The Backbone skill no framework names

There is a unique person or team, adapt at reading what is not written down, recognising what is not named, and knowing what when and how to guide and shepherd the collective or coalition in the long journey we call place-based change.

The skill of place-based sensing.

So what is a backbone team, exactly?

Lets back-track a bit… what exactly is this team I call a backbone team?

Originally coined in the Collective Impact framework, developed by John Kania and Mark Kramer in 2011, the Backbone is a unique team or realistically often just a person, whose entire job is to support a collaboration. Not to deliver programs or deliver a service, but rather be the glue convening, coordinating, and ensuring the is aligned and cohesive momentum that comes from collective work. A community I’ve been working with in Western Australia recently described it as the breeze that moves amoung the tree, moving between the many parts and aspects of the community, agencies, groups, and work, but not actually becoming a part of the tree.

The critical reason a backbone team is so vital is that it does some key things that nobody else has the capacity or the mandate to do consistently: guide the shared vision and strategy, support aligned activities across partners, establish shared measurement practices, build public will, advance policy, and mobilise funding. Its a unique team, drawing on unique skills and even uniquer ways. It is inherently relational work, with people, for people, alongside people, and always by people. This isn’t a job Ai has a look in on.

The skills a backbone team needs

PLACE Australia recently released a commonly understood set of 6 key skills needed in place-based work, embedded in the backbone team, essential for place-based change in the Australian context.

• Leadership

• Deep listening and analysis

• Stakeholder analysis and engagement

• Co-design

• Project and Program management

• Use of Data and Evidence

Across these areas there are some common capabilities that span across domains, integral to the effectiveness and continuous momentum of backbone teams and place-based change.

1. Relational and adaptive Leadership

2. The ability to hold the big picture and use systems thinking within a place-based and community context

3. Facilitation skills and specialised listening and engagement acumen

4. Understanding and use of data to influence decisions, program and projecct design, advocacy and strategy

5. Ability to use a range of tools and methodologies to suit the stage and focus

Beyond merely skills

Across all of these capabilities, at its heart are uniquely skilled people able to work within a continuously complex environment with people and alongside people, adapting approaches for the moment and the momentum. People people, working as a breeze towards long-term and transformational change in communities and systems that are complex.

But what about the invisible skills, the ways of being that see any given part of this work land fully and completely for the place it is for.

Place-based sensing.

Throughout my decades of work in communities, I have come to realise the art of sensing it a rare gem, but when it shows up it shines through and magnifies the collective work in amazing ways. Its hard to describe or quantify, which is likely why it rarely shows up in a skills and competencies matrix. The art of sensing and intuition, more than reading the room it is reading whole groups of people in order to understand and intuitively know the method or tool best suited for the moment, the intersection of the big picture and place-based context, or the knowing for when and what adaption is needed in convening and guiding a group of diverse people that aligns to their momentum.

Dually, because it is rarely an explicit skill or competency, it is rarely valued or leant into in the ways it could be. Its minimised or backgrounded, rather than leveraged and recognised.

The skill of sensing

Here are a few of the many ways sensing can look like in community and place-based work;

• Noticing emerging trends long before data or evidence is available.

  • The opportunity to be responsive, future aware, and naming small observations that are signals long before lag data catches up is incredibly powerful in place-based work and can mean the apparent slow pace of change is reduced

• Deep and deeper listening

  • Listening to people IS the job, the ability to sense a deeper story, experience, knowing or perspective and stay in the space of listening is an unparalleled skill that enriches whats shared and whats heard and whats understood

• Seeing signals in relational and collective environments

  • As noted in my recent article on starting with seeds, the collective likewise has a starting point, with trust, relational muscle, and confidence to act in a cohesive way growing over time. Noting the signals of change (in either direction) and responding and working to that is what takes a governance model on paper into a real-world collective initiative

• Seeing leverage points, opportunities and potential early on

  • A lot of focus is places on systems mapping and systems thinking, however the art of seeing the opportunities that sit within what are complex ecosystems and intersecting spaces and challenges is what takes a map to an actionable change moment

• Seeing both the tree and the forest

  • Captured by PLACE as seeing the big picture, the ability to move between perspectives and bridge the micro and meso and macro horizons is what weaves together place-based and systems level change.

• Carrying culture

  • This is a unique place-based sensing, a deep understanding of the ways culture and ways of being should, could, and must be woven throughout each and every point of change.

What have YOU noticed are the ways place-based sensing shows up or looks like?

For teams working in place, training for skills is one thing, honing the sensing and intuition of a backbone team becomes the transformational element. Trusting what isn’t yet on paper or in a graph and responding in real time to the evolving context and ecosystem movements as you maintain momentum collectively.

Working in a backbone team or place-based change initiative? We’d love to hear more about your work, the challenges you are grappling with and what future articles might help. Reach out at crystal@goodimpactau.com or www.goodimpactau.com

Read more

• https://ssir.org/articles/entry/collective_impact

• https://www.placeaustralia.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/04/Key-Skills-and-Competencies-Diagram-with-legend-large-scaled.png