community enhancements

Over the years, in my professional role, I have had the opportunity to help communities grow and expand. When I say communities, I mean business, towns, cities, colleges, healthcare organizations…and the list goes on.

A few years back I took a job that would test me as a professional but would help me grow more than any other time in my life. I took the seat in my office and soon realized that the company I was leading had been declining for about 20 years and people were ok with that. I observed that the community support was lacking. I realized that there had been no new projects to help that organization grow for quite a few years.

I knew that we needed to act fast to turn the ship or the future would be very bleak at best. The first thing I did was create a series of listening sessions in different communities and within the organization. A questionnaire was developed to obtain feedback from each listening session. Some sessions, approximately 15 sessions, were held and information gathered. About four weeks before each session a place was identified and invites were sent out to all in the geographic location. At the beginning of each session I laid the groundwork and purpose for the session. The discussions were rich and informing. In conclusion of each session we asked the participants to please give us some feedback. We asked the participants for the following:

• Gender

• Age

• Occupation

• Educational Level Attained

The key questions asked were:

• What are we doing well that currently serves your needs?

• What can we improve upon?

• What direction should we be taking with it current and future programs?

At the conclusion of each session I thanked each of them for their feedback and let them know we greatly appreciated them and their time.

These sessions were a game changer for this small company. We grew approximately 46% in 4 years, we enriched our customer’s satisfaction rate to 98%. We increased summer offering by 38%...it was a big deal!

One major outcome of the sessions was the creation of an action plan as well as 15 talking points about the business. The power in this was it helped everyone pull in the same direction and gave everyone the same talking points to discuss with friends and stakeholders. There is power in having a written plan and consistency.

A good friend of mine in Texas was facing a similar situation at his company. Years later when I shared the experience with him he stated, “I wish I would have known what you were going through and what actions you put in place. That type of plan would have been a life saver for us!”