Tools & Resources

This resource is a video of Rich Harwood describing the Harwood Institute’s concept of Turning Outward, or making the community the reference point for everything you do.

This resource includes an overview of what a common agenda is, and a five-step guide for developing a common agenda with others.

This tool will help you to identify how ready your system (group, community or organisation) is for collaboration and adaptation. It can also be modified to help you assess readiness for tackling complex challenges.

This resource provides a comprehensive ‘how to’ guide for forming, running, and harnessing the benefits of working groups.

This tool will help you to map and interpret stakeholder dynamics in your initiative. This tool can be useful at the start of an initiative when you are working out the ‘lay of the land’, if things go wrong, if there is conflict, or if you are not making progress.

This tool will help you to identify: • Factors that have contributed to the change you seek. • Evidence demonstrating the contribution. • The strength of the contribution. • Identify new means of and opportunities to exercise leadership.

This resource provides an introduction to social innovation processes that will help you rapidly test your assumptions in a cost-effective way.

This resource explains how identifying and understanding ‘positive deviance’ will help you understand the kind of solutions that can work in your community – with the resources that are already in place.

This resource from Australians Together outlines clearly why and how Intergenerational Trauma needs to be understood in the context of working with First Nations Australians.

John Kania shares insights into why Collective Impact and Systems Change efforts are most powerful when they are conducted at a place-based level. This is an excerpt of a video interview in 2020 with John Kania by CFI Director, Kerry Graham.

John Kania introduces the six conditions of systems change framework. An excerpt of a video interview in 2020 with John Kania by CFI Director, Kerry Graham.

John Kania talks about 'System Leadership' as the leadership required for systems change and identifies leadership as the biggest distinguishing factor of successful Collective Impact efforts. This is an excerpt of a video interview in 2020 with John Kania by CFI Director, Kerry…

This resource describes the difference between leaders who need to be the centre of attention and leaders who create the conditions for collaborative outcomes.

This resource introduces design research as an approach and set of methods that are particularly well suited to understanding the reality of people’s lives, what they want for the future and how the current situations help and hinder them.