Don't Throw Stones to Break More Windows

We live in communities in which there are problems perceived and actual.  How we respond to those problems reflect on us as citizens.  We have choices.

All communities have positive characteristics as well negative. We can choose to do nothing, we can choose to exacerbate the negative, we can work to accentuate the positive, we can work to improve upon the negative, or we can do some combination of any of these.

Recently a fiend of mine wrote a blog commenting on the public relations problem on the community in which both of us live.  Repeating others’ disparaging remarks does not add to the conversation. And repeating remarks that are untrue does not build respect and trust and actually damages those virtues. People strike out in response to anger, strikes which are often misdirected.  Paint the trim, pick up the trash, work with others, or go elsewhere; but don’t throw stones to break more windows.

The community which was being written about was Cleveland Heights, Ohio. I do not feel unsafe in Cleveland Heights. However, I would not go into a bar off the main strip which seems to tolerate misbehavior. The Cedar-Lee neighborhood has not been taken over by thugs. Cleveland Heights is not the most deteriorated suburb.  The Coventry neighborhood survived the removal of the liquor license of Irv’s when that establishment refused to work with the community and allowed serious misbehavior by its clientele. Maybe that is an option to examine here.

Yes, it is frustrating to get a parking ticket but you might as well go to any parking garage and try to sneak out without paying and see what happens. The benefits of going to Nighttown restaurant or the Cedar Lee movie theater and participating in the excitement of a vibrant community are worth paying the meal tab, the price of admission, and a few coins for parking.  Not everybody gets a speeding ticket or a parking ticket, only those people who get caught disobeying the law. There are reasons for speed laws and, if you don’t want a speeding ticket, don’t speed. There are certain intersections where it is unsafe to make a left turn during rush hour and often disruptive.  There are work arounds to those intersections but it might take add extra 15 seconds to your drive.

Any negative publicity is a public relations problem.  Not all public relation problems of a city need to be responded to vociferously but rather by keep doing well those things that one does well, supporting a caring and vibrant community of residents, businesses and visitors.

Fear

One of the greatest obstacles for us in moving through life is dealing with fear. We fear our government that might take away rights, force us to pay for something we don’t want, and make us do things we don’t want to do. We fear those who are different from us, who might invade our space, take what we feel belongs to us, and make us uncomfortable. We fear ourselves that our bodies get old and not work as well, our minds lose grasp of thoughts, and we lose the ability to control our environment as much as we would like. We fear that in our communities we will be not taken care of, will be disrespected,and will be forgotten.

So we spend a great deal of time, energy, and money dealing with our fears. We let our fears control us and our relationships with others. Our fears create an isolationism within us. They create a failure to behave in ways that create trust and respect. Our fears compound themselves in us and in others around us.

The fears will always exist but it is in how we acknowledge them, limit them, and use them for positive movement that we are able survive and to grow and sustain community. It is not that we look to others to control our fears for us or that we control others' fears ourselves. Rather than being driven by fear we need to live by a caring relationship with all around us. Our greatest gift is for us to work with others as both a local and a world community to support each other day by day and work together to lessen the grip of fear.

Do You Know Someone Who is Out of Work?

Do you know someone who is out of work? Take them out for some coffee and conversation. Introduce them to someone new. Let them know that you are there for support if needed. They do need get off the computer occasionally, get out of their houses, and talk to people who are not in the world of job searching, desperation, and depression, but rather are caring and listening.

You don’t always have to give them a network connection but if they ask, do so. Think about the times you met with coworkers and other employed friends and the pleasure you got from your interaction. Many unemployed have been disconnected from that resource and need to be offered that opportunity. You may be there at some point in your life.

Harnessing the Energy of Fear

The more we create and participate in trusted networks the better we are able to deal with the uncertainties and fear in our lives. Fear will destroy a community unless there is a way to harness that energy and move the community forward rather than backward.

One major problem that we all face is that there are those among us who harness the energy of fear but, rather than doing so to move us forward, doing so to create greater fear and more power to their own agenda. Many in the media are particularly good at expanding negative behavior as it exposes more to their paid advertising. There are politicians who are good at pandering to the fear so as to create support for their misguided agenda.

We need to be able to turn to trusted voices, share our concerns, and work through our feelings. In time of fear and economic woe, all of us, especially our leaders, need to help guide the conversations forward and dissipate the buildup of bile that poisons us all.

The Value of Community

Here in Cleveland a major employer has just been bought out by another in a neighboring state. As we watch the fluctuations in the value of our retirement accounts, we are also on edge about how all of the financial meltdown mire is going to bring change to our community. There seems to be little question that a large number of people will be displaced from their current work positions.

How the displacement affects the community is largely up to us. Will the community support those who are displaced? Will there be other positions available for making use of the years of experience? Will we think and behave in innovative ways to move the community forward? Or we will fall victim to the fear and sense of failure?

Now is the time to become engaged in conversation in the community. We need to talk through our fears being supportive of each other. We need to share the most valuable of our assets, our caring and our brainpower. Let us grow in community, celebrating and enhancing a legacy for our children and our children’s children.

Diversity is Over Valued

So my skin is a different color than someone else’s, along with my hair and eyes. So I have less money than some and more money than others. None of those keeps me from finding where others and I intersect and start building community.

Have we focused on diversity to the detriment of community? Back in August 2007 I wrote about a diverse community being an oxymoron. The American tradition has been to celebrate the individual, how we are all different, diverse. If we keep looking at the differences how do we ever have time to find the connections, the touching points?

Geographic communities have lost their binding agents and we have moved away from supporting one another. Areas of synergy go undiscovered. It is through our building trust and finding that deep inside we are one that we are able to stand against our fears and move forward.

Moving Forward

All too much our civic leaders are commissioning studies to determine what we have done wrong or what should we do. When are we going to commission ourselves to move in the direction of our conversations? Knowing what did not work is helpful in guiding us not to make the same mistakes again (and again); but do we need to keep paying for it?

Our civic leaders keep paying out our money and our charitable gifts for new plans but never implementing them. Again and again. Is it because the plans require too much of our assets? Are the players who should be involved, not involved? Is it because the plans are not workable? Is it because the world around us is changing more quickly than our plans have accounted for?

We need to work within our civic community to grow into strategic thinking rather than to develop strategic plans that are out of date by the time they hit the papers. Part of that strategic thinking includes accountability. Every time we announce a new initiative we need to also determine and voice our next steps. Each time we gather we need to follow up on where we are with those steps, refining our thinking as we go to allow for changes in the world around us.

We (all of us) need to have civic leaders who display accountability and the ability to guide our conversations and use of our assets. We need to continue civic conversations identifying and growing new ideas and leaders. Next step: start or participate in an open forum in your community.

History is in the Telling

Recently I have had a number of conversations about story telling or the lack thereof. I continually express my belief in the power of each one of us relating our stories which also includes the open source behavior of passing on the stories of those with whom we have interacted.

Story telling is not something that is to be controlled or can be controlled. However, there will always be arguments about how something actually occurred or why an event happened; what is the “true” story. Writing a story down or filming it does not always come up with the answers and often times skews the story for all who only use one source. Therein lies one of the benefits of the internet in that there becomes multiple sources for determining for ourselves what is important, what happened, or why it happened. The human brain is remarkable in that it can seem to identify the wheat in the chaff.

In Ireland there is a rich tradition of storytelling with the storyteller going from village to village relating folk tales, history, and other happenings throughout the island. People of each community would look forward to the visit of the story teller, hungrily gathering together to hear stories that have been heard often before as well as those that are new to many ears. The stories themselves are important but the hearing in community also provides for the richness of the experience.

We and our communities live on through the stories that are told so it is important that we teach ourselves the stories both new and old. The new stories are grown out of the old; we learn from our mistakes only if we are aware of the mistakes of others in the community.

Accountability in Community

Most of us want to live in community. We want nice neighbors, responsive civic services, effective schools, clean streets, playgrounds and parks, and good jobs. However, many of us have forgotten that along with the benefits of community there are also the accountabilities of community.

In our failures to see future opportunities, we are willing to accept and even encourage the quick fixes where there is less responsibility and accountability. We accept what we are told by people who our media tells us are our leaders or are experts. Rather than work to identify and encourage trusted individuals as leaders, we blindly accept. Rather than addressing the problems we look for the flash in the pan, the short term gain.

Somewhere along the way we are told and we accept that the answers are outside the box. What we conveniently forget is that when we go outside the box we are usually abandoning all that is in the box. We move to the suburbs so that we no longer have to deal with the urban “problems”. We create charter schools so that we can conveniently hide from the problems of the less fortunate in community support. We set up wards in our communities so that we can protect ourselves in our own small areas with people who we perceive as “us”. We don’t hold our leaders accountable let alone our own children.

We have lost our trust in our own communities and have no one but ourselves to blame even though we do our best to blame everyone else.

So, how do we reclaim the lost ground in community? We accept accountability for our own actions. We build trust with our leaders. We hold others accountable for their behavior. We work on long term solutions which may be simple but often are not easy. We stop letting ourselves be led into decisions which line the pockets of others in the short term but cost us in the long term especially at the expense the the greater number. Instead of building convention centers, we invest in the small businesses so that storefronts and offices are filled and appropriate jobs with benefits exist for those who are willing. Why would someone want to come to a city with poor services and missing retail to attend a convention?

We need to support not only our own children, but all the children in the community to assure that all receive a good education as well as have hope in the benefits of getting a diploma. We need to be accountable for disobedience. We need to share the stories that we all have of our joys, our successes, our hopes, our fears, what does not work, and what does work.

We need to stop “thinking outside the box” but instead think strategically in the box, making the box bigger and more inclusive, inviting all to participate in the exciting opportunity that is our community.

Moving from Diversity into Community

Recently there was discussion on the blog site Brewed Fresh Daily about diversity. It got me thinking about the phrase “a diverse community.” For me that is an oxymoron in that diversity addresses differences whereas community talks about a oneness.

Perhaps many who use the word diverse actually have something else in mind but aren’t saying it. If so, I believe it is better to say racially diverse, or ethnically diverse, or economically diverse, or whatever diverse. We also misuse community, assigning a much higher connotation on a group of people who live in geographic proximity to each other.

Whatever we are saying or whatever we mean, we all need to be moving into community where we learn share hopes, dreams, fears, expectations, and joys. We become community through open conversation, honest conversation, whether we agree or agree to disagree, we agree to continue moving forward in conversation.

The Questions Unite Us

There are so many things that we allow to divide us. We define ourselves by what we hold true and build boxes to separate ourselves from others who hold other truths. Then we spend tremendous amounts of brainpower and money enforcing our truths on ourselves and others.

I believe that we need to change our focus and energies to the questions which unite us. When we invest in the questions the answers will come but at a much lower cost and in a way that there is a greater acceptance because we are working together and we are part of the solution. The answers we arrive at may be different and activity occurs when there is community and passion in the answers.

Some of the questions are how do we deal with the poverty not only in our urban communities but also in our rural areas? How do we create sustainable businesses that don’t poison our environment and overly deplete resources? How to we fairly value our contributions to and in an ongoing society? How do we behave in ways that build trust and respect?

Spelling “Team” With an “I”

The other day we were sitting around having a conversation about others' view of the Open Source Economic Development process. Some reported hearing that it seem like chaos theory. Someone reported of hearing about herding cats. From my perspective it is neither.


However, I do admit, from a certain perspective those comments are understandable. Previous economic practices demanded certain perspectives for understanding. I am sure that those living in the Bronze Age had behaviors which seemed strange to those still operating under the Iron Age thought process. We are now moving in the Second Curve economy which also may be called the Collaborative Innovation Economy. First Curve economic thinking has problems with some of the concepts. First Curve is about closed innovation: knowledge control; Second Curve is about open innovation: knowledge sharing. First Curve does not understand how a business can be successful if it is telling competitors and the world about its processes. First Curve views Second Curve behavior as chaos and Second Curve sees purposeful behavior with collaborative leadership.


So it goes with teamwork and the view of working as a team. When First Curve talks about working as a team, it is often about sublimating your own agenda for the team. There is a coach, a captain, and a manager, all who guide the team in its winning a game. Second Curve team (in first curve parlance) does not have a coach, a captain, or a manager. This team works with individuals who are aligned in a common goal which isn’t to beat someone else. The individual is very important for the strengths that it brings as well as the individual’s goals. Its goal is to provide a successful, sustainable end that meets the needs of all of the team as well as providing good for the community. The individual is in the team but not at the expense of others participating on the team. There is an alignment of all the “I”s on the team to forward moving behavior.


In First Curve there is also the thought that when there are two teams working to a seemingly common goal, the smaller team should merge with the larger team so as to strengthen the whole. What then happens is the larger team gains control and mass but loses nothing. The smaller team loses any individuality and differences that it may have had which quite possibly were its strengths.


I have often heard coaches tell their teams that “team” is not spelled with an “I”. In my Second Curve economy “team” is spelled with an “I” and is stronger, faster, and more sustainable for it.

Living with a Disability

We all live with a disability: we are human. We make mistakes. We have other shortcomings. We are not perfect.


What most of us have to counter that disability is hope. We also have each other. Community is what brings us together and supports us all in our seeking to maintain or improve ourselves and each other.