Do you know which trends (positive and negative) will have the greatest impact on your council’s community over the next 12 months, and more importantly how will council and community respond to these trends?
As a leadership team, you will be thinking about your next areas of greatest vulnerability. Whether council has plans to address these vulnerabilities? What other information you will need to know to develop plans to respond and who else needs to be involved?
Being as prepared as possible and thinking about some innovative ways to do this will ensure your organisation can respond as efficiently and effectively as it can. The key emerging trends in achieving this success can include:
Leadership development for elected officials and staff.
Strengthening community networks so your council has high-trust relationships with organisations outside the bureaucracy.
Being a place for all people by making connections with diverse members of the community and inviting them to participate in council services and initiatives.
Creating innovation teams across departments to break down silos and use interdisciplinary groups to address some of your biggest challenges.
Broadening the definition of Sustainability by going beyond traditional environmental components to include economic and social justice factors.
Developing contingency plans for both rapid growth and decline.
Investing in Open Government and Smart Citizens by sharing community data and engaging citizens digitally.
Undertaking these actions can lead to reinventing Local Government for your community and helping them to determine why local government exists and what the role of government should be for the next generation.