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No laughing matter
Sunday, October 29, 2006 Originally posted on Brewed Fresh Daily. Jill waas making the point that Issue 3 is no laughing matter. Jill: I spent nearly ten years in the casino economy of Louisiana. I worked for casino developers, I worked for communities with casinos. I have seen up close the devastation of these businesses. I understand -- in ways that few people in Cleveland understand -- how these developments will cripple Cleveland's inner city. I have been to the clinics where pathological gamblers convene. I have heard and seen the stories. The casino developers are completely dishonest when it comes to these costs. Their willingness to move ahead with this campaign, in my view, raises serious ethical and moral questions. They will also further corrupt our politics. (Haven't they already?) The culture of corruption that these developments engender further depress economic development. My point is simple: Our leadership is so misguided that it has become a farce. We need new leadership, and that leadership is already starting to emerge. Henry Mitzberg, the noted strategy theorist, points to "community-ship" as the evolving model for organizations. In a networked world -- especially in the "civic space" where real economic development happens -- the old conventions simply do not apply. Read more about Mintzberg's point here. Unfortunately for us, the highly paid staffs at the GCP, NorTech, and TeamNEO are ten to fifteen years behind the leading regions. (Of the three, NorTech is the most up-to-date, but it is still largely a funds broker and little else. Leading regions evolved from this model years ago.) The foundations are not much better. Voices and Choices is such an ill-defined, extravagent process that it will not yield much beyond vague policy prescriptions. (Even though, I am told, the foundations are busy trying to come up with some practical outcomes. Read the preliminary report here. They'd better do something. Coming up with a recommendation like "Improve workforce training programs and ensure they match the needs of both workers and employers" is, frankly, laughable.) The cost of this process is also exorbitant. $3 million to engage 20,000 people represents a cost of $150 per participant. The town hall meetings cost, I would estimate, about $250,000 to $300,000 each or about $300 per participant. In Indiana, I ran 10 regional forums this past spring with a budget of $60,000. We engaged 2,000 people at a cost of $30 per participant. (At REI, our Tuesday forums that led to a number of important collaborations cost us less than a dollar per participant, unless we threw in a fruit plate.) Indiana leaders are not trying to figure out what to do with these forums. They are busy trying to figure out how to hold more of these forums on their own. Civic leaders in each region are busy implementing. (You can read more by downloading the Indiana Leadership report and reading about the regions in the back of the report here.) This coming week, I will be at a conference designing how we can use regional forums to integrate high school and economic development. Learn more. At some point, enough people will come to an understanding: The "leaders" running this show in Cleveland do not really know what they are doing. With the possible exception of BioEnterprise and JumpStart, most of these big investments have, in my judgement, very little probability of payoff. The design flaws are serious and difficult to overcome. (Team NEO is the most vulnerable to collapse.) Even worse, Issue 3 heads us in completely the wrong direction with a campaign that is deceitful, at best, corrupt at worst. (I can only imagine the bag money being passed out this week.) We are in a soup, and our current cast of characters at the GCP and the Fund for the Future are still fumbling around, unable to admit that they are lost. As Governor Daniels in Indiana has told audiences many times: "Progress begins when denial ends." posted by Ed |
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