Moving Past the Talking Phase: Reimagining Our Resources for Real Change

Let’s talk about moving past the talking phase…

Nope, not that “talking”- but the one that graduates people from discussing opportunities and setbacks to reimagining, recombining, and activating resources in community to make the possible real and translate supercreative problem-solving into vision-informed outcomes.

Individuals and orgs in my community and beyond have often worked to bring people together to talk about their issues or challenges- whether, in our case, that’s things like talent attraction/retention, regional branding, housing, quality of life... And that’s vital, especially when done thoughtfully and strategically (and with a diversity of stakeholders) to understand what we’re facing from different points of view, but that can’t be the last step or else we’ll be just “talking” forever.

This is where having Vision comes into play: Who do we want to be as a community 2, 20, 200 years from now? What is that overlapping image of the future we want realized, and how do we cooperate and mobilize together to get there? Without something clear and compelling to work toward, or by just stopping shy of an aimless or formless “hey, maybe we should do something about x”, there comes little incentive to move on from talking and nothing to hold ourselves and today’s micro and macro decisions accountable to for future progress.

There needs to be a talking stage. There needs to be visioning stage. But there also needs to be a stage that asks of everyone who claims to care and believe in the case at hand, “What are you willing to contribute to make a solution or alleviation possible, to help bring that vision to fruition?”

And what that contribution is can (and should) vary for this to work. Some may have money or time/bandwidth or necessary infrastructure. Others may have great foresight or a strategic mind or their creative craft. Maybe someone has physical space, or influence and connections. No matter what everyone has to contribute, if they supposedly care about this problem enough to want to see it change, they need to be willing to put forth something for the possibility of a better tomorrow. [Important sidebar: As a creative and entrepreneur, I cannot emphasize enough- please don’t take this to mean we can assume everyone can or should give of their talents for free! If so, let them offer that up as their contribution. And if not, keep reading to see how we can still work with that.] And yet even after identifying those willing contributors and their contributions, we can’t stop there either. 

Here is the pure magic that a lot of efforts stop short of: Once we have an idea of what resources are available in this communal pot, we can look at how we can (re)combine and reimagine those resources to create new modes of impact and make progress toward that shared (or at least overlapping) dream, goal or vision.

With this, we now have the ability to create and work more as a “whole”, a functioning interconnected and interdependent system that is greater than purely the identification and sum of parts. That’s how you start to enable transformative results.

We talk about the importance of partnerships, but do we really understand the power of them and what they can lead to? When you look at public-private partnerships- one notable example being the “Innovation Triangle” that comprised of government, academia, and the private sector coming together for the creation of the Internet- you can see incredible and paradigm-shifting things can occur. These kinds of multi-sector, multi-industry partnerships aren’t truly effective without there being a presence of agents who bring something that another party doesn’t have, and who vice-versa, don’t have what another party has the ability to bring to the table. Where a governmental body might have a budget or influence on policy, they may not have the ability to move as quickly. Where a corporation may have access to more freed up funds for causes, they might not have the bandwidth to be boots on the ground. Where another party might have more of the flexibility and mobility the others are limited in, they might not have the creativity to think up new approaches that an artist/creative excels in and can be compensated using our now available financial resources to execute. When we take these components and combine them to better leverage and energize them toward our desired vision or outcome, that’s where value can be realized. And that’s what innovation is, what reimagination is fueled by.

While we’re seeing this in pockets of practice through things like the integration of residencies into universities and businesses, the formation of innovation and creative districts, the development of branding cross-over campaigns, and the cultivation of unique organizational partnerships, we need to see more of this at a greater community development level.

So let’s sit and talk, yes. Let’s layout each of our unique contributions on the table. But then let’s create pathways of impact by strategically pairing those contributions together toward a grander image of what our community could be. Much like a LEGO with indentations that enable pieces and parts to come together to build something greater and stronger than any one piece itself could, each individual or organization can play a part by understanding what they can and cannot bring and optimizing and leveraging those assets in community with others.

Maybe, just maybe, we have the opportunity to do something different- to see what was once just potential become actualized, to shift the tide of apparent obstacles and challenges in our favor.

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