Its nice to be here, its nice to meet all of you some of you I know and some of you I dont
What im going to be talking about is Community Leadership for a Changing Economy
WE start out with this idea of economic development
Cause that's what Ive been doing for the last 20 some odd years working with economic development
And I came into the economic development institute director
So my background is as a clinical scientist and working with governments
Around 2000 or so, 1999, I began to work with economic development
And I travelled around the state talking with local economic development people and mayors about economic development
When you mention economic development to those folks what do you think they think of
What is economic development?
Recruiting, its recruiting businesses into the community.
That's how they view economic development
Well I view economic development more broadly, especially based on the experience I've had
Working in this field for 20 years or so
But this is the definition, a process by which a community creates, retains, and reinvests wealth and improves the quality of life
Its about doing anything you can to increase wealth in the community and thereby increasing quality of life
If you improve wealth life will get better because people will have more money in their pocket, their paychecks, they'll have more dollars coming in.
Whatever it is you'll be increasing wealth in the community
So its much broader than just recruitment
Its also about taking care of your citizens, your businesses expand, its about entrepreneurship
and small business development, its about retail, tourism
All those things bring wealth to the community
and improve quality of life
So that's economic development
That's a basis for talking about this
An also we're talking about what happens in communities.
As I continue to talk to groups I begin to see that its really important to look at the big picture
Look at the things that are going on outside the community that are impacting what goes on inside the community
So we begin talking about some trends that
we're seeing that impact our economy workforce.
That provides sort of the context of community leadership
So specifically I want to look at
Globalization, technology, Knowledge economy, Demographic change, and Urbanization.
So we'll talk about each of these a little bit
I want to go through these fairly quickly to
Talk more about whats going on in the community
Its important to know these things if your going to be a better leader.
Globalization is the first trend
This a quote by Thomas Freeman from lexus and the olive tree which he wrote back in 1999.
And it was one of the first books to really explain globalization in a way that people could understand it
He says "Globalization is the integration of markets, nationstates, and technologies
To a degree never witnessed before
in a way that is enabling individuals, corporations and nation-states
to reach around the world farther, faster, deeper, and cheaper than ever before
And so if we go back to 1989, that was the time
when the berlin wall came down
So that signals the end for the way that we had organized our political systems since World War 2
So you had the Soviet Union, communism, and their state control economy
And then you had on the other side the United States and the western
Democracies which promote capitalism and democracy
So in 1989 we saw the collapse of the Soviet Union and this bipolar world came to an end
We saw something replace it that was much different
The metaphor that would define the cold war was the wall
When the wall came down that was the idea of breaking the old
Kind of economy and political system
What replaced it is more described as a web, so not a wall but a web
YOu see more integration, you see a lot of less developed countries
Thatre coming on the scene and are able to compete around the world
because of something else that is happening just about the same time
and that was the explosion of communication technology
It began during a period in the 80s
We really overextended the amount of cable and things across the
seas and the ability to communicate and in effect we
created this local network of communications
We can speak to someone in India or china
or wherever and we can collaborate
It caused tremendous change in the way economies worked
and our workforce works
SO this new world is characterized by extreme competition
among countries
and companies all over the world
Supply chains now are international
So when we talk about the Mercedes benz
we know its made in the United States
with parts coming from other places
So supply chains are international
And the competition for markets and labor is also international
This gives you an example of what we're talking about when we talk about competition of labor
This is Foxconn, the Chinese factory where most iPhones are made
They employ 230,000 workers
The average wage for a production worker
is $17 a day
and employees work 6 days a weekfor 12 hours a day
So if we're competing on the basis of labor costs
Then we're going to lose everytime
and we have
So a lot of
communities have seen their
low wage, low skill manufacturing disappear
So rural areas especially have been
built on a agriculture economy
saw the small farms go away
replaced by some
low skill manufacturing
that sort of saved the town
and now its gone as well
So you have all these places
all over the country
that are experianceing tremendous change
and loss because of this
Now globalization also
causes us to have expoert markets
and more investment is coming into the country
Prices are much lower, those kinds of things
So there are advantages
but there are also disadvantages
To communities that see the loss
of some of their manufacturing
The second and probably more important
impact
on our economy workforce is technology
This is from a report in 2002
by NBC I think came out of North Carolina
And they looked at the state of the south
It said this
National recovery wont bring jobs
Back to the rural south
Production ahs moved to other countries with lower wages
or plants have substituted technologically advanced machines for people
Tens of thousands of jobs are not coming back
So two things there, ones globalization
You know you
companies are going to places with lower wages
but secondly
Plants have substituted technologically advanced machines
for people
SO automation, technology is the biggest
casue of lost jobs
we're seeing in the united states
This is from a CBS sixty minutes back in 2013
IT says the percentage of americans with jobs
is at a 20 year low
Just a few years ago it you traveled by air
You would have to interact with a human ticket agent
Today those jobs
are being replaced by robotic kiosks
bank tellers giving way to ATMS
Sales clerks are surrendering to e-commerce
and switchboard operators and secretaries to voice recognition technology
So a lot of jobs are going away
being replaced by techonolgy
Every summer we do
Through our intensive
economic development course
we go to the Hyundai plant
and we watch cars being made
at the Hyundai plant
Now if you
gone to a auto plant in america
25 years ago and watched a car being made
you would have seen jimmy and joe down on the floor and turning a wrench and doing things to make a car
But when we go and see an auto plant today
who is doing the work?
Robots.
If you go to an auto plant, all of the work is 
being done by robots. The humans that 
are there are tending the robots.
So its a different kind of job.
The talent bar is raised, its not about a
low skill kind of job anymore in manufacturing
increasingly the skill requirements are much higher because of technology
and there are much fewer people who are actually needed to do the job.
In the United States we've led the world in technology innovation for a long time.
Between 1960 and 1999 manufacturing's 
share of American total employment 
roughly halved to about 15%.
During this same period the manufacturing
output nearly tripled.
So we have half as many people working in
manufacturing and they are producing three times as much output.
That tells you we are doing more automation
theres less labor and we are just as productive.
We saw in agriculture we are producing as
much agriculture as ever but we don't need
there to be people we're doing it with machines.
Over and over and over we're seeing that kind
of thing occurring.
YOu may have seen this book and magazine the
idea that robots are coming to take our jobs,
will technology soon erase millions of jobs,
the answer is yes.
That is the answer.
Technology is replacing human labor and will
continue to do so.
Back in 1965 there was a guy named Gordon
Moore who posited Moore's Law and the idea
was, he was the cofounder of Intel, he said
this that the amount of information you could
put on a microchip doubles every ten years.
And that has been sort of a way to look at
the change in technology that we're seeing
exponential change in technology when you
think about change you want a slow gradual
increase over time.
What we're seeing in technology is more like
a hockey stick, its going straight up so the
change we're seeing is more than we can keep
up with more than our political systems our economies can keep up with but we're talking
now about self driving cars.
all these kinds of things.
You know one of the largest occupations in
the country is truck-driving with self-driving
cars it will displace that.
In all kinds of fields your seeing human labor
being replaced by automation and technology.
Knowledge leads to a change in the kind of
economy we have, Knowledge economy.
Back in 1980 Alvin Toffler wrote a book called
the third wave and in this he talked about
evolution of our economy from the first wave
of agriculture, the second wave manufacturing,
in 1980 Toffler predicted that a new kind
of economy was coming and it was based on
The key resource is in peoples heads, the
key resource for the new economy is going
to be knowledge and information.
Toffler was right because even in those fields
of agriculture and manufacturing we're seeing
more and more innovation and technology replacing
labor.
This little pyramid shows the creative work
at the top and at the bottom, the larger area,
routine work.
We have seen a lot of roots of routine work
going away because one globalization, work
is being outsourced to other countries and
other work of routine nature being replaced
by machines so we're seeing more of our economy
around creative work and less routine work.
time how manufacturing has declined in terms
of employment.
People who have a job in manufacturing are
seeing that as a sharp decline over time other
it was in 1960 in terms of public sector work.
In terms of occupational class shared workforce
the blue line is the working class shared,
So that is where the economy is going there
are fewer of those manufacturing jobs that
used to supply communities with real work
that paid real wage for people in the community.
If we look at this, these are really two different
charts, one looks at earnings by education
attainment and the other by employment ranked
by educational attainment.
You are more likely to be unemployed.
The next trend is demographic change we're
seeing some big shifts that effect our economy
work force and demographics.
We're getting old and I know this very personally
that we're getting older because im part of
this baby boomer generation that is now getting
ready and has exited the workforce.
Right now the proportion of our population
that is over 65 is about 13 percent and by
2050 that is supposed to be 20 percent so
we're getting older.
A bigger share of the population as the baby
boomers age is going to be over 65.
boomers bail how demographics will sort communities
into winners and losers.
It says the problem, actually there are four
of them, is simple.
We baby boomers didn't have enough kids, our
birth rate isn't high enough, we're living
longer, and our education system is dropping
half our kids in the academic dirt.
As 78 million of us retire there wont be enough
qualified workers behind us to fill jobs and
grow the economy that's necessary to support
all of us new dependents.
And so we're getting older and that has a
real challenge for numbers in terms of our workforce.
We're also becoming more diverse as a country.
Every year there are about 1 million legal
immigrants who come to the United States.
In 2000 we had 12.5 skilled immigrants which
is more than the combined number of Germany,
France, United Kingdom, Australia, Canada,
and Japan.
the reason we have the advantage is we have
the immigration we have people coming in.
Between 1990 and 2005 immigrants started 1
out of 4 venture backed companies in the United
States.
In 2007 15 of Fortune 100 CEOs had roots in
foreign countries.
And this next one is one that kind of blows
my mind.
and universities and if we can we keep them
here to stay and be talent in our industries
in sciences and engineering and those kinds
of fields.
So we're becoming more diverse, this is a
chart that shows a hundred years of the United
States, 1960 to 2060, in 1960 about 85 percent
of the population was white smaller percentage
of black and then 4 percent Hispanic and 1
percent Asian.
of the growth in our labor force between the
start of the century and the mid part of the
century will be because of immigrants and
their children 90 percent of our labor growth
will be related to immigration, unless we
make changes to immigration policy.
Peter drugard in the next society which is
a great essay he wrote in 2001 said this:
America's experience of immigration should
give it a lead on the developed world for
some decades to come.
But it is not the numbers alone that give
America the advantage, even more important
the country is culturally attuned to immigration
and long ago learned to integrate immigrants
into its society and economy.
The next trend is Urbanization all over the
world people are moving from rural areas into
more metro areas.
This is a map of the United States in the
dark purple areas is half the US population.
Half the US population are in those areas
the rest of the non dark purple are other half the
country.
So we're becoming more urban.
in communities, states, to me that is a really
telling kind of indicator of the strength
of your economy and your future.
IF you have a growing population things are
probably going to be good for you, if you
see a declining population you got real challenges
because when you gain people or lose people
population and bigger as you gain population.
Heres how we rate in alabama compared to the
rest of the south.
Now I've got here the other states of the
Southeastern conference cause I like football,
Which down then not to bad until you look
that we're only better than Louisiana Mississippi
there but look at places like Texas, florida,
Georgia, South Carolina, Tennessee, they're
IF you look at since the last census in 2010
our growth rate is 2 percent which is better
than Mississippi not as good as anybody else.
This of course is a map of Alabama and the
dark counties, that's half of Alabama.
We have our metro counties in green and our
very small counties in red.
You see the difference in numbers.
Every two years we do a econ vitality index
grouping in to rank all the counties on certain
indicators.
Specifically we look at population growth,
educational attainment, income employment,
mass of people really equates to economic
prosperity as well.
If we look at population change by county
size we got the metro counties, remember over
100,000, during this period since 2000 Alabama
grew by 9 percent and metro counties grew
by an average of 20 percent.
Since 2000 18 counties had a greater growth
rate than the state average of 9 percent.
Baldwin grew 51 percent, Shelby 49 percent,
Madison 44, Lee 40, St. Clair 36 percent.
So you have these metro counties growing like
crazy the only metro counties that didn't
But on our small counties there are 26 of
those counties below 25,000, 22 lost population.
Wilcox lost 19 percent of their people, Hale
21 percent, Macon 22, and Lamar 25 percent.
Already tiny places lose as much as a quarter
of their population during this 17 year period.
That's tramatic cause your talking again not
just about people your talking about your
losing people since the last census.
SO when we look at growth its concentrated
in our metro areas.
Bachelors degree, Shelby county got 41 percent
Coosa county less than 10 percent.
So in a knowledge economy when you need the
talent bars raised you find some places that
Income the same we see Metro areas median
household income is about $49,000 small counties
about $32,000.
You got a big difference.
Specific counties, Shelby at $70,000 Sumner
$20,000.
Poverty rate Shelby less than 8 Dallas at
35.
We're much more capitol intensive then labor
intensive these days because of innovation
technology.
Secondly there are fewer low skill jobs, a
lot of those have been outsourced.
need for coordination between our k-12 education,
our community colleges, our businesses and
we've got to begin to make sure we have a
workforce system that produces the skilled
workers we need for this kind of economy.
Then there is this intense competition for
talent.
The coming world of economic development is
not going to be about recruiting industry,
its gonna be about recruiting talent cause
once you have talent the industry will follow
cause they're gonna be looking for smart people.
It's like a tornado just hit and they weren't
ready for it, they're not ready to recover
from it because their schools are lousy and
we're talking about a new knowledge economy,
In this kind of economy there is in the bail
the subtitle is how do economies separate
winners from losers.
So some communities are gonna win and some
are gonna lose and so the places that are
gonna win are gonna be the ones that have
good leadership.
That's the bottom line because a lot of these
things are to big to deal with and unless
Which gets us finally to what we wanna talk
about: Community Economic Development, Community
Leadership.
Alright here is the way I look at a local
economy.
And I do it with my strategic planning and
working.
A lot of folks wanna talk just about industrial
recruitment in Economic Development whats
and marketing its also about product development.
You've got to have a product to sell before
you can be successful in selling it, no matter
what the product may be.
If you don't have a strong community then
you're going to be in trouble and by community
i'm talking about infrastructure.
I'm talking about physical infrastructure,
you've gotta have roads and utilities and
sewer and all those things and now telecommunication,
theres now cord infrastructure you gotta have
You also have to have a human infrastructure
meaning educated and skilled workers cause
you're not going to be able to grow your economy,
especially not this economy, unless you have
leadership.
You've got to have leaders who are working
together, citizens who are engaged, strong
That is the philosophy that I have in everything
that we do in our office, when I think about
economic development I'm not talking about
recruiting industry, I'm talking about creating
wealth and improving quality of life.
It includes all of these things.
That's what we're going to talk about. You need to have the Physical, the Human, and the Civic
Back in 2006 we had a rural roundtable here
in Auburn and we brought together folks from
around the state and the community to talk
about what do we need to do to be successful
in rural economy development and we met for
a whole day we all talked we divided into
groups and what came out of that day was three
things that we needed to do.
The first thing they said we needed to be
prosperous in our own communities is we need
leadership and citizen of participation.
The second thing they said we need is we need
better education and workforce development.
The third thing they said is we need broadband.
with communications technology.
This past November we had our second rural
roundtable and what the group did was affirm
In so many places you're seeing hospitals
close you're seeing services that are going
away, you're seeing and what that means is
that its not just about what the quality of
So not only is it needed to have good quality
of life in your other industry, it's a huge
part of local economies because they pay good
wages and employ a lot of people and some
We talked about physical infrastructure and
the human infrastructure really important
its the number one issue in economic development.
Is where do we get the workers?
That's the big question in economic development
today is where do we get skilled labor.
want to talk about because I think its so
important.
Citizen Engagement.
BAck in 1831 Alexis Tocquiville was a French
count who came to the United States and found
that European Settlers here were creating
a society much different than the one they
lived in Europe.
He found they had communities formed around
what he called uncommon indictional, small
groups of common citizens coming together
to solve problems.
He observed three features about how these
groups worked.
One they were groups of citizens who determined
they had the power to decide what the problem
was.
Secondly they had the power to decide how
to solve the problem.
Thirdly they often decided they themselves
would be key actors in implementing the solution.
So what he observed was these citizens who
were taking ownership of local problems and
doing something about it.
He said these citizen associations were forming
uniquely powerful instrument to be creative
in their foundation stones of American communities.
Foundation stones of American Communities
was this civic engagement, people who were
One definition is that it consists of the
active stock of connections among people,
the trust, the mutual understanding, and shared
values and behaviors that bind members human
networks and communities and make cooperative
action possible.
Robert Putnam said that social capital refers
to the features of social organization such
as networks, norms, and trust that facilitate
coordination and cooperation for mutual benefit.
relationships built on trust.
I find this an interesting quote because it
talks about relationships and leadership and
I do a lot of speaking and thinking about
leadership.
Leadership is about relationship its about
relationship this is what depa heradia said:
whereas economic capital is in peoples bank
accounts, human capital is inside their heads,
social capital adheres the structure of relationships
to posses social capital a person must be
related to others.
It is these others, not himself, who the actual
source of his or her advantage.
Social capital is not private property or
any persons who benefit from it.
It exists only when shared.
Social capital is about relationships with
others, getting the community to address issues.
relationships, around certain problems they
address together that they cant address alone.
So if they will come together and have a bridging
social capital they can address some of the
important issues they face.
If they don't they will never be solved.
What this research shows is that strong economies
depend on social capital, they depend on strong
communities.
village act together for a common good" What
he's saying is there wasn't the social capital
they needed to be successful.
Robert Putnam in 1970 also looked at Italy
when Italy sort of devolved power down to
the local governments and he looked at what
happened in the northern part of Italy and
place like we do and if we don't do it then
it wont get done.
That's social capital, that's what we need
to be successful in our communities and to
address the challenges that we face by all
these trends we talked about earlier.
I love this quote by Margaret Mead: "Never
doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed
citizens can change the world.
Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has"
A small group of thoughtful committed citizens,
that's citizen engagement.
So what do we need to do to provide opportunities
for this kind of engagement, one thing we
need is public space we need a place where
people can come together to talk and address
things that concern them and try to come up
with some solution.
It could be Town meetings, Deliberative forums,
Roudtable discussions, concerts and festivals
things that bring people out of their homes
into the community.
Especially when people come out to try to
plan and think about particular problems that
concern them and figure out how they can address
them with their own work together.
So we need public space and Collaborative
Leadership.
So there needs to be a new view of community
leadership.
A lot of times we think about a leader we
think about somebody who has an institutional
position in an organization, the mayor or
the head of the chamber or something like that.
But that's not really what community leadership
is about.
The new model is the leader as catalyst, connector,
and consensus-builder.
Catalyst, connector, consensus-builder.
Someone who brings people together because
what you find is that the mayor or anybody
else doesn't have all the answers and we cannot
solve the problems that we face alone.
We have to have all the organizations pitching
in, we've got to have right now silos and
begin to work together if we're going to be
successful.
So we need community leaders from a variety
of backgrounds perspectives who come together
for the community something Edward Matthews
the president of Kevin foundation calls a
leaderful community.
Its not about the quality of leadership, its
about the quantity of leadership.
You have a lot of people, different walks
of life who come together and say I'm going
to do my part in this community.
To do so overcomes what I see as one of the
biggest problems that ive seen in my thirty
years of working with communities is the problem
of disconnectedness.
You go into a community there are a lot of
good things going on and you find that the
chamber does some good things, the city council
has a good program, the churches lead some
good programs.
But what rarely happens is that they are working
in concert with one another, they are working independently.
So you have a lot of folks who are doing their
own thing, they're doing some good things,
but not really making the difference they
could if they would get on the same page break
down the silence and work together.
Building webs and not walls.
Webs, networks, people come together and connect
around trying to find solutions to the thing,
that could be their school system, healthcare,
whatever the problem may be.
People say we're not going to take the status
quo, we're gonna do better whatever it takes
we're gonna do better, they've worked with
that.
In Thomas freedmans newest book he talks about
the "eye" people.
He talked about all these things that I was
talking about, all these trends going on are
sort of like a hurricane that had hit us.
They're are unprecedented change coming at
us all at once through all these forces of
technology and the other things we talked
about.
He talked about some people are wall people,
they wanna put up a wall to try to stop the
hurricane, those people are not going to be
successful.
It's the eye people, people who stand in the
middle and try to take energy from these things
and figuring how they can use these forces
for the benefit of people to be successful.
He talks about some of the eye people and
wall people.
The eye people understand these forces are
there and they try to take energy from it
and use it rather than simply stand against
a wall.
This is for my philosophy.
The key to community development is to locate
all available local assets and to begin connecting
them in ways that multiply their power and
effectiveness.
An African proverb says that if you want to
go fast, go alone.
if you want to go far, go together.
And so its about identifying your assets,
making use of every asset you have by connecting
them and multiplying the power of the effects.
If we're doing it in silos without relation
to other parts of the community we're not
going to be as successful.
So the whole point of this about community
leadership its about relationships within
a community.
Making them stronger making more enduring,
more habitual.
Its about connecting stakeholders, you know
folks who are in those positions at heads
of institutions: school superintendent, the
mayor, head of the chamber all these people
are truly in a position of leadership in this
institution that has work in the relevant community
But to often they are operating on their own
and not in concert with other institutions.
So if we can figure out how we work together,
meaning the school system working with the
business community working with the government
working with the faith community.
all those folks beginning to figure out how
to work together then we can be more successful.
One way to do that is to create structure
cause I believe all these things about connections
and aligning the resources in the community
are important but its hard to do without some
kind of structure to make it happen.
So one structure that's proposed by the settlement
policies board in a report they did back in
2005 is to create something called a prosperity
alliance.
That's where you take the heads of your school
superintendent, your mayor, maybe your county
commissioner, your business leaders, your
faith based leaders, your head of civic organizations
who come together and meet on a regular basis
to create a plan or to figure out what your
community priorities are and develop strategies
to address those priorities.
It would be a regular occurrence where you
get the representatives of all the parts of
the community to come together thinking not
just as what are we gonna do in schools, what're
you gonna do in businesses, what're you gonna
do with government programs.
What are we gonna do about putting all the
pieces together, because if we can put the
pieces together then we can have a much greater
impact on our community than if we're working
in our own little silo.
So the prosperity alliance would be multi-disciplined,
inter-jurisdictional, it would convene, coordinate,
plan, create measures for success and overtime
continue to figure out how to be better and
better and better.
Strategic planning is another thing a big
supporter of the idea of figuring out where
you want to be, where you are, and how you've
reached that gap between where you are and
where you want to be.
Create an explicit path between where you
are now and where you want to be.
That's a powerful kind of process.
We get there by answering a few questions.
Where are we now, Where do we want to be, How do we get there, How do we measure our progress?
Every organization should ask those questions
of themselves periodically, every community
should do that.
I think every individual should do that as
well.
So I'm a big believer in 
the power of strategic planning, to often
they don't work, to often we don't really
commit to them.
But its important.
Its important to me in a community because
when you have a good strategic planning process
its one crossroad where we can bring together
those various stakeholders who rarely come
together to talk about the community as a
whole.
That's what should be a part of the strategic
planning process, What are the things that are the most important
to us as a community and how do we
work together to address those key priorities?
What are we going to do, whos going to do
it, whens it going to be done?
All kinds of things that you should get to
in the strategic planning process, its a way
to connect, to bring together.
Peter Drucker said "The relevant question
is not what shall we do tomorrow, but
what shall we do today in order to get ready
for tomorrow."
It's not just about whats going on in the
by and by or prep goals for the future, it's
about what are we doing on a daily basis to
get down the road from where we are to where
we want to be.
It's about action not aspirations.
Charles Darwin said "It's not the strongest
of the species that survive, nor the most
intelligent, but the ones most responsive
to change."
And that relates to all things we talked about
first, all the change we're seeing that the
successful places will be the ones who can
adapt to this change and in order to do that
I believe its good to have good leadership
and good planning.
And also when we talk about our small communities its important to begin to think about regions
because a small county, a small city by definition has a limited capacity for the resources that we need.
This is a quote from a publication we wrote a few years back "Because rural areas are sparsely
populated, they lack a critical mass- of taxpayers, leadership, financial capacity, infrastructure, and
skilled labor. So if rural communities are to survive they must join forces and work together. Rural
communities must learn to see the neighboring town as a competitor only for the Friday night football
game." So we've got to begin to think, how do we work together? Our small places really cant survive on
their own, in order to compete in the kind of economy we're talking about they need to increase their
critical mass assets by joining forces with their neighbors. So we need a lot more regional strategies.
I'm gonna tell a story about a few communities. Tupelo is the first one Tupelo, Mississippi.
How many of you know Tupelo, Mississippi?
Kind of a neat place, birthplace of Elvis,
those kinds of things.
But Tupelo is also one of the best examples
of the kinds of things we've been talking
about.
How a strong economy is being built on a strong
community.
In 1940 Lee county, Mississippi which contains
Tupelo was one of the poorest counties in
the nation.
If it was one of the poorest in Mississippi
you know its going to be one of the poorest
in the country.
Their largest employer was a large garment
factory which closed in 1937 after a bitter
labor strike.
That divided Tupelo and left a residue of
anger and mistrust and the place was in the floor.
They were already poor then they lost their
largest employer and they were in bad shape.
The catalyst for the turnaround was their
newspaper editor, George McLean.
He was editor of the Tupelo Daily Journal
and he was sort of the catalyst that sparked
change in that community and what he did is
he wrote editorials and he went personally
and met with the business community and he
tried to convince them it was in their interest
to help the farmers.
If you can go out and you can make the farmers
be successful their going to have more money
to spend in your stores and that's going to
be in your self interest.
So he tried to convince them of that, and
he did.
So they formed a cooperative and they invested
money, business money, in developing the local
dairy industry which was a big success.
They began to see the farmers more successful
and began to see the investment in their local
stores and began to see some growth.
This was sort of the turning point where they
began to see that this kind of a grassroots
movement, of investing in yourselves and working
together, could pay dividends.
In 1946 Tupelo created a series of "rural
community development councils" all over the
outskirts of Tupelo, sort of like the New
England town meeting, where these rural folks
would come together and talk about issues
they faced and try to come up with some strategies
to deal with them and so you saw these little
New England type town meetings all over these
rural communities where they could talk about
issues trying to figure out what things theyd
been doing.
In 1948 88 of Tupelos leaders came together
and created the Community Development Foundation.
Anyone who could pay the dues could join the
foundation.
The idea is we need money to invest in ourselves
if we're going to grow, and they did that.
All based on their pay and they began to invest
in their schools, in their hospitals, other
things and they began to see a lot of successes.
Their idea was that they were responsible
for creating their own future, the CDF which
still exists today and is still a very vibrant
part of Tupelo, in fact the president of the
Tupelo CDC is an Auburn graduate, David, he's
a really good guy who leads that.
They did workforce development, education,
health, legislative action, community leadership
institute so their doing all kinds of things
in that community to try and create engagement
by the citizens and trying to take ownership
of their own community.
Bottom line is they've been extremely successful.
Lee county, Mississippi is the second wealthiest
county in Mississippi, they have the largest
regional medical center in the state, or maybe
the south.
They have schools that are very highly rated,
so it is really a quality community in Tupelo
and the story is it came about because of
people investing in themselves.
Investing their time, their money and they
made sure that they created that community
foundation on which they could build the local
economy.
You may have heard that a few years ago Toyota
put an auto manufacturing plant in Tupelo
and so its a really great story.
There's a book if you want to know more about
this by my friend Bon Grisham called "Tupelo
the evolution of community" and it tells the
story of Tupelo as a really good case study
of how this kind of community will work, good
foundation for a strong economy.
Second place i'm going to talk about is Uniontown
and this is a personal experience.
Back in 1999, sometime in the late 1990s,
the mayor of Uniontown came to David Wilson
was the VP of outreach at Auburn, David was
from Ringo county he had relatives who lived
in Uniontown so he knew the place.
The mayor came himself to say "we need help"
and Uniontown, anyone that knows that place,
knows that it does need help.
Very high poverty, they have a lot of issues
there but in 1999 they came to Auburn for
help and Auburn said we'll try.
One of the things we thought they needed was
a plan.
I'm a planner and I did strategic planning
so I went and helped them with their strategic
planning process in Uniontown.
The mayor of uniontown appointed the members
to the strategic planning committee and we
went a worked with them and most of those
were sort of elderly friends of the mayor,
as it turned out.
So we went in and we worked with them and we
did create a plan.
One thing we found out once we had created
a strategic plan is there were a lot of things
they wanted to do in that community that the
city government really couldn't do and there
wasn't a lot of other community institutions
there other than the city government and so
we decided to help them work through a community
corporation that could do some things that
the city government couldn't do.
So the mayor was named president of the CDC
and the members of the CDC were again some
of the elderly friends of the mayor.
So this was in 1999 and in 2000 there was
an election in Uniontown.
What do you think happened to the mayor?
He lost his election.
So we were in a situation now where all the
things we had done, create this strategic
planning, which the new mayor cares very little,
created by the former mayor, about working
with the CDC where the former mayor still
sat as the president and had his cronies as
the members.
So we really didn't have a good plan that
we could use.
So what we did was we said well lets just
talk to people in Uniontown and see what they
think so we tried to create a group cross
section of black and whites from Uniontown
to come together and talk about their community.
And so it began with two questions, one was
what do you like about this place, the second
was what would you like to change.
As the group began to talk what they found
was it didn't matter whether you were white
or black you tended to like the same things
and you tended to dislike the same things,
you wanted the same kind of change.
They found they had more in common than they
did that divided.
One thing they said as they continued to meet,
this group, course they named themselves Uniontown
Cares and formed a nonprofit.
They said we need economic development but
we'll never get economic development in Uniontown
if the place looks like it does, meaning if
it was not just about labor physically it
was kind of junky, there is junk along highway
80 there as you went through from Selma to
demopolis.
But it looks unsafe because it had a lot of
young people who were hanging out, loitering
around the buildings and as a person goes
through Uniontown they'll probably hit the
gas just to get through the town quickly because
it seems unsafe.
So people in Uniontown care so we have to
do something about that, we'll never have
economic development unless we deal with that
loitering problem.
So they went to the mayor and the police chief
and said we need to enforce our loitering
laws a get these kids off the street and so
they created signs to put up and that kind
of thing.
But as they continued to talk they said who
are these people who are out here loitering,
they said its my nephew, its the kids who
went to school with my son, they're people
we know and the reason they are there is in
a lot of cases they have alcohol problems,
substance abuse problems, so they began to
say so what can about that they said maybe
if we could bring a Alcohol Anonymous group
and they did that.
So this was sort of aha moment for me, what
they did is they had gone from expecting the
mayor and police chief to try to solve this
problem they had, they began to say what can we do
What are the things that we can do, what're
we contributing.
So they began to do that, they began to feel
a sense of empowerment, they began to clean
up parks, clean up cemeteries, organize a
fund drive for the volunteer fire department.
All these kinds of things they did and it
began to make those folks who are involved
feel good about themselves and feel better
about their community.
You began to see the creation of something
there that wasn't there before, a sense of hope.
So it was real experience to me to see what
they had seen in Tupelo is that if you're
ever going to have economic development you're
going to have to have some kind of community
building.
I saw there the beginnings in Uniontown of
what might happen if they continue to work
together, they can have a chance but it took
this engaged citizenry to say that nobody
is going to help us unless we help ourselves
to make that matter.
So some of the lessons from all this was that
government alone cannot solve a communities
"wicked problems", wicked problems would be
those problems are not easy to solve they
require not just one entity trying to provide
answers but a lot of people working together
to deal with a multi faceted kind of problem.
Secondly that dealing with such problems requires
a collaborative approach by government, citizens,
and multiple community institutions and external
sources working together.
It's about working together, those relationships
a social capital that developed.
Relaying solely on Government- or outside
experts, like us - can leave the people in
the sidelines and stifle the community building
process.
So its not so much about what the political
leaders do with a top down perspective or
experts come in with outside in perspective.
It should be about developing the capacity
of people who are there to deal with their
own issues and problems.
Lastly is Demopolis.
Which is a city not far down the road from
Uniontown on highway 80 heading towards Mississippi.
But Demopolis is a community I've worked in
a good bit.
I always found it to be an outlier in the
black belt.
They tended to have more employment, higher
income, all the kinds of things you see in
a growing community and a vibrant community
that you didn't see in a lot of places in
the black belt.
I worked there back in I guess it was around
2000 or so and we talked about whats going
on in Demopolis that makes you different.
The story that I've been told, and I hope
its true, is that during the 1960s when there
was integration they made a decision the black
and white leaders of Demopolis made the decision
they would maintain their strong integrated
school system.
So unlike most places in the black belt which
created public schools that were 100 percent
black and all white kids went to white academies.
In Demopolis they tried a different model
and they did the same in Thomasville in fact,
which also is a strong community.
What they said was what happened was when
we did not divide by race in education we
grow the community together and that was a
different experience than other places in
the black belt saw.
The lesson there is that you cant waste community
resources.
When you begin to have a conflict that exists
in some places you begin to divide by race
or income or whatever it may be, your political
party, you diminish your resources.
You're not taking advantage of all your assets
and these small places, they have so few resources
they cant waste anything and so coming together,
working together is the only way they can
possibly survive in the coming economy we're
talking about.
And they have done that in Demopolis.
Southern Growth Policies board came up with
these characteristics of a competitive place
of the future: strong leadership, connected
citizens with high social capital, nimble
and quick to act, works well with others to
build strong partnerships, qualified and credentialed
talent with flexible training and retraining,
continuously informed global view, collaboration
and implementation capacity, really good at
something, and intentional.
Which would describe some of the places we've
talked about.
This is a publication I worked on a few years
back with my friend Linda Hoke of the southern
growth policy board and the idea was how do
you get people in a community coming together
to figure out what to do about an issue.
And so that's what this community questions
is, its a question base tool to identify what
the problem is.
You may go in with an overall topic like the
local school system, figure out what are the
problems, what are the options for dealing
with the problem, and then make some choices
about what we will do and then how do we work
together to solve it.
So that's what this little publication sort
of leads around to do is to say whats the
problem, what could we do about, and what
will we do and how do we work together.
Its a generic way that could be used in any
kind of community with any kind of topic.
So I found it to be pretty good.
Another tool is from the David Matthews center
for Civic Life and they're going around the
state now and doing this What's next Alabama?
I helped them develop this as well and it
uses some of the ideas that we've talked about
today and it goes through the process of looking
at where are we now in this community, where
do we want to be and how do we get there.
So it's what they tell them but if they go
into say Eufala.
I mean whats next Eufala and get the people
there to begin to go through a process of
identifying their key issues and what they
might do about it, then what they will do about it.
So it sort of expands the questions but puts
them in a little different bin which is good.
This is a quote from "The world is flat" by
Thomas Friedman its an African proverb and
it says this: "Every morning in Africa, a
gazelle wakes up.
It knows it must run faster than the fastest
lion or it will be killed.
Every morning a lion wakes up.
It knows it must outrun the slowest gazelle
or it will starve to death.
It doesn't matter whether you are a lion or
a gazelle.
When the sun comes up, you better start running."
That's where we are in our communities.
We don't have the option of waiting, we don't
have the option of thinking things are just
gonna get good all by themselves.
Its going to take a lot of intentional action
by people to make a difference in communities.
Lastly im going to finish up with this, what
it takes for a community to work as it should.
And I like quotes and so im sort of using
a lot of quotes to sort of illustrate some
of the things I think are important.
One is a clear assessment of assets and challenges.
Theodore Roosevelt said "Do what you can,
with what you have, where you are."
Sometimes you may not have much but you can
do something.
You need a proactive vision and plan.
Peter Drucker said " The best way to predict
the future is to create it."
We need innovative leaders, John Kennedy said
"Leadership and learning are indispensable
to each other."
We need many leaders, David Matthews said
"What stands out in the high-achieving community
is not so much the characteristics of the
leaders as their number...The high-achieving
community had ten times more people providing
leadership than communities of comparable
size...And its leaders function, not as gatekeepers,
but as door-openers, bent on widening participation."
So we need many leaders, we need places that
are leaderful.
And we need community engagement, this is
Robert Kennedy's quote called the time ripple
speech he made in South Africa which was also
relevant for the civil rights struggle but
I think it also applies to community engagement.
He said this "Each time a man stands up for
an ideal, or acts to improve the lot of others,
or strikes out against injustice, he sends
forth a tiny ripple of hope, and crossing
each other from a million different centers
of energy and daring those ripples build a
current which can sweep down the mightiest
walls of oppression and resistance."
What I like about that is not just this idea
of tiny ripples that every person can make
a difference everybody can do what they can,
its this idea of crossing one another when
those tiny ripples cross one another it creates
power, it creates possibility to make change.
Inclusiveness, Martin Luther King Jr. said
"We may have all come on different ships,
but we're in the same boat now."
A lot of times we think we can shoot a hole
in the other side of the boat, but that doesn't work.
It takes hard work, Will Rogers said "Even
if you're on the right track, you'll get run
over if you just sit there."
So it takes action and persistence, Jacob
Riis said "When nothing seems to help, I go
and look at a stonecutter hammering away at
his rock perhaps a hundred times without as
much as a crack showing in it.
Yet at the hundred and first blow, it will
split in two.
And I know it was not that blow that did it,
but all that had gone on before."
So sometimes you've got to keep hammering
the rock.
Which leads me to this talking about persistence,
the answers to the kinds of things we talked
about are usually not short term they are
things that have to be sustained over time.
A greek proverb says "A society grows great
when old men plant trees whose shade they
know they will never sit in."
And Lastly investment, 2 Corinthians 9:6 says
"He who sows sparingly will also reap sparingly,
and he who sows bountifully will also reap
bountifully."
Sometimes we know what to do but we will not
invest what is needed to get to where we need
to be.
So sometimes it takes resources and money
and investment.
And heres where we are among These are state
revenues per capita again compared to our
SEC rivals and the nation.
In our state and local taxes per capita we
are dead last in the country.
Our tax burden is the lowest in the country,
we ask little of our citizens.
If we have the tax burden of lets say Mississippi
showing it would create $2.6 billion more
every year which is more than our general
fund budget and so we I think in a lot of
cases don't invest what I say we've gotta
have to grow our economy and we may give incentives
but what we need is that human infrastructure
and physical infrastructure, if we're going
to grown the economy we've got to have that
and that takes public investment and so we're
right now in a position where in our office,
we're GEDI - Government and Economic Development
Institute, and I believe theres a perfect
marriage there because if you're going to
have economic development you've got to have
good government.
You've got to have good government decision
making and investment in order to make the
economy work.
If you don't have that the economy cannot
work.
And lastly Albert Einstein said "We cannot
solve our problems with the same thinking
we used when we created them."
