Conducting a Community "Health Check"

But how can you tell if your community has what it needs? We don't know of a fully-formed, statistically supported answer yet, but we are actively investigating the development of a widely agreed-upon set of community-based "health" metrics.

For now, we turn to the work of John Gardner, former head of the Department of Health, Education and Welfare, and then a professor at Stanford University. Professor Gardner was fascinated with leadership: what is it and how do you grow it?

Later in life he turned to the study of communities and in particular how to promote and develop a sense of community. He felt that the contemporary breakdown of community was a root cause of many social ills and a significant contributor to a general decrease in the quality of life in America.

As a result of his interest and concern Gardner developed a framework for measuring the ingredients of community. While there is not an exact one-to-one match between Pink's six competencies for the new economy and Gardner's framework for community, there is a rough correspondence that we find compelling. Gardner's categories are:

• Wholeness incorporating diversity
• Reasonable sense of shared values
• Caring, trust, and teamwork
• Effective internal communication
• Participation
• Affirmation
• Links beyond the community
• Development of young people
• A forward view

What, then, should communities do? If they want to attract highly talented people who are motivated in their lives by design, story, symphony, empathy, play and meaning they need to develop programs, organizations, and capabilities that support exactly those kinds of experiences.