Yeah!  I’ll take a picture so we can add it to the collection.

This story is not about continuing to blame the City for failing to provide basic infrastructure.  They know they get a big, fat F in that category.  I share this story because the crack is actually MY FAULT.

Yes, my government has an obligation to provide basic infrastructure such as safe roads that are free of debris, plywood, and potholes.  But it is my obligation to hold them accountable for it.  It’s sort of like the whole, “If you don’t vote, you can’t b*tch when you don’t get your way.”

As a citizen, my obligation to my community doesn’t end when my tax check clears the bank.  I also have the obligation (it’s really a BIG privilege!) to make sure those dollars are used wisely.  (As an aside, 75% of Memphis’ young professionals feel local government does not use our tax dollars wisely.  Check it out: http://ow.ly/5Im5g)

I have no right to complain about the streets until I have complained to the folks who haven’t fixed them.  If you don’t participate in your city, don’t b*tch if it doesn’t look the way you want it to.

To be fair, my obligation to be civically engaged is balanced by the government’s obligation to provide me reasonably easy access to the information I need to be engaged.  If I am keeping up my end of the civic stick by holding my elected officials accountable, then they need to keep up their end by being transparent about how they spend my money.

I’m fairly government savvy and I know my way around Google, but trying to figure out how to be a part of the ugly-street solution was beyond difficult.  I finally gave up after 45 minutes of searching.

So, to those who are in charge of fixing all these potholes, plywood, fountains, and other unsightly issues – please know I am trying to hold you accountable.  I can’t find you online, but I’m trying.  And to my fellow citizens, I encourage you to do the same.  Follow your tax dollars and make sure they’re being spent wisely.  Otherwise, we might as well just flush our money down the toilet.

I could really digress in a discussion of government and toilets, but I shall restrain myself.  In the end, I can either pay my taxes and not be concerned or never know about where the money goes (just like the toilet!), or I can make a few phone calls or send a few emails and begin holding my government accountable.

Maybe if I keep up my end of the deal, government will keep up theirs?

Today’s agenda includes the following:

Citizens dying faster than third world countries.

A shoddy public transportation system that only serves a small percentage of our citizens.

A tax base that is shrinking faster than my new white shirt.

An education system that fails to educate more than 30% of our children.

A workforce that is woefully unprepared for the jobs of the future.

And no clear path to health and prosperity.

These are real issues that need to be addressed TODAY.

With more than 7,000 nonprofits, approximately 7,200 city employees and 6,000 county government employees, all working to provide for our citizens and build a stronger city.  Yet, we still rank at the bottom, if not dead last, on many of the indicators of city success.  It seems pretty clear our current modus operandi isn’t working.  It’s time for a new perspective, higher standards, greater accountability.

Bring Out the Crayons

Want a fresh vision of Memphis?  Give a child a box of crayons.  They are uninhibited by past hurts, professional greed, or political rhetoric.  They have simple needs and expect their environment (the people, places and structures around them) to meet these needs.  Isn’t that what government is all about, meeting the basic needs of its citizens?

The child’s drawing will likely have both people and buildings.  Makes sense.  A successful community needs strong people and well-designed infrastructure.  We know that building placement and pedestrian access are critical to a successful neighborhood.

I suspect the people will be of normal width, pictured with clean clothes and smiles on their faces.  They might even be holding hands.  That would be nice.  Healthy citizens who are happy and engaged with each other.

The picture will likely be pretty, maybe with flowers and trees.  Sounds good.  People want to live in neighborhoods that are aesthetically pleasing.  Access to green spaces is also good for your health.

Hopefully the drawing won’t include guns or dead people.  We’ve made so much progress in crime reduction, and I believe our children truly are safer than they were five years ago.

I’m also hoping it won’t have piles of trash or heaps of tires.  Memphis used to be the cleanest city in America, and thousands of people are working every weekend to bring that award back.

The drawing might be finished off with a rainbow, which I always like.  Unfortunately there’s not much we can do on that one.  Mother Nature has her own agenda, which rarely coincides with ours.

Tap Into Fresh Visions

I’m not saying we should bring in a gaggle of children to color the walls of city hall or write our strategic plan in crayon, but I am saying it’s past time for a new approach – one as revolutionary as kids & crayons.  And no, we’re not going to start dispensing crayons at City Council meetings, but we’ve got to find another way to drive our revolution.  We need people who are young enough to be fearless, yet mature enough to be purposeful and effective.  Do we have these people in Memphis?

Yes, they are the hundreds and hundreds of young professionals who are a part of MPACT Memphis.  Many of the members have college degrees, but not all.  That’s ok.  They don’t all want to be leaders, some just want to be engaged.  That’s ok too.  They have fresh ideas, new energy, and an entrepreneurial spirit.  What they generally don’t have – and this is really important – is the baggage, the political constraints, or the weight of the past.  Just passion, energy, ideas, and high expectations.

We’ve won a few battles lately, but we’re still losing the war.  Now is the time to tap into new energy, creative ideas, and new ways of thinking.  What’s the worst that could happen?  We end up exactly where we are now – our citizens dying, our tax base shrinking, and our children uneducated.  Jaime Lerner, a world-renowned architect & urban planner, recently described urban growth like this: “If you want creativity, cut a zero off your budget.  If you want sustainability, cut off two.”

The zero has been lopped off and we now face one of the direst fiscal situations in recent memory.  It’s time to get creative, and chart a new course for our community.  Kindly leave your baggage at the door, bring your crayons, envision the future, and know that Memphis’ young professionals are ready for action.

Although obsession normally implies a need for behavioral therapy, an effective cure in this case is simple support, encouragement, and money.  (Yes, I’m not afraid to say it: social entrepreneurialism takes money.  We’re might be scrappy, grassroots, and passionate, but we still have to eat.)

Given the relative infancy of social entrepreneurialism as an accepted adjunct to business entrepreneurs, gaining community support for our work is a critical first step.  Social entrepreneurs are a different breed, a product of a fast paced, ever-changing, office-cubicle-averse, just-try-and-stop-me world.  Like so many who give so much to our city, we are passionate about our causes, but we go about executing our dreams and tackling our goals in a different way.  If the old approach of forming disconnected organizations without a clear vision of the ultimate goal, haphazard funding, and political allegiances really worked, then we would long ago have solved the problems we are still battling.

Before I can expect you to trust us, support us, encourage us, and fund us, I want you to first understand us.

How do we see our city and our world?

What is our frame of reference?

What are our strategies?

What new tools and resources do we bring to the table?

I read too much, so please believe me when I say that community support of our newfangled ideas and out-of-the-box thinking will be one of the key determinates of our success or failure as a city.

So, for all those in government, business, nonprofit, and the general powers-that-be who write checks, here’s a bit of a primer on us social entrepreneurs, or at least my take on what I eat, sleep, live, and breathe every day.  No one appointed me (or even asked me) to share my thoughts.  I was just the first one to submit my blog.  Take it with a grain of salt, chew on it a bit, and ask a lot of questions.  I love questions.

On the Chopping Block

The last time I checked, Memphis had somewhere around 2,000 registered 501(c)(3)’s not counting churches and the community work they do.  As best I can tell, we have about 15 different divisions of city government and Lord knows how many county divisions.  Folks, more isn’t always better.  Sometimes it’s just more.  Ms. Dorsey states that young social entrepreneurs are “agnostic about organizational entities.”  I would take that a step further and posit that we are quasi-opposed to them (at least as they are now).

At least once a week, I hear from someone who wants to start a new nonprofit.  What do they most often have in common?  Someone else is already doing exactly what they are so earnestly trying to start!  A new organization is waaaaayyy down on my list of ways to create change.  Way down.  I can even think of some instances in which it is absolutely not an option.

Before we haul off and spend a lot of time and energy worrying about who gets to be in charge of a new organization and how much they’ll get paid, let’s step back and take a look at the landscape as it stands now.  Obviously the currently assortment of players (organizational or individual) isn’t working.  You really want to fix things and grow?  Don’t be afraid to state unequivocally that everything is on the chopping block.

Yeah, I know.  That’s a scary one.  Very few are willing to put the greater community good above secure health insurance.  And we’re also talking about people, like myself, who are sincerely passionate about what we do and the city we hope to create.  It’s tough to ask someone to give up an organization that is a part of their heart and soul.  By definition though, we social entrepreneurs are about change.  And leading change means we’re asking people to give something up in the belief that we are creating something better.

So what’s the magic word that will help us get to a better place?

It’s “nimble.”  And occasionally “scrappy.”  According to the all-knowing Webster, nimble is a synonym for “agile.”  My goal as a social entrepreneur is to move “quickly and easily” in ways I might not have ever imagined.  And when I need to be quick, and I need to be effective, you might just find me being scrappy.  It’s what Webster called the “determined spirit” that, when combined with the ability to leap and bend, and put it all on the chopping block, makes us a pretty good bet.

To quote one of the coolest people I know, Christopher Reyes, the social entrepreneur’s model is “for profit with a conscience.  Our bottom line is not money.  Our bottom line is community.”  We might have a home base, even an “office” of sorts.  But most days, we’re all over the community building relationships, rarely organizations.

Back to the guy (or girl) who wants to start a new nonprofit.  The first thing out of my mouth is usually, “You should talk to XX.”  Again, we start with the premise that another organization is rarely the path to effective change.  Sometimes coffee, or cocktails, and a conversation can work magic.  And if we can make enough money to keep the lights on, then it’s a pretty good day.

In summer time, I revel in my neighborhood and the sense of place it provides.  When it’s warm, I play outside every day.  I mow my yard (all by myself!), work in my garden, walk my dog all over the neighborhood, and run in Overton Park.  I walk up to the movie theatre or to meet friends for drinks on the patio at Le Chardonnay.  On Saturdays I ride my bike up to Easy Way, then down to Otherlands for coffee, and stop off at Tip Top to pick up a bottle of wine.  I can get everything I need for a big dinner party without biking more than two or three miles.

I know everyone on my street and we have no fear of being nosy.  We’re all different ages and backgrounds, and I rarely walk down the street without stopping to talk to at least two or three of them.  We all have front porches, so that’s where we spend our time.

The Cold Disconnect

Winter is another matter altogether.  I hunker down in the house and generally refuse to play outside.  I tried running in the cold, but the little snotsicles just got to be too gross.  And my toes went numb.   Because I’m not out front in the garden (and the dog refuses to go for walks when it’s below 50 degrees), I don’t see my neighbors as much as I used to.

I read a lot during winter, and go through several cords of wood a month.  Even as I write this, I am snugged up under a blanket, three layers of clothes, fire blazing.  I still shop at Easy Way, drink coffee at Otherlands, and check in with Dewey and his dog Baxter at Tip Top, only now I zip around in my MINI.  The bike is in the garage holding down some lawn chairs that keep tipping over.  In essence, I completely disconnect from my neighborhood, and I lose that sense of place that brings me such joy.

Snow Re-Connection

Our recent surprise snowpocalypse was a stark reminder of how much I miss my neighborhood connection and sense of “place” during winter.  Just after dawn that Monday morning, I dug out two pairs of thermals, several shirts, ski pants, sweater, coat, hat, scarf, and mittens.  And yes, I actually looked like the Christmas Story kid.  I met up with my neighbor and her German Shepherd puppy and we traipsed across the street to Overton Park.

It. Was. Amazing.  Given the ungodly hour, we were the first on the scene and the snow was pristine.  We quickly hiked back into the woods.  I stopped.  I was standing in the only old growth forest in the city, covered in the sparkling snow of a new dawn.  It was breathtaking.  The trees might be bereft of leaves, but have you ever really looked at the grace, beauty, and strength of the bare branches?  You never get to see it in the summer time.

Two hours later, after having caught up with other neighbors and a woeful attempt at a snowman (it came out looking more like a snow lump), we hiked back across the street, wet, cold, and tired.  About an hour later, I got a text about lunch.  Hike up to Bosco’s for some locally brewed beer and a pizza?  You bet!

We met at the corner and schlepped down the snowy alley to Bosco’s.  For the next hour, we laughed, ate, and sampled some of the best locally brewed libations ever.  I also learned that it’s a good thing I’m not a baby wolf, as I would have starved because I eat so slowly.  Full and warm, we schlepped back down those same alleys back home.

I tucked in, fired up the laptop, and attempted to get some work done.  Not surprisingly, I was monitoring Facebook instead.  I was amazed at how many people were already griping about being bored and snowed in.  It was 2 pm!!  And then I remembered.  They live in subdivisions, unwalkable neighborhoods with no pedestrian access to all the wonders of our city.  If they can’t drive, they are completely cut off from those around them (if they even know their neighbors in the first place).  They have no sense of belonging or access to a “place” or a neighborhood.

Bless Those Folks Who Have to Drive . . .

Wow.  My neighborhood is a BIG part of why I love my city so much.  I feel bad for all those Facebook folks who have to wait for the streets to clear before they can take their families sledding.  I am connected to the people, places, and businesses around me.  Even in the worst of winter, I still have the opportunity to laugh with friends who live only 50 feet away.  I can still get my favorite mocha and fresh produce.  My neighborhood and those who inhabit it are an important part of how I judge my happiness in my city.

Loose Translation:

Place is important.  Neighborhoods in which we all can feel like part of a larger community are important.  I’ll admit, investment in walkable, accessible neighborhoods and strong public parks won’t solve our education problems or reduce infant mortality.  So what function do neighborhoods and public places serve?  They provide the visual backdrop for a city narrative in which we can all see our place.  These public places (like Overton Park) are equal opportunity experiences that will never come close to a mall or a freeway.

Anyone could have been the first ones to break the snow in the Old Forest of Overton Park.  That joy is free to anyone who shows up.  My access to such a beautiful park is an integral part of why I stay in Memphis.

The Beale Street Landing is a phenomenal opportunity to create that visual backdrop in which we can all see our place and feel a sense of pride.  Yes, it’s currently over budget and over timeline.  A few snags snuck up on the Riverfront Development Corp.  Happens to the best laid plans.  But that in no way diminishes the value and importance of the project.

Visual Backdrop

Beale Street Landing will provide that same free access that I have to Overton Park.  Even better, it will provide free access to the most incredible of Memphis’ assets: the Mississippi River.  Today, the best I can do to “experience” the river is to walk down to Riverside Drive and stare at it.  Yeah, that’ll make me want to live in Memphis.  Not.

As I said, even the best laid plans sometimes go awry.  We’re in a recession, and it’s admittedly hard to justify spending additional millions on a park that’s already over budget and behind schedule.  So what happens if we just stop where we are?  Quite simply, our riverfront would be marred by a wretched, terrible scar.  I’m not talking about some psychological scar.  I mean a big, ugly scratch in the river bank.

We’ll still get the grass-topped building, and a red spiral thing that goes to a boat dock that never got built.  The rest will be just a bunch of dirt that’s been shoved around.  If we stop now, if we refuse to fund the current request, we’ll leave ourselves (and our city) worse off than when we started.  Should that happen, I suggest the marketing folks hire a good airbrush artist to touch up any skyline photos.

Equal-access public places are a big part of the visual backdrop of our city.  These are places we can all look at and see ourselves enjoying.  Anyone can be the first to stomp in the snow or watch the sun rise in the forest.  My special place, Overton Park, is a big part of why I live where I do.  Let’s make Beale Street Landing the same kind of special place.

P.S.  Don’t worry, I haven’t abandoned my walkable neighborhoods soapbox.  Keep your eyes open for that one.

If you’re really serious about building Memphis into a City of Choice for young talent, and you’re really serious about creating the nation’s first office of talent retention and development, then I humbly suggest you double-team it.  In essence, I think it will take a team of two to make this work: one white, one African American.  Now before anyone gets all up in arms about all the ills of our city that are so much more important than talent, y’all just hear me out.

Today’s Picture: A Bit Woeful

Let’s start by taking a look at the current state of affairs.  What exactly does a young professional in Memphis look like?  Well, for starters, I’m white.  And I have at least a four year degree.   And I’m between the ages of 25 and 34.  It doesn’t matter what my actual job is, or how much I make.  I’m a young professional.  Does that sound like what you thought I would look like?  It’s exactly what more than 70% of us look like.

Now, what does a general Memphian look like?  There’s about a fifty-fifty chance I’m white or African American.  Seventy percent chance I don’t have a college degree.  Thirty percent chance I’m not even working.  Now, who can tell me what doesn’t add up about these two pictures?

US Census data shows that roughly 12% of Shelby Countians are between the ages of 25 and 34, or about 111,000 of us.  Of that 12%, only about 36% of us have a bachelor’s degree or better.  So now we’re down to about 40,000 people out of Shelby County’s entire population of more than 900,000 who qualify as “young professionals.”  What do we actually look like?  Well, only 17% of these college-educated citizens are African American.  That shakes out to about 6,700 African American young professionals in the area.  Hmmm . . . that doesn’t bode well for our future.

So what?

So why should we concentrate on building young talent just as much as we concentrate on crime, education, and other key issues?  For starters, the presence of a vibrant community of young professionals is one of the top three indicators of a city’s success.  What??  Yeah.  Education, safety, greenness, and all that other stuff are important, but without us young professionals in Memphis to work on these issues, we have at least a 30% chance of failing as a city.

If hard numbers are more convincing to you:  According to CEO’s for Cities, young professionals account for 58% of a city’s success as defined by per capita income.  Short version: we can account for as much as 58% of Memphis’ economy.  That’s an awful lot of tax dollars that can be used to educate our children, keep the Med open, and put more police on our streets.

Want more money?  Then let’s see what happens if we simply increase the talent we have here.  If we can increase our college attainment by 1 percentage point (only about 8,000 graduates), then Memphis will benefit from a $1 billion annual economic impact.  And that billion dollars will repeat itself year over year.  It’s not a one-time deal.  Again, that’s an awful lot of education, social services, police, and parks, which are a direct result of spending as much energy on talent development and retention as we do on other issues.

Side Bar: Serious props to Leadership Memphis and all the other wonderful groups who are working so hard to make the Talent Dividend a reality.  I truly believe we can achieve this ambitious goal, and I’m grateful you’re all on the case.

Now, back to the hard numbers.  I’m not terribly good at math, but if there are only 40,000 of us young professionals in all of Shelby County, then I’m pretty darn sure that’s not enough of us for Memphis to reach its full potential.  Oh, and did I tell you that we’ve been bleeding 3-4 young professionals EVERY DAY for the last 18 years?  Yowsers.  Sometimes I think it might be easier to find enough money for the Med under my couch cushions than it will be to turn the tide on our talent blood loss.

If more young talent means more money, and I hope you will at least agree that means it deserves more attention, then who really cares what that talent looks like, right?  Just so long as we build it and the tax dollars it creates.  Wrong.

One Shot

Memphis has one shot at building itself into a City of Choice for young professionals.  It’s not worth doing unless we can do it right.  And right means we build diverse talent.  Want to succeed in business, education, and just about anything else you can think of?  You have to build a diverse team.  Otis Sanford recently cited some interesting research that shows students who are educated in diverse schools perform better.  It’s what author Scott E. Price calls the “Diversity Conjecture.”  Simply put, diversity creates better groups, companies, schools, and societies.  In some cases, the power of diversity can even trump ability.

Let’s return to those 6,700 African American young professionals.  Does 17% minority young professionals sound like diversity to you?  I think not.

Memphis as a whole is already wonderfully diverse.  Trust me.  Statistical data aside, more than 1,500 folks, many of them young professionals, consider our diversity to be one of the city’s greatest assets.  So if we’re going to commit our time, money and passion to building a community of young talent, shouldn’t it be a diverse community, one that actually reflects our city?

It reminds me of a movie that I don’t particularly care for, “Field of Dreams.”  The only line I remember from the movie is, “If you build it, they will come.”  I’m quite sure that adage holds true for talent as well as baseball.  That still doesn’t explain why we need 2 people leading the charge, but keep that phrase in mind as we continue forward.

I was talking to a friend of mine about this issue recently.  (See my previous post.  I’m passionate about this one, and sometimes it’s all I can talk about.)  He relayed an interesting conversation he recently had with some very important people engaged in talent retention.  The group was about half white, half African American.  They weren’t really making any progress finding solutions, so they backed up and decided to look at the question of what kind of talent Memphis already has and what we should be working towards.

Turns out, therein lay the pickle.  The African American conversants thought my friend (who is white) was only talking about white young professionals.  My friend thought the group was only looking at African American young professionals.  Either way, the disconnect was a concrete impediment.

I’d bet good money they aren’t the only folks with differing visions of what our talent currently looks like and what it should look like.  If we’re going to be successful in recruiting and retaining talent, let’s first show Memphis what that talent looks like.  Most importantly, our talent is diverse.

Well, not yet.  But it can be.

It Might Be Shocking

Now, my next statement might seem a bit shocking.  That’s okay.  It stands to reason that if hold something up as your ultimate goal, I’ll think that’s what the goal should look like.

Let’s say the city’s first “Talent Czar” is white.  Well then, that must be who they’re trying to recruit, white talent.  What if the first “Czar” is African American?  Well then, the city must be focused on only recruiting and building African American talent.

But what if we put forth a team of both black and white young professionals?  That is what we want to create isn’t it?  A diverse community?  Back to “Field of Dreams.”  I posit that if you build it – a diverse team leading the charge, then they will come – a diverse community of young professionals.  There’s certainly more than enough work to be done than any two people can handle.  It’s going to take a lot of elbow grease to stem the tide of talent.

I’m a big fan of starting with the end in mind.  So let’s take a brief look at what can happen when we empower a diverse team to build Memphis into a diverse City of Choice for young professionals:

We might not need as much of the Gates Foundation money.  Memphis will be a very attractive city for the nation’s best and brightest teachers.  They will want to stay here and work to educate our next generation of young professionals.

We might not even care about where our police officers live because we’ll have a whole cadre of college-educated men and women who want to live in Memphis, serving and protecting.

Artists, musicians, and other creatives will know they can come to Memphis and be surrounded by other energetic, entrepreneurial people.  Move over Nashvegas, Memphis is the place to create.

Bioworks, the University of Tennessee, and the University of Memphis won’t be able to keep up with the influx of researchers, specialists, entrepreneurs, and general smarty-pants who all want to call Memphis home.

We might even get a little closer to finding the cure for childhood cancer.  St. Jude is one of the finest research institutions in the world, but it’s a really tough sell to get the best scientists to move to Memphis.

Did I mention the $1 billion economic impact or the increase in tax revenue we could devote to crime, education, and the myriad of social issues we face every day?

Stay Strong

So Mr. Mayor, to recap: Please stay committed to building Memphis into a City of Choice for young professionals, if for no other reason than the incredible financial impact.  We can’t just build any old talent, though.  It must be diverse talent.  There’s so much work to be done, and so much benefit to be reaped.  We have to get this right.

Please build a diverse team to tackle our impediments to growth.  If the team is diverse, then the product will be diverse.

One final thought:  I have no idea where you’ll find the money to do this.  It sounds like we’re a little short on cash right now.  I can’t seem to find a comprehensive, easy to read map of city government, so I can’t even begin to suggest where cuts might be made or duties shifted.  As a citizen though, I trust you to find a way.  We can’t afford not to succeed.