The Okotoks Chamber of Commerce brought a familiar face to some parts of the Foothills Wednesday to speak with residents and chamber members on '13 Ways To Kill Your Community'.

Former Minister of Municipal Affairs turned author Doug Griffiths enlightened attendees on towns he has visited and what they've done to wrong their community or as his book would say, kill it.

Griffiths has been across the country showing off his book based on experience dealing with municipalities. He was with the Alison Redford government and there's always something new he learns from each visit he makes.

"There's always something new to discover, people always tell me stories about what they've seen or heard of to sabotage their community," he says. "But I haven't heard that here, Okotoks is such a great community there are a lot of communities in this region that incredible opportunities and power."

The 13 ways to kill your community were described by Griffiths covering many various areas of a community from 'living in the past' to excluding seniors from community ideas.

He says although one of the 13 ways to kill a community is enough, taking responsibility for actions may be the harshest way to kill a community.

"If I had to identify one, I'd probably say fundamentally it starts with chapter 13 the last one, because it's not taking responsibility for community success," Griffiths say. "As soon as the community says it's not our fault we're failing and there's nothing we can do.  it is some other government or some other agency or someone else has to fix it... you're done."

Griffiths was impressed with the way Okotoks works with the community to make it a better place, but says when in doubt its success can change with one wrong move.

"No matter how successful a community is, it can always benefit from analyzing what it might be doing to sabotage its success and Okotoks is no different but they sure do a lot less things that I've seen other communities do across the country."

Griffiths is already starting on a second edition of "13 Ways To Kill Your Community".

If you'd like to see preview of his book visit the link here.