Zane Safrit

Can You Solve Your Culture Conflict?

The USDA is the same organization that designates what food is officially organic and how much untreated animal manure is too much for our open waterways. Well, to date, they haven't cried Uncle or Stop or issue standards on how much is too much; we'll keep waiting.

That's quite a range. 

F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote:

The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposing ideas in mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function.

But, can it be said that the FDA has a first-rate intelligence when it accommodates two opposing principles: approving food as 100% organic while allowing twice as much untreated manure to enter the open waterway from the CAFO’d hogs in one Iowa county as the sewage from the Dallas-Fort Worth metro area. (Iowa has 99 counties.) Link.

While an first-rate intelligence can hold two opposing thoughts, can a consumer embrace the USDA as a trusted source for food safety?

What's all this got to do with your business?

• Where's your culture conflict?
• Where is your culture's bi-polar duality expressed in a dysfunctional manner in the markeplace?
• Where do you say one thing, on your website, and execute another in your rules and tactics?
• Where in your employee engagement do you say 'we love you' or 'you're the most important part of our success 'and then silence or ignore their suggestions or needs?

As a leader you're very likely insulated by org chart and careers from this cognitive dissonance of your company's culture conflict. It happens; it's not personal. We all are constantly re-defining ourselves as we move through life. And since companies are people, too, my friend, companies are re-defining their brand, their culture, their identity.

Joss Whedon* offered this insight at a recent commencement address he gave:

You have, which is a rare thing, that ability and the responsibility to listen to the dissent in yourself, to at least give it the floor, because it is the key — not only to consciousness, but to real growth. To accept duality is to earn identity. And identity is something that you are constantly earning. It is not just who you are. It is a process that you must be active in.

This contradiction, and this tension … it never goes away. And if you think that achieving something, if you think that solving something, if you think a career or a relationship will quiet that voice, it will not.

Every company at one time was personal. Very personal. Every company was built on relationships. And then bureaucracy and rules, departments and titles, creeped in. ( Some of those rules and titles may prefer to handle dissent with a different approach. Rule it out, discourage it, punish its advocates. Ask GM how that approach worked.)

Now you may not even know the name of your most recent hire. It may be months or years since you spoke to a customer, one on one. That's very different than reading a report, even if it's a report of their collective or individual Net Promoter Scores.That's very different than considering personas, too.

That's where the culture conflict arises. In that process, that transition, from a culture of relationships, of knowing and experiencing, of passion, of looking in the eye honesty to one of distanced and nuanced reports, of territories and postures, saying what is thought to be right....for some other audience, for some other reason...you (the corporate and personal 'you') stopped listening to the dissent, to the dissenters and disruptors in yourself (corporate and personal selves).

Somewhere along the line the USDA lost sight of its purpose to protect our  food supply. Its big now. Vast and anonymous. Reports and procedures and unknown decision-makers for unknown, unspoken stakeholders. No one's listening to...dissent. Sound familiar?

What if Tom Vilsack, the head of the USDA and former Governor of Iowa, stopped reading reports and making speeches to Chambers of Commerce, left his/her smart phone turned off. What if he went out to a grocery store and met with the ultimate customer of the USDA: shoppers. Families and kids, grandparent and parents. What if he asked them:

• Do you feel safer?
• Are we helping you make better choices for the health of your family?
• What can we do better?

But for you, what if you walked out of your office, sat on a park bench and called a customer?

• What if you asked the three questions of the Net Promoter Score? Then you could hear the customer's voice as they answered?

What if you just asked them:

• How do we make your life better, easier, simpler, happier?
• Do we?
• What can we do better?

Now. What if you did that with your employees? I don't mean just your direct reports. I mean the newest hire. What if you sat down and asked that person:

• What do you hope to achieve here?
• What could you achieve?
• What would you need to achieve that?
• What stands in your way?
• Where's our culture conflict? Where's the gap between our promise and our delivery?

What if you made this a regular habit? Walked outside that box you've created.

What if you began to reconcile your company's culture now with what it had been, back when it was exciting and fun and crazy and you were growing?

What if?

Beware the C.A.V.E Dwellers in Your Organization

C.A.V.E Citizens Against Virtually Everything. Jack Schultz from BoomTown Institute coined this term. He shared it with me in our conversation on BlogTalk Radio. You can listen in streaming on-demand at this link.

C.A.V.E. Dwellers. They dwell openly or in hiding within most organizations. These are the naysayers, the nattering nabobs of negativity**, the expert marksmen who shoot down every idea with a question or a doubt or a snark or sarcasm or poignant pause. They are expert in all the reasons things don't work, won't work, never will work. They rarely use that skill to see things that work, did work, and will work. Their perceived intelligence masks the walls and obstacles they build in their world.

They can keep your organization in the Stone Ages. They can emerge from their dark, dank, dwellings, to drag your organization back to the Stone Ages.

And, you can't change anyone. You can inspire. You can offer the resources. You can remove obstacles. You can create a culture where change is embraced. But, you can't change anyone. You can't force C.A.V.E Dwellers to come out of their caves and live with you as you lead your organization through the changes needed to not only survive, but even thrive.

Now. There are things you can do to entice C.A.V.E Dwellers out of their caves. Here's a few:

* Offer them food.

Ok, maybe not literally. But you can offer them incentives that are meaningful to them. (Maybe food is meaningful...)

Them is the operative word. How many organizations offer incentives to employees that are meaningful to their CFO or their shareholders, but not to the employees? And those incentives failed to generate the desired results.

Reward the right behavior. The right reward for the right behavior.

* Entice them to take small steps.

CAVE Dwellers are easily spooked and provoked. Encourage them to take baby-steps away from their darkness. Reward them with those meaningful incentives with each step towards the light.

* Create a safe environment

CAVE Dwellers are easily spooked and provoked. Our ancestors include them. So, we carry that DNA.

Different environments can manifest our DNA as, awaken our own internal, CAVE Dwellers.

Creating a safe environment for change and learning is good for everyone. Create an environment that loves the first mistake. And loves learning from that first mistake. Together.

* Educate.

CAVE Dwellers are great learners. The issue is what they've learned (mistakes are bad; you're punished for mistakes; stupid people make mistakes...) and the habits that were reinforced.

Instead, create an environment that teaches how to first share ideas and the occasional mistakes among them. Then create the process that teaches from those mistakes. Then teach them that new process.

* Ban the recidivists

You can't change people. You can create an environment where their change is welcomed and supported. But you can't change them.

Ban from your group the C.A.V.E. Dwellers who insist they want to remain as C.AV.E Dwellers. It's where they want to remain. Only unhappiness and failed organizations result when CAVE Dwellers are forced to remain among others.

Be safe. Carry a torch.

** Nattering nabobs of negativity was one of the prized quotes from our former Vice-President, Spiro Agnew.

WARNING: Self-Promotion.

If you want to know more ways to engage with your employees, my book RECOGNIZE THEM: 52 Ways to Recognize Your Employees in Ways They Value offers 52 ways to recognize your employees, easy exercises to reinforce those habits and skills and inspirational quotes to keep you going.

BlogTalk Radio Guest Highlighted Excerpts: Andy Brudtkuhl, 48Web Consulting

Andy is Chief Web Guru at 48Web - a small web startup in Des Moines, IA. They specialize in web strategy, development, and consulting. He also writes a couple of blogs as well and co-hosts a podcast. One is a technology blog called Get A New Browser where he discusses the business and technology behind the web. The other is Web Strategy Workshop where he writes about web strategies and internet marketing techniques for small businesses and agencies. And he, co-hosts a podcast with Doug Mitchell called Managing The Edge - helping businesses become more findable and engaging online.

Andy also founded and designed the IowaFlood website which became the defacto clearinghouse for real-time information on the impact of the 2008 floods in Iowa. Much of that information came from citizen journalists' efforts.

Let’s talk about the Iowa floods, the event, your site and what’s changed since last year. Bring us current with the site. What’s happening there?

Even today the site still pulls in news from many news sources and has gone through a maintenance mode to scale the large amounts of visits, and is still growing. The bounce rates are very low. I've noticed that visitors spend more time on the site. This shows that the content is compelling and of interest to the audience. There is code on the back end of the website crawl the social networking sites to extract the most specific news worthy content for the site.

Tell us about the resources you used to build the site then. Which ones worked the best? Why?

Once the floods started, it only took about a day or two to create the website. I had noticed all of the tweets and posts regarding the floods and no one was trying to promote the content or act as a resource or point of contact for what was happening.

Resources to build the site? I use RSS feeds to consume the information then ran the information through YAHOO Pipes to “clean” it up and then send directly to the blog. I built it with WordPress.YAHOO Pipes is a great tool for gathering data and clearing up noise/duplicates from aggregate sites. Pipes is a powerful composition tool to aggregate, manipulate, and mashup content from around the web.

Like Unix pipes, simple commands can be combined together to create output that meets your needs:

* combine many feeds into one, then sort, filter and translate it.
* geocode your favorite feeds and browse the items on an interactive map.
* power widgets/badges on your web site.
* grab the output of any Pipes as RSS, JSON, KML, and other formats.

Tell us about the site’s users. Who used it? Why? How did they use it?

People wanted to see the raw content, the reality of life during the flood, depicting the real human experience.

What was your reasonable aspiration or hoped-for goal when you created it? For our listeners that phrase and its definition comes from Erika Andersen’s book: Being Strategic.

Many major media outlets contacted me: WNYC, Iowa Public Radio were interested in the floods as well as the technology that was used to create such a dynamic powerful site. Traditional media does not have the same power as iowaflood.com for the fact that they use their own images, more editorial in nature, vs the realism of the devastation portrayed by the community-driven content. My site reached out and linked out to people and it became more viral.

Let’s say the next once-in-500 year flood hits Iowa in August. What would you do differently? What other resources would you use? How would you promote it?

1. Use Twitter more.
2. Create a dedicated Twitter account to send out up to date information.
3. Remove himself as an editor so information can get to the site faster.
4. Create an email list of the website visitors to engage and distribute emergency information and content.
5. Use friendfeed and their embeddable widgets.

Why Friendfeed? You're a big fan of it. Why?

I create groups and lists of people that are publishing and sharing content that is live and up-to-date. You can segregate your content feeds. Once content is shared, it is threaded like a discussion board and takes the content to the next level. You can create rooms and add RSS feeds from various sites to populate the friendfeed room and then easily upload it to WordPress.

What changes in social media are reflected in IowaFlood.com?

The next version of Iowa Flood will reflect more of the changes in terms of disseminating news and content especially because of Twitter.

Since your experience in building Iowa Floods, what changes have you seen with Social Media and social needs?

Social media brings a lot to the forefront that may not have necessarily been covered by mainstream media. News organizations are now using social media on their sites to stay informed, learn about more trends, and deliver the news to the public. It is instant, real time news.

What, if anything, changed this year with social media and its uses for social needs?

WordPress is the biggest change. It has changed the web environment and eliminated the standard web development time-frames and problems. As the web needs progressed and shifted, my firm has grown into a strategy company versus web development.

Which new social media resources have failed to live up to their hype?

• Web video: It is not escalating as fast as it was first expected.
• Facebook: Not as much value as a friendfeed or Twitter.

You have moved past merely living on the edge. You now help businesses in managing the edge. That’s the name of your radio show you co-host with Doug Mitchell. Living on the edge has become routine now for many businesses. How does your show help them manage the edge?

The edge is where technology meets the customer and how we can use these available tools to make the customer experience more valuable. We talk about inbound marketing à bringing people to your website with great content, and then converting them into leads or sales. It is the principle of reciprocity: if you provide this content, they are more apt to come to you when they need something. The content must be findable, engaging and extends value.

You have an episode there titled 10 Things from Our Last 10 Episodes. What are those 10 things?

1. Building a technology platform that won’t inhibit you, but will allow you to be more agile and produce content more quickly.
2. Content and the long sale of content. Provide valuable information
3. Put the content where the people are
4. Listening strategies
5. Local search optimization
6. Blogging is essential in business
7. Measuring social media based upon established goals

What are your biggest challenges as a small-business owner?

Taxes and healthcare

What three tips or tools would you offer our listeners to enter the social media arena?

1. Create goals for using SM as a business. They need to be defined enabling the opportunity to measure your efforts against your goals.
2. Develop content and make it available in many channels: blogging, podcasts and video.
3. Build a following on Twitter to help build a community and be THE resource for your expertise.

You can follow Andy Brudtkuhl on Twitter at abrudtkuhl.

Thanks, Andy.

I'd bet on the organic farmer who listens to his customer

If Dante Hesse's hunch is on the money, the people he sells his organic milk to will also become the people who fund his growth. Reuters

He first invested his most precious resources. His time, his attention, his heart and his two ears. His purpose? Find their way to make their life better.

Customers told him what they wanted. They did this in...low-key, one-on-one conversations, with him.

And they told him how important their desires were by how much they were willing to pay.

As a result, they willingly pay a 100% premium for his whole, organic, milk. $4.00 a quart. That's double the national average.

Now, he looks to deepen that relationship. That one-on-one conversation has escalated into a serious attempt to raise $850,000 - in as little as $1,000 increments - directly from the dairy-loving consumers who buy his milk by the quart.

I'd bet on the organic farmer who listens to his customers, whose customers willingly pay a premium for his product. Who would you bet on?

Where are the entrepreneurs?

We are currently experiencing a bulge in the 45-64 age group which, naturally, will mean a bulge in the over-65 age groups in coming years...

Why does this matter for entrepreneurship? Contrary to popularly held assumptions, it turns out that over the past decade or so, the highest rate of entrepreneurial activity (a measurement of new business creation) belongs to the 55-64 age group. The 20-34 age bracket meanwhile-which we usually identify with swashbuckling and risk-taking youth (think Facebook and Google)-has the lowest.

In every single year from 1996 to 2007, Americans between the ages of 55 and 64 had a higher rate of entrepreneurial activity than those aged 20-34. - Jack Schultz* in his BoomTown Institute newsletter. ;

So. Again. Where are the entrepreneurs? Data...points to them, us, being in the boomer bulge.

* Jack Schultz of BoomTown Institute . If you're interested in entrepreneurship, community development, rural development or just learning from someone smart, focused, knowledgeable and who offers pragmatic solutions from a range of sources....subscribe to his newsletter.

Note: Jack shared his thoughts recently with me on all the above and more ; on my BlogTalk Radio show. You can listen at this link.

7.5 Keys to Big Success in Small Towns... (and/or Small Business)

Boomtown USA: 7.5 Keys to Big Success in Small Towns is the title of Jack Schultz's book.  Jack spoke with me last week on BlogTalk Radio. You can listen in streaming mode with the media player on the right here.

And here's the permalink to the show in case you find this post 3-4 weeks from now when the show's not displayed there.

Here's the list

7.5 Keys to Big Success in Small Towns

1. The community adopts a can do attitude. This is the most important quality in a successful community. Working together, having common goal, and working to accomplish it.
2.  Shape your vision and decide what you want to do as a community.
3. Leverage resources, utilize what you have. 
4. Raise strong leaders. It only takes a handful of people to make a difference.  
5. Encourage entrepreneurial approach
6. Maintain local control
7. Build your brand

• .5 The teeter-totter factor – if on top, are you helping to find innovative ways to make your community stronger, more viable, an attractive place for everyone, for the future. Make new things work. Don’t listen to the other end.

This list is also perfect for your small business. Change community to small business. And there you have 7.5 Keys for Big Success in YOUR Small Business.

Taxes and Jobs

There's been a bit of talk lately about taxes. Maybe, you've heard some of it...

And today I find the Business Tax Index 2009: Best to Worst State Tax Systems for Entrepreneurship and Small Business, from the Small Business and Entrepreneurship Council. It ranks the 50 states and District of Columbia according to the costs of their tax systems for entrepreneurship and small business. The index pulls together 16 different tax measures and combines those into one overall tax score, according to the article in the WSJ.

I read the article that included the rankings. I came away puzzled. Maybe the puzzle rests in my small business and entrepreneurship paradigm. That paradigm says that:

*  Diversified economies in states favorable to entrepreneurs.  States whose tax rates are most favorable to small business and entrepreneurship would be states with an economy and job-base diversified across industries and business growth stages.

* High employment/low unemployment in states favorable to entrepreneurs. Those states highest on this ranking, most favorable to small business and entrepreneurs, then would show a comparatively low unemployment rate. That's because all their eggs aren't in the one basket of big corporations in mature industries whose own stage of development is the cash-cow phase. That's where they reduce investment in innovation and R&D to replace their out-dated product lines and stop investing in training for their most important assets: employees. Instead, they seek to maximize cash-flows. Hence, the cash-cow title.

These are the same companies who've been the source of much of the rising unemployment rates in this and every recession. (Unemployment increases in a recession start at the top with big corporations and then trickle-down to small business. That might be the most noticeable economic metric in a trickle-down economic policy.)

And with a diversified economy and job-base from the entrepreneurs attracted by the favorable policies...there would be more jobs being created, more startups and early-stage companies being created throughout this recession to absorb any such layoffs.

But I didn't see that at first glance.

I thought, maybe my data's wrong. I checked the unemployment statistics by state for March, 2009 at the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Here's the states with the anomaly between unemployment and their rankings as a state favorable to entrepreneurship:

* South Carolina.

• Third-highest unemployment at 11.9%
• 11th-best state for entrepreneurs

* Nevada

• 7th-highest unemployment rate
• 2nd-best state for entrepreneurs

* Iowa

• 5th-lowest unemployment rate
• 7th-worst state for entrepreneurs

* Washington

• 16th highest unemployment rate
• 4th-best state for entrepreneurs

* Mississippi

• 14th highest unemployment rate
• 12th-best state for entrepreneurs

* North Dakota

• LOWEST unemployment rate
• 16th-worst state for entrepreneurs

Now, to be fair there were several states whose results seemed to be consistent with the low-tax = favorable business environment, high tax = bad business environment:

* Good: Wyoming, South Dakota
* Bad: DC, California, Minnnesota

Now, my point isn't that there's no corollary between tax rates and bureucracy and job creation. My point is that the relationship of taxes to job growth isn't so direct as to equal a sole and causal relationship.

There are other factors to consider:

* school systems
* workforce skills
* current business community
* quality of life in the community (water, air, arts, lifestyle)
* healthcare
* infrastructure (roads, bridges, airports, telecom)

Jack Schultz from BoomTown Institute spoke with me last week about job creation in small communities. He shared the story of one company who moved their headquarters to another town motivated in large part by the failure of their hometown to invest in public schools. The poor quality of those schools prevented them from attracting the executive talent needed to grow their business. The families of the executives would not allow their children to be forced to attend those public schools. The company moved to a community that among other things a strong, vibrant, growing, public school system. That attracted other companies, who in turn attracted other companies.

So before we throw jobs and communities out with the teabags, let's make sure we have a comprehensive discussion, a data-based discussion,  on how to create a diversified community that can create and sustain their own job-creating economy.

Is rural broadband access worth $9 Billion?

I think so. I live in a rural community in Southeast Iowa. But, through the efforts of our state and our LISCO we have 100 meg connection within our city limits. (Well, we'll have it to my doorstep within 60 days. They're working to install it on my street as I type.)

But, what about the rest of our county, and the residents in the county next door...and on and on. Do they get stuck with dialup...(dialup!!) speeds. Do they get left behind, physically and technologically?

Again, we're not talking about broadband speeds like 14 other nations enjoy. This report shows 14 other nations with higher average broadband speeds,  well in excess of 5 megs it says we, here in the US, enjoy. (Who gets 5 meg broadband speeds?)

 We're just talking about DSL-like speeds.

Do we as a nation choose to leave 21% of our friends, neighbors, co-workers, family-members, brain pool, talent pool...future...behind?

NY Times

Think Global, Lend Local

I was thinking about lending and our financial system this week. I’m sure lots of others were, too.  Wall Street banks have their bailout money in hand, or should have it in hand shortly.  (There’s nothing like money with no strings attached is there? I’ve never experienced it, even when my grandparents would give me a $5 or $10 bill. Implicit in that gift was love, acceptance, approval and my desire to bask in it forever. Wall Street banks maybe aren’t burdened with that petty sentiment.)

And small, local, banks, have their money in hand, too. Though whose money it is and how they obtained it is different. No bailout with our tax dollars was needed. It’s money they earned the old-fashioned way: make good loans, take appropriate risks, help local businesses foster good credit, maintain clarity about lending vs gambling and our money as a result of our confidence in their management.

Wall Street banks announced recently they were reluctant to lend money until the economy strengthens. The irony of them telling us, the ones who rescued them, that we’re the ones not credit-worthy...seems to escape them. 

Again, the ours they now claim as theirs is actually the ours that they needed..to stay in business. Of course, the ours they claimed as theirs in recent quarters was our economy.

On the local, rural, front, our community’s leaders recently sponsored a public meeting to discuss the affect of the financial crisis, the recession, the bailout, and its impact on our local economy. Attending it were representatives from some of the local banks. It was comforting to hear the local banks are solid, secure, well-capitalized and buffered to a large extent from the lending practices of their, our, bigger brothers: Wall Street banks. We all celebrated that they were smarter than say the leaders at Citi or Wachovia, WAMU or Bear Stearns..or Enron.

 They acknowledged they see some affect locally of the recession we’ve been in since December 2007: slower payments and weaker cashflows with their clients. But still, it’s a small percentage of their overall portfolio.

Then they said that moving forward they would use more stringent lending practices. Basically, they’re tightening the local credit market.

What’s odd is that the lending practices that helped them avoid most of the impact of this recession for themselves and our community will now be discarded to avoid the impact of the recession.

One of the major contributors to the great Depression was the decision to implement trade barriers in the form of tariffs on thousands of imported good to be sold   here in the US.  This was the now infamous Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act of 1930. Naturally, other countries did the same. And the result, was, in seeking to protect their ‘local businesses’,  political leaders brought global commerce to a halt in the ’30’s.

(That's a picture of Representative W.C. Hawley (left) and Senator Reed Smoot (right) ...in better days.) 

Today, it's not political leaders bringing a halt to global trade, it's banking's leaders. Tightening credit on the national and global markets is today’s equivalent of that simple but devastating effect. It stops trade on the global markets as effectively as the Smoot-Hawley Act of 1930.  That’s why you see the spread of this recession reaching the economies of every country around the world.

Tightening credit on the local market, on local small businesses, will have the same impact, maybe greater.  Tightening credit on those businesses who have weathered the recession so far, whose good business practices have kept their company, their bank and their community strong...is no different.

The irony’s the same as with the big banks’ decisions to not lend.

It punishes the community. It tells them, us, our money’s no good now and we’re scared of you...you borrowers...we’re not sure you’re now worthy of our lending.  Sure, you’ve done ok so  far, but we can’t trust you’ll continue to lead your companies smartly. We're doing this to protect you...for your own good...now that you've helped us, the bank, stay strong.

And the impact on our economy will be more devastating if more small banks in more small towns whose primary business loans are to small business now restrict access to credit for those businesses who’ve survived to date. 

Small business is what will drive us out of this recession. Cutting access to credit now for small business is what will drive us further into this recession.

Small Town Talk...And It's Gone Global, Now

Becky McCray at SmallBiz Survival and I share many common interests, chief among them is small business and rural communities/small towns.

Becky McCray recently shared a poignant reminder of the inevitable Small Town Talk.  One of the pleasures of a small town are the close relationships you can develop. Conversely, one of the challenges of a small town is the illusion of close relationships.

Frankly, this talk isn't limited to our small towns. The conversation Becky describes is the same in big towns with big companies. People are people, regardless of their community's census count.

And now with social media...Small Town Talk has gone global.  The same conversations and connections, insights and innovations, illusions and innocence, is going on 24 x 7 in online communities, the digital equivalent of small towns, popping up on the 'net prairie and then disappearing, growing and dissolving.

Becky shares some great perspective:

No matter what you do, they will talk about you. And sometimes it will hurt.

I don't have an answer. I just want you to know it's inevitable.

Yep. You're right, Beck.

Small Town Talk. Gotta love it.

Just "rural" internet stuck in the slow lane?

Jason Fried at 37signals has discovered the rural life and all its pleasures: peace and quiet, a slower pace, room to think, fewer distractions, more focus time, cheaper costs, less traffic and more (or less depending on your perspective) that makes life out here, well, so pleasant.

And he's discovered the dirty little secret about rural life....internet access is stuck in the 90's.

Dialup speeds and the accompanying decline in productivity and innovation and community, and connection with ideas and resources and solutions are the norm.

By comparison, our whole country is a rural community if you compare our internet access speeds to our big-country competitors among the industrial nations. Japan's average internet access speed is 61 Mbps; Ours is 1.2. As a nation, we're rated 19th among industrial nations for internet access speeds. That makes us, as a nation, the equivalent of Jason's rural community when compared to our competitors worldwide among the industrial nations. 

How's that going to work out for us as a nation in the future? Well, jobs and businesses and the income they create are fleeing the isolation of rural communities here in the US. Out of necessity, not necessarily out of desire, they leave. Let's take Iowa as an example. Iowa ranks 47th for internet access speeds among 50 states. Job creation is a major challenge here. So is retaining the students that graduate from the state's excellent education system.

Our internet access speeds in-effect turn us into the world's newest rural community.  It doesn't bode well for creating the jobs we need to pull ourselves out of our current problem.

Back in the day...30's, 40's, 50's rural communities lived without electricity and phone service. Leaders like Lyndon Johnson and Huey Long built whole careers on the basis of bringing electricity and roads to the rural community. Those were the equivalents of internet access. That brought the world to those communities. And their products to the world.

That brought equality in education and free markets to those same rural communities. That brought innovation and jobs and communities grew and wealth was shared, distributed, created. Everybody was happy.

Who's the leader that will step up and say infrastructure, including comparable internet access speeds along with roads and bridges and airports and transportation, is the foundation for a new wave of innovation and job creation?

Better Planning Kills Fear...Better

Tim Berry has some great points in his post Be afraid, maybe. Plan better, definitely.

And he uses the hurricane metaphor to drive the point home:

Who do you want to be when the hurricane is coming? Do you want to be one who carefully boards the windows and lashes everything down, closes up and then evacuates with time to spare and a basic plan? Or would you rather be the one that does nothing and ends up drowning or gets rescued by brave people risking their own lives to do it?

Seems pretty clear, doesn't it, when it's put like that.

Banks and towns: Small are Beautiful #2

A friend of mine asked me to pick up his check and deposit it for him in a local bank. I don't have my accounts there, never been in their building before, never read about them in the news.

And so I did. I picked up his checks, drove over to the bank and walked in. This was on the day last week when Congress and Wall Street were having fainting spells (ok, I was worried that afternoon, too.) about the need for a bailout bill to save their respective sit-bones.

The people in this bank were the friendliest I'd ever met in a retail operation. Everyone spoke, said hi, asked how I was, smiled and made eye contact. 

Then the teller said that on Wednesday's they round up each deposit to the next dollar.

Huh? Now, I gotta tell you, I didn't hear, really hear, what she said. So, I absentmindedly said 'oh, ok'.

And then she said and that's why your deposit amount will be bigger.

Well, that phrase got my attention. And I asked her what she said. And she repeated herself. Every Wednesday, we round up deposits to the next dollar.

In my friend's case that was ...$.87. Eighty-seven cents.

I thought about it and asked her why do you do that?

She smiled and said...No reason, really. We just do.  And everyone around her smiled , too. 

So did I.

I was starting to feel pretty good by now. Smiling people. My friend gets an extra  eighty-seven cents...This whole experience has gone on for 10-15 minutes, now.

Being the clever person I am, I asked her..."you don't round down the deposits on Thursday, do you". They thought that was pretty funny, at least they convinced me they did.  Regardless, someone laughed at my joke and now I'm just bubbling.

And for $.87 and a few smiles...they've got my business.

Sometimes, it's really that simple: Creating customer evangelists AND managing a bank successfully in today's credit environment.

Banks and towns: Small are Beautiful #1.

What's right with Kansas are the more than 300 local banks taking care of Main Street. Nothing's the Matter with Kansas by Bill Wyckoff, President of Labette Bank in SE Kansas.

Maybe the big boys on Wall Street can learn something from the lending habits of small banks in small towns. What do you think, Becky?

What's the economy doing to small town USA?

I saw a search on Google with the phrase What is the economy doing to small town USA?*

I thought...the same thing its been doing, maybe worse. Smalltown USA is made up of small companies served by small banks. And if big companies with big banks see their credit lines threatened...these lines either no longer exist, or will soon cease to exist, for small companies in small towns served by small banks.

What do you see happening in your community?

* I saw it by looking in my stats, seeing they came to my blog from a google search and then clicking to see what search phrase was used where my blog was listed in the organic search results.

Corn Ethanol: Environmentally Disastrous?

Corn ethanol, always environmentally suspect, turns out to be environmentally disastrous.

...The grain it takes to fill an SUV tank with ethanol could feed a person for a year. Harvests are being plucked to fuel our cars instead of ourselves.

Soaring corn prices have sparked tortilla riots in Mexico City, and skyrocketing flour prices have destabilized Pakistan, which wasn't exactly tranquil when flour was affordable.

But the basic problem with most biofuels is amazingly simple,... using land to grow fuel leads to the destruction of forests, wetlands and grasslands that store enormous amounts of carbon. The Clean Energy Scam, Time magazine.

Link from Trends I'm Watching.

The prospect for  grain-based ethanol held such promise. Living in Iowa, the prospect of an industry to bring jobs to the rural communities built around grain production, seemed ideal. But has time's gone on, much of the benefit comes not to the local community but to the corporate owners who, too often, live, and take their profits, outside the state.

But that's not unique here. That business model is consistent around the world from Indonesia, Malaysia, Brazil, as well as here in Iowa.

Big Ideas for Small Towns

Becky McCray's at it again with her Small Biz Survival resource. She's given away for free 20 Small Business Ideas for Small Towns. It's an ebook she wrote detailing 20 different ways you can make a successful business in a small town.

I know one way that works. And that way is surrounding yourself with smart people like Becky.

So, anyway. Get the book. Read it. Use it. It really doesn't matter who you are, where you are, what size of business you are...there's ideas Becky's offered that will help you grow.

Your community can be energy self-sufficient

In the late 1990s, the town of Freiamt in Germany's Black Forest decided to take the fight against global warming into its own hands...

Today, the Freiamters are proudly self-sufficient. What's more, in 2007 they generated an extra 2.3 million kilowatt-hours beyond the 12 million they consumed. They sold the surplus, enough for an additional 200 homes, back to the national grid. - Newsweek

What's holding my community, our community, your community from doing the same? Or more?

Link from Lunch Over IP. It's one of my favorite blogs on innovation and technology. I've included it in my Typelist of Innovation blogs.

Sacrificing longevity to gain jobs?

Merrill Goozner at Gooznews has a great post titled: As Longevity Declines in Poor Areas. The subtitle is States Raid Tobacco Settlement Money.

He shares a map of the US that graphically displays the changing trends for longevity. It's fascinating if you live in the dark green areas (areas where life expectancy grew faster than the national trends). It's alarming, embittering, if you live in the white to red areas where your life expectance declined with increasing speed as you moved towards dark red.

And as you might expect, the areas in dark red are also the areas marked by:

stagnant wages and rising income inequality, with the hardest hit areas being those left behind what has generally been considered a period of rising prosperity

And then he links to the recent news that Ohio is the first state to seek to undermine its own trust fund established to manage the use of funds received in the Tobacco settlement case. Those funds have been used exclusively for smoking prevention programs.

Why's the governor of Ohio seeking to change the use of those tobacco-settlement funds? To attract jobs.

Mr. Goozner sums up the quandary quite nicely:

So here's what it has come to in the good old U.S.A.: a declining state (sort of like Pennsylvania, where primary voters will be voting today), desperate to attract jobs, takes money away from citizens who are trying to reverse the effects of having no jobs in the first place.

I can't argue with his conclusion. Trying to be a data-based decision-maker, it's hard to ignore the data. It's also hard to understand how a Governor hopes to attract business and jobs to his state with an overall workforce whose life expectancy is declining faster than those workers in other parts of the country. That would translate into higher labor costs either directly if the new jobs offer health insurance as a paid benefit (unlikely, they usually don't) or as a result from loss productivity from workers with a greater number of health-related issues and the associated time off needed. Or is it a perfect match for the employer with state incentives (at the expense of the workers' health) and a depressed economy where wage competition will be minimal.

I don't know. What do you think?

Rural Broadband Access: Lots to Rant About

Becky McCray's ranting about broadband access for rural communities: Broadband access is too important for bad copywriting.

She's right. Her title's right. The points in her post are right.

They're so right, the situation is so...odd, that I had to first stop laughing, then post. You see humor is contrast of opposites, the paradoxes of our time, things that are so different you'd never see them together at any time and when you do, you laugh.

Rural Broadband Access is one of those terms. I giggle when I write it. It's like having Easter Bunny or Tooth Fairy the name of an important business resource, vital to the development of a community. Of course, it's not real. And you giggle when you have to talk about it in public.

But I digress. Becky's post has a more complete discussion.