Growth is Diversity

An Introduction | The People are the Community | The Purpose is the Mission |
Growth is Diversity | The Rules are the Culture | Putting it all Together

Community growth organically happens when there is a benefit to belong. There are countless examples of communities that seem to always be growing. There are also countless examples of communities who’s growth is stunted because new ideas aren’t joining. Whenever I’m asked to help a group grow, one of the first things I look at are it’s people. If everyone in the group is the same and there is no diversity, the community will forever be stunted because there are no contrasting ideas or experiences being exchanged. Conversely when I’m asked to evaluate a growing community, the biggest thing I see contributing to their success is many  of different types of people sharing their experiences that others within the community find different or new. And that diversity a good thing. 

Communities can grow in a few ways and all growth has the potential to be positive. With Viking, we can grow by having more families participate in our fun services which in turn means we need to grow our internal coaching community. For Viking, both situations are sources of welcomed growth. More families means a more diverse customer base who are able to receive the benefit of fun and more coaches give us the ability to effectively deliver on our mission of fun. Plus the increased diversity brings different experiences with new and exciting ideas. 

One cool thing about communities is that as one grows, there’s a good chance they can help support another community in a mutually beneficial way. Using Viking as an example, we are our own community that does something specific which is doing actively fun stuff to keep our community engaged physically, mentally, and socially. A town’s recreation department is their own community who have their own mission of providing programs to keep their community engaged physically, mentally, and socially. Even though we are two different communities, we share the commonality of doing stuff that engages people physical, mentally, and socially. That thing we both share becomes our link. From there we join together to strengthen each other. For Viking, our goal is to execute fun and we do it expertly and are always looking for more avenues to ply our craft. For a recreation department they need to create services to engage the tax payers within their budget. 

Viking has the skill set while the Recreation Department has the people who can benefit from it. Viking wins by reaching a new group of people, the recreation department wins by giving their community something fun, and the residents win by having more options to engage the recreation community.

When communities grow exciting things can always happen.