Future Here Now: Future Ready Communities, next steps

Toolkit

The last two weeks’ posts dealt with some practical steps for using our understanding of how the future will be different from our past to drive more effective approaches to your business or organization, and to your own mindset. We also explored how some of the Ground Conditions that look like they’re going to underlie our future are likely to play out in our communities - cities, neighborhoods, and any collection of people who share a space or purpose.

Today we wrap up that question with some of the next steps that community leaders can take to help their communities adapt.

All of the posts in this series have shown you practical, hands-on techniques that you can use to build your future readiness today. Some of the posts in this series have been available to everyone, while others have been paywalled. If you have not gotten all of these posts, you can get the full archive, as well as all future posts and other tools at 25% off for a limited time. And you get a 7-day free trial period as well.

You can start building a future ready community today with a few steps. I won’t say these steps are simple, because they won’t happen overnight. But you can start almost immediately.

• If you don’t already have one, develop an open data portal - a web site that gives as much access to public information as humanly possible. This should include city, county, transportation agency, you name it. Any of that information that’s technically supposed to be available to the public, but usually hidden away in some kind of database that only two people know how to get to. Put links to all of those data sets on a public web site, and get your local tech people to help you build an API, which will encourage people who are learning programming and data visualization to use it.  And then publicize the heck out of it — and if you already have one, re-publicize it. That will start to show the community that you are seeking collaboration and not trying to hide information, which increases transparency and trust. And you might find that someone in your community can do something useful with that information that helps everyone.

• Start some open-ended discussion sessions with minority -led organizations or individuals. Be clear that the purpose isn’t to create some kind of Santa Claus list, and definitely avoid “listening sessions” or anything that hints of checking a “public participation” box. Make clear that the purpose is to change bad dynamics, to build relationships. But only start down this path if your leadership is willing to commit to it for the long term. Remember that trust is crucial to the kinds of relationships that transparency requires, and that trust is, above all, fragile.

• Challenge an assumption. It’s astonishing how often I find community leaders who are so deep in the minutiae that they don’t realize how little members of the community might know about how it actually works. For example, most community members don’t realize that different kinds of development have different impacts on the community’s expenses and revenues (unless that misunderstanding has already caused a crisis). Showing people how the average house/restaurant/warehouse etc. generates different kinds of taxes, which goes to different agencies, which is used for different things, does more than just increase civic literacy, as important as that is. Publicizing this kind of information starts to change community members’ picture of themselves - it shows them that they’re not passive or helpless, but that they have an important role in co-creating their community.

• Prepare to issue a good apology. Your community leadership might not have anything to apologize for right now, but rest assured…you will. And when information is easy to get and almost anyone can amplify their message, a bad or insincere apology can do far more damage than the original mistake.

  What does a good apology look like? This recent apology for a bad gaffe from the dating app Bumble actually gives a pretty good template: it

  • identifies the error,

  • acknowledges the hurt it has caused,

  • expresses regret and

  • takes active steps to use its resources to take at least a small step toward addressing the inequity at the root of the damage.

  Being prepared to issue a good apology when it becomes necessary will help maintain trust between community leadership and community members.

What else would you add? I’d love to hear what you think.