Find the Needle: The Search Party

[This article is one in a series designed for our Find the Needle community coaching opportunity, but of benefit to anyone. The 2025 application is now closed.]

There is a “feel” to your world when something that you really need has been lost for a while. It can consume your thoughts to the point of eventually declaring, “This is driving me crazy!” Have you ever been there?

What about those times when you sense that something is missing, and you don’t even know what? A simple example might be the taste of a soup or a sauce that doesn’t seem right, and you can’t figure out why. You taste, and you taste, thinking, “What does it need?” Eventually, you might call someone else to help you figure it out. “What’s missing? Tell me what it needs.”

We work in a world of community development and community building where there is a constant question of “What is missing?” That’s a different type of “needle” to look for: you don’t even know what it is. You need help defining the needle you are looking for.

In a recent webinar on building community collaboration, I polled the participants representing communities across the USA by asking, “How often do you meet with others outside your organization to discuss solving shared community problems? 56% replied, “Rarely.”

To have 56% indicate that they rarely meet with others outside of their organization for problem-solving surprised me. I had a hunch that “rarely” might be significant, but not that high. Could it be the distinguishing phrase “solving shared community problems” that makes the percentage high? If that phrase were removed, do you think that 56% would decrease significantly? Maybe people are meeting with one another, just not to solve problems.

I also wonder if the kind of conversation taking place with the other 44% is of a problem-solving nature. Is what you are doing trying to solve the problem or only responding to the problem? Seth Godin recently called it “polishing the problem.” Bypass surgery is a response. Changing eating habits is a solution. Have we given up on finding real solutions?

If you connect regularly with others, consider the meetings you attend outside your organization. Are you discussing problems and developing shared approaches to solving them? As I have written before, this necessitates lots of questions. Questions tend to make us uncomfortable when we don’t have immediate answers. They can also be irritating if they seem to have no real purpose, like the game Trivial Pursuit. The name says it all.

An abundance of questions arise in the problem-defining, solution-designing process. Questions are a search for answers. Here’s an interesting question that may make you feel a little uncomfortable: Do you know what you are looking for? Are you sure?

Sometimes, we assume conclusions, preventing us from asking questions that could lead to significant and even groundbreaking information. We need answers to help us discern what is missing and what is keeping the solution from being found or complete.

The shift to help you find the understanding needed for your community could be as simple as adding one more person for revelatory conversations. More people ask more questions, leading to more information. The information can lead to the desired answers. It’s like putting together a search party to look for the evidence needed to find something or someone missing.

A search party is effective when it is a strategic and coordinated partnership of determined people looking for the same thing.

Let’s start by developing the search party. This isn’t the actual search, but it is preparing for it.

What is your general field of focus for the search?

Think about your community development and building heart, vision, and longing. If you were to generalize your field of focus, what would it be? Get as general as you can at this phase. As you think about what matters most to you, consider the largest umbrella under which you could put that work. Let me ask it this way:

If you woke up tomorrow and one problem had been solved in the world,
what would be solved?

Is it in the field of housing, food, finances, mental or physical health, education, addictions, veterans, homelessness, or some other community issue? This is the big sphere or the wide-open landscape where you have been working and looking for answers. This will become your initial search party area that you begin to explore for evidence and for others who want to search with you.

Who else shares that general field of focus?
Look around in your general field of focus. Who do you already have a level of relationship with? Consider individual people and organizations of all kinds. To help you with this brainstorming work and to be reminded of those in your network who operate in your general field of focus, sit with your legal pad or journal:

• Scroll through your cell phone contacts and social media friends.
• If you use CharityTracker or Oasis Insight, go through the Agencies tab.
• While sitting in upcoming community meetings, look around the room and note who might be a fit.
• This approach may be new to you, but please try it! Sit with your eyes closed in a quiet space. You might have some soft music playing. Picture yourself in a hot-air balloon floating over the community that matters to you. Street by street, area by area, think about the people, organizations, churches, and agencies you know there. Write them down as you think of them.

Consider those where there might be some disagreement. Why would I invite you to any level of conflict? Because when ideas are challenged, they become better and stronger. Tension does that, like weightlifting. We invest more time here in this series. It's one of the significant challenges in developing real solutions for our communities. 

Reach out to those on your list for an initial conversation.
BE the initiator; don’t wait for someone else to start the conversation. If everyone sits waiting, there will be no conversation, and the needle will remain lost. Start calling, texting, emailing, and dropping by. Yep, some of this is the old-school way that works: just showing up.

Now, not everyone will say yes. Some will say, “I’ve got too much going on.” Others may say, “Been there, done that.” It doesn’t matter. Part of this search process is looking for those who also want partnerships. Don’t give up—those who want to will.

As I have coached individuals, families, and communities, willingness is the common element leading to change of any kind. Give me someone who knows nothing about what they want to accomplish, but they are intensely willing, and we will eventually find a way. Ability can be found and developed where there is an undying willingness.

As long as you are willing to pursue a partnership, it will eventually happen. You plus one more are a partnership. You don’t need a large number of people to start finding what is missing in your efforts to restore life among your neighbors. Keep looking for those who are willing.

With those who have joined you, brainstorm others who can be invited to expand your search conversation.
The brainstorming you did alone, do with the others you have found to join you. Use the ideas above and look together for more people to develop your search party. Everyone has a network of people they know and have some level of connection.

Think about people, organizations, agencies, businesses, entrepreneurs, and faith communities with whom you have relationships and those with whom none of you have ever connected. Cultivate relationships and multiply the eyes, ears, and brains.

Have ongoing conversations as the search party develops, discussing what you are looking for.
The aim is that you are looking for the same needle in that shared field. But don’t make quick work of it. DO make it STEADY WORK TOGETHER in wide-open conversations.

Brainstorm…

• What you know
• What you think you know, and
• What you don’t know but wish you did. That is missing information to search for and discover together.

By the way, brainstorming means no debating or deep, detailed discussions about what is said. I will unpack that work in a future article. For now, let things land freely on the list.

Conversations release information. As you unpack together what you see, know, and don’t know, bringing in new information leads to new insights.

Don’t assume. Break molds. Find new lines of thought.

Don’t be anxiously driven, but be determined. What happens when you press your face against a window? Your face is distorted, and so is what you see. That is the same impact of an anxiously driven person pressing in too hard. Anxious atmospheres shut things down when you desperately need people to open up.

In future articles, I will explain more details about how to approach this process of finding the needle. For additional help in developing partnerships, consider the articles linked below.

Happy connecting!

Other Articles for Ideas about Developing Partnership

Power of Together   - Moving from community resource sharing to solution creating is easier said than done. The results are worth the investment.

Art of Conversation -Healthy communities are built through conversations. What would happen if we had more of them and got to know each other better? Let’s work on it.

WE - Community. Neighbors. Together. More than me. More than you. Us. We. Let’s examine what happens when we walk over time with FAITH in one another.

Do you desire to strengthen your CharityTracker or OasisInsight network and achieve new levels of collaboration and impact? Reach out to Chuck today to schedule your conversation: chuck@simonsolutions.com. 

Dr. Chuck Coward serves as Community Impact Specialist for Simon Solutions, Inc. Chuck has invested over 35 years in fostering human and community development from a variety of places and roles, including as a pastor, non-profit Executive Director, Director of Development, businessman, consultant, university professor, The Struggle Coach, and the founder of Entrusted Foundation. Serving to make people and communities stronger is his great passion. Chuck is the proud husband to Anita, dad to four, and granddaddy to eight.