Team-Network-Community System

Introduction

It’s awfully hard to navigate territory if you can’t even perceive what’s around you. It’s a lot easier when you can recognize the major beings that populate that world. For instance, walking through the forest you want to know about trees and paths, about rocks and roots, about animals and storms. And walking through the city you want to recognize streets and cars, sidewalks and bikes, people and animals. It’s no different with community. Of course at the level of bare reality there are no categories; every person, every institution, every resource is unique. But honoring that uniqueness, at its extreme, makes it impossible to act. That’s why this [theory of community/community legend/key to community/framework for (thinking) community] is here: to identify those people, institutions, and resources, their subgroups and characteristics that make it easier to navigate, that make it easier to think community. Fundamentally, this is simply a mental tool to facilitate effective action in building community.

Function of the Framework

This [framework of community] is intended to make it easier to act when building community. The introduction compared this naming of the core players in community to naming the beings encountered in a forest walk. With this set of core players, and an understanding of their engagement, one can create an overview of the landscape; one can begin to draw a map of the community. This much is essential. But it is also essential to understand that a map of a living entity must always be thought in two temporal dimensions: first as a static map and second as a dynamic one. These two temporal perspectives fulfill different purposes. Let’s return to the forest briefly. In navigating the forest one normally has two distinct tasks. One is to take each next step. There might be a level path ahead, or a knobby root jutting out, or a tree that has just fallen over. These must be taken into consideration at every step. The other is to proceed toward a destination. Rarely do we take a walk through the forest without having any idea of where we’re going, and once we do we need to take in the larger terrain and plan accordingly, remaining sensitive dynamic conditions such as the weather, season, and time of day. Failing to do either of these task can end badly. Paying attention only to the next step will likely get one lost; paying attention only to the destination will likely lead one to stumble or fall.

Returning to community, the need for these two perspectives is quite the same. The first perspective – as a static map, a lay of the land – allows the community builder and others to see the people, organizations, and resources in their community at the current time. This allows the community builder to navigate the community as effortlessly as possible whenever new opportunities arise or a change in course is due. For instance, should a new innovator arrive on the scene, with the passion to start a great project but without all the necessary resources, the community builder should – ideally – be able to refer to the static community map to find those resources and try and build a connection to move the project forward. Or if a previously unengaged community member should come forward with interest in active community developments, the community builder should be able to point them toward appropriate network access points. Thus the static map of the community – having a rough mental picture of the people, organizations, and resources in the community at any given time – is necessary in order to make the next step whenever the terrain of the community changes.

The other perspective – as a landscape developing over time, community as a process – allows the community builder, together with engaged community members, to understand the current phase of development the community is in, and thereby plan appropriate events, communications, etc. As we outline below, communities can be seen to go through various stages of development in which relationships are stronger or weaker, the number of actively engaged community members varies, resources are more open or closed to innovators, and so on. These varying conditions of a community demand appropriate facilitation on the part of the community builder, and thus – although more speculative in nature than the static map – it is also essential for the community builder to have a rough understanding of what stage the community is currently in. For instance, many of today’s social systems share a common starting point: organizations and institutions are slowly failing, but continue to hold on to the majority of the common resources, general community members feel despaired and powerless, innovators are many, but lack appropriate resources and connections to the old system, and a general sense of hopelessness pervades all. Yet, there are communities in which organizations and institutions are actively searching for the way forward, community members know how to access the network and are encouraged to do so, innovators are actively supported, and hope and creative energy are beginning to win the day. How the community builder should act in each of these cases is very different, and that’s why it’s important for them to have a picture of their community as it develops over time.

Thus learning to see these core players of community fulfills two main tasks. First, from the static perspective, it helps community builders conceptualize the players in their systems, and therefore better see how they relate to one another. Second, from the dynamic perspective, it helps them understand how the community can change over time, thereby guiding the community builder’s strategy for change and priorities of work.

[At a meta-level this framework of community will also aid our team in developing community mapping tools!]

Open Questions About This Framework

• Should people and resources be mapped separately or together?
• Is the map best used as a rough mental framework, or does it make sense to create a visual map for reference?
• Language can be a big deal: Do we want to continue to use the distinctions ‘status quo’ vs. ‘reform’, ‘old’ vs. ‘new’, and so on? Or, do we want to be a bit more subtle and use another distinction that effectively covers that meaning, without triggering the related political, cultural, generational associations? One suggestion would be to put all those people, institutions, and resources that are “working toward a vibrant system” under the category “network”, while labeling those not in that group members of the general community. Then one could talk about trying to build a larger network of actively engaged community members, rather than using language that elicits thoughts of a movement.
• Do we want these maps to be public or private or somewhere in between? Categories that are useful for the community builder – such as an innovator or someone who is actively working against change – may be destructive if made public.
• The same must be asked of the resource mapping regarding openness.
• What role does geography play in a community map?