On March 27th, the Network Coordination Commons and Socialroots hosted Part 2 in our ongoing series with June Holley, a workshop on convening multiscalar networks. (Find our summary and recordings of Part 1 on Exploring Multiscalar Networks here). Guest panelists who gave examples of networks of networks in action included:

• Anne Palmer of The Johns Hopkins Center for a Livable Future's Food Policy Networks project
• Christy Shi-Day an engagement strategist working with multiple networks on disaster recovery in post-Helene Western North Carolina
• Samantha Glaser of Teach for America Appalachia and the Central Appalachia Leadership Lab
• David Witzel of the Global Regeneration Colab

NOTE - Oli Sylvester-Bradley of Murmurations will be speaking in a future session on tech tools, interoperability, and their implications for networks.

What does network of networks work look like?

Familiar, place- or topic-based networks provide tactical, concrete possibilities for action but have blind spots. A local food network may not be aware of watershed-level insights. An informal disaster relief network may have a hard time accessing available but invisible resources, and formal networks of regional governments consistently struggle to listen to and implement community needs.

If simple networks are about sharing WHAT we're all doing, networks of networks enable deeper learning, systems thinking, and greater impact by creating space for learning HOW other networks approach working together. Key functions include connecting experiments, sharing learning, coordinating campaigns. For any of these, building shared support ecosystems (e.g. network facilitators and weavers, communication systems, funding resources) is critical.

To kick off our workshop, June reminded us of these forms, functions, and of the potential power of a multiscalar network. Here's what we're still thinking about from her presentation, and our ongoing conversations:

Our Key Takeaways

"[Networks of networks are] where really deep learning can happen... And if we want to spread things, I mean, people have been doing good things for thousands of years; we're trying to help create a world that's better for all of us. But one thing they haven't figured out is how to spread successes... So, we're seeing that's where networks of networks have a really particular power that simple networks by themselves don't have." —June Holley

Multiscalar networks are all about learning!

Many of us are accustomed to simple networks of people and organizations where the coordination need is to share WHAT members are doing over time. Networks of networks, on the other hand, thrive when their coordination focus is on the HOW - on learning together about how to approach common challenges like engagement, funding, governance, and strategy. Multiscalar networks provide unique value because they foster cross-pollination among issue-focused networks. This helps catalyze shared learning, cross-topic alignment, and widens the possibilities for systemic transformation.

Balancing structure and emergence helps networks of networks thrive.

Focusing too much on structure as a network of networks effort quickly disengages people with overly heavy processes. Conversely, keeping networks too loosey-goosey as they begin to thrive, ignoring more formal structures and processes when they are needed, can sew the seeds of collapse as well. Networks need a dynamic balance between the two. Notice that less formal and more formal activities take place simultaneously as people interact across networks. Some activities (eg: collective learning over time) need more formal support structures; others (eg: identify and celebrate the work of network weavers) need less.

Funding any network is hard. Funding multiscalar networks is a unique challenge.

Network weaving is an emerging field. While some understanding is growing in funding spaces about the key role networks play in systemic transformation, more field-building is very much needed. Working in and weaving across networks represents a systemic shift from 'me'-centered to 'we'-centered ways of being. We are at the bleeding edge of this work. This itself opens new perspectives, regardless of what the network's core focus. More and more people are seeing networks as a way to connect three key scales:

1. the tactical (grounded, project-based)
2. the orchestration (coordination and management, role and relationship-based)
3. the strategic (whole-systems, outcome-focused)

Effectively and consistently connecting across these scales is the 'problem beneath the problems' of democratic decision making, self organizing, strategic system change, and more. To open possibilities for better futures, we need real practice - today - of democratic, peer-oriented participation. We need to shape new civic spaces and inquiries. Networks are well-suited as a training-ground for this practice. These skills are the next step in shifting people's ability to cooperate not only in small groups but in mass and across scales.

####Healthy networks are made up of healthy teams.

Like any healthy team leadership practice, relationship-centered and trauma-informed approaches to convening multiscalar networks build trust and psychological safety. Importantly, relational practices also center the 'WHO' in networks, which helps weave between scales of strategic networks (funders, resource stewards, and support organizations) and issue- or place-based networks (on-the-ground projects and community work). Essential relational connections between networks and across the three scales help catalyze people's participation and get critical resources flowing more effectively to where they are most needed.

Four Network Case Studies

We then turned to our four guests for short presentations describing working as a network of networks in different topics, contexts, and scales. All of the speakers highlighted:

• the critical habit of regular convenings and rhythms, where relational space is created for connections and serendipity
• the need for flexible, adaptive structures that can facilitate learning and resource-sharing between the scales.
• the challenge of silos and the power of cross-pollination

The workshop recording was shared with attendees, and a summary of and links to each network case study are below.

Food Policy Networks Project

"I often say: I know so little, but I know people who know more than I do. So I'm going to figure out how those people can help us in our network and help our people move forward. For me, it's a lot about looking at resources, out what we can do, what we can't do, and where [to work], seeing what gaps are we actually filling." —Anne Palmer

Anne Palmer works on The Johns Hopkins Center for a Livable Future's Food Policy Networks project

The Food Policy Networks project supports 300+ local and statewide food policy councils across the US. Project activities emerge from a regular survey of the network every 18 months focused on understanding council needs and challenges. The project team then designs activities and resources to build capacity in and across councils. Loosely structured, around 2,200 people participate on a listserv. Partnerships can help avoid duplication of the work of others in the space, but the balance between silos and healthy boundaries still makes it hard to identify duplication. Funding for the Food Policy Networks project comes primarily from core funders and foundations that want to support the work of food policy councils.

We love Anne's quote above - saying out loud that you don't know, or 'know so little' is a key leadership behavior to enable healthy teams. Our early mentor, Prof. Amy Edmondson, was asked recently what is "the most underrated quality in a leader today, in your opinion?" is, and answered:

Humility, not in a falsely modest way. Leaders should acknowledge uncertainty, saying, "I don't know." Recognizing the unpredictable nature of the future is crucial. —Amy Edmondson

When aiming for systemic transformation and working across multiple networks, comfort with uncertainty is even more critical than in today's traditional organizations. People who can model that behavior in networks create patterns of curiosity that support learning and growth. The fact that Anne says this often is a big 'green flag' for us! 💚

Disaster Recovery Networks - Weaving across scales and speeds

"We're having to navigate different types of speed with which groups can organize ,or with which these networks operate. The people within the networks are operating from the cultures they operate within. We're having to navigate different types of scale and different types of scopes. And so, it's that being in the middle of trying to weave that together and figure out how to allow a collection of voices to be heard up in a system that doesn't know how to listen to individual voices unless they've asked for a certain type of information in a certain way." —Christy Shi-Day

Christy Shi-Day is an engagement strategist working with multiple networks on disaster recovery in post-Helene Western North Carolina

In Western North Carolina and the surrounding area, the impacts of Hurricane Helene are still a daily reality, though the Sept 2024 storm is long out of the national news cycle. Christy Shi-Day, long inspired by June's work, is focused on long term resilience and recovery. Silos in disaster response systems have been a concern for her since regional flooding in 2022. Post-Helene failures further highlighted the danger of siloed work and disconnection. In disaster response, silos and missing information can be not just annoying or costly, but can threaten people's ability to meet basic needs.

Before jumping in to any one network, she's taking time to sense into what already exists - and discover key missing information flows. Her relational approach highlights the need for network participants to be aware of nervous-system regulation - and to recognize disregulation, when it occurs, for what it is. Weaving together different networks and groups responding to the disaster, including local government, long-term recovery groups, and grassroots organizations means she is navigating the challenge of connecting these siloed groups operating at different speeds and scales, with the goal of reducing harm and improving information exchange to enable more inclusive recovery efforts.

Christy is currently working with facilitators and trauma-informed approaches to build relational connections and safety across existing networks, rather than trying to create a formal network structure. She's relying on individual donors to support the early stages of this work, and leveraging existing assets in parnterships, like with trauma-informed trainers, trusted conveners in existing networks, and local resilience hubs. She's also collaborating with Socialroots. Here's our co-authored blog about her work. [ADD LINK]

Global Regeneration CoLab

"Movements are kind of the result of three pieces interacting: (1) The narrative, the set of stories that it tells the compelling creates the zeitgeist within the movement. (2) The network, which is a separate thing, which enables the flow, data, skills, ideas, excitement, flow, and that's what the network is for. And then (3) infrastructure, which just makes you more capable, makes you smarter, faster, have more scale, things like that. And so you intervene in a movement in those areas, and often you're doing something that affects more than one or the other. But they're kind of distinct." —David Witzel

David Witzel is a convener in the Global Regeneration Colab

One of the most interesting points in David's perspective is that the narrative is what creates the essence of a network, rather than the network itself - the connections between people and across projects - being the main thing. He sees the network more as the infrastructure or "pipes" that enable a narrative to spread and connect people.

The Global Regeneration CoLab, or GRC, global peer-to-peer support network for regeneration changemakers, focuses on those connections. By maintaining minimal formal structures, and prioritizing activities that facilitate 'speed dating' for serendipity, they facilitate network emergence around narratives of regeneration. Activities include regular convenings with plenty of space for people to connect with each other; more than 17,000 people have participated in their 'speed networking' events to date. With 10-12 video calls a week, and plenty of opportunities to co-create - as the 'colab' name suggests - it's hard to keep up with what's new, but easy to see that the narrative of global regeneration has spread among participants.

Central Appalachia Leadership Lab

"We know that teachers and teacher school leaders are doing incredible work within the K-12 building and we know that also it's going to take healthcare infrastructure, social services. It's going to take challenges in the narrative about Appalachia. There's a lot that's going to go into the goal that we're hoping to achieve." —Samantha Glaser

Samantha Glaser of Teach for America Appalachia and the Central Appalachia Leadership Lab

With diverse representation from education, government, nonprofits, business, etc., and geographic reach across four states: West Virginia, Virginia, Tennessee, Kentucky, the Central Appalachia started as a leadership development cohort. It aims to build a team of leaders working across sectors to improve educational outcomes in Central Appalachia by 2030. Fellows serve 3-year terms, meeting quarterly in different Appalachian communities. as the fellows interacted, the need for a network of networks emerged. A container to learn and address problems together was needed - it didn't yet exist outside of 'networking' as usual in 1:1 connections. The program is now working to support more durable learning network. The intended outcomes are:

• Foster and sustain collaboration across the regional educational ecosystem
• Increase public will and momentum around better educational outcomes
• Build deep place-based knowledge and facilitate innovations and cross-pollination

Samantha articulated some of the lessons learned so far - a list very aligned with our research and great advice for any network coordinators wanting to work with a cohort model, especially within the context of place-based communities:

• Lots of "flickering lights" of great work happening, but very siloed - the lab can help cross-pollinate
• The quarterly in-person convenings - hosted by fellows in their communities - have been unparalleled in helping to build relationships and learn from place-based host communities
• A centralized network coordinator or 'liaison' to keep connections and collaborations going holds a critically important role
• Participants are the experts - facilitate them, don't just lecture!
• Notice the scale you work with - the lab's cohort size 'sweet spot' right now is around 23 people. What is possible in groups varies widely at different scales - you can do and not do things with with 20 vs 200 vs 2000 etc.

Leveraging Teach for America's national and regional fundraising capacity, the network helps to package program elements (e.g. sponsoring a fellow, or an event, or initiative, etc.) as easy entry points for funders.

By taking the network of networks approach, The Central Appalachian Leadership Lab is build a multi-sector movement and expanding the region's capacity to drive systems-level change in Appalachian education. Acknowledging that desired change is about so much more than just education - it requires interventions in healthcare, social services, cultural narratives and more - means that the network is already starting to work from a systems-informed model.

How to stay connected

We're so excited to be along for the ride with June and all of you as this network of networks learning community emerges!

=> Register for our next multiscalar networks session here - we'll be making an ecosystem map of this network of networks! You'll also be able to join the new Network of Networks Learning Community, co-led by Network Weaver's June Holley and Limicon's Danielle Johnson with our help for this initial phase.

Here's some activities and topics this network of networks learning community is exploring together:

• Healthy cross-network engagement and communication
• Funding for multiscalar networks
• Building habits that create shared learning
• Measuring impacts in multiscalar networks
• Unlearning outdated mindsets and behaviors

June is also leading a working group to create a network of networks handbook. Community participants are also welcome to host other working groups or topic conversations.

If you'd like help from the Socialroots team to tell the story of your network of networks work, or in make an ecosystem map for your network, let us know by emailing "team 'at' socialroots dot io".