And the missing ingredients are? Structure, teamwork

Shooting from the lip

I’M THINKING about gated villages. I often do. Not because I like them – or want to live in one. But they achieve important successes. They enable people who live on the same demarcated piece of land to achieve goals together.

Most of us agree: gated villages are known to be safer, cleaner and quieter than other residential areas.

It’s not that those people want those outcomes more. All of us want to live in safe, clean, quiet suburbs. But gated villages achieve it, more often, because of a single factor: shared structure, order.

When a family rents or buys in a gated village, they agree to a set of rules.

Eg: You pay a levy, which goes to one security company which monitors all 10 or 100 properties together. Carefully building the collective safety. In a comprehensive, integrated way, using good management principles.

That’s far easier than trying to get half a dozen security companies to play nicely.

Outside gated areas, many wealthy and commercial areas essentially do the same.

They use funding models to buy “topup” services. But as importantly, they are creating structure and order for an otherwise disparate, chaotic collective. To identity priorities, and chase them, together. With cohesion. Teamwork.

We’ve used these principles in our suburb – without spending an extra cent.

Step One: We defined our area. A triangle between three main roads. Everyone who lives within them. Together, we worked out our priorities. We decided not to try to solve “the crime problem”. Instead, we chose to “create safety”.

Step Two: We “audited” our area. Counted the houses: 205. Identified our basic strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, threats. Mapped them. And our own skills, resources. And our partners’ too. With firm plans, like patrol rosters. And monitoring templates. A clear dashboard we all understand.

Step Three: We set up smart “comms”. Between ourselves, and our “safety partners” – police, municipal services, private security and local entities like schools, churches.

In a nutshell, we set up a system. Which we can now performance-manage. Like a mechanic does with an engine (which has many parts).

On this page, in February last year, the headline: “Let’s mobilise, organise, communicate for safety.” Let’s apply those three to our model, above: Mobilise: The Resources: Inspiration, leadership, partnering skills, maturity. Our Goal: Forging common purpose. Organise: The Resources: Management tools. Our Goal: Improving the performance of a system. Communicate: The Resources: Communication excellence. Clear thinking. Our Goal: Walking a journey. Together. There’s no guarantee we’ll prevent all crime. But we’re now far more capable of creating safety. And anything else.

Especially: Hope.