Inviting and Supporting Shared Well-Being* in Community Organizations
What can city government and communities organizations learn from 20-30 years of agile experimentation in software teams and other enterprises?
[*Well-Being = prosperity, resilience, agility, adaptation, innovation, learning and/or self-organization]
WORKING NOTES
Starting Points
Listening and transparency aren't enough. It’s not enough for those in positions of authority to “listen” in order to inform transparent but still centralized decision-making. Our most important issues and challenges will require adaptive changes and choices to be made by formal authorities and stakeholders throughout the organization/community.
Complex, organic, emergent community solutions require leaders to model listening AND invite everyone in the community to follow that lead. Civic transformation requires that everyone is talking with everyone. Everyone is thinking, sharing, listening and being heard. Emergent solutions are messy at first, but ultimately more effective, durable and scalable. Focus on removing obstacles that prevent different kinds of people from coming together to create solutions that work for all.
Transparency is just the beginning. We need to follow it with:
- Invitation, see TheNewMayoralTaskForce – bring all stakeholders together (at once)
- Engagement – invite conversation, not a line at the microphone
- Immersion – invite everyone to talk with everyone, turn spectators into participants
- Collaboration – invite people to take responsibility, and take action, together
- Community – genuine sense of community arises/strengthens as people work together
- Agility – working together makes adapting, transforming, evolving possible, and easier
Some of the sectors/issues/needs CA can address:
- Economic Development
- Affordable Housing
- Transportation
- Community Art
- Local Food Systems
- Local Commerce
- Youth and Education (and Lifelong Learning)
- Community Health
- Social Justice
- Public Safety
Core Practices for Inviting Agility
- Visualize Everything
- Refine, Prioritize and Focus
- Commit Incrementally
- Deliver Collaboratively
- Review and Improve
- Rinse and Repeat
Benefits of Inviting Agility
- Address the most complex issues in direct, robust and actionable ways
- Engage any number of diverse stakeholders in meaningful and productive ways
- Align planning and action across silo, institutional, geographic and political boundaries
- Focus everyone's immediate efforts on most important and valuable tasks and outcomes
- Create, strengthen and connect any number of interdependent teams and organizations
- Increase velocity and build momentum of results
- Gather and learn from customer/community feedback early and often
- Measure, track and improve the outcomes that really matter
- Remove obstacles, leverage resources, eliminate delays and reduce other forms of waste
- Make incremental results count toward achieving visionary outcomes
Experiments
Inc Dev Alliance
- Durham, NC
- Calhoun County, MI
- Tompkins County, MI
- Flint, MI
- Kingston, NY
- Hudson Valley region, NY
- Buffalo, NY
Other Experiments
- Albuquerque Summit
- Albuquerque Transit/Zoning? Update
- Albuquerque Economic Development Department
- Art Barn School of Art
- Multiple agile/scrum software teams
Draft Designs
Practice Resources Library
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