Articulating and co-developing shared purpose
Mobilization requires compelling purpose that others can connect to. Purpose becomes even more powerful when co-developed. Develop clear articulation of the team's purpose: what…
C5
Mobilization Skills
Inspiring and enabling others to engage in shared purposes and collective action.
Tools for this skill (10)
Co-Designing Transition Experiments
With a printable card deck and practical guidelines, teams co-design transition experiments — innovation projects that start from a societal challenge and treat learning as the…
Coordination across team boundaries
Most significant work requires coordination across team boundaries. Effective coordination multiplies the team's impact. Identify where cross-boundary coordination is needed: wh…
Public Narrative (Self / Us / Now)
Marshall Ganz's leadership storytelling craft: build a Story of Self (a choice point that shows why you are called), a Story of Us (shared values and experience of the community…
Shift & Share
A gallery of live demonstrations: innovators set up stations, small groups rotate through on a fixed rhythm, hear a short show-and-tell, and probe with questions. Spreads good i…
Stakeholder engagement practices
Effective engagement with stakeholders builds support, surfaces important perspectives, and creates allies. Develop systematic approaches to stakeholder engagement: Identify key…
The Capacity Trust
A seconds-scale daily micro-practice for Mobilization Skills (VCoL collection): When engaging someone in work or when they seem uncertain, express genuine confidence in their ca…
The Meaning Connection
A seconds-scale daily micro-practice for Mobilization Skills (VCoL collection): When engaging others in work, briefly connect it to why it matters. Instead of just describing wh…
The Ownership Invitation
A seconds-scale daily micro-practice for Mobilization Skills (VCoL collection): Instead of telling people what to do, invite them into ownership. Frame challenges as shared prob…
The Power of Storytelling
Teams craft and deliver a compelling 90-second video pitch for their project, learning story structure, audience, and delivery — then face a playful market test (Monopoly money…
Also develops it (8)
25/10 Crowd Sourcing
The whole room generates bold ideas on cards ("if you were ten times bolder…"), then mills and swaps cards while scoring each passing idea 1–5 over five rounds. Scores add to 25…
9 Whys
Pairs interview each other about their work on a shared challenge, asking "why is that important to you?" again and again — up to nine times — until the answer reaches bedrock p…
Building and maintaining relationships across team boundaries
The quality of external relationships significantly affects the team's ability to accomplish its goals. Start by mapping the team's key external relationships. Which other teams…
Discovery & Action Dialogue (DAD)
A facilitated dialogue built on positive deviance: through seven fixed questions, a group discovers who among them is already solving a chronic problem against the odds, what th…
Open Space Technology
Self-organizing conference format for 5 to 2000 people around a question that matters: participants themselves post the sessions, form the agenda in the opening circle, and move…
Purposeful Storytelling
A longer arc from inner values to shared story: participants identify what drives them, find like-minded peers, formulate shared values together, and craft a story that communic…
Social Network Webbing
The group maps its informal web: who is already involved in the purpose, who is connected to whom, and who is missing — using color-coded sticky notes that grow into a living ne…
Strategy Knotworking (SKW)
A whole strategy process as one composed arc (~6 hours, or split over days): the group works through six questions — purpose, honest baseline, shifting context, competing challe…