How do you activate change in a network?

Farra Trompeter: Welcome to the Smart Communications podcast. This is Farra Trompeter, co-director and worker-owner at Big Duck. Today we’re gonna ask the question, how do you activate change in a network? And I am delighted to be joined by Stacy Van Gorp, PhD. Stacy uses she/her pronouns and is partner-owner at See What I Mean Consulting, which provides strategy and planning, research and assessment, and support for organizational change to national associations, regional networks, and place-based organizations. Dr. Van Gorp’s 25 years of social change work, spans many roles from frontline youth work to community mobilizer to fundraiser to CEO in a variety of industries, including refugee services, youth development, poverty reduction, philanthropy, and higher education. Alongside the learning that comes from serving the community. Stacy earned her PhD in planning policy and leadership studies from the University of Iowa, exploring the role of trust and conflict in innovation. I personally had the pleasure of collaborating with Stacy and a previous podcast guest, Alyssa Wright. You can tune into the conversation with Alyssa all about what and who is a major donor back on episode 142. But Stacy, Alyssa, and I got to collaborate on a project for Virginia G Piper Charitable Trust back in 2020-2021. And it is just so great to connect with you again and welcome you to the show.

Stacy Van Gorp: Thanks. I’m excited to be with you. I love Big Duck’s work, but also to be following in the line of the great guests you’ve had on The Smart Communications Podcast.

Farra Trompeter: Welcome to the club. Now Stacy, to kick things off, I actually just wanna ask you to talk about your approach to organizational change in networks, because we haven’t talked about networks much on the podcast before. We did discuss managing change in a previous episode with Mara Mintz and Caitlyn Corda. And I’d love to just actually start by what you think about change and networks and how that comes about based on your work with nonprofit organizations.

Stacy Van Gorp: Well, thanks, Farra. When we’re thinking of networks, we’re thinking of formal networks like an association that you might join that might have members or a big federated structure, or coalitions. So those are the kinds of things we’re talking about. And I think when you talk about those kinds of structures, “managing change” is not a phrase that really fits very well. It just doesn’t really match what’s happening in a network. Because typically in a network, I don’t have much control. If I’m in that network hub, people might join or leave the association that I’m part of. I don’t have a lot of authority. And if we try to control in a network, like make someone do something or manage somebody into something, then we usually risk losing that member and diminishing our own influence. So I think in a network we tend to think more about activating or facilitating change.

Stacy Van Gorp: So like as that network hub, what can we do in relationship with our members or our partners to think about activating or facilitating? And I think there’s really probably like three levers we see. So the classic one is educate; so, if I’m a member association, I’m offering some kind of programming to get people inspired, to get people to do things, to influence change. I think for your listeners and your work, there’s always communicate and so it’s like what does our newsletter say out to our members about what we’re seeing and what we’re noticing? So that could be everything from what you are saying, but who you’re featuring. So if you are trying to expose people to new voices and change minds, like who is getting featured is just a huge part of influencing that change. And then I think integrating is one that we see a lot of associations could do, could do more with.

Stacy Van Gorp: So you already have a lot of stuff going on. So if you have a goal, like you want more of your members to take a strength-based approach, or to do more work with a particular population, you already have offerings. So how do you integrate your new goals into those offerings that already exist? And then I think demonstrate as the big one. So we see a lot of networks where, for example, if they have goals around equity that you know, we’re asking questions like: well how are you demonstrating that commitment? Not just telling your members they should do it, but really doing it yourself so that other folks can see it. You know, I was part of Grantmakers for Effective Organizations for a long time, and that’s a big network of foundations and I think they really did this so well (in demonstrate). Like they were hoping their members would engage community more. And then I was part of their national program planning committee and they really just demonstrated that. Like, I was from a smaller rural place and I was on the committee with, you know, people from bigger places and bigger foundations and just a lot of community input. So then when they were saying you should get community input, they were also getting community input. So educate, communicate, integrate, demonstrate, I think are those like activation moments in a network rather than, you know, when we just try to manage and control in a network, it just doesn’t go that well.

Farra Trompeter: Yeah, it also reminds me of just really living and leaning into your values. And I know you do a lot of work also in looking for patterns of equity as well as disparity in designing programs and services. And I was talking with you in preparing for the show and you spoke about an approach about meeting, missing, and matching. And I’m wondering if you could share more about what that is with our listeners and how that connects to all of this.

Stacy Van Gorp: Yeah, I think as a consulting company that works with all different kind of organizations, we’re often thinking about what are we communicating and how does that communication open the right door for people to get started? So we’ve found this idea of meeting, missing, and matching works really well for our clients who I think of as hyperfunctional. You know, it’s the clients who we work with, for example, like lots of food banks, lots of educational delivery organizations, housing organizations, like they are motivated about getting things done and sometimes they’re not as excited about things that seem “processy”. Instead of saying like, Let’s look at all your data or examine your values. If we enter from the conversation about their mission: Who are you meeting with your mission? Who are you missing with your mission? And who are you matching with your mission? We tend to get people who really wanna go do something to get involved a little bit faster.

Stacy Van Gorp: So, for example, if you’re an organization that wants to serve young people, we’re helping you to try to be really clear-eyed about who you’re meeting or serving. That would be the “code” for meeting and the characteristics of those audiences. So, it would be who are you offering school-based services to? Which kinds of schools? Like, it might be open to everyone, but where is that bus actually coming from or going to? I think a lot of organizations do that. Like that’s who you’re meeting, this is who’s showing up, and it’s really looking at the list of who you’re not meeting. But then when we look inside that of who you’re missing. Missing could just be the opposite of who you’re meeting. Like you’re working with suburban schools, not rural schools. But then we’re also digging inside of that. So if you have a group of students coming to your museum, are students with disabilities included? Like are they coming on the bus with everybody else? Is it only the kids from the kinda talented and gifted program that are coming? Like within that group, who are you missing?

Stacy Van Gorp: And then when we talk about matching, what we’re really thinking of is like service design and communication. We worked with a career in technical high school and they were trying to encourage students into construction careers. And when you looked around you thought, gosh, there are not very many girls here. So what was going on in that service design or in the communication that just didn’t match, that wasn’t making it feel like that place? And so this idea of meeting, missing, and matching gives us a way to really examine what we’re doing and then think about: What do we need to say differently? What do we need to do differently? And I think that operationalizes things into a daily decision.

Stacy Van Gorp: So if you are waking up in the morning, your job is to recruit schools to come to your offering, who you call should be based on your patterns of meeting and missing. And perhaps when you’re thinking of what you’re gonna do next year, you might think, what do we have to change to better match folks that we’re missing? I think it’s the kind of thinking lots of us want to do, but meeting, missing, matching gives it sort of this clever alliteration that helps people remember it and make it part of their daily work is really what we’re aiming for. They have values about that. How do those values show up in things we do?

Farra Trompeter: Yeah. And what I love about that is it is easy to remember and easy to apply, not just in program service, but also in communications. And thinking about, to your point, especially with matching, why are we missing this point? Is there something about the tangible things we’re doing that we’re missing folks, or is it because of how we’re communicating/ where we’re communicating/ who we’re communicating with? So I love that framework.

Farra Trompeter: Now let’s turn back to the idea of working in a network. You recently co-wrote a book with Jordan Vernoy called Activating moments for change, A guide to unlocking the full potential of organizations and networks. I love in that book how you emphasize the importance of sharing power and working in partnership to address critical issues. And the heart of doing that well lies so much in earning influence by building and extending trust. And I’m wondering if you could share an example of what that looks like in action.

Stacy Van Gorp: Sure. I am a trust researcher, so I spend lots of time thinking about trust. And I think in the 25 years I’ve been in the sector, the conversation about trust just keeps growing. But I feel like it often sounds like the poster on the wall: like, it’s our value “we trust” or “we earn trust”. So what we’re typically trying to do is think about how do you activate trust. Like what are the actions, behaviors, messages that would actually help you earn trust authentically? We’re not talking about manipulating people, or extend trust, which I think is part of the equation that’s not talked about quite enough. When it comes to communications, right now we’re doing some work in healthcare settings about trust and partnership between patients and healthcare providers. I think what’s been really interesting about this is that there’s a lot of work going on in helping healthcare providers communicate differently, like patient-centered communication. And that’s really important, but sometimes those providers are undermined by the systems around them when it comes to trust. So I’ll give you an example: I have twins who have a chronic health condition and they had had the same physician for 15 years. And one day we got a letter that said, “Your doctor left, here’s the new person.” It wasn’t personalized. Like we had been going there, like we had these people’s cell phone numbers, you know, these were people who were part of our team. It wasn’t signed by any human being. And the person who they said is your new care provider, I had no idea who it was. I had never heard of the person, there was no description of their background. So you can just imagine it was like pulling the plug out of the trust basin, the trust water basin. Just systems trust.

Stacy Van Gorp: So, you think of individuals working hard in that system to earn interpersonal trust that are totally undermined by their system’s communication. So we’re doing some work right now to help clinics think about how would you welcome people differently to your clinic so that you would start earning trust right off the bat. And we’ve done a lot of research about how physicians earn trust from patients. Essentially what we did in that work is, first of all, that letter should be personalized. Like Farra, you’re gonna go to a new clinic, “Hey, welcome to the clinic.” It should have your name on it. You know, if we’re going to be partners, I expect that that’s a personal relationship. So that seems really easy, but it is a miss in most systems communication. The next part is that so much of trust is about expectations. So if I meet your expectations, I earn trust, and if I fail to meet your expectations, I can lose trust.

Stacy Van Gorp: So when you’re welcoming someone to a new place, making sure you have the same set of expectations is really helpful. And so patients told us that’s number one: they want to know what to expect. Logistically, like, how long will I be there? Am I gonna have blood draws? Who am I gonna see? But they also wanted to know what to expect about your style of healthcare. So, should I expect that we’re gonna be partners? Should I expect that you have a caring disposition? Should I expect you’re gonna include my family? So, they really wanted to know that as well. So for example, in that written communication, it won’t surprise you to know that number one, what people wanna know is that their provider is competent. So it’s like, here’s the provider bio. Of course, you say where they went to school, how long they’ve been practicing. But then we ask providers to say, what’s their approach to healthcare or why are they a healthcare provider? To just make that connection of what to expect from them. So then if you turn that all around, physicians earn trust by being competent, reliable, caring. But people with chronic illness told us they want to be trusted by their healthcare team. They want their doctor to trust them. You’ve been living in that body, you know, my kids 19 years living with this, they are experts. So we’re trying to help in those welcome experiences, healthcare providers to extend trust. And they can do that by honoring people’s expertise. So by saying like, “Hey Farra, we’re gonna meet for the first time. You know, we know you’re an expert in your condition. You’re an expert in how it feels in your body and what works for you. I want you to share that expertise with me when you come.”

Stacy Van Gorp: And we also know that listening is number one, so that that healthcare provider extends trust when they listen to you when they honor that you are the expert in your healthcare. And then also when they honor, you’re the one that’s gonna make decisions, no matter what I write on the prescription, if I’m your healthcare provider, you are going to decide what happens. That you are in control of your own health. So we’ve set up a series of communication tools to get physicians to prompt that conversation. And it’s been interesting. I had a physician say to me, “Well, of course, I trust my patients, but I’ve never actually told them that.” And so I think this idea of being more explicit comes up a lot in our work. If you really do trust that patient, if you don’t trust them, don’t say that. But if you really do trust that patient, telling them makes a huge shift in these relationships. So, trying to redesign written communication, or at least not draining the bathtub of trust before we get started is some of the really interesting work that we’re doing. And I think communication professionals can have a huge role to play in this. And just taking a very, it’s like we almost audit the communication for like, where does this show we’re reliable? Where are we sharing expectations? Where are we telling people that they’re the experts? And I think communications experts could be so helpful in getting institutions to do that.

Farra Trompeter: No, a hundred percent. So much of what you’re saying. Well, I can certainly see it from my own personal medical experiences, dealing both with physicians as well as insurance companies. You know, it does feel like it’s a power relationship. It does feel like I just have to do whatever they say. I have to trust them and I can’t bring any questions or I don’t know anything. And this idea though, of both earning and extending trust and really seeing that relationship as almost more equal, I think could be, again, could be extended to communications and how we connect with people in our community, how we honor people with lived experience and engage them on our teams, on our boards and in communications and in fundraising. There’s so much of what you’re saying here, as well as making the implicit, explicit. So much of that is what we hear in good communications. And turning to that, I know you’ve got a lot of tools and activities in the book, and I wonder if you could share some ideas or tips related to communications.

Stacy Van Gorp: Yeah. I appreciate your note about the power differential, and we do see those power differentials play out in all kinds of places. It’s not just about doctors and patients, but it is about grantmakers and grantees. We almost use the same recipe in those settings. And so I’m glad that you’re extending that thinking.

Farra Trompeter: Yeah, and we’ll stay there for a second then come back to our question. We had a recent podcast conversation with Lisa Cowan where we talked about trust-based philanthropy and those relationships, and we’ll link to that in the transcript and all of this at bigduck.com/insights. But again, so much of this starts like circling the drain or being in that trust bathtub or whatever it may be. I’m gonna hold onto that one, too. But yeah, let’s go back to this great book you have, which is a really handy workbook. It’s not just an academic thesis, it’s really approachable and accessible and there’s some great ideas in there. And I just wondered if you could share some ideas that have been coming up for you when it comes to communications.

Stacy Van Gorp: Yeah, and I think in this case, some of the things that I would wanna point out, I think, are things that external communications professionals are doing so well. So, one of our principles is to focus on assets and not be distracted by deficits. And I have seen that movement come through in our sector of the public-facing communication. We work a lot on internal communications, as I mentioned, but also network communications. And it feels like we haven’t always extended that lesson internally. So you could imagine public-facing communication, for example, about people facing food insecurity, about portraying people as resourceful and have happened into circumstances that might be out of their control, and that they’re a person who’s taking care of their family and they’re doing good things for their community and they happen to need some free groceries now and then. So you really see that happening. But then sometimes when we move inside the organization, that’s not the language that we use. Or we might really get stuck focusing on things like meals and pounds and not people. And so we’re often thinking about, like, how to restructure those internal communications to start with our mission to start with the strength. We’re all here working together because people in our community, our neighbors, like that’s a lot of the language that we hear shifting from clients to language like neighbors, because our neighbors wanna take care of their families. All of the things that we know that people are out there doing and we’re walking alongside to give them a hand. So making sure that the person who’s getting services, is actually the person who’s in power of their own life. And I think that’s the same things that we were talking about patients. The patient is in control of their own life, so how do we honor that power that that person brings?

Stacy Van Gorp: So I think it’s a lot of taking those principles that you’re using well outside and helping internal folks use them. So what’s the newsletter look like that goes out to all the staff? Like what does it actually talk about? We work with a lot of fundraising organizations. Does it talk about the student who got the scholarship or does it talk about the financial statement from last month? Both things are important, but you should start with one of them rather than the other one. I think we feel like we’re doing it, but then when we really take a look at what we wrote in our emails or communications, our newsletters, that isn’t always what we talked about. So I think again, communications professionals, you could rub off on the rest of us, like program managers and other folks who aren’t always thinking about: How is it that what we say in here shapes what we believe? And I think that’s what communication professionals are so great at. So, help us do it better internally.

Farra Trompeter: Amazing. I love that. Well, I wanna close with some joy because this work can sometimes be quite difficult and draining and intense. And I love that you wrapped up the book with a reminder about the importance of celebration. How does taking time for celebrating the wins help create change in networks and organizations?

Stacy Van Gorp: Yeah, one of our realizations after studying what we call “network adoption”. So imagine you have a network of 300 members and you want to see something change in that network. We call that process network adoption. Most things that you want to see change, even the easy ones often take five years. From the first folks doing it until you get that last group of adopters. And I think people just miss the progress. We think of network hubs as the guide, you know, they’re activating and facilitating change, but they have to be the narrator. They have to help people see that, like, two years ago, you know, six of us were doing this and honoring the Robert Sterling Clark Foundation for being trust-based philanthropy, early adopters, which has been an amazing movement. And now there’s hundreds of organizations having done that. So, you honor those first adopters, but you say, Gosh, now there’s 20, now there’s 50. Now at every national conference you go to somebody is talking about trust-based philanthropy. But if you are not narrating that progress, people feel stuck in whatever the struggle is of the moment. And they don’t see that their sector made a shift. And I think trust-based philanthropy has shifted the sector. And if you don’t, as the guide in the network, if you don’t help people keep seeing that, there isn’t the joy, there’s just the struggle. Because every day you still have to wake up and make it work and somebody’s not doing it and you hear a story about something that’s not working. So sometimes we use the metaphor of a wave to talk about network adoption like the practices come to shore, it has kind of its own propelling, but that guide has to be the lighthouse of saying like: Look, it’s out there. People are shifting. Our sector is getting better in certain kinds of ways. So I love that the network guide, they’re the joy-spotters. Like, that’s another way to think of it. And I think that without that, we don’t recognize the progress because our work is so hard. It’s hard externally because these are wicked problems in our community and it can be really hard internally to change how we do things. So that network guide as the narrator of progress, of the celebrator of joy, is not sort of this nicety, it’s a necessity to keep people going, to keep people continuing to make changes that will improve our organizations and our communities.

Farra Trompeter: Love it. I’m thinking about Bruce Lee talking about being like water and flowing with things. There’s a lot of water metaphors in today’s conversation. So drink your water, and reflect on this conversation. Now, if you’re out there and you’d like to learn more about Stacy’s work or get a copy of Activating moments for change, go to SeewhatImean.com. You can also connect with Stacy on LinkedIn, and again, you can get connections and links to lots of things we talked about today when you visit the transcript at bigduck.com/insights. Stacy, thanks again for being with us today.

Stacy Van Gorp: Thank you.

Farra Trompeter: Alright, everyone, go drink your water and have a great day.