The LIfT Strategic Doing Initiative Team is offering Strategic Doing Practitioners Training for Local Leaders February 20-21 – when they will cross the one hundred person mark for numbers of community leaders who will have been locally trained. The Strategic Doing initiative has been recognized internationally and by national community development professionals for its unique approach to community progress. There are limited spaces remaining for the practitoner training; the deadline for registration is Thursday, February 15. .
Strategic Doing works for our region where community-wide Strategic Plans have failed because it is:
- Designed for loosely connected networks – vs hierarchical systems, for which strategic planning can suffice.
- Designed to address complex issues facing communities and organizations …where no single entity is in charge or can tell the others what to do
- An exciting new approach to strategy development that is about innovative collaboration.
Strategic Doing is about DOING; it teaches how to guide a group to DOING in the space of a three-hour workshop.
The chief champions of the Strategic Doing process in Texarkana USA are members of the LIfT SD Initiative Core Team – all of whom regularly and successfully use Strategic Doing, including: Rob Sitterley, Jason Smith, David Orr, Scott Norton, Robin Hickerson, Vicki Melde, Robbin Bass, Jennifer Harland and Ruth Ellen Whitt, all of whom have participated in the Strategic Doing training and/or have been engaged for extended periods with strategic doing teams producing outstanding community outcome.
Core Team member and AR-TX REDI CEO Rob Sitterley has said, “Strategic doing WORKS and is a game changer!!”
Strategic Doing is seen as a Texarkana imperative because Texarkana’s competitive advantage and community excellence depends on our ability to WORK TOGETHER to address our various challenges.
The February two-day training will be the fifth local training held in conjunction with the Agile Strategy Lab of the University of Northern Alabama, since April 2021, part of the Core Team’s goal of growing the capacity of leaders to effectively use Strategic tapping the potential of Strategic Doing for the benefit of Texarkana USA. To date, and to that end, ninety-eight community leaders have been trained. This year’s Strategic Doing Practitioner Trainings are being supported in part by MaxAlley Real Estate Development company and by all businesses and organizations which are investing in the training for their leaders.
In Fall 2022, Strategic Doing trainer Dr. Fratesi said: “Texarkana has built the strongest collaborative ecosystem using Strategic Doing in the US,” – a perspective drawn from his community development work around the US in his leadership position with the Stennis Institute of Government and Community Development, MS State University. Further reflecting that stellar perspective of our unique community-wide commitment to tapping the benefits of Strategic Doing for the benefit of all who live and work here, Texarkana USA and TXK USA’s community-based Strategic Doing Initiatives were lifted to an international audience and featured internationally at the invitation of Strategic Doing founder Ed Morrison, on a global podcast emanating from Brussels in January 2023.
In short: Strategic Doing is fostering a Texarkana USA brand worth pursuing: TEXARKANA USA as a community of EXCELLENCE that gets things DONE!
Just a few of the community advancements and projects which have been driven by leaders using Strategic Doing have included: the Courthouse square initiative (earning state-wide honors as a unique place of civic beauty), TXK’s Broadband initiative, the goTXK initiative (a game changer for our community narrative and recruitment), the development of the soon to be unveiled Assembly Line creator space for entrepreneurial thinking and doing, the Pitch It Idea competition, higher ed offerings in the prison systems, Staff and student initiatives in TASD and TISD, the Amtrak Station facelift, Solarbration planning and doing, community gardens, beautification initiatives, the super charged implementation of TexAmericas Strategic Plan, resulting in top five rankings nationally as an industrial park – among so many other Strategic Doing initiatives advancing in Texarkana each day in every quarter of the community.
Organizations which have invested in the training for their leaders (most paying to train more than one individual) have included: AR-TX REDI, TXK Chamber of Commerce, City of Texarkana, AR, City of Texarkana, TX, TexAmericas Center, Texarkana College, TAMUT, UAHT, TASD, TISD, PGISD, The Arnold Companies, BWI, Cooper Tire, Encompass Rehab, High Tech Signs, SWEPCO, SHRM, NETX Small Business, Texarkana, TX Housing Authority, RRAD, Communities Unlimited, Bank of OZK, State Bank, GTYP, Main Street Texarkana, TSO, TRAHC, Literacy Council, TexRep, Conifer Properties, FUMC-AR, Oasis Community Church, and Leadership Texarkana’s Board of Directors.
Register online at LeadershipTexarkana.com. Questions: LeadershipTXK@gmail.com. LIfT – the Leadership Initiative for Texarkana – is a program of Leadership Texarkana focused on engaging and equipping the community at large for taking an active role in fostering community excellence in Texarkana of USA.
###
LEADERSHIP TEXARKANA is an independent non-profit organization dedicated to WORKING TOGETHER for COMMUNITY EXCELLENCE. To those ends, Leadership Texarkana dedicates its efforts to
- Unleashing Texarkana Talent and Ingenuity
- Blazing Trails for Community-Wide Strategic Doing
- Unifying all around Vision, Values and Priorities
- Bringing a Voice of Possibility and Responsibility
- Celebrating TXK Excellence and What’s to Love at goTXK.org–
PLUS a TXK calendar for all events
Additional information about Leadership Texarkana can be found at www.leadershiptexarkana.com.
