A Boomtown How-To A look at any magazine rack or bookstore shelf yields this undeniable conclusion: Americans are suckers for lists. The 7 habits of highly effective people. Five easy steps to killer buns. Six tips to paint like the pros. You read them. I read them. And I’m still ineffective, soft in the behind, and paint like a five year old on a sugar high. I’m hoping communities fare better with a new list aimed at helping them improve. In Boomtown USA: the 7½ keys to big success in small towns, Jack Shultz boils down an impressive array of small-town stories to what he thinks are the common elements behind prosperity. Such lists aren’t new (I’ve written one or two, myself). Nor are they typically very profound (Mine included). Still, they--like the steps to a firm backside--can help if actually, and diligently, followed. According to Schultz, a consultant who wrote the book for the National Association of Industrial and Office Properties, these 7½ keys are the difference between communities bearing fruit and withering on the vine. The keys:
Some, of course, are obvious. Others, less so. Take, for example, the need to raise up strong leaders. Schultz rightly charges everyone with the need to lead. According to him, “people in all sectors—government, business, education, healthcare, religious, service, private—have not only the opportunity but also the responsibility to play a leadership role in their area of expertise.” And citing Martin Luther King, he writes “true leadership is about serving. A leader serves the town by sacrificing what’s good for just one person or group to attain the best for the entire community.” I heartily endorse both concepts. Indeed, I’ve often moaned about the dire need for a resurgence of citizenship in the truest and most expansive sense of that word. Schultz is hitting that same note. Unfortunately, such leadership, such citizenship, is all too often lacking in places of all sizes. “The lazy view of leadership is that someone else needs to do it,” he writes. I’d say that’s not only the lazy view of leadership, but the common view of leadership. The most intriguing—perhaps even alarming--key in Schultz’s list is the “teeter-totter factor.” As on a see-saw, it takes only a small shift to tip the contraption in the other direction. In community terms, small actions can make either a negative or a positive impact on the entire community. According to Schultz, there’s a precarious balance in small towns; most could go either way: success or failure. Communities that are aware of that and consciously move toward the positive are less likely to come crashing down. For examples of tipping the teeter-totter, look at the downward spiral started when the local school or hospital closes, or the WalMart opens on the edge of town. On the flipside, look at the shot in the arm from investing in local entrepreneurs, saving and redeveloping an historic downtown, or bringing in high-speed Internet. (Note that these are my examples. Schultz—not surprisingly for a commercial real estate consultant--seems to be a fan of WalMart.) As for the results of following his steps, Schultz presents statistics for the 100 rural counties he calls the best of the best, and from which he presumably derived his 7 ½ keys. And indeed, they did quite well compared with national averages. His top 100 counties experienced 32 percent growth in employment and 28 percent increase in population from 1990 to 2000. The national averages grew 14 percent and 13 percent—less than half as fast. Do the steps guarantee success? Of course not. Can they help? I think so. As Schultz puts it, “The opportunities for rural communities to prosper are abundant; the landscape for success in small towns is as fertile as the fields that grace America’s heartland. But that success doesn’t occur by happenstance.” It takes a lot of hard work. By Thomas D. Rowley
|