Governance in complex situations works best when it provides clear direction while leaving room for good judgement. Adaptive governance uses shared purpose, light structures and ongoing feedback to guide action.
It starts with shared understanding. When people know what matters most and why, they can make sound decisions on the ground while staying aligned with the bigger picture. Guiding principles and open lines for coordination help people act on the best available information.
Adaptive governance treats plans as working documents. Regular reviews let approaches evolve as you learn more. When conditions shift, decision-making can shift too. This might mean adjusting your community response plan after each event, updating contact lists as people's situations change, or shifting who leads coordination based on who's available and what the situation demands.
Building this capacity takes practice and culture. Creating room for judgement and valuing learning alongside outcomes helps. Working through scenarios together, holding honest debriefs, and keeping communication open builds confidence.
When governance becomes adaptive, communities stay coordinated under pressure and ready for opportunities. Direction emerges from shared understanding rather than detailed control.
Something to chew on:
Where could your community benefit from more flexibility in how decisions are made and coordinated?
Resilience Bites offers weekly insights from the Australian Resilience Centre, drawn from decades of work alongside communities across Australia and internationally. Each Bite explores an aspect of resilience and closes with a reflective question to chew on.
Across the series we'll explore themes that shape resilience in practice, including place, patterns, networks, leadership, learning, feedbacks, thresholds and the deeper work of change.
This series is for people working in communities, landscapes, systems and change. It will help you learn key resilience concepts, apply them in practice and build our collective capacity to create resilient futures.
To learn more about the Australian Resilience Centre and explore our work and services, please visit https://www.ausresilience.com.au/
To read published Bites, please visit https://resiliencebites.ausresilience.com.au/
