Rock Stars, Regions & Resilience

Rock Stars
It’s funny how, depending on the lens you use, certain people can become your own personal rock star.  I recently attended an International Economic Development Council (IEDC) event in Texas.  I was pulling all of my best networking moves and finally decided I needed to take a break and actually “listen” to one of the break out sessions.  As I was I was making the latest update to my FaceBook page, I was interrupted by someone making sense.  I looked up in amazement as a saw…Kim Didier.

Kim Didier is from Newton, Iowa, a little town of 15,000 that rests smack-dab in the middle of the state.   In my imagination she regularly belts out would-be top-40 hits in the shower, but only when she’s not on tour with her entourage and counting the millions she’s made from going platinum.  In reality, Kim’s—well—totally normal.  She’s friendly, inquisitive, entirely approachable, and generally nice to be around.  She has a professional haircut and sports business casual with the best of ‘em.  So, what makes her so undeniably cool?

Regional Economic Crisis
In 2001, Maytag Corporation, which had been headquartered in Newton for 113 years and employed 4,000 people at its peak, announced it would reduce the local labor pool by moving to new facilities in Mexico.  On October 25, 2007, Maytag ceased operations in Newton for good, with closure of both a production facility and corporate offices.  That day, a final 1,800 Maytag employees lost their jobs.

Townsfolk began going through the seven stages of grief, starting with shock and denial, pain and guilt, anger and bargaining, and depression.   People might have gotten stuck there but, rather than wallowing in their sorrow, the common loss brought the community together.  Community leaders, including Kim Didier, pounced on the opportunity to shift negative energy focused on confusion, grief, and anger to more constructive purposes.

Taking Action
Like any good counselor, Kim called on community residents to do a little role playing.  The process started off with something called “The Futures Game.”  An Australian “gent” from rural Australia, David Beurle, led the exercise, which helps people understand how, when faced with tough futures about growth and development, different choices at critical points in time can lead to drastically different community outcomes.  This process led to development of a community vision, steeped in the understanding that if people stray from the decision or don’t make collaborative, mission-driven choices, the community’s future outcomes could be sharply affected.  Salt brines or development

In addition, Kim prodded the community to participate in a process called “network weaving.” This entails understanding how strongly connected community leaders are to one another, where their passions and expertise intertwine, and how they view one another as collaborators, innovators, and trusted partners.  U.S. national intelligence agencies use the process to understand the effectiveness of terrorist networks, and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control has employed the technique to control deadly infections in hospitals.  Kim Didier and her peers employed the process to understand how to most effectively move their community forward.

Did these hokey processes really make a difference for Newton?  The answer is an irrefutable “yes.”    These processes helped the community establish common desired outcomes and rallied leadership around it—fully leveraging the full strengths of the communities assets and building trust relationships that have allowed the community to move forward.  Today, Newton isn’t “formerly the home of Maytag.” They are at the center of innovation, becoming a manufacturing and design hub for state-of-the art wind turbines and, with just one employer, home to 400 new, related jobs.

Recovery
Slowly but surely, the town is moving through its phases of grief: the upward turn, reconstruction, and acceptance and hope in abundance.   This transition was possible because some folks dared to do the unthinkable—to step back, create a vision, create safe spaces to build trust, and understand how to focus community leaders’ energy at the right places at the right time.

What do you call someone who recognizes the need for this kind of process and gets the buy-in to make it happen? Yep–that’s a “Rock Star” in my book.