-Robert J. Leaver

Communities organize and behave based on a ‘stand’ for values that matter to them. This is true for organizations and places like a village. The value-stand may materialize in a manner that connects and serves, or separates and ‘dis-serves’, the whole community. For example, tolerance may breed diversity that in turn breeds innovation, leading to wealth creation.  Or intolerance may forge a wall of separation and animosity that leads to disorientation and dysfunction.

Often such value-stands are made unconsciously without a full understanding of the community in question, and more so, the community not understanding itself. In effect, not being conscious of who is in the community and what it stands for, how it is acting, how it is organized and performing, and how it owns or disowns its power to consciously craft what it longs to stand for and be. 

Communities matter to the well being of both organizations and places like a city. Through the process of crafting a community, communities of location – cities, neighborhoods or towns; communities of interest – trade associations, networks and online workgroups; and communities of organization – business, civic organizations, develop a deeper, felt-sense of community that places them at the center of the ‘game’ they are pursuing  – business, civic or artistic.

Crafted communities see themselves as the life-blood of any place where people come together to live, play or work. In such communities, differences and tensions openly fuel collaboration. Bonds of trust are palpable because differences and diverse gifts are respected, used and combine. Genius erupts and collectively mobilizes. Thus, people connect and partner to link capabilities for better solutions and opportunities. In these communities, people experience their distinct culture thriving and shaping their future. Social, economic, environmental and cultural identity – so critical for a sense of ownership and ‘belonging’ – provide a context for individual and group innovation that has impact. Overall, people are engaging each other – from all points of view and specialties – t o get results that matter to all – results they can’t achieve alone.

"Crafting Communities" engages and aligns people to craft, form and lead:  communities for action; communities for strategic thinking adn scenario making; communitities of practice adn reflection; communities of inters; communities for innovation; or communities for learning.  In effect, a community forms to address any challenge- business, civic or artistic.

The process of crafting communities, addresses diverse and complex questions and issues, like:

How do we work through the silo’s of organizational specialties – the splice it and dice it approach – to rally a community-centered/organization-wide approach so the community ‘feels’ and acts on a full opportunity for itself – an opportunity greater than what any specialty can pursue?

How do we best mobilize and combine the full capabilities of communities in any endeavor?

In forging strategy, how do we get people to continually think and do beyond their immediate sphere to embrace the whole place – organization or neighborhood – as a source of know-how and value? For example, if developers saw themselves as community builders of the public space between the buildings and the public squares adjacent to the building and not just builders of their buildings, they would add more value to their projects.

How do we turn waste in a city or village into profitable business opportunities, so we can reduce the adverse impact on the environment? 

Urban youth suicide continues to climb at outrageous rates – across all classes and ethnicities. How do we temper and redirect this, but only where it fits?

The loss of a middle class and the growing ‘great divide’ between those with money and those without is a ‘ticking time bomb’.  Our, North American culture is based on a healthy middle class with midlevels of wealth providing a sense of upward mobility. What is the way forward through this ‘great divide’ at a community level?

The disaster of New Orleans, destroyed slowly by water, would have been significantly altered for the good with more people coming together, more effectively, if the community had been knitted together across race, class and geography.  Katrina has shaken the psyche of America. How do we ensure that disasters of this magnitude are led and managed better because a community is fully present for all its members?

The Process of Crafting Communities

Crafting occurs by hand with skill.  Crafting is a process not a one time event. Crafting Communities occurs in a ‘studio’ of people meeting in a special place several times in a process. The studio is structured as a ‘community conversation’ in a network composed of diverse players with the right know-how to examine the economic, social, cultural and environmental conditions and issues at the centre of a community.  A studio may address a specific issue, forge a strategic plan, evolve a new living structure and culture, or design a new century neighborhood or trade association. The studio is a hands-on learning experience in the art of consciously crafting community. The studio process may be held in the community in question or in an environment external to the community.

A community – in any organization or a place like a village – requires an active polis or ecosystem. It is composed of three interacting variables, structured as a matrix: people with diverse operating roles and disciplines, many entry points that serve as conversational states and convening places and spaces.

Build community of people using diverse operating styles and disciplines. What are the results when these diverse kinds of people collide and combust: investors, creators, irritants, entrepreneurs, mavens, soul keepers, social capital builders, networkers and business builders?  And further…what happens when diverse disciplines come together like artists and scientists?

Use many conversational states with people engaging each other based on a preference or operational style: the poetic, the conceptual, the wild card, the integration, the cusp (for example a dilemma) or the concrete like a project or practice.  It is not that one entry point is a better way into the conversation than the others.  Rather all are required in conversation to get great thinking and execute effective action for the greater good of the community.

Create engaging places and spaces for convening. Pay attention to the vibe of a place for people to gather and work together in a business as well as how a building in a city openly engages the street, inviting you in for coffee and a chat. Attend to aesthetics or the “music of a place” – the sensation of how a place touches and invites your heart as well as action.   

Problems that Require a Community to Solve

Diverse people, using all the ways to be in a conversation, held in the right places, are a community crafting itself.  Crafting a Community takes many forms including:

Process #1: Make Leaderfulness present throughout the community.  Everyone is a leader. Thus, the process creates liberated leaders as self-directed learners, thinkers, doers, collaborators, and community builders with soul, working as ‘humble maestros’ of change for the greater good.

Process #2: Design the community’s preferred future. Knowing the preferred future grounds the community in their unique sense of place – market or neighborhood – and helps forge the future, grounded in a past that matters, from continuous strategic thinking and planning, inside a living structure and a values-driven culture.

Process #3: Orchestrate networks and movements to get better results. Such networks and movements may operate inside organizations, among organizations and in cities – composed of the right know how and passion to get better results. The process maps and musters those people with know-how in their constituent network and those with a passion for change. The process identifies and amplifies the hubs of know-how, influence and coordination. Effective hubs are like our bodies, connecting the head, heart and soul.

Process #4: Foster the making of cities and whole neighborhoods.  The process fosters healthy local economies that are alive for and shaped by the people living there. Jobs, wealth, culture, a sense of place, the built environment engaging the street, are present and vibrant.