Colorado doesn’t have a leadership problem; it has a connection problem.
We have smart people. We have committed people. We have people working on every major issue you can name—education, housing, workforce, mental health, economic growth. And yet, too often, progress stalls.
Not because people don’t care. Because they’re not working together.
We keep building rooms full of people who already agree. We keep reinforcing the same circles, the same conversations, the same patterns. We keep leaving those conversations without next steps or tiny experiments to move toward progress. And then we wonder why the hardest problems don’t move.
So…we decided to try something different.
Colorado doesn’t have a leadership problem; it has a connection problem.
We have smart people. We have committed people. We have people working on every major issue you can name—education, housing, workforce, mental health, economic growth. And yet, too often, progress stalls.
Not because people don’t care. Because they’re not working together.
We keep building rooms full of people who already agree. We keep reinforcing the same circles, the same conversations, the same patterns. We keep leaving those conversations without next steps or tiny experiments to move toward progress. And then we wonder why the hardest problems don’t move.
So…we decided to try something different.
On April 14, we launched the Impact Forum pilot. Forty-five leaders showed up—public, private, nonprofit, and community. Different sectors. Different geographies. Different lived experiences.
We didn’t bring them to listen to us. We brought them to work.
The morning started with a shared reality check. Colorado is a civically engaged state—high voter turnout, strong nonprofit presence, deep volunteerism. And still, most of our civic infrastructure is designed to bond—to connect people who already know each other, already agree, already share a worldview.
What’s missing are spaces designed to bridge—to bring people together across difference, across sectors, across lines that usually keep people apart.
Then we asked two questions:
The answers weren’t abstract. They were grounded, human, and specific. People talked about mentoring one student, helping someone feel seen, creating spaces where people belong, and strengthening a neighborhood block by block.
This wasn’t small thinking. It was precise thinking. People understand that systems don’t change in the abstract—they change through relationships.
But that wasn’t the whole story.
In the same breath, people named the need for impact that lasts—impact that is measurable, that scales, that shows up in policies, funding decisions, and long-term outcomes.
And then came the harder truth: We don’t have a shortage of people doing good work in Colorado. We have a shortage of alignment between them and a shortage of places to practice the hard work of what it means to collaborate.
Organizations aren’t working in parallel. Sectors speak different languages. Rural and urban communities are competing for resources instead of coordinating them.
People didn’t ask for more ideas.
They asked for the conditions that make collaboration actually work—trust, shared language, better processes, and spaces where people can stay engaged and practice long enough to move from conversation to action.
That gap—between impact and collaboration—is where the real work lives.
A few days later, that same reality showed up in Fort Collins.
Our Colorado Governors Fellows gathered for their third regional session, diving into education, regionalism, and economic growth. While they were there, they spent time with Dr. Martín Carcasson, who has spent decades studying how communities make progress—or don’t. I told you about Carcasson’s work last month.
His framing is both clarifying and uncomfortable. The problems we’re trying to solve aren’t technical problems waiting for better answers. Martín would call them “wicked problems.”
Take almost any issue in Colorado—housing, water, education, economic growth. Every one of them sits inside tensions. Just take healthcare as an example. We all say we want affordable, high-quality, accessible care for ourselves and those love. Tough to argue with any of the values. But let’s admit they are in competition. A rural community often has to travel long distances for quality care. Affordability is often dependent on where you live, where you work, or what type of care you need. Great values – tough to live up to all of them. And therein lies the real work of civic progress.
These aren’t problems you “solve.” They’re tensions you manage—over time, together.
And here’s the part most people miss: We are wired to approach these problems in ways that make them worse.
We crave certainty and consistency. We prefer simple narratives—good vs. bad, right vs. wrong. We cluster with people who already agree with us.
In other words, we default to environments that feel comfortable. But comfort doesn’t build solutions. What actually moves communities forward is something far more demanding. It requires what Carcasson calls a deliberative approach—one that builds the capacity of communities to think, learn, and act together.
That means:
And perhaps most importantly:
It means creating real, human interaction—because the most powerful force for overcoming bias and making progress is genuine conversation with people we respect, and who feel respected by us.
Put the Impact Forum and the Fellows session side by side, and a clear pattern emerges.
People know what matters. They are deeply committed to their communities. They are ready to act.
But the infrastructure to support that kind of leadership, the kind that builds trust, bridges difference, and leads to sustained progress, is still too thin.
Too concentrated in certain places.
Too fragmented across sectors.
Too rare in everyday practice.
So we’re building it.
CiviCO is expanding—beyond Denver, beyond single events, beyond one-off conversations. We are building civic infrastructure across this state. Not as an idea—as a practice.
Rooms where a rural leader and an urban policymaker don’t just meet, but work through real tradeoffs together. Spaces where business, nonprofit, and government leaders learn how to translate across their differences instead of talking past each other. Communities where disagreement isn’t avoided—but structured in a way that leads somewhere.
This is not about more programming.
It’s about building the conditions for progress. It will take time. But this is our big, audacious goal for Colorado!
We strive for a Colorado that has a thriving culture of civic leadership—where individuals across business, government, and community step forward together to address challenges, seize opportunities, and shape a stronger future for all.
Impact Forum is one way we’re starting to experiment to create those conditions.
What started with 45 people, we want to become something much bigger—a growing ecosystem of leaders who are willing to stay in the tension, build trust, and do the hard work of collaboration.
We’re just getting started!
But here’s what we’re already seeing:
When you design the right space, people show up differently. They listen differently. They take more responsibility—not just for their work, but for the system around them.
That’s how civic infrastructure gets built. Not all at once, but room by room, conversation by conversation, relationship by relationship. And if we get this right—if we build the capacity for Coloradans to work across difference, to navigate complexity, and to stay engaged over time—this state won’t just respond to its challenges.
It will lead the way in solving them.
No one is coming to build that future for us. It’s up to us.
Be a part of the work!
