Talk from Harald Katzmair @ D4R, The Hub, Berkeley 4/12/2010

Resilience Thinking
Networking Strategies for Building
Adaptive Capacity
Harald Katzmair
(Founder and Director, FAS.research)

4/13/2010 © 2010 FAS.research, all rights reserved 1

 FAS is a social Network Analytics & Strategies
company. FAS maps key drivers and key
influencers in markets, organizations, online
ecosystems and develops strategies to leverage
the power of networks for advocacy,
campaigning, lobbying, marketing, key account
management and social change.


4/13/2010 3
© 2010 FAS.research, all rights reserved

Resilience: Being robust, strong and upright


Resilience: Thriving where challenges are
enormous


Thriving where cyclical destruction rules


Resilience Definitions
 (Business) Life as a process of generative
disruption and creative destruction.
 Resilience defined as being able to deliver value
under changing conditions.
 Resilience defined as capacity to adapt to and
shape change.
 Resilience defined as capacity to operate, respond
& react under critical conditions (stress and
disturbances).

Resilience and Managing Uncertainty
 If we are not certain about the future, let’s be
prepared for a range of futures.
 Build resilient networks as strategy to hedge
uncertainties.
 If the future is uncertain we have to redistribute
the power to participate in the problem solving
process.


Resilience as Capacity Building
 Capacity is a power, a resource, a capital.
 Capacity building requires a strategy to capitalize
and re-capitalize people, communities and
organizations to increase their potential to act
and react (agency).
 Capacity building has two currencies: resources
(money) and stories (meaning and memory).


Sciences of Resilience
 Positive Psychology
 Systems Ecology
 Material & Engineering Sciences
 Complexity Theory
 Network Theory


Understanding Networks
Closure Network Brokerage Network Structural Fold Network

1 social circle Not overlapping social circles Multiple overlapping social
linked through a Broker circles, Broker as “Hybrid”,
as “Multiple Insider”

Understanding Ecological Resiliency

Capacity to
re-invent
yourself!


Features of Complex Adaptive Systems
 Life on the edge of challenge and opportunity
(Kaufman’s “Edge of Chaos”)
 Diversity
 Modularity
 Short feedback cycles
 Self-organization
 Openness


What blocks resiliency?
 Lack of understanding
 Lack of resources
 Lack of willingness


Lack of willingness: The Case of Jordan


The Centralized Solution Strategy
 Centralized, hierarchical disempowering social
structures not set up for managing change.
 Centralized solution strategies in the context of
over-abstraction of aquifers have significantly
failed so far, though still dominate the mindset of
policy makers (the King, Allah, the Americans,
they will fix it)
 Water is not regarded as a commons, nobody
owns the problem = no participation (supportive
environment for fraud and corruption)

Centralization as Fallacy of Power
 Centralized Mindset = one attractor, one idea,
one drug, one focus, one solution, one operating
system.
 Jordan is a symbol, it’s everywhere where we try
to solve “wicked problems” with a centralized
mindset.
 If the solution is uncertain, we rather have to
redistribute the power to participate in the
problem solving process, to hedge the risks of not
knowing.

What can we learn from Design
Thinking to improve the governance
process?


Design Thinking Cycle (by George Kembel)
 Empathy: Understand and observe latent needs.
 Framing: Define the problem you want to solve.
 Ideating: Brainstorm alternatives to solve the
problem.
 Prototyping: Build low resolution prototypes.
 Testing: Test among the group you studied latent
needs.

4/13/2010 19

Design Thinking
 We don’t want to discover the only one “best
solution” but the best “good enough solution”
given the fact that we don’t know everything,
information is wrong and incomplete and
constantly evolving.
 Robust decision making: “satisfying” and not
“optimizing” as attitude to assess goal functions
 Resilience: A change in the mindset, a change in
the process to discover solutions (a social
innovation, not a technical solution)
4/13/2010 20

Adaptive Co-Management Cycle as Governance
Implementation of Design Thinking Principles
Observations

Policy Alternatives

Explanations

Evidence


10 Principles of Adaptive Management
1. Create frame and story to envisioning a common future
2. Create open arena to share experiences and observations
3. Share models and explanations of reasons and causality
4. Develop portfolio of policy alternatives
5. Offer arena and marketplace for ideas and pilot projects
6. Participation of funders, sponsors, donors, enablers
7. Discuss outcome (evidence) of pilot projects
8. Diffuse success stories
9. Monitor implemented developments
10. Communicate progress and outcome

Stakeholder Mapping for
Stakeholder Dialog


Applied FAS Technologies and Tools
 Evidence based Influencer Mapping (EIM)®
 Participatory Impact Analysis (PIA) ®
 Participatory Resilience Assessment (PRA)®


Jordan Stakeholder Map (anonymized)


Types of Influencers
 Cross Boundary Influencers: Influencers linking
different (ethnic) groups.
 Cross Scale Influencers: Influencers linking
different levels of time and space: community
level, village level, market level, clan level, state
level.
 Cross Role Influencers: Influencers linking
innovators, networkers, leaders, facilitators,
implementers, sense makers, investors, incubators,
bureaucrats, entrepreneurs etc.

Stakeholder Dialog


7 Dialog Domains
1. Change the Crop Pattern
2. Improve the Land Management Pattern
3. Improve Use of Efficient Irrigation
4. Increase Use of Treated Waste Water
5. Improve Exchange of Experience among Farmers
6. Diversify Income Sources or Leave Agriculture
7. Resolve Use of Illegal Wells and Land


Summary
1. Resilience perceived as a social innovation, a way to
hedge the risks of not knowing through cross scale and
cross boundary collaboration in networks.
2. Building up adaptive and responsive capacity requires a
Network Map and a Networking Strategy to identify and
bring together Key Influencers embedded in Structural
Fold Networks (intersection zones between different
types of institutions, knowledge and social memory)
3. Strategies for building up adaptive capacity can learn from
tools and work styles established in design and
engineering (observing, framing, ideating, prototyping,
testing, robust decision making)


The D4R Movement
 From San Francisco to Vienna!
 From Jordan to Yemen!
 From Hub Berkeley to…. ?


Contact

mailto: harald.katzmair@fas.at
www.fas-research.com
Harald Katzmair, PhD
(Founder and Director)


Resilience Thinking
Thank you for your Attention!

Harald Katzmair
(Founder and CEO, FAS.research)


Talk from Harald Katzmair @ D4R, The Hub, Berkeley 4/12/2010

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