1. Build stuff people want, offer products and services people want to buy
2. Attract and retain quality talent
3. Raise capital to get fledgling ideas to the point of sustainability, create a density of “investors”
4. Create a world class culture that encourages people to stick around even when times get tough

These may not be comprehensive factors, but they could be useful metrics to view your city with.

If I had to rate my own city of Richmond, Indiana, I’d say we have plenty of room to grow in each area:

1. We have a lot of great infrastructure and a variety of desirable products/services but we’re pretty scattered on how to sell them in the global marketplace
2. We think we know a lot about what kind of talent we’re looking for, but there’s often a disconnect between that knowledge and our level of investment in actual attraction efforts
3. We don’t always make efficient use of the limited capital that’s available to us, but we have a lot of generous and heavily invested people living here
4. We’re often short-sighted when it comes to building an attractive culture, but there are pockets of people who see the big picture and are working for change

How does your city do when you look at it as a start-up company?

Perhaps the most striking point for me in Bischke’s piece is the question of leadership.  He says we need more than just strong or experienced leaders, we need people who can think like entrepreneurs:

As we roll into an election year, many cities are in a state of crisis. Budgets are a mess and job growth has been minimal for a good swath of the country. Cities in need don’t just need strong leadership, they require transformational leadership. It’s no easy feat but it’s likely that the more that mayors view their cities through an entrepreneurial lens, the better they will be able to adapt to a rapidly-changing world.

Almost any city across the country could adopt the slogan “Adapt or Die” and it wouldn’t be an understatement of the predicament they’re in and the approach needed to get out of it.  Many traditional businesses are in the same boat.  The businesses/cities that will not only just survive but flourish are the ones willing to use non-traditional methods to make ground-shaking changes in the way they operate.

It’s also the case that I try to do creative work: building interactive and engaging websites, collaborating with people to find innovative solutions to challenging problems, creative writing, creative thinking, and more.

Sometimes it can be a challenge to do creative work surrounded by pieces of infrastructure that don’t elicit creativity, and that sometimes even discourage it.

For a while now, I’ve been starting my day with coffee or tea poured into one of two hand-made mugs that I bought earlier this year.  The mugs were made by Ben Clark, who is an amazing potter and teacher from Richmond, now living in Cincinnati.

The mugs are still “built” items as opposed to “naturally occurring” ones, but they are built in a way that I can marvel at and appreciate what went into that process.  They are elemental, with the textures and ingredients of their making on display as you use them.  They are a simple and singular result of an inspired creative act.

And so when I start my day with these mugs, I feel a little more connected to the sources of creativity and inspiration that make me feel most alive in my work, and in my life.

For some people, it’s ceramics that have that effect.  For others it’s plants, or sculpture, or art on the wall.

What pieces of your surroundings bring you inspiration and creativity in your work and life?

Of course officials who are elected and empowered by government to take action are often central to many kinds of community progress.  But it certainly doesn’t mean that getting elected is the only way to be a leader in your community.

So, I offer this list of Five Ways to be a Leader in Your Community Without Running for Office:

1. Volunteer your time. Find an organization or a project in your community that meets a need or tackles an issue that’s interesting to you.  This may seem like an obvious one, but giving of your time not only provides tangible assistance to your community, but it helps you connect with others who are working on making it a better place.  From these experiences you can see what other parts of the community need your attention and how you can best serve.
2. Participate in public debate and feedback.  When you’re asked by organizations or other leaders in the community for your input, or if someone is doing a survey or conducting focus groups, participate!  It can be tempting to think your individual response won’t make that much difference, but a well-thought out comment or an observation or question shared from the heart can often make ALL the difference.  School boards, government agencies and community improvement organizations can wander around in the dark for a long time without regular feedback from the people they serve or represent.  If you have the chance to help guide them, do it, and encourage your friends and family to participate too.
3. Find an unmet need and lead the way to meeting it.  In many communities there are often basic services, programs or bits of infrastructure that aren’t in place but could be.  Look for those times in the course of your daily routine when you think “Somebody should…” or “I wish they’d…” and then become the person who moves that thing forward.  You don’t have to be an expert or a full time advocate to help get a process unstuck or bring something to the attention of appropriate decision-makers.  And it doesn’t have to be a big project or an expensive solution to make a difference.
4. Ask for accountability. Make sure you understand the job descriptions for your elected officials at the local and state level, and then make sure they’re actually living up to that job description.  If they’re doing a good job, tell them that and encourage them – it’s not easy being a politician and you can never make everybody happy, so affirmation goes a long way.  If they’re not doing a good job, tell them that in constructive ways – letters that suggest alternate approaches, showing up at meetings where you share your perspective, and so on.  Let your representatives know that you’re watching and that you care.  In the end, most of them will serve the community a little bit better because of it.
5. Develop your network.  Build relationships with others around you – neighbors, co-workers, friends, strangers – and look for opportunities for people to work together or share resources to achieve a common goal.  Even if you don’t have an active project or effort right now, knowing who to call or connect with when an opportunity arises will help make things happen more quickly.

These suggestions may be obvious, and practicing these kinds of leadership may not yield the same kinds of recognition or public exposure that elected officials receive (this can be a good thing), but every successful community depends on its members to take some active role in making it a better place.

What other ways do you work at being a community leader?

Life In a Day weaves together moments of joy and sadness, frivolity and struggle, plainness and great beauty into a wonderful fabric of the human experience.  It at once shows the ways in which the routines of our days are shared across cultures and landscapes (we wake, we clean up, we eat, we interact, we travel, we love, we argue, we sleep), but also the stark contrasts of wealthy and poor, privileged and oppressed, healthy and unhealthy, troubled and care-free.

There are only a few “characters” we see multiple times throughout the day -- a man bicycling around the world, a family struggling with cancer -- but the amazing editing and soundtrack create a story arc grounded not in personality or plot twist, but in the experience of having 24 hours pass and all of the amazing (or mundane) things that can happen in that time.  It’s a masterpiece that will perhaps seem quaint in a few decades, but that could not have been possible even 5 or 10 years ago.

Life In a Day is inspiring and moving.  Best of all, it’s real.

Here, you can start watching it right now:

www.youtube.com/watch?v=JaFVr_cJJIY

The Indiana Economic Development Corp. offered Really Cool Foods up to $3.05 million in performance-based tax credits, up to $165,000 in training grants and will provide Cambridge City officials with a $200,000 grant to assist in off-site infrastructure improvements needed for the project. Wayne County officials offered the company 50 acres of land, $165,000 in grants and a 10-year property tax abatement.

The facility opened in October of 2008 with 250 of the projected 1,000 jobs to start, and over the last few years the company has had numerous challenges reaching initially estimated milestones of investment and jobs created.

Today, the company told workers who showed up for their morning shift that the facility was closing, and in a press release sent after 9 AM, announced the company is shutting down.

A couple of initial thoughts and questions about this unfortunate announcement:

First, if the reports are true, what a crummy way to treat your employees.  Even if there had been layoffs in recent years and even if the economy is bad, short of natural disaster I don’t think there’s ever a good reason to have an entire workforce find out about the end of the company when they show up for work that day.  (Not to mention the timing of right when the weather turns really cold, right before the holidays, etc.) Yes, it’s harder and maybe even risky to share the news in advance, but I think employees deserve the respect of being a part of that conversation well before the rest of the world knows.

Second, I’m sure there might be a lot of finger pointing going on around this announcement, but it really is important to investigate why a company so well received in our area and so generously supported by taxpayer dollars has to close after only three years in operation.  Yes, the economy is bad, but it was bad three years ago too.  Is this a case of bad planning, excessive optimism and hype, poor management, problems with the location…what caused this, and how can we stop it from happening again (especially on the taxpayer dime)?

Governor Mitch Daniels welcomes Really Cool Foods to Indiana

Speaking of the taxpayer-funded incentives, the local Economic Development Corporation likes to talk about the role of clawback terms in their offers to businesses wanting to locate here.  Does such a clause allowing us to recoup these subsidizations exist in this case, and are they “on it” when it comes to being a registered creditor for any sale of assets or bankruptcy proceedings?  What percent of lost revenue and outright grants does Wayne County and the state of Indiana stand to get back?  What will we do differently next time in vetting a potential recipient?

Lastly, Really Cool Foods has often been cited in our region as a success story of the conventional model of economic development, using taxpayer dollars to sell the area to large employers in hopes of landing significant long-term investment in the community.  More and more, the evidence points to this as an outdated and unsustainable model, and when the success stories turn into nightmares, we have to pay attention to that.  I personally hope we turn toward job creation at a more human scale, but whatever we do, we need a model that’s sustainable when you look at the big picture – global economic trends, fuel costs, climate change, etc. – and not just what makes for a good headline over one, three or five years.

My heart goes out to everyone involved with Really Cool Foods – especially the workers and their families but even the people who worked hard to bring them here in the first place and the management who had to wrestle with a foundering enterprise along the way.

But one way to honor their pain and misfortune is to make sure it’s not repeated in the future, and that we find ways to be better stewards of the people and resources in our region.

The important question the movement raises, one that I hope we all take a moment to consider is, “what would it take to make us take to the streets in protest?“

I’ve written here before about our cultural disdain for those who take direct and public action to live out their personal values, whether it’s through making statements that confront some untruth or injustice, being a community organizer, or holding up a sign in the rain on a street corner.

Practicing what we preach is hard, and fear of change is sometimes paralyzing, so it’s no wonder that we can become confused, resentful or even outraged when someone does stand up for what they believe in, especially if what they believe in is different from our own views and beliefs.  It’s vulnerable, difficult and even embarrassing to put ourselves out there in front of complete strangers, let alone to do so for hours, days, weeks and months at a time; no wonder we sometimes look at the OWS folks like they’re a little crazy.  ”There are civilized ways one is supposed to handle these things,” we say.  ”Standing in the street can’t accomplish anything.”

But whatever you think of Occupy Wall Street protesters and their demands or non-demands, whatever good or bad things you think of when you hear the word “activist,” please, PLEASE ask yourself this question: “what injustice would need to occur for me to drop what I’m doing and take action against it?  What would make me protest in the streets?”

Would some great harm brought upon your family members, your children, your loved ones be enough?

Or would it take someone who makes decisions about your paycheck, your pension fund, your tax dollars being caught red-handed stealing or maliciously misusing those funds?

How about an imminent threat to the land you live on, or the public spaces in your community where you gather with friends, take kids to play, the places that define your environment?  What if you found out someone was poisoning your water supply or putting harmful chemicals in your food?

Sure, maybe at first you go to a co-worker, or the police, or a lawyer, or a judge…but what if they didn’t see it your way?  What if they didn’t bother to help you?  What if they actively tried to stop you?

Is there something that could happen that would feel important enough for you to take action?  Today, right now?  What does it look like?

The Occupy Wall Street movement is a group of people who have decided that something has happened in their lives, in their world, that merits protest and other forms of direct action.  They’ve decided that “the civilized ways one is supposed to handle these things” aren’t enough, or aren’t working.  Some line has been crossed, and so they’ve decided to cross their own lines, making themselves vulnerable and uncomfortable and maybe a little bit embarrassed.  We don’t have to agree with where that line is to appreciate that they’ve found that clarity for themselves.

And if you can’t think of anything that would cause you to take action, then what do you stand for?

Earlier today I attended the Indiana University 2012 Business Outlook Panel in its visit to Richmond.  It’s a group that “has presented national, state, and local economic forecasts for the coming year to business, political, and community leaders of Indiana” for the last 38 years.  I attended the same gathering back in 2005 and I have to say that today’s commentary wasn’t much different from what it was six years ago: “things are not great with the economy, but there are reasons to be cautiously optimistic.”

As I noted in my reflections from the 2005 event, there were a couple of troubling ideas that permeated the remarks, especially from the panelists looking at global and national trends.

The main one that I continue to struggle with is the idea that we just have to wait for the global economy to improve and drive things to get better at the national, state and local level.  In defending the power of globalism, one of the panelists even outright made fun of the idea of building a regionally self-reliant economy.

A more regional approach to economic development – instead of depending on the importation of resources from around the world – is exactly the approach that many others (myself included) are saying is key for communities like Richmond to surviving the increasingly intense effects of rising fuel prices, the falling value of the dollar and the destruction of the natural environment.  While I appreciate that there’s hope in what a thriving global economy might mean for midwestern cities, I’m not sure it’s reasonable to ask the people without jobs or credit or homes or disposable income to keep waiting it out, just another year or two.

Despite the inclusion of this troubling premise, the event was still interesting and perspective-bringing; some other tidbits shared by the panel:

• Political dysfunction at the national level is clearly eroding confidence in the ability of policy-makers (Congress and the President) to have any real effect on the economy
• To make sure we can survive through any kind of economic recovery, we have to address the Eurozone economic situation, stop implementing short-term, ineffective fixes domestically and start solving problems for the long term, open and evolve our financial system (“Federal reserve monetary policy currently penalizes people who save instead of rewarding them”), and pay attention to China’s emerging consumer culture.
• Despite the down economy, corporate earnings are up 11% and are expected to improve
• We have to do better at answering the question “what should investors do with their money?”  The market is too volatile, savings accounts don’t offer a return, and if we don’t have some good options, people will seek dangerous ways to get a higher rate of return (e.g. lending money to home-buyers who can’t actually afford it).
• Indiana has been hit harder than most states, using a quarter of a million jobs from 2007 to 2009.  Those jobs mostly aren’t coming back, in part because they’ve been lost from organizations that are more efficient and don’t need them any more.
• Private education and healthcare services are the two industries that are doing well in Indiana, with 36,000 jobs added in the last year.  The government sector has recently done well too as the result of stimulus fund application (there were 450,000 government jobs in Indiana as of May 2010) but that’s expected to level off or decline as those funds dry up.
• Housing sales in Indiana are down 3% and the average price of homes for sale are up 1% – not a good economic trend, and new housing construction has slowed significantly.

I also learned a new economic term that is very timely for my own hiring attempts at Summersault.  One of the event attendees asked the panel how they reconcile the issue of companies and organizations investing in lots of infrastructure and equipment to expand but then not being able to find qualified workers to fill those jobs.  The term for this is “structural unemployment” where there’s a mismatch between demand in the labor market and the skills and locations of the workers seeking employment.  Richmond is experiencing a form of this now, where we (including my company) have positions that are open but our workforce doesn’t always have the training or skills to fill them.  The panel didn’t offer any particular solution to this phenomenon, but the implication was that it is among our most serious challenges to solve.

Thanks to Indiana University East for sponsoring this event and to Reid Hospital for hosting it.  I hope it generates some useful conversation.

For most people, having a job is a means to other ends – making money to help provide for our families, a place where we go to be productive and feel a sense of accomplishment, a foundation on which to build a quality of life.  Most people don’t want to live so they can work – they work so they can live.  And so it’s disconcerting when politicians casually talk about job creation as the end in itself, without any concern for or follow-up on what that means for the people in a given community taking those jobs.

If jobs are created but workers aren’t paid a living wage or are prevented from standing up for their rights, is our work really done?

If jobs are created but hiring processes are discriminatory or working conditions are oppressive, can we say we’ve done a helpful thing for our fellow citizens?

If jobs are created but toxic chemicals are released into the groundwater or treasured natural areas are destroyed in ways that limit the quality of life for future generations, can we really claim success?

If job creation is our only goal, there are a lot of unsustainable and destructive models we can follow to get a whole bunch of people put to work right away.  Relax a few laws, sweep a few health and environmental issues under the rug, put up a “help wanted” sign, and ta-da – you’ve got your jobs numbers to wave around, at least for this news cycle!

But if our primary goal is not just job creation, but helping people make a meaningful and fulfilling living for themselves and their families, then maybe we approach it a different way.  Maybe we can start to think about job creation at a more human scale.

What does job creation at a human scale look like?  I wrote some about this back in 2005, when I described what a driving vision for job creation might prompt us to prioritize. A few more examples:

• Supporting employers that are rooted in their communities and that have a tangible stake in the health and well-being of the people who live and work around them
• Investing in employment opportunities that will pay a living wage, and that value the health and well-being of their employees over the long-term, even when it’s not immediately profitable in the short-term to do so
• Not being afraid to see value in creating one, two, three jobs at a time, instead of always waiting for the “big win” of hundreds or thousands of jobs at once – most “growth” is happening in smaller companies now, not larger ones, and the cumulative effect is just as powerful and important
• Regional economic development efforts that focus on the question “how can we do well with what we already have here?” instead of “how can we import resources and build brand new infrastructure so that we can look and feel exactly like some other place?”

I’m sure there are many other ways to think about job creation at a human scale, and I welcome your contributions.

As you can imagine, this isn’t an idle academic exercise; traditional methods of economic development are failing, local and state governments are on the ropes, and at least in my state of Indiana, personal bankruptcies and debt levels are soaring.  We must talk about job creation, yes, but we must talk about it in a way that fully engages the human scale of what it means for a particular person in a particular community to have a job, and what sacrifices and compromises are made by that community to get there.

I’ve written before about things you might consider when leaving a volunteer board of directors for a non-profit or other community organization. I’ve also had some good conversations recently about the process on the other side of that kind of community involvement, deciding whether or not to say “yes” to joining a board of directors or taking on some other leadership role. For your sake and for that of the organization, it’s important to do some research and reflecting before accepting that invitation, to make sure your involvement is a good fit and that the experience will be rewarding for all involved.

From my experience, here’s a list of steps to take and questions to ask when you’re considering whether or not to join a board of directors:

1. What’s the function of the board? Is it purely advisory, or does it make and enforce policy? Is it involved in big-picture strategic planning, or is it managing day-to-day operations? What role does it play in the life of the organization?
2. What’s the time commitment? Some boards meet a few times a year in intensive sessions, but don’t otherwise expect much from their members. Other boards meet monthly, with multiple committee meetings and community events in between that you might be expected to attend or even organize. Some boards have very active e-mail mailing lists, others are quiet. Learn how much of your time and energy – in the form of meetings, events and other communications – you’ll be expected to expend.
3. What’s the leadership structure? Who sets the agenda for the board meetings? What’s the relationship between the board’s executive committee or other leadership and the rest of the members? What’s the relationship between the board and the staff? Are there “covert leaders” who have exceptional but unofficial or unnamed influence?
4. How are decisions made? Do board conversations seek to build consensus, or is discussion about convincing a majority to vote a certain way? When there are concerns or conflicts, how are they resolved? Are stakeholders consulted, or informed after the fact?
5. What’s your anticipated role? Are you being invited to join because you have a specific skill, affiliation or resource that you’ll be expected to use (e.g. you’re a lawyer and they need free legal advice)? Do they already know what committee or project they want you to work on, or will they wait to discern what might be the best fit for you?
6. What’s the new member orientation process? Are new board members formally oriented to the processes and culture of the board, or are they just expected to show up and figure it out? Who does the orienting, and what approach do they use?
7. How is institutional memory preserved? Does the board create and publish thorough meeting minutes? Are past decisions and discussions easily reviewable so that conversations aren’t re-hashed with board member turnover? Are key documents like bylaws, member contact lists, and financial statements made easily available?
8. What’s a meeting like? Ask to sit in on a board meeting as an observer and see how it’s conducted. Are the espoused values and mission of the organization manifested in the way the board members interact with each other? Is member participation even and equitable, or unbalanced and dominated? How does it feel to spend an hour of your time in that setting?
9. Why did other board members say yes, and why are they still there? Talk to other members of the board about their experiences, what they think works well, and what they see as areas for organizational growth. What frustrates them? What projects and successes get them excited?
10. Check your schedule. Even if the answers to all of the above questions point toward a “yes,” look at your existing time commitments and personal aspirations, and ask whether or not you can fully engage in the life of the organization without compromising those. Do you have enough time in the day for a new role?

Are there other things you take into consideration when deciding what good causes and organizations you give your own time to?

Sometimes this reinventing and rediscovering happens because there’s been a change in staffing, sometimes it happens because people just don’t bother to write things down.  But I’m amazed at the “shortcuts” people think they’re taking to work around those cases:

• We couldn’t find our username and password to manage our website domain name, so we just registered a new one and re-printed our business cards.  Problem solved!
• We forgot that our last IT person already had a Facebook page setup, so we setup a new one and then asked everyone to like the new page.  Problem solved!
• We’re not sure where the source design files are for our marketing brochure, so we’ll just design a new one.  Problem solved!

Meanwhile you’ve lost a bunch of would-be visitors to your website who still have your old business cards, halved your population of Facebook followers, and wasted someone’s week on solving a problem that was already solved.

Sometimes it is faster to take a shortcut – I’m guilty of using the “forgot my password” feature on web applications WAY too often because I haven’t bothered to do a good job of tracking the password used when I don’t use the service but a few times a year.  And there can be value in having a given process considered with fresh eyes and new perspective, even if it is because the old way wasn’t well documented.

But when you find yourself repeating this exercise over and over again, spending time and energy (and money?) reinventing or rediscovering some core parts of your operations, you have to wonder if there’s room for improvement:

1. Encourage the building and documenting of shared knowledge using tools like wikis, intranets, internal blogs, and shared document repositories, and train staff on how to use them (“All of our key account information related to our corporate website is in that folder on the shared network drive.”)
2. Facilitate easily checking in with coworkers before launching something new (“Hey, I’m gonna create our new Facebook page, anyone see a reason not to?”)
3. Audit the time your staff spends getting up to speed on core business practices or resources.  (“The last three marketing department hires each spent 10 hours researching and documenting area printing services we could use – maybe there’s something wrong here.”)

What parts of your organizational operations are being unnecessarily reinvented or rediscovered on a regular basis?

How do you make sure your staff members build on what you and your coworkers already know?