9 Responses to “Resilience: How To Build Sustainable Communities”

1. Laban Johnson
   March 30th, 2009 @ 9:28 pm

   The ability to introduce and fully harness planned change is a true test of community leadership.

   Whenever change is introduced you will face resistance from those who have not fully embraced or understood the benefits of said change. “That won’t work, I can’t believe they’re doing this, we’ve always done it the other way, why mess it up now?”

   It’s not enough to dictate a change to the community and expect everyone to jump on board. Denial is part of the process of change, and to overcome it requires constant, consistent, open communication. A community that talks well together walks well together.

   If you will recall, Change was the campaign promise of our current President, who also simultaneously embraced communication and transparency. The results of the campaign are evidence of its effectiveness.

   On the other hand, reacting negatively to denial will result in very hurt feelings and dissension. Sometimes other members of the community – not the leadership itself – are the chief culprits of responding negative to the denial of their counterparts.

   Change introduces the unknown, and the unknown is the leading cause of fear in people, and fear, as we know, leads to the dark side.

   Resistance may result, when people actually work against change, to intentionally sabotage an effort toward change, in blatant refusal to use or try a new system. When people are not listened to verbally, they speak in other ways… People need to feel they can express their confusion and doubt without fear of retribution. They need to know they are heard and understood. The L in leadership stands for LISTEN! (Kind of cliche. It’s late.)

   Once people say their peace, you have a captive audience to introduce the benefits of the proposed change. You’ll see an attitude change, even if people are not convinced it will work, they will be far more willing to work along with leadership that listens, the room will fill with ideas to make it work, instead of reasons why it could or should fail.

   Unfortunately, the failure to listen has become a common fallacy in corporate America and most levels of government – serious disconnects exists between the leaders and the led. So, is there any wonder why our ‘leaders’ have led the world into a recession? I digress.

   The final phase of harnessing change is commitment, this is when the change is fully embraced as the new and improved method of way of doing something. Then, it’s time to acknowledge the results and celebrate! Overt recognition at this point will make change that much easier the next time around.

   In summary, a resilient community is one with patient, responsive leadership which successfully guides the community through the *process* of change, from denial to resistance, to exploring the benefits and finally individual commitment.

2. tex1sam
   March 31st, 2009 @ 9:22 am

   In order for a community to be identifiable as a group, there is some means of members identifying each other. Those members in turn have a certain set of mutual expectations of each other.
   These expectations might not be uniform and there may be hierarchical and class distinctions in terms of what various members expect to contribute and receive in their affiliation with that community. This set of behavioral expectations constitute a social contract that binds the community and serves as a basis for enforcing inclusion and exclusion from the community and the distribution of benefits to its members.
   Resilience is not just displayed in times of adversity. An unexpected opportunity can also stress or destroy a community as members disagree on how the opportunity should be addressed, because some members may benefit more than others from a particular windfall. Resilience in a community is derived from a pre-negotiated set of modifications to the status quo or “normal-circumstances” social contract. These pre-negotiated changes are part of the existing social contract and allow a community to more effectively deal with duress or an unanticipated opportunity. In any event resilience allows a community to readily redistribute deprivation or benefits without rupturing the social bonds that tie the community together.
   Adaptations on the other hand are the substantive changes to the social contract underlying a community and changes to the composition of the membership of the community itself. The resilience of a social contract will be tested by long-term deviations from an idealized “normal” status-quo and by extraordinary circumstances. As the social contract is renegotiated on a longer term basis members may opt-out or opt-into the community. Communities adapt over time in ways that render them unrecognizable to long-time members of that community.
   The concept of the status quo is subjective and malleable, and hence the subject of much rhetorical discussion. The leadership of a group is rooted in certain individuals’ ability to frame perceptions of the past and future. This subjective set of perceptions defines the framework for individual decisions on resilience, adaptability and participation in a community.
   Finally there is the limited span of human life and the spirit of extroversion that governs perceptions of the status quo. And perception of the status is the key to both resilience and adaptability. If there are no community members that recall a previous epoch and the community’s perception of normal circumstances and expected behavior, then departures from that previous order are irrelevant.
   An interesting case study would is the community of listeners to KTRU before and after the broadcast strength was increased and the antenna moved to for north Harris County.

3. Jen Mathis
   April 13th, 2009 @ 7:47 am

   Grace,

   Regarding your statement about the things needed to sustain formal organizations: I’m trying to build them into my organization’s model from the very start.

   The biggest challenges for me so far are getting the word out that the organization exists (with no marketing budget), and finding people who are resilient from the very beginning, and therefore willing to ride this thing through until it takes a physical form.

   Is the passion of just one person enough to make this happen? I hope so.

4. Laban Johnson
   April 13th, 2009 @ 1:48 pm

   The greatest of fires begin with a single spark (and a little blowing)

5. Christina
   April 17th, 2009 @ 4:33 pm

   Great ideas and links. Sometimes the hardest part of sustaining any community (online or otherwise) is keeping the members active and engaged. We’ve probably all witnessed the demise of an organization who lost a key figurehead and didn’t have enough resiliency to adapt and survive or even to grow from the loss.

   How do we give ownership to a critical mass of members? How do we give them voice? How do we transition leadership — or even build in smaller roles and positions from the beginning so that members feel invested enough that new natural leaders will emerge?

   It seems online tools used in smart ways can also bolster the sense of community. I’m in a program right now where they just launched a support site for their volunteers that includes a blog, discussion forums, and resources. Everything on the site is tailored to helping each volunteer do his/her job better, and each volunteer truly feels like his/her contribution can help others do theirs. Of course, it has all the momentum of a new project, and only time will tell if the activity and community is resilient. I believe it has a fighting chance because of the value it adds to every new volunteers’ experience. http://ctnation.citizenschools.net/

6. Valdis Krebs
   April 19th, 2009 @ 9:28 am

   You might enjoy this paper on building communities, which includes resilience/sustainability…

   http://orgnet.com/BuildingNetworks.pdf

7. grace
   April 20th, 2009 @ 6:44 pm

   Thank you for the pdf link – I really like the concept of the “core/periphery model” for sustainable community networks. One person can’t do it alone: it takes a core community of “network weavers” to connect and strengthen related networks into an even larger community. To borrow from metaphors that came before, this framework is more “rhizome” than either starfish or spider.

8. grace
   April 20th, 2009 @ 6:48 pm

   One person is enough if their passion becomes the spark that ignites the passion of others. The beauty of starting with no marketing budget is that you can attack this in a truly grassroots way with social media and word of mouth; and the people who come on board at that level already prove that they believe in it and are willing to work towards its success. More power to you … and you can always ask me to help spread the word!

9. Laban Johnson
   April 20th, 2009 @ 7:10 pm

   One thing about roles, they should never be too dependent on any single person’s abilities, as people come, people go.

   Try to break roles down to the lowest common denominator, people with multiple abilities can fill multiple roles, if they leave the tasks can be assigned out in different ways.

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