Leverage local knowledge and initiative: Great Place is about people working closely within their community to understand and embrace the complexity of today’s challenges, generate strategic change ahead of change, and to own their future. In this way all present initiatives and groups are bought together as a ‘group of groups’ to work together without replacing or duplicating existing community initiative and capability in formulating and activating a whole of community, integrated strategy.
Re-affirm and re-think ‘our place’: The challenge outlined above calls a community to question: What constitutes a great place in this environment? What strategies does our community need to remain or become a great place? What do we value and what value are we committed to adding? Different communities value different things, so each community defines their own sense of place for what makes sense to them.
Formulate and act on a whole of community strategy: The community is involved in teaching, learning and formulating whole community strategy in the face of complex change. This is driven and owned by the community, with assistance from local coaches, in collaboration with business, government and non-profit organisations. It integrates and compliments all elements of community including their social, business/economic, environmental, cultural, aesthetic, education, built form, technology, health and civic leadership/governance capabilities.
Work in sync with the power of their supporting organisations: There is no doubt that we are all in this together. Along with the development of whole community strategy there will be opportunities for organisations to apply a similar approach to their own strategy generation. Opportunity optimisation, risk minimisation, sustainable wealth creation and customer synchronization within communities will be at the fore. This strategic partnership and the great work and great places that it generates will be worn as a badge and brand of honour for all participating organisations.
Generate a movement toward a resilient future: Though mitigating risk and discovering new opportunities is a critical component, the end-game for Great Place at every scale and for all sectors of community is to generate a resilient future. Defined as: whole communities (people, place and organisations) dynamically self-organizing their capabilities within and ahead of changing conditions to generate value.
Catalyse self-organisation at the local level: Great Place communities and organisations will survive and thrive based on the merits of this proposition and the resulting action of the people involved. The initial Great Place proposition is but a catalyst that offers a strategic process (the Resilient Futures Framework), training and coaching, an element of coordination, a platform on which civic and organisational leaders can come together for mutual benefit, and the challenge of generating a resilient future for all in Australia. What happens next is always up to each local community and the organisations involved.
