a grassroots (look at the picture) networking effort that's literally transforming the landscape. The fine folks organized by the Bay Area Ridge Trail are nearing completion of the 400th mile of trail around San Francisco Bay--for horse riding, biking, and hiking. On the weekend of June 2-3, 250 volunteers turned out  to complete the trail through Muir Heritage Land Trust’s Sky Ranch in Martinez, California. Thanks to Morris Older who edits the Tilden-Wildcat Horsemen's Association Newsletter for all his hard work and for the tip. (Disclosure: he's my cousin.)