Building Community Capability

Vibrant communities are successful. They are healthy places in which to live and prosper. They attract new people and empower and nurture most residents over time.

From my experience and reading, healthy communities include these traits:

• Care – about what goes on around you
• Communicate – tell others what you know; ask others what they know
• Trust – get to know others around you; trust who and what they are; you’ll earn the same
• Share – spread your blessings to others; be willing to receive them, too
• Collaborate – work with others to solve problems or accomplish common tasks
• Cooperate – rely on others to pitch in; do the same
• Innovate – combine ideas & passions; create new solutions, processes, products
• Monitor – inspect what you expect; revise operations for better results
• Celebrate – take notice of success and give thanks

I wonder how many communities could become vastly better if they worked on each of the above components? Might this be a good task to share with others in your community? Assess how your town measures up? Build an agenda for improvement?

Let me know what you think.  We can share thoughts here and work on this together.

March 19, 2012