Photo by George P. Lewis, Horace Nicholls – Public Domain
I’ve been leading or supporting community-led action through collaborative problem solving 1 for more than a decade. Throughout this journey, I regularly come across new groups and organisations who are struggling to take their long list of ideas and turn them into on-the-ground action. At the same time, I also frequently see established groups get stuck or hit a ceiling after a period of hyper productivity, especially when they’ve lost their status as the dominant influencer in a space now crowded by other eager parties.
Getting community buy-in, regulatory approvals, recruiting helpers, and securing funding commitments for your ideas can be one of the most challenging aspects of community-led initiatives.
I thought I’d share some of the key principles that drive my approach, and also what I advise the various organisations and institutions I work with. A lot of the success I’ve encountered with collaborative problem solving is essentially about excelling at group work, understanding the context and constraints of the environment you want to shape, and adjusting when you’ve hit a road block.
I recently published the Guide to Community-Led Initiatives 2 through my role at the City of Fremantle. It articulates a few other best practices that might be useful to you.
All of the below might seem obvious, but I can guarantee that even the most established groups often need a reminder.
Patience, practice & perseverance
I repeat these three words to myself every day. It keeps me focused on the slow methodical work that’s required when organising community and facilitating change. There are going to be stops and starts, sprints and jogs, and probably a few wrong turns. You need patience to get through the ups and downs. You need practice to understand all the nooks and crannies of getting ideas funded and approved (especially when bureaucracy is involved). And you need perseverance to stay committed to the long game. It’s ok to slow down. It’s ok to take a break and come back to the work another time. I see people burnout or give up all the time. Even quick wins require a whole heap of upfront work.
Find focus; set priorities
Shopping lists get you nowhere. They end up looking like a set of demands that can easily be palmed off by decision makers and funding bodies. Set clear actions or goals by articulating what’s 1, what’s 2, what’s 3, etc. Clarify what you’re seeking to do now versus what you’re interested in pursuing in the future. New and established groups really struggle to do this piece and have the difficult conversations with their community about a way forward. I like what multi-platinum selling artist Pitbull says about this: “paso corto, vista larga”.3
Work with people who follow through
It’s easy to find people who want to just chat about ideas. Like good ideas, these people are everywhere. However, talking about the work has somehow been mistaken for doing the actual work. Recruit people who will help you do the many little tasks to move the idea forward; not just show up for the easy bits. They are rare, but they are out there. Finding people to own specific skillsets is key because you can’t do everything, and you don’t need 10 people on social media (yet).
Remove the outrage from the conversation
I once read that “if you’re freaking out all the time, it affects your ability to be rational”. I strongly agree. Not all problems require outrage and anger to make a point–issues that have a severe impact on human health and wellbeing are the exception (but even this gets co-opted by people who want their thing to jump the queue for attention). You can articulate urgency and importance in many ways. Use anger and outrage selectively and try to dull the noise. Learn to disagree constructively and remember that not every problem requires an activist mindset.
Stop scrambling to the finish line
Funding rounds happen every year. Decision makers have regular processes for approving or participating in programs and projects. Put time aside to fill out application forms and conduct the appropriate meetings. Decision makers can see a last-minute submission and are very likely to say no if they haven’t had a chance to properly review your request. Also: huffing and puffing and flailing to a deadline is a miserable way to live.
Be flexible and responsive
I always come back to a quote by my colleague Sarah Wilkinson: “intent can be strong but your scope needs to be flexible as the environment changes”. A common pitfall of turning ideas into action is clinging to the one solution or approach you’ve fallen in love with and refusing to adjust as the context and constraints around you do not match up. It’s important to reset or adjust your thinking regularly on this journey because you risk becoming irrelevant when the door closes on the solution you thought would succeed. I find having shared objectives or goals is way more powerful than locking into tactics and solutions because it helps you zoom out and reframe the problem as the environment changes. Be prepared to have difficult, sometimes tense, conversations with your partners when wrestling them away from a fixed approach.
Recognise what’s already in motion
Strong community ideas connect to the strategies, plans or policies that the community has already endorsed, and decision makers might have adopted. Review these documents and see how they might relate to your idea or how you can complement the work that’s already happening. Groups and decision makers may not want to double up or share resources. It’s even worse–and this is a personal bug bear–when groups ignore the work done to date or ignore the policies and procedures that decision makers are required to follow to force their ideas across the line.
Learn to be a stable, reliable, long-term partner
Success in community-led action comes down to results that are repeatable and scalable. It’s frustrating to see community ideas that have been wedged through as a trial or experiment, only to end up becoming a set and forget exercise with no plan for future care or maintenance. Projects and ideas like these are littered all across communities if you know where to look. I also pay particular attention to how people react when they are not given exactly what they want or are more focused on the optics of an opportunity over doing the work. You should aim to have your collaborators, partners, and funders coming back again and again wanting to deliver more opportunities with you. Also, just be kind to people! I see so many community groups leading with suspicion on projects with decision makers instead of leading with curiosity. There’s a difference.
Learn to handover or let go
I get disheartened when I see a once active and influential group become jaded; but most importantly they are ignored and no longer relevant. There comes a time when new blood is needed to refresh your approach or offer a different perspective. There comes a time where a door will close and you have to start over on what you’re trying to achieve and how to be relevant for the opportunities that are available. There comes a time when you just have to call it a day, let go of grudges, and move on. Lastly, there comes a time to handover the reigns to others who can relay forward to the next part of the long marathon that is community-led change–succession planning in community groups is something I’m exploring and will unpack another time.
I genuinely think this is a really good time for community groups because access to funding is everywhere. This also means it’s a very competitive space. You have to be super organised, focused, and capable to deliver what you say you’ll deliver. At the end of the day, I just want to help my community get that money and make good things happen.
- When individuals work together to address complex problems, leveraging diverse perspectives, knowledge, and experiences to generate innovative solutions. Teamwork makes the dreamwork–even if it means revisiting previous trauma from your high school and uni group work days. ↩︎
- Kudos to Sarah May, Courtney Owston, Lana Stephens, Shaun MacBean, Mac Bruce, Annie Gevers, Alli Doherty, and Courtney Wilmot for their help. ↩︎
- Translation: “Short steps, long vision”. Take small, consistent, and deliberate daily actions while keeping a long-term, ambitious goal in mind. This is a marathon, not a sprint. ↩︎
