From an organisational change perspective, community development is important because helping your community to develop can help your organisation to develop.

Community expectations help to shape organisations' sense of what's legitimate. Helping local people understand water management better - so that they understand why it is appropriate to expect a lot more from water managers than we did twenty years ago - can help local water managers (like local Councils) learn to think differently.

From a long term perspective, in democratically governed communities like Australia, community expectations play an important role in shaping the trajectory of change. It is much easier to catalyse changes that are broadly aligned with the trajectory of change in communities' expectations. So it makes sense for advocates of change to support the development of community understanding and dialogue in the areas of interest to them.

For material on how to do community development, see Community Development and Education.

To do it in a way that catalyses change:

1. make sure that the content of your community development and education programs reflects current best practice and helps people see the way ahead, and
2. as with all change management, stay attuned to what, in practice, is helpful in catalysing change (see Change Management for a more extended discussion of this).

It is particularly useful - from the perspective of championing particular changes in urban water management - when you recognise that (some of) your community are, are or are likely to be able to, think more innovatively than your organisation.

In those contexts, helping these people understand the issues, and understand how to raise them in ways that your organisation can hear, can make a helpful contribution to enabling change.

Potentially this is politically delicate work.

A perfect understanding of such risks is never possible, but it makes sense to:

1. check out with colleagues and senior staff what they think is possible, and
2. stay tuned to the detail of what is being discussed, as you talk, with an eye to not acting in ways that will end up offending your organisation.

For practicalities re working up community development strategies and re the details of programs, see Community Development and Education.

See also:

• Engaging Stakeholders
• Principled Negotiation
• Adaptive Management
• Facilitating community decision-making

Using community development as a component of a change management approach makes sense because:

1. our own organisations (particularly local Councils) are influenced by community expectations,
2. community expectations are a long term (imprecise, ...) driver of public policy, including urban water management, and
3. local communities have a legitimate expectation of being involved in local decisions in some appropriate way, and of being helped to understand what is at stake for them and others (see Facilitating community decision-making for more on this).

• Community development and education
  
• CommunityBuilders.nsw