Kate Downing Khaled | Founder & CEO
Would you stay accountable to your community, even if it meant shifting decision-making power, or stepping down from your role?
That might sound extreme, but this actually happened during our strategy development work with Heart of the Beast Theater (HOBT) in South Minneapolis.
After making a powerful promise to act on community insights, we heard an overwhelming amount of feedback that HOBT should take the lead from intersectional BIPOC artists in their neighborhood to decide what was next for their organization.
Heart of the Beast knew that this was the moment to take action — not only to preserve their financial sustainability, but also to rekindle their connections with the South Minneapolis community.
So HOBT made a decision to transfer leadership and brought in a new group of partners to lead their strategy — Free Black Dirt, an artistic partnership formed by Minneapolis-based collaborators Junauda Petrus and Erin Sharkey along with Lisa Marie Brimmer.
But this year, the MayDay festival returned, reimagined as a block party in collaboration with other community organizations.
This is just one example of the power of a public promise, but there are hundreds more.
To create a more effective and less extractive strategy, you must define how your user feedback will be put to use, and honestly share what type of real decision-making power your community actually has along the way.
I won’t lie — this can feel quite scary. For organizations AND the individuals within them.
Committing to a promise means committing to learning in public, and being held accountable. It means that you might mess up, and everyone will know. It means that you’ll have to share power to figure out what to do next.
But ultimately, creating a public promise only stands to benefit the investment you’re making in redesigning your strategy and gathering community solutions.
Extracting community insights, knowledge, wisdom, and ideas without making a commitment in return is how your organization burns bridges and loses trust.
Think about it — if someone asked you for all your best ideas, but then launched a new strategic initiative that had nothing to do with the insights you shared…would you be inclined to go to that launch event? Would you trust that new “community resource?” Would you sign up for that new service?
I know I wouldn’t.
Prioritizing trust and accountability is the right thing to do. And it ALSO leads to community buy-in, which increases your return on investment, and the ultimate effectiveness of your new strategy.
Public promises don’t usually mean that you need to commit to leaving your leadership role. And not every organization should commit to acting on every single idea from their community.
Instead, it’s more important for public promises to be self-aware and actionable. They should be written in plain language, so anyone could read and understand what your organization is planning to do with their feedback, and how they can be involved.
Standing behind beautiful words isn’t what matters to us. Instead, we want to stand behind honest ones.
Crafting a public promise takes introspection, intentionality, and a foundation of self-awareness.
Feeling overwhelmed? That’s exactly why we created the Get Started Gathering Community Insights guide – a step-by-step workbook to help you kick off your strategy development process, including how to craft a public promise. Download it now on our website.
