Change does not come easily. Successful change around community-based issues is  particularly difficult to achieve, primarily because of the difficulty in arranging a truly collaborative process, arriving at consensus, and making things actually happen.

Why do community stakeholders have such difficulty reaching agreement on critical  issues? Job preservation, funding competition, interpersonal conflicts, philosophical  differences, and the fear of losing clout block the decision-making process during  community change efforts. These problems must be addressed in a straight-forward manner, in order for the collaborative effort to result in a program of change that has an honest chance to succeed. After all, change must always be about people , first and foremost; too many change efforts fail because the people component is in bad shape.

Creating an Initial Vision

Mostly in response to an ongoing economic development crisis within Southwest Virginia, two regions came together in 1993 to form The New Century Region, comprised of the Roanoke Valley and the New River Valley, which includes 11 counties, 5 cities, and 34 towns. A visioning process was undertaken by its governing board, The New Century Council, and over 1,000 citizen volunteers participated in the formulation of 152  strategies over a three-year period in seven key areas: Economy, Education, Quality of Life and Environment, Health and Safety, Infrastructure, Governance and Leadership. Eighteen participating organizations, including chambers of commerce, economic development organizations, and planning district commissions from across the New Century Region, provided support to the effort.

By all appearances, everything was progressing well - until the goals began to emerge and the implementation phase began. The lack of community leadership was obvious, and the competition among community organizations began to take its toll on the visioning process. The idea of change was embraced only until it became obvious that change would, indeed, affect some of the very participating organizations that had supported the visioning process. Suddenly, several leaders became divisive and many of the citizen volunteers began to grow restless, fearing that their time and energy had been wasted. In retrospect, it should have been apparent that the vision itself was not manageable: 152 strategies were too many and several key organizations and constituencies were not  represented. Fortunately, the perseverance of a few interested citizens resulted in some key changes that would keep the visioning process alive. To revitalize the process, the change management program was reorganized to broaden leadership and refocus energy.

Lessons Learned

There are lessons to be learned from our New Century visioning process that should be beneficial to our continued efforts and to other Turning Point partnerships.

Collaborative Leadership - Communities must develop a new leadership model. Gone are the days where the decisions of a few will be embraced, or even tolerated, by the community at large. People are more skeptical than ever and are better connected and informed than ever; accordingly, they expect to be included in the decision-making and change process. The collaborative process espoused by Turning Point is particularly timely.

Consensus - Achieving consensus must be an outcome of the collaborative process if change is to be successful. We also caution against letting the opinions of a few vocal individuals or organizations bog down the process and prevent arriving at a  consensus strategy. Strong collaborative leadership is needed to overcome natural "no change" defenses.

Action - Successful change management must be exemplified by action. The  collaborative process should identify a few key initiatives for immediate implementation. Success begets success. If successful change can become readily accepted within the community, then the list of activities and participants can grow exponentially. Successful implementation demonstrates the viability of the change process in  the most powerful manner possible and  provides the very credibility the change process needs.

Partnership - Our experiences in Southwest Virginia have highlighted a principle that we have defined as "connectivity ." Issues facing our communities today are too  complex to allow any one individual or  organization to solve them. Rather, a team of problem-solvers from a broad range of community organizations should be  identified, and specific duties should be  assigned to those individuals and organizations that are best suited to solving the given problem. Every organization has strengths and weaknesses; successful change management requires maximizing the strengths while avoiding the weaknesses. Only this "connectivity" among individuals and organizations can produce the collective wisdom and broad range of talents, abilities and resources needed to address the complex issues we face today.

This, of course, means there are no longer a few leaders in any community that have all the answers; no longer can any one organization pretend to be the "top dog." There must be plenty of chairs around the change management table, together with a willingness to fill them with truly diverse community representation. Considerable time and energy needs to be spent  identifying prospective individuals and organizations and getting them to agree to participate. This is not a simple process.

The Turning Point process provides an opportunity for successful change, using a new model of community leadership. The New Century Region is proud to be a partnership organization involved in the Turning Point process.

 Robert Glenn, Jr. is a board member on The New Century Council. The New Century Council, located in southwest Virginia, is one of three communities in partnership with the Commonwealth of Virginia to receive a Turning Point grant.