Wise Community Decisions
What Should We Do?
We all ask that question, don’t we… and when we’re dealing with a community, if we’re honest, we have to admit that we’re trying to make that decision about probably the most complex environment we’ll ever encounter. Everyone has different opinions, everyone things something different should be done, and it’s not often clear exactly how one issue might impact something else. Should that make use nervous about making decisions that will impact our community’s future. Heck, yes it should.
A big part of the problem is that our decision-making methods in dealing with communities are 
pretty primitive. A lot of times, what we do tends to draw more on unexamined assumptions, playground rules and seat-of-the-pants winging it than any kind of rational, systematic method. Then, when we don’t get the results we want, or we discover down the road that something unexpected has thrown us off our neatly-laid path, we look at each other, bewildered, wondering what went wrong.
The real kicker is that the knowledge of how to do much of this better is already out there. People have been studying how organizations work (and don’t work) for more than 100 years — socioligists, organizational theorists, educators and others. Leading industries and organizations are already putting this knowledge to work, and it allows them to avoid many of the sinkholes that sometimes swallow our efforts. Perfect? Of course not. But a whole lot better? You betcha.
The Wise Economy Workshop is continually working on methods for bringing the decision-making tools and methods used in these fields and others to work in local communities. We believe that we can help you break deadlocks, avoid false assumptions, get your hands around possible unintended consequences, and set a more successful direction for your community or organization. Is that worth doing? Heck yes, it is.
Here’s a few examples of how a Wise Economy approach has helped communities make better decisions:
Ohio-Kentucky-Indiana Fiscal Impact Model
