ECD

Community Development Processes: Creating Civic Networks & Strategic Doing

On Saturday, March 21, I had the opportunity to spend some time with participants in the Southeast (Indianapolis) Leadership Development Initiative being organized by the Purdue Extension, Marion County. We spent the morning talking about some of the processes that can be helpful in community development work, specifically how to (1) build community by building networks and (2) practice the art of "strategic doing" to get things accomplished. The presentation from this session is available here.

We also talked a little about the great resource, Building Communities from the Inside Out: A Path Toward Finding & Mobilizing a Community's Assets by John Kretzmann and John McKnight. You can find more about Asset-Based Community Development (ABCD) here.

If you would like more information on this great Indianapolis neighborhood, go here.

Materials for Upcoming Economic Re-Engagement Session

The following are facilitator and participant materials for the Developing Community-Based Economic Re-Engagement Strategies scheduled for Wednesday, March 25, 2009:

• Agenda - This is the agenda for the session. Please make copies of this and distribute to all participants.

• Facilitator Notes - This is needed for only the local facilitators. it will give you details of what you need to do when including some questions that may be helping in prompting creative thinking during the group exercises. 

• Solutions Lab Pack - This is what participants will use to work through their strategy development. Each participant will need a copy

• Purdue University Economic Re-Engagement Toolbox - This is an initial list of some of the programs and resources available at Purdue. Please encourage representatives from other organizations to add to this toolbox with resources and programs from their own organizations or agencies. Each participant will need a copy of this.

• Session Evaluation - Each participant needs a copy of this and please ask them to complete it and leave with you. See Facilitator's Notes for information about what to do with them after the session.

Economic Re-Engagement Solutions

On Wednesday, March 25 community leaders in several Indiana communities will be coming together to develop solutions to help the firms and workers in their communities get "re-engaged" with the economy. They will be thinking creatively and preparing to act strategically to develop new civic networks like:

• Strategy redesign networks

• Direct re-employment networks
• Growth cluster networks
• Skunk works networks
• Self-employment networks
• Career ladder networks
• Career exploration networks

The next few days following the March 25 event, we will be posting their ideas on this blog. Watch the space in the upper right had side of this page for some of the most innovative thinking related to helping troubled firms and unemployed workers re-engage with the changing economy.

Strategic Doing: Maxamizing Greene County's Assets

Here is an article from the March 13, 2009 Green County (Indiana) Daily World

There are many individuals, agencies and groups of people in Greene County who are working hard on a project that will benefit Greene County residents. These projects range in scope and impact, and run the gamut from individual donations to a particular cause to larger endeavors like planning a festival. Every one of these activities has a positive impact on our community.

Wouldn't it be wonderful, though, if all of the various activities could be identified and their progress communicated to each of the other active partners? Then we could work more harmoniously, not duplicating any effort, and become more targeted and efficient.

Well, someone thought about that and came up with a solution. Ed Morrison is a member of the staff of the Center for Regional Development at Purdue University and Economic Policy Advisor for the WIRED initiative in north-central Indiana. Ed has developed a new model for economic development: Open Source Economic Development. The model promotes the development of open innovation systems ("clusters") to accelerate regional development.

Ed visited Greene County this week to introduce GCEDC staff and other community partners involved in the HomeTown Competitiveness core team to the Open Source concept and to demonstrate its ability to go beyond strategic planning and to stimulate strategic "doing" (also known as strategic action.)

In Ed Morrison's white paper, Strategic Doing: The Art & Practice of Strategic Action in Open Networks, he states, "As we move into the world of networks, we need to find new ways of thinking together ... Networks are different. In a world of open networks, strategy becomes the art of guiding purposeful conversations. Effective strategy translates ideas into action quickly, so we can learn what works."

"Strategic doing is a set of principles, practices and disciplines for implementing strategy in a network ... It guides strategy across organizational and political boundaries with a discipline to build collaborations quickly. Strategic doing answers four questions:

* What could we do together?

* What should we do together?

* What will we do together?

* How will we learn together?

Sounds simple, yet, it is not easy ... it takes practice. Once we learn the discipline of strategic doing ... we can move ideas into action quickly."

Strategic doing is also a skill that we can teach to others, once we have learned it ourselves. So, strategic doing is low cost and scalable (and flexible). It can become a convenient framework for igniting and managing creative collaborations. ... It becomes how we get stuff done when we venture outside the four walls of our own organizations."

It starts with agreeing "to behave toward each other in ways that build trust and mutual respect."

Ed shared the analogy of a person sitting on the beach planning how to navigate across the water to a buoy. That individual can spend a great deal of time planning their course from the beach to the buoy. The problem is that, by the time they have developed their plan and no matter how well thought out it is, it will be defunct. By that time, the conditions, such as the wind, waves, currents and other impacting factors, have changed. Strategic Doing is getting in the boat and starting to paddle, looking up periodically to assess the status and redirect the bearings to ensure that you get to the buoy, because it's all about getting to the target.

Well, having experienced the training in action and the results it produced, the Greene County "trainees" were sold. We decided to try this different approach, so we can learn to deal with complex issues with simple (not simplistic) solutions. As we get comfortable using this method, then we hope to share it with other community partners.

The issues Greene County has to deal with are no less complex than the issues a major city has to deal with. Things like increasing unemployment, poverty, affordable housing, transportation, decreasing revenues, etc. It's just that we have far less resources, so it becomes crucial that we maximize what we have, especially our time, energy and efforts. The Open Source method allows us to "bite off only what we can chew" at any given point in time, and to work together to make significant impacts quickly. I'll share more once we've practiced a bit.

Joan is the executive director at Greene County Economic Development Corporation and can be reached at (812) 847-4500 or by email.