Toward a Vision of Sustainable Community Wealth: Taking Time for Process

A word from the Executive Director, Andrea Malmberg

 
I think it is pretty safe to say that there are few opportunities to productively engage with the diversity of people in our communities to solve problems of mutual concern. When we do “mix it up” it often results in conflict rather than consensus. Since we are a society that relies heavily on hired guns to advocate or fight against public policy, and our “news” largely comes from partisan commentators, it is no wonder that we find ourselves in a “civil cold war.” 

This, in my opinion is not a conducive environment to create the change needed in our communities. Instead, if we are going to someday see communities that are ecologically, socially, and financial prosperous we need to work together across group and ideological lines. But do we have the skills or the patience to seek consensus on the strategies that will lead to sustainable communities?

Most problems, especially ones as big as creating community wealth, appear irresolvable because the information base used to solve them is limited. Beliefs and behaviors become frozen in time, as our minds seek to create comfortable patterns in which to respond. The problem with this tendency is that it is exacerbated when we end up only hanging out with people that have similar beliefs and behaviors as we do. Learning and growing requires the thawing of the old pattern or belief and refreezing to the new.

Learning and growing is a requirement for consensus seeking, which means that a learning environment must be created. Consensus seeking recognizes that:  (1) We learn through experience; (2) We must be able to experience uncertain, uncomfortable conditions to learn; (3) It takes time in the front end of a decision to create a common knowledge base sufficient to make a consensus decision; and (4) Changing behaviors is more powerful than changing words.

With the intention of providing a place where people from all walks of life could build their capacity to find consensus on strategies that will lead to community wealth, Oregon Rural Action hosted Building Community Wealth:  A Program for Change in Pendleton, Ontario, Baker City, Cove, and John Day this spring. Facilitated by Jeff Goebel, nearly 100 people began the conversations about what sustainable community prosperity would look like.

The gatherings utilized a consensus seeking process created by Bob Chadwick (though I think he would say that all of the people that have ever used it created it). Bob Chadwick, coincidentally a former resident of La Grande, is nationally recognized for his abilities in bringing differing groups together to communicate and develop common solutions. He has pioneered the development of consensus-building that fosters creative solutions to old conflicts.  The concept of conflict goes beyond the idea of a squabble or a war to include things like the conflict that arises when there are job losses or when there is a natural disaster. Bob's meeting format yields very different results from conventional styles. Not compromise, not middle ground, not voting on priorities, but it is a respectful, honest, and effective method for moving diverse groups into new beliefs and behaviors. The Building Community Wealth Workshops showed that information from many different perspectives, when listened to, can create a new, shared knowledge base with which to resolve problems.

Participants in each workshop established what the best outcomes are for creating community wealth in each place. Fostering the best outcomes requires looking at beliefs, behaviors, strategies and actions. Yet, typically our outcome-based society is only focused on action plans or strategies.  What we learned through this process is that if the beliefs are not consistent with the plans and strategies, they will not be carried out. The behavior will tend to be incongruous with the action.

The collective statements that resulted from these workshops (which look as different as the individual communities themselves) can all be found on our website or by stopping by our office for a copy.  From these statements we can now develop the movement to make the best possible outcomes a reality.

Though it might at first appear that there were few tangible results from these meetings, the workshops lay some powerful foundations: voices rarely vocalized were heard, an amazing sense of diversity and respect filled the room of each gathering, and new relationships were created. This I believe is the first step in creating the communities in which we wish to live.  Won’t you join us in continuing that journey?