5.3.4 Phase One: Thinking Strategically

The ability of a society to develop its economy is fundamentally dependent on its capacity for strategic thinking. Without it, community members run the risk of utilizing the underlying riches in their system sparingly by attempting to solve their problems in a piecemeal or haphazard manner. They are less likely to comprehend how their choices will affect the community’s future prosperity and are less able to recognize potential strategic intervention areas.

Strategic thinking in a regenerative setting emphasizes the potential that exists inside a living system and is only waiting to be pushed forward and realized. This is considerably different from a strategy that aims to take advantage of a circumstance by influencing the forces at play. Regeneration, in contrast, is thought to focus on evolutionary tactics.

This necessitates the development of a set of skills that go further than traditional strategic thinking, and these capabilities must be created as part of an overall process for strategic planning. Living systems frameworks can be useful in teaching people how to think about complicated, dynamic systems without breaking them up into separate components. Second, individuals need to develop the ability to fully assume responsibility for their own actions, development, state of someone being, will and determination, and personal agency. Third, people need to learn how to focus on the essential components of their task while disregarding the extraneous details. Fourth, people need to learn to appreciate place as a living system, recognizing the intricate web of social, environmental, economic, and cultural factors that influence it and its potential.

Working on their neighborhood helps residents develop these thinking skills by creating a strategic direction for the neighborhood’s future that is based on a thorough understanding of who it is and what it might become. The following step is to translate this orientation into an ever-evolving collection of leveraging pursuits and actions that are intended to motivate community members to invest in realizing their individual and communal potential.