Approach & Expertise

Our approach

Shaping the future is like wading across a murky river, feeling your way with your toes. We make sure you have the proper footing.

Our approach is practical. We believe in helping groups get to action quickly and wisely and get better as they go.

First: We get to know you—your company, organization, or community—as you are now, how you got there, and where you want to go.

Second: We craft a process to pull people together, make sense of what’s going on, and adaptively innovate and act to make things work better.

Throughout: We strengthen abilities to lead and manage the process, for the situation at hand and the ones to come.

Core Competencies

We strengthen abilities in three, mutually reinforcing areas.

Systems Perspectives

With a systems perspective, groups can see the patterns in how people and organizations are connected and how they behave. They can construct a shared view of a challenge and of the dynamic forces at play. Together, they can detect where change is likely soonest and the direction things go as they start to intervene.

Adaptive Strategizing & Action

Adaptive strategizing and action is a process. It’s a systematic way of making sense of a what’s happening, of coming up with innovative ideas, and of adapting activities based on the outcomes that emerge.

Inclusive Collaboration

Diverse perspectives enhance a group’s collective intelligence. They help groups see more facets of a problem and more opportunities for generating change. Diverse skills and abilities increase a group’s power to innovate, to combine resources in unexpected ways and overcome the most difficult challenges.

Our expertise

With years of experience we have become expert in a wide array of tools and methods. This allows us to craft our support to meet your unique circumstances.

In implementing our approach, we specialize in:

    • Narrative modes of inquiry and sense-making
    • Organizational assessments
    • Multi-stakeholder collaboration
    • Community-led / locally-led initiatives
    • Adaptive management
    • Leadership and Board support
    • Workshop facilitation and training
    • Coaching and backstopping

In building core competencies, we are experts in:

    • Multiple sense-making and way-finding approaches
    • Systems mapping and analysis
    • Behavior change methodologies
    • Innovative intervention design and management
    • Collaborative learning and perspective taking
    • Diversity, equity, and inclusion
    • Monitoring of outcomes and systemic change
    • Scaling and transformative change
Eric Derks

Eric Derks is the founder and director of Riverain Collaborations. For 30 years he has been at the forefront of applying and contributing to innovative ways to generate change in complex social systems. For most of his career, he has designed and led initiatives to alleviate poverty, mitigate climate change, or strengthen people’s collaborative capacity to learn and achieve together. His work has been steadily infused with insights from systems thinking, complexity sciences, and behavior change.