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Managing Change, Complexity, and Conflict
March 11 @ 1:00 pm - 4:00 pm
Tuesday, March 11th, 2025
1pm
Duration:
3 hours
Location:
Online via Zoom
Description
Doing collective impact well means managing complexity in strategy and implementation across a network of diverse actors. It requires managing change for network members who need to change their work to align with the collective impact initiative’s priorities. And it means addressing differences and even conflicts in the group.
In Managing Change, Complexity, and Conflict, participants will learn adaptive leadership and other practices that groups have found helpful to manage and solve difficult challenges within their coalitions.
Aligning a network of coalition members to move change together is difficult and complex work. These are some examples of challenges we have seen that these tools can help to address (not an exhaustive list, just examples):
- Members don’t fulfill commitments and avoid accountability;
- Members have competing interests or even conflicts where they sabotage the collective or refuse to work with each other;
- There are power dynamics within the collective between grass-tops and grass-roots members that are shutting members down, diminishing trust in the process, and leading to member attrition;
- There is a lack of trust with key partners who refuse to share data or information on their programs and outcomes with the group;
- A small group of members meet together outside the collective’s meetings and make decisions to exclude others and pursue funding for work that conflicts with the agenda;
- Members refuse to change their work to align with the agenda, participating in the collective but continuing programs or activities that undermine the shared strategies.
Learning Objectives
his three-hour workshop will be a mix of presentation, personal reflection, and small group discussion. Attendees will gain from this session:
1. Ability to better articulate and frame challenges within the collective impact in order to generate solutions;
2. Ability to apply adaptive leadership practices and other tools to collective impact challenges.
Target Audience
This workshop will be aimed at backbone staff or individuals in leadership roles (e.g., steering committee or workgroup co-chairs) in collective impacts. Partners who are members of collective impact efforts and want to learn these skills are also invited.
Presenters
- Dominique Samari is Cofounder at P3 Development Group, technical advisor for the Collective Impact Forum, and is an experienced strategist, coach, and facilitator who helps organizations build and sustain equitable and inclusive change. A naturally empathetic leader, Samari specializes in supporting leaders as they navigate difficult and complex change. Samari began her career as a criminal defense attorney and a City of Milwaukee criminal court commissioner. She transitioned from the practice of law to international development, serving in key management positions for the U.S. Department of State’s Rule of Law Program in Afghanistan. There, she designed and implemented culturally-relevant strategies and training opportunities for over 2,000 Afghan criminal justice professionals. In 2011, Samari translated her diverse background and experience into co-founding P3 Development Group. Most recently, Samari has led planning for Imagine MKE, the city of Milwaukee’s first inclusive hub for arts and culture, helped set the strategic direction for the newly-created Milwaukee Parks Foundation, and facilitated racial equity and inclusion strategy development for the Greater Milwaukee Foundation. Samari is also the creator of the Belonging Project, a year-long exploration into how individuals create a sense of belonging across differences. Informed and inspired by data from the Belonging Project, she subsequently developed Kin, an online platform designed to authentically connect individuals across real and perceived differences.
Paul Schmitz builds the collective leadership of organizations and communities to achieve greater social impact through his roles as Senior Advisor at The Collective Impact Forum and CEO of Leading Inside Out. He is also the author of Everyone Leads: Building Leadership from the Community Up, and the former CEO of Public Allies, where he helped more than 5,000 diverse young adults begin careers working for community and social change. Paul is a faculty member of The Asset-Based Community Development Institute, was a social innovation advisor to the Obama White House, and has been named three separate years to The Nonprofit Times list of the 50 most influential nonprofit leaders in America. Paul is a faculty member of The Asset-Based Community Development Institute, and a board member of The Corps Network, the NYU Leadership Initiative, Playworks, and The United Way of Greater Milwaukee. Paul previously served on the board of Independent Sector, the association of nonprofit and philanthropic leaders, and was the co-chair of Voices for National Service, which led advocacy for AmeriCorps and other national service programs. Paul co-chaired the 2008 Obama Presidential campaign’s Civic Engagement Policy Group, was a member of The Obama-Biden Transition Team, and was appointed by President Obama to The White House Council for Community Solutions.
Registration Deadline
March 7, 2025
