Getting the Right Things Done
Most people are hard-wired for action—they may place more or less value on collaboration, or risk-taking, but they mostly want to get things done. Others of us are more concerned with taking our time to get the Right things done.
This does not have to be an either-or choice between planning and taking action. There is no on-off switch to creating winning companies or winning communities. We don’t create corporate or civic enterprises for the exercise of keeping people busy doing any old thing, yet we can’t spend all our time philosophizing either.
Implementation is where we can get the right things done, when we keep in mind getting things done with a purpose—that put a plan into action to achieve a mission. Think of Jim Collins’ book Good to Great (and its companion Good to Great in the Social Sectors). Each of us in engaged in a mission, from the monumental to the mundane. When we agree on our mission—our Hedgehog as Collins puts it—we still have to agree on how we get that done.
That’s our Flywheel. Go beyond our bias for action, beyond the search for the magic silver bullet. There is no one sweet spot on the slider bar between Action and Planning. Rather, we’re turning a giant heavy flywheel. We do things, we talk to people, we build on our strengths, we demonstrate results, we return to go and start around the flywheel again.
Know Thyself
The Platonic dialogues of ancient Greece repeated an inscription on the Temple of Apollo at Delphi, meaning “Know Thyself”. Whether you take a typical planning-action approach to development, or adapt a cumulative and iterative flywheel, you need to understand your community and the people who live and work there. We have to know ourselves.
We’re not necessarily talking about the traditional comprehensive planning approach with big thick tomes of data and maps collecting dust on bureaucratic shelves. There are some really exciting advances in large-scale “Big Data” informing public decisions, but we’re talking here about turning “data” into “information”. Take for example, what Charles Marohn and the Strong Towns folks are calling the “Growth Ponzi Scheme” of modern suburbia. We’ve had the fiscal impact numbers at hand for fifty years. Yet only recently have we started to be honest about the long-term costs of growth. The fact is, much of our modern development pattern cannot pay to maintain itself, let alone cover the inevitable cost of replacement.
What we thought the data said, isn’t what the data said. The problem isn’t necessarily not knowing the answers. The problem is we’ve been asking the wrong questions.
There are numerous people and groups getting busy trying new ideas to build better organizations and communities. Sometimes it’s hard to notice them among the same old doom-and-gloom, but they’re there if you look for them. Here’s three that come to mind:
Strategic Doing: Ed Morrison at the Purdue Center for Regional Development has refined a development approach over the last 20 years that he calls “Strategic Doing”. Ed emphasizes forming collaborations quick, moving toward measurable outcomes and making adjustments along the way. “In today’s world, collaboration is essential to meet the complex challenges we face.”
Today’s communities are shifting into open networks, embedded in other global networks, which favor a more dynamic and agile approach—a strategy that is clear, focused, disciplined, adaptive and iterative. Strategic Doing breaks the process down with four adaptable questions: What can we do? What should we do? What will we do? When will we check in again?
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Orton Family Foundation: Up in the mountains of Vermont, the Orton Family Foundation is an operating foundation with a track record of nurturing innovative ideas, especially for small towns and rural areas. These include Community Matters, a partnership of seven organizations (including Chuck Marohn’s Strong Towns) intended to facilitate connections and conversations for communities who want to re-create themselves and their civic infrastructure. Community Matters has recently sponsored some interesting webinars, including “Creative Rural Urban Alliances”.
Community Heart & Soul is their latest initiative which aims to get people participating in making community decisions and taking action to improve the place where they live, work, learn and play. They have been ground-testing this four phase, 12-step process, in New England and across the Rocky Mountain states, and have some interesting results you can put to work in your community.
Sonoran Institute. Out in the deserts of Arizona, Sonoran is celebrating 25 years working mostly across the Western U.S. While they mostly focus on environmental issues, they have grown over the years to encompass vibrant communities and resilient economies. Community Builders is one initiative that shares success stories from across the West. They sponsored a webinar this winter from Downtown Bozeman, Montana, where I was once lucky enough to work.
New Mobility West is another Sonoran partnership, providing support to communities in Montana, Wyoming, Idaho and Colorado to improve transportation systems and create stronger and more vibrant communities. They are at work up the road from me right now in Durango, Colorado, on the state highway that cuts through the historic downtown. If you live/work in Montana or Wyoming you might be able to get in on some free training if you apply soon.
Implementation is the keyword
Community development, economic development, enterprise development, are not simple yes/no, button-pushing processes. Successful projects get done when we take a step back and push the flywheel. We plan, yes, then communicate before taking action, and take careful measure of what we accomplish so we can adjust and work our way around the flywheel again. Before you know it, your wheel will be turning almost all on its own, when we move beyond doing any old thing and focus on getting the Right thing done.
For more on these ideas, please visit www.jcshepard.com. On Twitter:
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9 年Great post John!! I am listed on Community Builders, although only did one post . . . need to work on that . . . but work closely with many of the Sonoran Institute/Community Builders/New Mobility West folks. They are top notch. I would urge municipalities and counties and others to engage them if you can.
Executive Director Muhlenberg Alliance for Progress
9 年Thanks for the resources, John. I think doing the right things sometimes gets stymied by feelings of "we can't control anything" so we are afraid of taking any action at all, or have endless discussions on what to do and end up doing nothing at all.