Podcast Archive
Strategic Drivers for Comprehensive Community Change
For communities wanting to collaborate on complex issues such as poverty, a comprehensive plan can get people moving. In this podcast, Garry Loewen discusses a resource that uses strategic drivers as a starting point for change and action.
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Where do you start if your community wants to work together on a tough issues like reducing poverty? How do you use your starting point to think about the next steps? In this podcast, Garry Loewen describes a resource that uses strategic drivers as a starting point to plan for comprehensiveness. Become acquainted with a strategy and an approach to “living out” a comprehensive approach to reducing poverty.
Access Podcast Highlights:
- The Roots of the Strategic Driver Resource
- Four Ways to be Comprehensive
- Scaling Up or Down
- Other Frameworks
- What’s Next
- Reflection Questions
- Links & Resources
- Meet Garry Loewen
The Roots of the Strategic Driver Resource
This resource began as part of a neighbourhood planning workshop in the first Communities Collaborating Institute. Garry noticed that groups were struggling with how to be comprehensive with limited resources. Many groups knew how to think comprehensively, but were stumped on where to start to put a comprehensive plan into action.
The process of considering strategic drivers helped them to see how they could start with the thing they knew best, and turn it into something comprehensive as time, expertise and resources allowed. The strategic driver approach was also working well for Vibrant Communities initiatives across the country, but groups needed a resource like this one to help them think about how to build comprehensive approaches around those drivers.
In this clip, Garry explains how the Urban Aboriginal Strategy applied the technique to choose a strategic driver to help them reach multiple outcomes.
Garry explains that there are at least four ways that initiatives can approach the challenge of being comprehensive:
1. From The Outset – You may elect to work on a broad range of issues or a broad cross section of groups from the beginning. For example, neighbourhood groups often seek to renew all aspects of a geographical area for all residents, so they start with a large range of diverse initiatives.
2. Using Strategic Drivers – You might start with a focus on one or a few areas or issues and expand your effort over time as your group finds more capacity or resources. Groups often start with the most immediate issue, or the issue with greatest support, then build from there.
3. Be Opportunity Driven – When a group decides to take on new initiatives may be dependent on outside opportunities, for example on the availability of a policy opening or media interest. Groups may identify a range of issues at the beginning, but only take them on in response to opportunities.
4. Hybrid – This is a combination of the “Strategic Driver” and “Opportunity Driven” approaches - A group may agree to devote most of their resources to one or several areas with potential high impact, but they reserve some capacity to respond to good opportunities to make an impact in other areas as they arise.
In this clip, Garry explains how the North End Housing Project in Winnipeg expanded over time to include many other activities that benefited their target group and resulted in a safer and more attractive community.
A simple example that uses this technique would be a housing initiative that knows from the beginning that their sole strategic driver will be housing, and that all other activities will flow from there.
The Urban Aboriginal Strategy’s experience in Winnipeg is a more advanced example. In that case, the initiative asked small groups to start with a different strategic driver at the centre and see what activities flowed from different drivers. Then they compared the results - to see which outcomes looked most powerful.
Groups can take the technique even further by fleshing out several options, then gathering research on a number of the options. They can then use a formal and structured rating technique for choosing between the options.
The concept of strategic drivers can be used in combination with other frameworks for developing community building and poverty reduction. For example, in this resource, Garry incorporates ideas on resiliency developed by Sherri Torjman in her book, Shared Space: The Communities Agenda.
Sherri outlines four clusters of interventions that help create resilience - sustenance, adaptation, engagement and opportunity. On page nine of the resource, Garry shows how activities that arise from a strategic driver might be clustered in this way.
This analysis might serve as a checklist to help groups see where they are being comprehensive and where they might be falling short. The exercise can also stretch groups’ imaginations and help them think of initiatives that they could add to move towards a higher level of comprehensiveness.
Here, Garry gives examples of activities that fit the clusters that Sherri suggests, and how they might link to your strategic driver.
Garry explains that this resource is a living document that will change with the experiences of the groups that use it. For example, the resource does not include techniques to help groups decide between courses of action, where more than one option presents itself. He suggests that sometimes choices like these are made intuitively, or through applying simple techniques like dot-mocracy. Sometimes decisions will need to be made using more sophisticated techniques like ranking and rating exercises. Working that out will still be a challenge for groups.
GOING DEEPER
- To what extent does our community poverty reduction effort reflect a comprehensive approach to reducing poverty?
- Where are some ‘strategic drivers’ in our community that might have many links to other elements of poverty and secure widespread support?
- How and when can our community use the technique described in this resource?
Comprehensive Approach to Poverty Using Strategic Drivers - This resource describes how communities can use strategic drivers as a starting point to plan for comprehensiveness. The resource incorporates the resiliency framework outlined by Sherri Torjman of the Caledon Institute for Social Policy.
Shared Space - This online seminar, based on the book by Sherri Torjman of the Caledon Institute, examines the vision and associated goals, the methods and the actions communities are taking to create economic and social well-being. It includes Sherri’s analysis of the four clusters of interventions that create resilience - sustenance, adaptation, engagement and opportunity.
The Poverty Compendium – This resource categorizes 147 strategies for reducing poverty and describes frameworks and processes that groups use to move towards comprehensiveness.
Poverty and Poverty Reduction - This three-part online seminar series examines alternative approaches to conceiving poverty and poverty reduction. It seeks to strengthen the capacity of communities to make choices about how best to frame, unfold, measure and communicate about local poverty reduction efforts.
Comprehensive Strategies for Deep & Durable Change - This online seminar frames the concept of “comprehensiveness” and outlines the strengths and limitations of such approaches for achieving deep and durable outcomes. It is the first session in a four part series that includes this session.
Urban Aboriginal Strategy – Garry refers to the Winnipeg arm of this initiative as an example of a group who considered many different strategic drivers when planning their work.
The Aspen Institute – The strategic driver resource builds on the work of the Aspen Institute. The mission of the Aspen Institute is to foster values-based leadership, encouraging individuals to reflect on the ideals and ideas that define a good society, and to provide a neutral and balanced venue for discussing and acting on critical issues.
Garry Loewen - Early in his working life, Garry held senior management positions with Air Canada, including Executive Assistant to the President and General Manager of Air Canada’s operations at Toronto International Airport. He then served as a parish minister for five years. From 1999 to 2002, Garry served as Executive Director of the North End Community Renewal Corporation in Winnipeg, and from 1999 to 2000, was Executive Director of The Canadian Community Economic Development Network. He was also Community Economic Development Director for the Mennonite Central Committee Manitoba from 1991 to 2000. Garry is currently self-employed as a community and economic development consultant. Garry helped found and has been an active leader of Vibrant Communities since 2002.
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