My Mind is a Tornado

My mind is a tornado lately. Spinning with ideas, picking up quotes I’ve read or heard, blending it all together, trying to figure out where I’ll set down these new “designs” and create something new. For this whirling, I haven’t dug into any local or family history recently. If you’ve subscribed for that, stay tuned. I’m sure I’ll get back to those topics, as I have more presentations upcoming for which I need to prepare.

Photo by Greg Johnson on Unsplash

I’ve made some significant strides in my professional life lately. Projects I’ve been really trying to coax along, find funding for, or ignite have started to take off to the point that I already know my main projects for the next two years. In my line, that’s unusual.

Probably the project I’m most excited about is building on some research a professor and I have been working on for a few years. We’ve been doing it as we have time around our other work responsibilities, so there have been months where it has taken a very back burner. We are at the last hurdle for funding the work. Luckily, we were together in the office when we received the call. You may have heard us cheering after I hung up the phone.

If this comes to fruition, it will be an amazing culmination of interviews, research, and new ways of thinking about economic development. It comes from across disciplines. For me, if our project makes folks stop and think about ways of doing things in their communities, if they challenge the status quo, if they don’t do something because “it’s what we do,” it’ll be a good thing. I’ll give you an example.

I’m working with a couple communities on a grant. In a meeting this week, we were discussing how to proceed. When applying for a grant, one typically must submit letters of support from leaders or organizations. It’s common that people immediately think of commissioners, trustees or mayors - political leaders. I do as very little of that as possible when I apply for grants, and it hasn’t hurt us. I know other organizations who have not been doing that either, and they are successfully bringing in multi-million dollar grants. To me, that’s the way it should be. The politicians should not be the gatekeepers or the “be-all-end-all” of support. Do the people want it? That is the more important question.

Anyway, for this particular grant, we must have a letter from the mayors of the communities involved. No problem. They are aware; they are on board. But then, I caught myself in the group-think and said I would get letters from another of the political group. Later, I realized what I’d done and emailed the others helping on the grant explaining why I would rather not proceed with that.

These are the seemingly small ways I hope our research will affect others. Stop. Think about what we are doing. Change, if appropriate. We can’t continue to say we are “community-led” but then get letters of support from the politicians. That’s not congruent in my head.

But so much of economic development is this exact top-down mentality and this “recipe-for-success.” If every community is following the same recipe, how will we develop unique and innovative approaches? Sometimes we need to make our dinner from scratch. Let’s pick some unique ingredients and put them together in ways no one else has thought of yet.

Let’s do something different. That’s where the bottom-up approach is so beautiful. We aren’t trying to make people and communities fit into a certain mold. Instead, we are helping the people create and build. We help them move around the hurdles. We help them drill new holes; we don’t try to fit them all into the same round hole. Efficiency and McDonaldization are not the answer.

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I was sitting out in the middle of my yard today with a nine-year-old. Yes, sitting in the grass. Talking. She wanted to build something. She wanted to create something new out of things I had or her parents had. Earlier this week, she wanted to start a neighborhood kid’s detective club to help people find things when they lose them. She gives me hope for our future. How do we water that creativity instead of stifling it? How do we turn her loose? That is what will create new businesses, new communities and lasting change, not some politician or top-down approach.

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I am currently reading two books that will be released soon. That has been quite an honor. One book will be released to the public in January, I believe. It is written by a New York Times Bestselling Author. I was quite excited when his people reached out to me and asked if I’d be willing to read it. I’ve used his research and a previous book in my job, so to get a sneak peak into this book is exciting.

See why my mind has been a tornado lately?

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Thanks for joining me at The Creighton Cabin this week. If any of you have stories of how you’ve changed your approach to something in life and went against the grain to do so, please share!

Have a great week.