Note: this post is a complementary commentary to the one April 20, 2026, about leadership.

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There’s a familiar refrain in Memphis civic life, one that echoes from boardrooms to ribbon cuttings: believe in Memphis, talk it up, sell the city.

In recent years, a growing chorus of CEOs has leaned into that message with renewed vigor, urging residents, employees, and fellow business leaders to stop the negativity and start cheerleading.  If you aren’t promoting Memphis, the argument goes, you’re failing your hometown.

Leading the cheerleading is the Greater Memphis Chamber, but it’s hard to fault them.  Over the past 35 years, you’d need more fingers than you have on both hands to count all of its “Believe in Memphis-type” campaigns.

These days, its campaign comes with pep talks and an email blast, Good News From Memphis, Good News for Memphis, from businessman and current Chamber chairman Duncan Williams. 

As a membership organization, the Chamber’s “good news” is largely speaking to the converted, and as a result, its messages regularly fail to ripple out across the community as much as it would like them to.  As evidence, a recent edition of Mr. Williams’ email suggested that it was “an honor” to “host (Donald Trump) in our city and show him the good news about Memphis.”

The alleged purpose of these missives from the Chamber is “that we want everyone to speak positively about Memphis,” but even a business membership group should resist the urge to tout the visit by Trump, who was in the city to praise the Safe Memphis Task Force and essentially spotlight Memphis crime.  Surely, even in its echo chamber, the Chamber knows that the number of people living in Memphis who have been arrested is approaching 1,000 and the number of them who are charged with a crime is less than 5%. 

Some business leaders in the city traveled to Washington months ago to lobby elected officials in favor of the current encroachment by all the federal government’s alphabet law enforcement agencies.  Despite this support for the harassment of hundreds, if not thousands, of Memphians, immigrants and citizens alike, the Chamber should acknowledge that it would have been much more effective if, rather than paying tens of millions of dollars to bivouac all these officers in Memphis, that money had been spent on local officers and local crime prevention programs. 

Truth Beneath Applause Lines

Here’s the thing about these kinds of top-down accolades.  They come from a privileged point of view rather than from a point of view from which every Memphian can see themselves.    

Theirs is an appealing sentiment. Confidence matters. Civic pride is not trivial.  Cities that believe in themselves often outperform those that don’t.

But there’s a hard truth lurking beneath the applause lines: cheerleading, by itself, has never transformed an economy.  It will not transform Memphis.

In a city where population growth is headed in the wrong direction, the economy is underperforming, poverty remains entrenched, and too many neighborhoods sit outside the boundaries of opportunity – happy talk untethered from a serious, shared vision risks becoming something worse than ineffective. It becomes a substitute for action.

More than anything, it’s the vision that matters, and the primary question remains: Who exactly is the keeper of that vision? 

We have visions for certain segments of the economy, for advocacy groups, and for nonprofits, but what is lacking is the over-arching, shared vision that pulls all these visions together into actions with the most potential for positive impact. 

Memphis does not suffer from a lack of boosters. It never has. For as long as most of us can remember, business and political leaders have stepped forward to defend the city’s reputation, often in the face of criticism about crime, education, or economic stagnation. That instinct – to protect the brand is understandable. No CEO wants to recruit talent or investment into a place that is constantly disparaged, especially by its own residents.

But there’s a difference between defending a city and defining its future.

Asking Right Questions

Too often, the call to “be positive” functions as a conversation stopper rather than a conversation starter.

It implies that skepticism or critique is disloyal, that asking hard questions about why Memphis underperforms is somehow equivalent to undermining it. That’s a dangerous framing. The cities that succeed – really succeed – are not the ones that suppress criticism. They are the ones that harness it, interrogate it, and turn it into fuel for change.

The data on Memphis is not a matter of opinion. For years, the region has trailed peer metros in job growth, population gains, and per capita income increases. Too many young people leave. Too few new industries take root at scale. Entire swaths of the city remain disconnected from economic mobility.

These are not branding problems. They are structural challenges.  And structural challenges do not yield to slogans.

That starts with honesty. Pure cheerleading often glosses over the depth of the city’s challenges, but effective leadership requires naming them clearly. Why has Memphis struggled to diversify its economy beyond logistics and legacy sectors? Why do wage levels lag even as major corporations operate here? Why do disparities between neighborhoods remain so stark, decade after decade?

These are uncomfortable questions. But avoiding them does not make them disappear. It simply ensures that the gap between rhetoric and reality continues to widen.

Alignment Over More Plans

What Memphis needs from its CEOs is not just enthusiasm, but leadership of a different kind – leadership that is willing to move beyond generalized optimism and incremental progress and to become part of a process to develop and articulate a shared vision for every person in the city – not a vision in the abstract, but one grounded in strategy, accountability, and sustained investment.

That’s why alignment is so important. Memphis has no shortage of plans, initiatives, and task forces. What it lacks is a unifying vision that brings together business, government, philanthropy, and community voices around a shared, single vision supported by a set of priorities. CEOs are uniquely positioned to help drive that alignment, not because they have all the answers, but because they control resources, influence policy conversations, and can demand results.

But alignment requires more than occasional convenings or statements of support. It requires committing to a small number of big bets – and sticking with them long enough to matter. The Chamber tried this with its “moon missions” years ago but they slowly faded away.  Whether it’s now growing a specific high-wage industry cluster, transforming workforce development, or investing in neighborhoods that have been left behind, clearly, the key is focus and sticking with it over time.

Cities don’t change by doing a little bit of everything. They change by doing a few things exceptionally well.

There is also the question of accountability, which is where cheerleading most often falls short. It’s easy to celebrate incremental wins or highlight isolated success stories. It’s much harder to set clear benchmarks and publicly track progress against them.  

Are more Memphians earning living wages? Is the region attracting and retaining talent at a higher rate? Are disparities narrowing in measurable ways?

If the answer is no – or not fast enough – then the response cannot simply be to double down on optimism. It must be to adjust strategy, reallocate resources, and try something different. That’s how businesses operate every day. There’s no reason their civic leadership should be any different.

Key to City Ambassadors

None of this is to dismiss the value of pride. In fact, pride is essential. Memphis has assets that many cities would envy: a global logistics hub, a rich cultural legacy, a strategic location, a history of resilience and reinvention, and a survivors’ pride. Telling that story matters, especially in a competitive landscape where perception can influence investment decisions.

But pride without progress is hollow. And Memphians know the difference.

When CEOs urge Memphians to speak more positively about their city, they are asking for trust. They are asking people to believe that the future will be better than the present. That’s a reasonable ask – but trust is not built through messaging alone. It’s built through visible, tangible proof of change.

People become ambassadors for their city when they see opportunity expanding, not when they are told to ignore its absence.

There is also a generational dimension to this conversation. Younger workers, in particular, are not persuaded by boosterism. They are looking for authenticity, for a city that acknowledges their challenges and are actively working to address them. They want to be part of a city that is not just talking about change, but making it happen.  For many of them, a campaign to be more positive ignores the realities in front of them and at the same time, suggests that the CEO delivering them are tone deaf and uninterested in them.

If Memphis wants to retain and attract that generation, it must offer more than encouragement to “say positive things.” It must offer a credible roadmap to a more dynamic, inclusive economy.

Cheerleading as a Conversation Starter

That’s where CEOs can make the biggest difference – not as cheerleaders, but as architects. They can push for policies that support entrepreneurship and innovation. They can invest in workforce pipelines that connect more residents to good and higher paying jobs. They can use their platforms to advocate for regional collaboration rather than fragmentation. And they can hold themselves – and each other – accountable for results.

In other words, they can turn belief into strategy.

The irony is that genuine progress would make the cheerleading largely unnecessary. When a city is clearly on the rise, when its economy is growing and opportunities are expanding, the narrative takes care of itself. People don’t need to be told to be positive; they feel it.

Memphis has reached a moment where it must decide what kind of leadership it wants. The call for optimism is not wrong – but it is incomplete. Without a clear vision and a commitment to execution, it risks becoming a comfortable illusion, one that allows the status quo to persist under the guise of civic pride.

The better path is harder but ultimately more rewarding: pair the belief in Memphis with a disciplined, ambitious vision  to improve it. Demand more than words. Insist on outcomes. And recognize that the highest form of loyalty to a hometown is not defending it from criticism, but doing the work required to make it stronger.

Cheerleading can start the conversation. But it cannot finish it.

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