And why scientific rigor and representative data gathering are vital to your informed decision-making.

“Leadership should be born out of the understanding of the needs of those who would be affected by it.” – Marian Anderson

One of the greatest challenges any responsible leader faces is cultivating everyone’s voice, opinion, and sentiments and processing that collection of voices into an outcome that can guide the greater good.

Whether you lead a community of 200 or two million, a special district, or an association of like-minded difference-makers, your community has entrusted you to make resident-informed decisions that create a positive quality of life for all stakeholders. Making representative decisions would be easy if a consensus of opinion could be absolute on every topic and initiative. However, any leader knows that there is a counterpoint for every point, and for every yay, there is a nay.

The imperative of leading by majority and making decisions with as much input from as many voices as possible is at the heart of our community and local organizational leadership. We have election days, council votes, and town halls to empower representational decision-making. These data-gathering and decision-making models that date back generations will always have their place in society. However, how can the modern leader scale their data-gathering and sourcing of impactful inputs at a time when those we serve include the broadest imaginable spectrum of engagement and access to information and polling places? Layer onto this challenge the complications of language barriers, economic disparity, the digital divide, the impact of the vocal dissenting minority, and the challenge of data gathering are exacerbated exponentially.

According to FairVote.org, in recent decades, about 60%(opens in a new tab) of the voting-eligible population voted during presidential election years, and about 40% voted during midterm elections. This process decides elected officials and helps determine legislation and policy, but what about all the days in between? What about all the choices leaders, councils, and organizations must make that never make it onto ballots? What about communicating factually and statistically about the initiatives on the ballot?

If every organizational decision worth making has an impact, and every voice matters, how can leaders bridge the gap between their people and their progress? The answer is as old as the democratic process itself, but it’s more impactful than ever thanks to modern technology and the progress of community-based research methodology: quantitative and qualitative engagement.

Consider the risk of misinformation and the power of the vocal, dissenting minority. In one local community during a unique election season, voter turnout was high because there was a significant initiative on the ballot that may have meant higher taxes. In this case, the vocal minority gained control of the narrative and won the necessary votes to stop the initiative. The vote might have passed if the affirmative party executed a better communication strategy to inform voters how the initiative would improve quality of life and why the increased tax was worth the investment. In these scenarios, resident engagement is critical to initiative promotion, understanding, and success.