Sustainable Communities

Throughout the general election the national media has led us, or certainly me, to focus on national issues when trying to decide who to vote for. Now before I go any further I want to state that this is not a political blog, (it is about my thoughts as a Norwich marketing consultant) in fact I work hard to try and keep my personal views on politics away from the work I do as I think it can get in the way of positive working and collaboration. When trying to decide how to vote, there is so much coverage about the state of the country’s finances, the challenges in education, the state of our NHS, the need to deal with an aging population, and of course the sensitive subject of our foreign policy in the Middle East. With all this to consider, I find it easy to completely overlook the fact that actually you are not voting for a party to govern as a whole, or for the next Prime Minister, but for a local candidate to represent the community in West Minister, and work on behalf of constituents to improve the local environment for everyone. This means considering a completely different set of issues to decide who to vote for. There is local crime, concerns about street lights being turned off for half the night, the need for better local services for parents with young children, the still pressing issue of dualing the A11 and improving train transport links into London.

Last month I went to an event where I heard from a guest speaker from Inspire East. Inspire East have developed an interesting model demonstrating what they believe is necessary for a sustainable community and I think it is pretty comprehensive. Whilst the model can be used to build a new community or a new community based organisation, it can also be used to evaluate existing communities – and perhaps their strengths and weaknesses. By looking at the relative focus of each aspect of a community as they describe, one could draw conclusions about the culture and society of the community. Interesting stuff!

Although the model is primarily aimed at community development, I also think the model could be used as a template for the key considerations of a board in a business organisation. There are other models and papers that tackle the subject of an optimised board but this is a good start – and I like the colours!