Changing attitudes vs. Changing lives

Plentiful and fun community events in a Calgary neighbourhood - an essential ingredient for successful local organizations  

TOOLKIT: For the past three years, Larry Leach has penned a series of blogs forming a toolkit for neighbourhood livability. In 2023, he introduced outputs and outcomes. In 2024 he explored the nudge factor and Good Neighbourhood Agreements. A year later children and youth centres was followed by Neighbourhood Communications Plans. In this installment, Larry returns to outputs and outcomes, taking the idea further as the foundation for his upcoming presentation at the October SafeGrowth Summit in Calgary.

by Larry Leach 

One might also title this blog Outputs vs. Outcomes, a theme I first described a few years ago. It is a narrative that ends up shaping whether you collaborate or work in a silo. 

In my experience, organizations that value outputs, branding and changing attitudes, tend to be less collaborative than those that value outcomes, changing lives and doing the work. Changing attitudes is still good work, but it’s important to recognize the difference. We fail when trying to be all things to all people.

Jason Tudor, a member of our SafeGrowth Network, describes it this way: 

"I have worked with government agencies, nonprofits, businesses, neighborhood groups, and residents, and I don’t think any one sector is inherently better at collaboration. The difference is whether an organization views collaboration as a means of advancing its own work or achieving a shared community outcome."

If you value achieving a good outcome, you will collaborate with any organization to get there. After many years building community, I can identify organizations that collaborate and those that don’t. Trying to change an uncollaborative group is much harder, if it’s possible at all.

Jason adds: 

“Residents in Hollygrove confronted drug activity, cleaned neglected spaces, installed lighting, organized walking groups, addressed problem properties and businesses, and created solutions when traditional institutions could not or would not respond… but the important outcome was not successfully implementing a SafeGrowth project. It was that residents developed the capacity and confidence to act collectively.”

He describes how the most successful partners were those willing to directly join the neighborhood process rather than owning it themselves. “Collaboration became difficult when institutional procedure, jurisdiction, funding silos, or organizational ownership became more important than solving the neighborhood’s problem.”

The full Hollygrove story is covered extensively in prior blogs, such as back from the brink and a gift for the holidays, and in our forthcoming SafeGrowth book. 

Neighbourhood groups in Hollygrove were careful to choose partner organizations that shared their visions - here they conduct safety audits as part of the safety diagnoses

Another great Safegrowth partner, Pamela Daniels of The Brickerati group in Newark, New Jersey adds: 

“I think successful collaboration for us in Newark has been about leveraging partnerships to achieve mutual outcomes/impact and sometimes that impetus being funding sources themselves." 

"Funders want to see collaborations, shared resources, and less duplicated approaches to reach the same target audiences and collaborative approaches… to achieve greater impact. That synchronicity happened successfully in Newark over time because the field started to realize we aren't competitors but partners in an ecosystem.”

Great neighbourhoods have convenient and safe places to lounge. They also need local organizational methods to keep them that way.  

 

 THE SQUEAKY WHEEL GETS THE GREASE

Output Organizations value branding and changing attitudes and often get the attention and funding. That is what they seek. While great for awareness campaigns, when it comes to actual community building, that focus on building a brand can cloud their ability to build relationships to make the change necessary for a good outcome. In turn, that can perpetuate rather than help solve the problem.

Non-profit prognosticators tell me how funders should change the way they look at funding, changing the process of applying and what they fund. The truth is many funders have their own outputs and may not be interested in solving a problem. They prefer to brand themselves in a cause. 

How do you determine whether an organisation is collaborative and whether they’re interested in solving a problem? 

Try these trigger questions when you are assessing partner organizations or seeking funding: 

• Are they saying “we want to collaborate”, but not following with actions?
• Are they actively resisting your ideas?
• Is the problem bureaucracy, conflicting priorities, lack of trust?
• Do you need something specific from them, or are you trying to build a longer-term partnership?

GETTING CREDIT - BUILDING TRUST

Rather than pushing them harder, consider these steps:

1. Understand their incentives. Organizations respond to what helps achieve their goals. Frame your proposal around their priorities, not yours. 
2. Lower the risk of saying yes. Start with one small, low-risk project with clear roles and a timeline. Relationships take time. 
3. Identify the decision-maker. People may appear ready to collaborate but lack the authority. Find the person who can authorize action. It makes a big difference. 
4. Track agreements in writing. After meetings, briefly summarize what was discussed, who agreed to what, and next steps. This creates clarity without confrontation. 
5. Know when to stop investing your time. After repeated delays, cancellations or silence, it may be more productive to find another partner or project.

Jason sums this up: "Perhaps the simplest test I have found for identifying a genuinely collaborative organization is this: If someone else receives the credit, but the community gets the outcome, would the organization still consider the project a success? If the answer is yes, you probably have a very good collaborator."

Pamela adds: "It takes time for guards to come down. It takes time for competitive natures to dwindle. So, funding sources as the impetus [can] speed that up and certainly ushered in new approaches in Newark when it happened."

As Stephen Covey describes in his book by the same name - change moves at the speed of trust. And that applies only when we believe that our Outcomes are more important than our Outputs.