{"id":16320,"date":"2021-07-14T12:51:42","date_gmt":"2021-07-14T11:51:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.powertochange.org.uk\/?post_type=blog_post&p=3363"},"modified":"2021-08-11T11:45:34","modified_gmt":"2021-08-11T10:45:34","slug":"weaving-healthy-networks-role-people","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.powertochange.org.uk\/news\/weaving-healthy-networks-role-people\/","title":{"rendered":"Weaving healthy networks: the role of people"},"content":{"rendered":"

The community business sector<\/a> relies on healthy and effective networks. Its resilience is dependent on community businesses\u2019 appetite for mutually beneficial partnerships, their flexibility to quickly refocus their activities to meet local demand and on their capacity to lean on their communities for support.<\/p>\n

Network experts say that carefully managing roles helps keep networks healthy and thriving. \u201cWhen members make clear commitments to the network, they can act and interact without coming into conflict or performing redundant work\u201d<\/em>, says Patti Anklam, author of Net Work<\/em><\/a>.<\/p>\n

So how can community business networks harness their potential? One potential answer is: by managing roles effectively and by roles we mean the activities and tasks people and\/or organisations carry out so their activities can thrive. We discussed this previously with Community of Practice (CoP) members<\/a> first residential in November.\u00a0 While most of them described themselves as facilitators, many expressed a need for further roles in the network that specialised in strategy and engagement. Understanding the nature of roles and how they serve networks became the topic for our first on-line workshop in December.<\/p>\n

Why is it important to understand the role of roles and what can we use roles for? <\/strong><\/p>\n

Well-managed roles can achieve a variety of results. During our session we focused on two impacts in particular:<\/p>\n