Thomas Friedman: Bottom Up Reviving Communities

I’ve often enjoyed reading Thomas Friedman’s opinion articles because he often has very insightful nuggets that I can learn from. He writes about world politics but also hits closer to home, especially on jobs and US economics. He has written Thank You for Being Late, a book that outlines the 3 accelerating changes in the world that is the source of a lot of our problems: globalism, technology, and climate change. I’ve written a post on the book briefly summarizing what we need to do in the face of technology - see picture/link below

Just before 4th of July, he wrote two articles, the first of which pretty much reprises the thesis in his book of the three accelerating changes bifurcating the world into the World of Disorder and the World of Order. This bifurcation is creating the massive immigrations and the resulting nationalist and populist backlash. But towards the end of the article, the author alluded to something new and positive that’s reviving communities across America and but he left me with a cliffhanger. I waited for the second article to come out but I never saw it. I had to google for his articles to find it.

Thank You for Being Late: a Summary of What We Should Do in a World of Robots

The solution that is coming out of various communities throughout the U.S. runs pretty closely to what I’ve been thinking about over the past year: individuals in smaller communities were going to have to get together in a form of community entrepreneurship and figure out what the community could sell instead of waiting for large companies to save them. It would be hard for each individual to be an entrepreneur alone but maybe as a group they would have a better chance of revival. That has been my thinking for a while.

What Friedman’s article talks about is individuals as civic leaders in communities getting together, no matter what party affiliation, to solve communities’ problems, without waiting for the state or federal government to help. Party affiliation is left at the door. Friedman calls this coming together “complex adaptive coalitions” and it is thrilling to read about how people are coming together to take the bull by the horns.

“They realized that the only way they could replace Armstrong and re-energize the downtown was not with another dominant company, but by throwing partisan politics out the window and forming a complex adaptive coalition in which business leaders, educators, philanthropists, social innovators and the local government would work together to unleash entrepreneurship and forge whatever compromises were necessary to fix the city.” Thomas Friedman, New York Times, "Where American Politics Can Still Work: From the Bottom Up", July 3, 2018.

A couple of things I got out of the article with some of my own thinking thrown in:

1. You need trust. There can be no ulterior agenda.
2. All parties, people of all opinions must cooperate. It can’t be just one party trying to solve the problem. Key word: COLLABORATION.
3. Don’t rely on state or federal government. Federal government has to contend with the broader problems and social differences but smaller communities need to focus on their own community problem.
4. City resurgence seems to require a college or university as part of the community because R&D is the ingredient for innovation and innovation is what propels the economic engine.
5. Large national companies are not playing a role but instead the community-based businesses are playing a role because they have more at stake. Large national companies are more shareholder driven; community businesses have a localized stake.
6. Art and culture is important because both make the place more enjoyable and livable.
7. Openness to different kinds of people (races, refugees, immigrants) is critical. You need all kinds of people to generate innovation. It’s the mashing together of ideas that is important. (Okay, the article doesn’t say that – that is my take on the need for different people but I don’t think I’m far wrong.)
8. Local businesses are involved in education to make sure people have the skills they need for the future. Businesses are forming a partnership with local educational systems and making investments instead of doing the “just the bottom line” thing that we've seen over the last 20 or 30 years.
9. A small thing mentioned but I did catch on to it: Lancaster makes sure that everyone has access to postsecondary education and that there is some form of medical care is available for everyone.

“So the board moved to a collective-impact model – four bold goals over 10 years – aimed at reducing poverty by 50 percent; making sure that every child is kindergarten-ready in terms of basic learning skills; ensuring that every adult has access to postsecondary education and credentials; and ensuring that every citizen has access to some kind of health care.” Thomas Friedman, New York Times, "Where American Politics Can Still Work: From the Bottom Up", July 3, 2018.

What wonderful news to read of communities beginning to pull themselves out of the trench when big companies pulled out to go elsewhere. I hope Thomas Friedman writes another book because we need more positive news and he’s such a great writer.

To close this post, I want to note that I just bought another book describing the new “brainbelt” where small cities and towns are reviving. I’m not done but already, from the preface, it’s intriguing and very positive. Hopefully when I’m done with the book, I’ll have something to say.

I wonder if it’s possible to translate the communities’ revivals into strategies for one’s own reinvention?