Five Interconnected Strategies to RESET your community by
Motivating, Mobilizing, Maximizing, and Maintaining:
RESET’s five interconnected strategies help local leaders and partners motivate, mobilize, maximize, and maintain the conditions for local systems innovation and community and economic development. Once a decision is made to apply a RESET Communities approach, a community or neighbourhood can contract support and services or, if available, receive a sponsorship, to actively engage and be supported to apply the five strategies explained below:
Strategy 1:
Systems-Catalyst Leadership (Community and Economic Development)
This strategy helps motivate action by strengthening the leadership capacity needed to support transformative community and economic development across complex local systems. It focuses on the competencies needed to help people, organizations, and sectors work together in more connected and effective ways. Systems-Catalyst Leadership (an emerging new discipline) focuses on the competencies needed for neutral orchestrators and ecosystem builders working across multiple sectors. Learning opportunities are designed to ensure neutral, competency-driven practitioners equipped to catalyze and merge the collective wisdom of businesses, social purpose organizations, government entities, and community members.
All learning uses a unique, practice-based approach, with peer-to-peer exchange as a key component, grounded in these competencies. Additionally, the learning is based on well-proven competencies (skills, knowledge, attitudes) that have been developed and tested over many years.
Strategy 2:
Collective Knowledge Sharing and Exchange
This strategy helps mobilize learning, relationships, and practical insight through peer exchange, networking, and knowledge sharing. It enables promising practices, lived experience, and useful ideas to circulate across multiple networks so people can learn from one another and move forward with greater confidence.
Strategy 3:
Resources for Strengthening Communities as Ecosystems
This strategy helps mobilize local action by supporting pilot communities and neighbourhoods to apply hyper-local, whole-community, integrated approaches. It supports local leaders to identify priorities, bring diverse stakeholders together, and launch practical action that builds confidence, momentum, and community well-being.
Strategy 4:
Venture Capacity Building
This strategy helps maximize the potential of community-rooted ventures to contribute to local development and broader ecosystem outcomes. RESET acts as an intermediary that supports readiness, alignment, and capacity-building, helping ventures and local leaders better position themselves for relevant opportunities, partnerships, and resource streams. This strategy strengthens the capacity of community-rooted ventures to contribute to local economic development and broader ecosystem outcomes.
RESET operates as a readiness and alignment partner—supporting ventures and local leaders to prepare for and navigate opportunities, rather than acting as a funder.
Strategy 5:
Digital and AI Systems Infrastructure
While AI and digital technologies are rapidly reshaping planning, coordination, and resource allocation, there is a growing reality that communities often rely on fragmented tools and siloed systems, without a shared, local-level strategy. Focus is placed on generating a greater understanding of the digital and AI-related systems infrastructure needed to support cross-sector collaboration, horizontal networking, and better-connected community silos and systems.
R.E.S.E.T. Communities Collective increases responsiveness to complex challenges and opportunities by collaborating with multiple partners to provide a variety of support and services that enhance social, economic, and environmental well-being.
Future-readiness is increased by supporting capacity for (1) community-led development, (2) systems-practices, (3) strategic foresight, and (4) AI and digital optimization. We've learned these four components are necessary for the project and systems collaboration and informed decision-making that are essential for transformative change and innovation.
Innovative approaches require being bold, perseverance, tenacity and a sprinkle of panic.
-- Michelle Baldwin
Many situations in life are similar to going on a hike: the view changes once you start walking. You don't need all the answers right now. New paths will reveal themselves if you have the courage to get started.
--James Clear
Leadership today is about courage. Courage to realize our challenges are complex and no one individual, organization, or sector can resolve them on their own. That means we have to let go of the idea that we alone have the answers. Instead, we need to strengthen our individual and organizational competencies in order to become sector connectors who call meetings before we have the answers, aren't intimidated by messy, and can ensure a culture where all voices are heard. Only then, can our collective gifts, experience, and wisdom be focused on building a better future for all.
--Brenda Herchmer
In times of change it is the learners who inherit the future. Those who have finished learning find themselves equipped to live in a world that no longer exists.
-- Eric Hoffer
