How to Manage Networks: Managing Shared Purpose

Maintaining balance in a network, where power and leadership is intended to be dispersed, can be particularly sensitive and consequential. In the context of membership fees, you not only have to consider fiscal equity and inclusive decision-making, but maintain the spirit and culture of the network while doing so. Being communicative, explicit, and transparent throughout all steps of whatever decision-making process you use is generally good practice. In some cases, it can also be helpful for network leaders to openly communicate that they acknowledge and share concerns around imbalanced dynamics that membership fees may create and provide reassurance it will be carefully and meaningfully considered. This can be an important and foundation-setting communications step to help build trust and authenticity from the outset of the process.

It’s also beneficial to take the time to hear all views by facilitating an open and transparent consultative process that meaningfully engages members in deciding if and how a potential membership fee structure gets implemented. This could include taking additional steps that look critically at the composition of respondents to any such consultation and proactively nudges segments of the network to participate. This can help to ensure the breadth and diversity of the network is adequately and effectively represented and mitigate concerns further down the line.

Whatever the resulting decision about whether or not to implement membership fees must also be communicated with any perceived imbalance in mind. If, for example, the membership fee structure includes a discounted or waived fee option for a particular group, the rationale for making that decision should be explained to the entirety of the network to alleviate any perception of favoritism or inequity. This level of openness and transparency strengthens the trust necessary to sustain paid membership and for networks to succeed and thrive overall.

The short answer is yes. Collective Mind’s definition of a network is an organizing model comprised of individuals and/or organizations with common interests who work together to achieve shared goals. Referring to our network diagnostic framework, we believe that, at their core, networks must have two foundational network capacities of a) a shared purpose and b) a membership. Any network must have these two core capacities to be a network. (You can learn more about our network diagnostic framework by joining our open Networks 101.)

A network’s shared purpose is the visionary goal shared by everyone involved in the network. Networks do different types of activities – what we call network functions – to try to achieve their shared purpose. Some network functions are more common across networks than others, such as information sharing and community building. Others are more complicated to undertake together, such as advocacy and policy influence or thought leadership and field-building. And some of the network functions -- such as learning and capacity building -- might be necessary to be able to undertake those more complicated functions. For example, we may need to learn together in order to come to shared positions for advocacy. Any network will undertake its own configuration of network functions based on its shared purpose and membership.

What we always come back to is why we’re working within a network as opposed to a traditional organization. We work in networks because we not only have common interests but also have shared goals and want to work towards them together. We recognize that we cannot achieve those goals without working together across the membership. The specific activities will vary but should always be directed towards achieving the shared purpose through the collaboration of the network’s members.

In principle, the members should always design the network’s shared purpose. If we think about what defines a network, a network is a network because it has a shared purpose and a membership, the two core network capacities as defined by Collective Mind’s network diagnostic framework. These are also what make a network different from a traditional organization, whether an NGO or a corporate firm. It is the members -- the organizations and/or individuals who have shared interests -- coming together to achieve a common goal (i.e. a shared purpose) in ways that ensure those members’ participation in achieving that goal.

In practice, designing a shared purpose is about collectively setting the network’s vision and mission as well as the strategies and specific activities that embody that shared purpose. The strategies and activities define how work towards achieving the shared purpose will happen, what the priorities will be, and how efforts will be harmonized and aligned across the network.

How network members determine the shared purpose is the hard part. There must be clear and transparent ways and means for the members to do all of this together. Final decisions may be taken by a smaller group, such as the network’s governing body, but there should be participatory, engaging, and inclusive ways in which ideas and views are gathered and incorporated from the broad membership.

Again, your network exists because you have a shared purpose and members, so if it's just one organization making the decisions or setting the path, that's not really working in the spirit of what it means to be a network. It's complicated to design and manage group processes that allow people to share their ideas, build consensus, and make collective decisions on the ways forward. Nothing about that is easy. But in a network setting, you can raise a host of other issues by having one organization or one person set the path alone because that's not why members came to the network or what they signed up for. The openness, transparency, accountability -- and the inherent conflict resolution -- of these group processes is really important to your network’s health and success.