John Plodinec

Adversity: the primer for resilience

January 30th, 2012 - John Plodinec  

Walt Disney said:

All the adversity I’ve had in my life, all my troubles and obstacles, have strengthened me… You may not realize it when it happens, but a kick in the teeth may be the best thing in the world for you.

Nietzsche wrote (and Jethro Gibbs repeated), Whatever doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.

One of my favorites among the many definitions of resilience is – Positive adaptation to perceived adversity (slightly altered from Adger). But what Disney and Nietzsche (and Gibbs) are pointing out is that resilience is learned behavior whether at the individual, the community or the national level. We learn to cope by coping; we learn to adapt by adapting to those things we cannot change. But that begs the questions: How much adversity is enough? How much is too much?

I recently read a summary of some interesting work by Dr. Mark Seery at the University of Buffalo which sheds an interesting light on this. He looked at those who had faced much adversity throughout their lives, those who had faced some adversity, and those who had faced little to no adversity. He found that those who had experienced a great deal of adversity and those who had faced little adversity were both much worse at coping than those who had experienced only some adversity. And it didn’t appear to matter what the adversity was.

There are a few interesting parallels at the community level. The strengths Charleston developed during and after Hurricane Hugo undoubtedly helped it to successfully cope with the subsequent naval base closure. Without the adversity of Katrina and the levee breaks, would New Orleans have been able to withstand the Great Recession and the BP Oil Spill as well as it has (Next week, I’ll be writing a blog about some surprising – at least to me – lessons from New Orleans recovery.)?

Too often, we (especially our politicians!) seem to act as if we can’t allow anything bad to happen to anyone. But does trying to prevent bad things from happening to people, communities, or our nation actually mean that we are actually preventing people, communities and our nation from becoming more resilient? And, ultimately, such efforts are doomed to failure, anyway. Bad things will happen. The more little “bads” we’re able to prevent, the more severe the big “bads” will be, because we will have been deprived of the opportunity to learn to cope – to become more resilient.

As Helen Keller wrote:

Security is mostly a superstition.
It does not exist in nature
Nor do the children of men
As a whole experience it.
Avoiding danger is no safer
In the long run than outright exposure.
Life is either a daring adventure
Or it is nothing.
To keep our faces toward change and
Behave like free spirits
In the presence of fate is strength undefeatable.

John Plodinec

Notes on the International Disaster Conference and Expo

January 27th, 2012 - John Plodinec  

Last week, I attended the first International Disaster Conference and Expo in New Orleans. Rather than give a blow by blow rundown, it’s probably more useful to lay out major themes that kept popping up, as well as a few interesting (at least to me!) insights I gleaned.

Public-private partnerships, and the emerging importance of the private sector. Virtually every speaker spoke to the value of private sector involvement in disaster preparation and recovery. Craig Fugate talked on his “Waffle House indicator,” and the CEO of Waffle House described his company’s approach (He probably had to handle some of the toughest questions – for example: “Would Waffle House be as proactive if it was a publicly held company?” He did a superb job of laying out the importance of WH’s corporate culture for the corporation’s actions, something that receives too little attention.)

The presentations on the humanitarian response to the earthquake in Haiti provided an interesting twist on this theme. Several speakers pointed out that one of the unintended consequences of the outpouring of humanitarian assistance was the harm it did to local companies. By providing goods for free, aid organizations essentially shut out local companies that could have provided goods and services to strengthen the local economy.

Whole community. Craig Fugate did his usual good job of explaining this but the theme was reinforced and amplified by several speakers. I appreciated his point about the tax base being an indicator of recovery. In CARRI’s work, we have encountered those in local government who felt that they had no business worrying about business. As Fugate implied, they had better worry about business – if they lose businesses, their ability to provide the services expected by their citizens is diminished. Several of the international speakers echoed the importance of involving the entire community both before and after an event.

Information. This became the most important theme of the conference for me. If the Whole Community is to be effectively engaged, then each member of the community must have accurate, relevant and timely information. Dave Kauffman of FEMA pointed out that there is three times more information available now than in the 1980’s, and it’s volume is growing at 30%/year. Dave and one or two others talked about the need for tools to pan the river of data to find those golden nuggets of needed information. Social media can play a crucial role, as sentinels signaling a changing situation, as validators of data, and – increasingly – as platforms for action. This led me to wonder if we might see more mini-“Boatlifts” (the almost spontaneous organization of the evacuation of Manhattan Island after 9/11) facilitated by Twitter and its siblings.

Community resilience. I was very pleased to see more and more people looking at community resilience as a “virtue with big shoulders,” something vital and active rather than a pallid and passive shadow that is only seen after a disaster happens. Meir Elran from Israel pointed out that active communities were resilient communities, and that resilience could be built and enhanced. He described several steps being taken in Israel ranging from training elected leaders to providing age-appropriate programs for students from kindergarten to college. If we want to build a culture of resilience, what better way than starting with youth. Dave Kaufman pointed out that one of the key drivers FEMA sees in our future is the greater involvement of the entire community in preparation and recovery. We need to actively build trust between the governing and the governed to do this effectively.

Education. While this wasn’t an explicit theme in the presentations, I was struck by the number of educational institutions who were part of the Expo and what they offered. Noteworthy were:
• The Stephenson Disaster Management Institute at LSU. Probably their most visible accomplishment was conceiving and helping to foster the foundation of the Business EOC in Louisiana. An excellent example of government making a commitment to work with the private sector.
• The Center for Hazards Assessment, Response and Technology at the University of New Orleans. UNO also touted the usefulness of some of their urban planning programs.
• Tulane’s Disaster Resilience Leadership Academy. Dr. Ky Luu and his colleagues have pulled together an excellent interdisciplinary program. I have to admit somewhat ruefully, though, that the curriculum seems too daunting for any current leader to take it (which is too bad). Let’s hope their graduates are among the next generation of leaders.
• Anna Maria College, near Worcester, MA. They have some interesting “nuts and bolts” programs (e.g., a degree in fire science, as well as an MS in Emergency Management).

John Plodinec

Demographic Trends and Community Resilience

January 10th, 2012 - John Plodinec  

Two weeks ago, the Brookings Institution released an interesting report on Five Things the Census Revealed about America in 2011. The authors were focused on America as a whole, but in the following, I’d like to look to look a little deeper at what their findings may mean for American communities.

Minorities are driving growth, and replenishing America’s youth. In the 1950’s, about one-fourth of our population growth was due to minorities (non-whites). On the 2000’s, almost all (92%) of our population growth was due to minorities, mainly Hispanics and Asians.

While non-whites in particular are driving population growth, the overall rate of growth is slowing. The nation’s population increased by about 10% from 2000 to 2010, the lowest rate of increase since the 1930’s. This reflected less immigration because of a poorer economy, and a lower birth rate because of an aging population. It’s as if everyone in Quebec, Ontario and the rest of the eastern half of Canada (about three-fourths of their population) moved to the US in just ten years. We clearly are continuing the process of becoming a “majority minority” country, just a bit more slowly than we have been.

The rate of growth of the population 45 and over is eighteen times that of those 45 and under. As one important result, only one in five households consist of a married couple with a child under 18.

The rate of migration continues its slow decrease. About 20% of us moved our homes in the ’50s and ’60s; in the last five years that dropped to just over 10%. Simply put, more and more Americans are staying home – with one major exception. We are seeing a “Reverse Migration” of the Black population to the South, as well.

The median household income declined the past decade for the first time on record, by about 9%. There was a concomitant increase in the poverty rate, to 15%. As we’ve seen so pointedly for New Orleans after Katrina, poverty is spreading from inner cities to the suburbs as is ethnic diversity.

Clearly, each of these trends will impact our communities, and each in a different way, depending on the community. However, there are a few generalizations worth noting.

• Communities’ responses to the diversification process will be telling indicators of their resilience. Some communities will not cope well; others will find strength in their increased diversity. Fortunately, there are models that are working (e.g., Anaheim) that others can emulate.

• Perhaps the greatest danger inherent in this diversification is that the community’s sense of itself may be dampened or destroyed. Without positive action, there is a real danger that a community may splinter based on race, language, age, or economic condition. If these become barriers to communication in a community, groups will tend to isolate themselves, and their members may have greater allegiance to their group than to the community as a whole. As a result, community resilience will suffer. It will be important for communities to develop inclusive “community mythologies” to prevent these barriers from forming. The reduced rate of migration may be a trend that counters this in many communities.

• Concentrated poverty is an extreme example of this isolation and an important one because poverty has a tremendous impact beyond just the poor. We’ve seen what happens in many big cities (e.g., Detroit) when poverty is concentrated in a neighborhood like plaque on a blood vessel. Crime and other anti-community activity increases. Those who can, leave – creating a potential death spiral for the neighborhood and a resource-sucking “Black Hole” for the larger community.

• While there will be greater diversity (based on ethnicity, age…) within communities, at the same time we are likely to see greater diversity among our communities in terms of their makeup, the specific challenges they face, and the resources they have available to deal with them. This implies that one-size-fits-all solutions from the federal government will be even less likely to work. Given the inertia in the federal system, this also means that communities are going to have to cope with their demographic changes largely on their own.

• As communities aim toward the future, they will have to consider whether the present mix of community services matches future needs. If the immigrant population in the community is growing, that may imply a need for more youth services, and for provision for those with little or no English. If the community is “graying,” this likely will mean the need for more services aimed toward the elderly. In areas of high unemployment, homelessness will impact not only those agencies that serve the poor, but education, and others as well. More resilient communities will meet these changing needs with solutions that include private business, non-profits and other essential service providers, as well as local governments.

• At the same time, local governments and other service providers will have to look at their services in a regional context. As we’ve seen so pointedly in metropolitan New Orleans, poverty has spread to the suburbs. For many communities, this means that they will have to look at themselves in a regional context more than ever before. Through effective coordination of service delivery among different organizations and jurisdictions, there is the potential for greater efficiency and greater resilience as well.

Many of our communities are already being impacted by these trends. These trends indicate many more will be. A community’s anticipation of what these trends portend for it, and its actions to positively respond, will perhaps be the best indicator of that community’s resilience.

John Plodinec

Resilience — One Movement, Many Voices

December 19th, 2011 - John Plodinec  

Earlier this fall, I attended the annual meeting of the Federal Alliance for Safe Homes (FLASH). For those of you who aren’t familiar with FLASH (see www.flash.org), they are doing an amazing job in raising consciousness about strengthening homes to severe weather conditions. I was struck by the applicability of their motto – quoted above – to resilience.

For resilience has become a movement; and like all movements it has developed branches as diverse as the roots from whence it came. Transition Towns and Resilience Circles, Asset-Based Community Development communities and many others are all fluorishing branches of a movement aimed at strengthening communities so that they can withstand adversity.

The Transition Towns approach to community resilience is ultimately based on a philosophy of despair (as is that of its close cousin – Resilience Circles). The British founders of this approach see Peak Oil, Global Warming, and the Great Recession as working together to fundamentally change the nature of society. They foresee a rapidly approaching end to the Age of the Automobile, and a concomitant possibility of severely disrupted supplies of food and other necessities. Some of their writings seem almost apocalyptic in their forecasts, including the collapse of civilization. Their answer is to make communities as self-sufficient as possible. Hence, an emphasis on growing food locally, and a more communal lifestyle in general. While there is an anti-technology Luddite element to this, one cannot deny that participants have found much satisfaction – and even joy – in the renewed sense of community in Transition Towns.

The Asset-Based Community Development (ABCD) approach has a very different philosophical basis. Developed by John McKnight and co-workers at Northwestern, the ABCD approach seeks to discover and develop community competence by helping neighborhoods, for example, to recognize the assets and capabilities they contain within themselves. While ABCD shares with Transition Towns a general distrust of the ability of external bureaucracies to address local problems, it ultimately celebrates the capacity of the commons working together to solve local problems. David Gershon’s work in Philadelphia and New York, while not explicitly based on ABCD, shares much in common with it.

There are many other branches that deserve recognition – FLASH’s work to make homes more robust, TISP’s efforts to develop a more resilient infrastructure, the Department of Health and Human Services’ inclusion of resilience as a core element of their strategic and operational planning, the Army’s work to enhance the resilience of soldiers and their families, and especially FEMA’s Whole Community approach to emergency management spring to mind. Where then does CARRI’s approach fit in?

Back in July, I wrote a blog about resilience and the problem of scale (Community Resilience and the Problem of Scale or There are Horses for Courses). CARRI’s approach focuses on the community, and particularly on the challenges that communities face. While some of these challenges are universal (economic distress), most of them reflect the specific conditions and setting of the community itself. Applying Brian Walker’s insight from ecology, this means that CARRI must help communities consider these challenges from both the individual-family-neighborhood and regional perspectives, if the community is to successfully meet them. As William James said, “The community stagnates without the impulse of the individual. The impulse dies away without the sympathy of the community.” And sometimes the community must call on resources beyond its own, if the impulse is to lead to positive action. CARRI is thus centered on the community, and its role is thus to energize and empower the individual to influence the community to take action to meet the challenges it faces.

John Plodinec

Resilience for Dummies 2: Effective Community Leadership

December 13th, 2011 - John Plodinec  

Not too long ago, an interviewer asked me what were the keys to community resilience. I answered “Leadership, leadership, leadership. And, oh yes, connections and resources.” We talked a bit more about that, and the whole conversation was then pushed to the back of my mind’s garage. It was recently brought back to me when I read a blog from Bill Hooke (Living on the Real World) on leadership, which led me to a column by the Washington Post’s Sally Jenkins on Tim Tebow, which led me to some very interesting work by Robert Hogan.

First, let me define what I mean – and don’t mean – when I talk about a leader. In terms of community action, an effective leader is someone who
• Mobilizes at least part of the community, and its resources, to achieve common goals.
• Works effectively as part of a team to achieve those goals.
• Is committed to improving the community.

Hogan provides some valuable insights into the qualities that make an effective leader (see the figure that I’ve adapted).

First, he notes that being a leader implies having followers – and that it is both the leader’s innate personality and the followers’ perceptions of that personality obtained from the leader’s behavior and actions that make the leader effective. Hogan then identifies the key personality traits of an effective leader:
• Integrity. If followers believe the leader has integrity, it creates trust that the leader will carry out promised actions.
• Vision. People are more likely to follow if they believe that the leader has a vision for what the future should be that is aligned with their own.
• Clarity. People are more likely to follow if the leader can clearly communicate a vision, the goals that must be achieved to attain the vision, and a plan to achieve them.
• Decisiveness. People are unlikely to follow the wishy-washy. Decisiveness indicates a confidence in one’s own direction.
• Competence. To be effective, a leader must be able to use the tools available to move the community forward. Playing the blame game to explain lack of forward motion eventually is seen as a sign of incompetence. While the first four traits can boost a person into a position of leadership, incompetence will eventually unseat them. However, to be competent, a community leader should have experience in working on problems that involve a large part of the community.

An effective community leader does not have to be an elected official; he or she can come from any sector. Hugh McColl, a banker, was not an elected official, and yet he spearheaded the transformation of Charlotte, NC, from a declining textile town into the nation’s second largest financial center.

An effective community leader is not necessarily a manager. Managers are made responsible for the motion of their subordinates in some pre-defined direction based on their positions, through command. Leaders take responsibility for achieving a vision and move others to follow them, through conviction.  However, more often than not, effective community leaders have experience working at the community level. They almost have to, if they are to be able to convince people throughout the community that following them will lead to positive results for all. This is probably why we so often look to elected officials for community leadership. They generally have experience at the right scale of action.

It may be instructive to look at the election of President Obama in 2008. Certainly, there were few apparent differences in the integrity of the two candidates. Mr. Obama laid out a vision for America that was more generally appealing than that offered by Senator McCain, though there was little clarity in either’s vision. Mr. Obama’s confidence during the campaign inspired confidence (or at least hope) that he would be a competent president, while Senator McCain’s choice of Governor Palin led many to question his potential competence as president. Neither candidate had an apparent edge in decisiveness. Thus, the electorate’s view of Mr. Obama as a better potential leader certainly increased his electability.

It is interesting to note that the President’s “leadership quotient” among the electorate has distinctly fallen. He has not demonstrated the ability to get things done, and is continuing to play the blame game after three years on the job. Whether this will hurt him in the upcoming election is questionable, though, and will depend on the personality of his opponent, and the voting public’s perception of his opponent’s leadership potential.

In the next post in this series, I’ll continue looking at community leadership, particularly communications. The ability to communicate is probably the most important single skill a leader must have.

John Plodinec

Resilience and the Hole in the Rock Expedition

December 5th, 2011 - John Plodinec  

Jenae Holtzhafer in the Emmaus (PA) Patch posed this question in a posting this summer.

“What if our circumstances on this Earth suddenly changed? Would we be able to endure the extreme physical and mental challenges faced by our ancestors to push through the hardships and survive with nothing more than basic necessities?”

She pointed to the Hole in the Rock expedition of 1879 as an example of the resilience of our forebears. For those who don’t know the story, in late 1879, 236 Mormons set out on a missionary expedition to southeastern Utah. They had selected the shortest path to their destination – they expected it to take only six weeks, but one that was largely unexplored. Trapped by snow behind them two weeks after they started, they were forced to go forward. Perhaps their most difficult feat was building a wagon road through the hole in the rock – a narrow cut in the cliffs surrounding the Colorado River gorge – and crossing the river. It took them about 8 weeks to build the road and get all of their supplies across, and another 10 to reach the site they choose to establish their “colony.” Amazingly, no one died on the five-month trek, and 238 arrived at the new settlement – two babies were born en route.

Holtzhafer’s gut answer were “No, we are not as resilient – we have lost the skills to survive these hardships.” A closer reading of history, though, makes her conclusion less compelling. The intrepid party – even though they set out as winter neared – was reasonably well-prepared. Eighty wagons, over 1,000 head of cattle, tools, dynamite and other necessary supplies – they were ready to confront what they faced. They had taken full advantage of the technology available to them. In similar circumstances today, most of us we would do the same. While we may have lost some of the skills those hardy Mormons possessed, we have other skills and technologies they did not have.

However, the expedition has an important lesson to teach us – being ready for surprises. The missionaries expected to be gone about 40 days; instead, they were on the road for 100 more. They didn’t expect to have to build a bridge across the Colorado, but they did.

Most communities try to prepare for specific threats – hurricanes, earthquakes, human-induced crises. But look at some of the events the Gulf Coast has experienced in the last decade – a recession in 2001-2; Hurricane Katrina and the levee break; the BP oil spill; the Great Recession…what’s next?

The pessimist looks at this list and says “Why bother to prepare? The next event may well be different. We’ll just adapt to it when it comes.”

The optimist says, “We’re strong, we will weather whatever comes; let’s prepare for what we know.

But the resilient realist says, “Prepare for the known threats, but be sure to include in your preparations those things that will help you survive and thrive in the face of any threat. Most importantly, make sure your people know each other and will help each other, no matter what threat they face.”

A simple thought, but with some profound implications. First, it means we shouldn’t rely on institutions to pull us through a crisis, but on ourselves. Second, we can’t count on getting resources from outside in a crisis – we can only count on what we have in our homes and our neighborhood. Most importantly, the one thing “Government” in general is not doing but could do to prepare us is to hammer these messages home.

Yesterday, I was speaking to a victim of one of the many floods that have hit the St. Louis area. Her house up to the top of the first story was flooded – she had to live in the upper floors. She “commuted” to wherever she had to go in her neighbors’ boats. She pointed out that it took 45 days before the floodwaters had receded enough for safe vehicular traffic to her home. By the time she and her family were ready to begin recovering, the news cameras had moved on; her story was old news; most of the government assistance was gone. With good grace and a sense of humor, she is coming back more or less on her own, with the help of her friends and neighbors.

Her experience shows that some of us, at least, are as resilient as any who came before. Her experience also testifies to the wisdom of the resilient realist: people are the best preparation for surprises.

John Plodinec

Resilience and Jobs

November 16th, 2011 - John Plodinec  

I am an inveterate, voracious and omnivorous reader. No cereal box near me goes unread. Books, blogs, and newsletters are fed straight into my bloodstream. This weekend I read two very good pieces that together got me thinking about jobs, recovery from the Great Recession, and community resilience.

The first was by John Mauldin, one of the best writers on financial matters I’ve found (www.johnmauldin.com). The second was by Ashwin Parameswaran in his series “towards a more resilient macroeconomy.” Both tackled the question of jobs and unemployment and provided a useful point/counterpoint to me.

Quoting first from John Mauldin, looking at where the new jobs came from in the last 15 years:

“…Big business is a net drag on job creation, and small businesses are a wash. Governments have seen job growth, but where does the money come to pay government employees?

Net new jobs come from new businesses (defined as those started within the last ten years). Yes, some of those businesses become Google and others are the local dry cleaner or donut shop. But those start-ups (if they survive) are the source of new jobs.”

Ashwin’s piece (warning – desert-dry academic writing!) focused on the role of innovation and competition in employment. He considers technological unemployment (where a company or industry’s market is destroyed by a new way of doing what has been done before – think buggy whips at the dawn of the automotive age), and truly innovative products that create brand new markets. He asserts that we are seeing a dearth of innovations across our economy, primarily due to a lack of investment.

What binds these two together is that each points to investment in startups as the best way to create jobs. You can’t have startups if there isn’t money to make the initial investment to create the business. You can’t have innovative new products without investing in their creation. This implies that the best way out of the economic morass we’re in is to encourage investment in new businesses in every way we can, and to remove barriers and disincentives to their formation.

This is where communities need to look inward and begin asking some tough questions. What are we doing to encourage startups? Do we have an able workforce? Do we have unnecessary permitting or licensing requirements? Are our transportation systems blocking access to areas that need new businesses?

Do we have sources of capital in our community? Rural agricultural communities might say no, but they’d be wrong. Some very innovative Canadian farming communities are forming micro-investment funds that are creating new businesses. Are we taxing startups at the same rate as large companies? Most importantly, do we understand and appreciate the important role that businesses play in our community, providing jobs, taxes, and, often, crucial support to the things that pull us together – the arts, sports teams, and community events? That means, are we working with businesses to make them – and the community – stronger?

Mauldin points to an article in last week’s Wall Street Journal by Daniel Henninger. He interviewed many businesses that had moved to Texas. The overwhelming sentiment was that it wasn’t just lower taxes or no unions, but a willingness to get things done – a can-do attitude. Communities that care about jobs can learn a great deal from Fluor’s experience in leaving California and coming to Texas. According to Alan Boeckmann, former CEO:

[When the 2006 move became known] “California made no attempt to keep us… things started to happen quickly [in Texas], without us initiating them. The Irving Chamber of Commerce did orientation sessions for employees and spouses, even helping with new-house searches. Or ‘little things’: Irving on its own renamed a street Fluor Drive, which in California or the Northeast would be laughable.”

Resilient communities recognize that businesses are vital parts of the community, and central to the community’s survival. These communities seek to encourage new businesses so that the communities can remain relevant in a changing world. If resilience is adaptation, these communities are discovering that fostering new businesses in the community is a way that they can actively be a part of the future, and thus more resilient.

John Plodinec

A Path to Economic Recovery and Resilience

November 10th, 2011 - John Plodinec  

Just over a year ago, I wrote about what a more resilient economy might look like (see Recovering from the Great Recession – What Might a More Resilient Economy Look Like?). I talked about a value-driven rather than a consumer driven economy. That post begged the question, though – how do we get there from here? In the next few paragraphs, I’ll try to outline an answer to that.

Before I do, however, my disclaimer. I am clearly not an economist (I’m not sure that’s a disqualification, since the economists are all over the map on how to recover!). Further, politicians will be making the most crucial economic decisions over the next few months, and they are clearly not economists (not to mention their roles in getting us into this mess in the first place).

Our national economy is in what economists call a liquidity trap. In a liquidity trap, there is relatively little investment because those with money are very risk averse. Consumers don’t spend, businesses don’t hire, and everyone looks at the economic glass as half empty. And that’s what we’re seeing right now – individuals and businesses are paying off their debts, individual debt is at levels not seen since the early 1990’s; those who can are saving at rates not seen since the 1970’s; and businesses are sitting on their cash (and not borrowing) rather than investing in new products and jobs.

The two antipodes of the debate over how to fix our economy – escape the trap – are characterized by the “Spend, Baby, Spend” school and the Tea Party’s call for government austerity. The Spend, Baby, Spend school is epitomized by economists such as Paul Krugman, who vehemently believe that our federal government should be spending more, much more, to spur demand for goods and services. This group points to our nation’s crumbling infrastructure as a place where investment would create jobs, creating demand, and facilitating economic recovery. At its core, this view sees lack of demand for goods and services as the problem that needs to be addressed.

The Tea Party-ers, on the other hand, see the size of our government as the core problem. In this view, a smaller government, with fewer regulations and lower taxes, would put money back into people’s hands to spend on goods and services, thus jump starting the economy.

You’ll notice, however, that neither view really addresses the core problem – how we get out of the liquidity trap. Or, said a little differently, how do we help businesses, in particular, become less risk averse so that they will invest the cash they are now sitting on in new equipment or new jobs. Framed this way, it seems that government spending per se is somewhat irrelevant to getting out of the trap. Recovery will come only when people have confidence once again that there is a secure future. That’s not to say that government spending is unimportant, just that stimulus spending doesn’t really seem to be the right answer.

If this is true, then what should government do to put us on the road to a resilient economy? Simply put, governments should do those things that will remove uncertainty from people’s minds and those things that will make people more confident in their futures. In this light, it seems that we need to take some of the medicines prescribed by both schools of thought to help bring us out of our national malaise.

We need to recognize that the current pace of regulation creation is creating great uncertainties for businesses and individuals. In the first two years of the present administration in Washington, we created more regulations than we did in eight years of the previous administration. Further, whether we like it or not, small businesses are already telling us they won’t be hiring in the near term because of the possible impacts of health insurance reform (and those impacts won’t be fully known until 2014 at the earliest!).

We also need to recognize that our national debt is unsustainable – if we continue on our present path, we as individuals eventually will end up paying exorbitant amounts in taxes to support intolerably high interest rates to service both our national and personal debt. We as individuals or investors or business owners recognize this and are saving at almost unprecedented rates to provide our own safety nets for ourselves.

However, we also have to recognize that the government must continue to make investments that will help us to have a more certain future. We must invest in our infrastructure – not to stimulate spending but to ensure that we can continue to move goods, people, and information where they are needed. If we don’t, we will spend far more to respond to and recover from the disasters that will expose our infrastructure’s fragility.

We also need to heed the lessons we have already learned about what went wrong and put regulations in place that address the root causes of those problems. The current regulatory framework for the financial industry has much that is wrong with it; recently passed legislation is likely to drive smaller community banks – who in the main were not at fault in getting us into this trap – out of business. This will make it more difficult for entrepreneurs and small businesses to get the capital they need to start up or expand their businesses, i.e., will make our economy even less resilient. Meanwhile, many of the more speculative financial sectors remain unregulated even though they were prime actors in our economic tragedy (and are doing nothing to help us recover).

We must provide a safety net to those of our citizens with special needs. Not because of their vulnerability but as an investment in their future and in ours. The safety net should be focused on outcomes – for example, living healthier and more productive lives – rather than means, for example insurance. Just as with our physical infrastructure, if we don’t make these kinds of investments we will spend far more to respond to and recover from the human tragedies that will result.

I don’t think it requires a rocket scientist (or a Ph.D. economist!) to see a path to recovery. It only requires a clear recognition of where we are as a nation, and then some common sense actions to move to where we need to be. We have to cut government spending and the pace of regulation, but we also need to invest in ourselves and take actions to prevent us from falling in the same trap again. At its core, we have to restore our confidence in ourselves if we are to recover. Neither school of thought, neither political party, can or will be successful unless they grasp this simple truth – this is the only path to economic recovery and greater national resilience.

John Plodinec

Resilience for Dummies: What is Community Resilience

November 8th, 2011 - John Plodinec  

I read a lot – if I don’t have a newspaper or a magazine or a journal article to read, I’ll read cereal boxes. Or I’ll get on the internet and find something there. In doing this, I’ve discovered a new phenomenon – the proliferation of books “X for Dummies” – Puppies for Dummies, Stained Glass for Dummies, Relationships for Dummies. All designed to help the neophyte learn enough to at least be unafraid of the subject and willing to take basic actions. For those like me, whose ignorance is legion, there is even a website – dummies.com – where you can find basic help on almost any topic.

So, over the next few months, I’m going to be writing Community Resilience for Dummies – detailing what this neophyte has learned about community resilience in a way that I hope others can use. As we in CARRI have talked to people about resilience it has become clear that – like sustainability – resilience is a word in danger of losing its meaning because it is being used by so many in so many different ways. So I’ll start by talking about what community resilience is.

As do so many others, we at CARRI have our own definition of resilience:

A community’s ability to anticipate risk, limit impact, and bounce back rapidly through adaptation, evolution, and growth in the face of turbulent change.

In fact, on the CARRI website, you’ll find a document that compares and contrasts many of the definitions.

Most people who are using the term resilience are doing so in a crisis context – a crisis being anything that strains the community’s resources. While resilience may be an inherent trait of a community, its resilience is only seen in how well it recovers from the crisis. As a community evolves over time, it may become more or less resilient. Thus, in these parlous economic times, most communities have become less resilient toward natural disasters or human-induced crises due to dwindling resources – both human and financial. Those communities that have maintained their same level of resilience (and the few that have enhanced it) have generally done so by finding ways to adapt to the financial crisis they face.

Adaptation is the key to resilience – it’s the ability to turn disaster into opportunity; to create social capital to augment finance; to form partnerships to replace or repair needed infrastructure when no one entity has enough money to fund projects. Greenburg, KS’ response to the devastating tornado that hit the town is an example. Prior to the 2007 storm, the town was in danger of dying. It used the opportunity provided by the devastation to attempt to create a different and more sustainable Greensburg.

Mayor Tom Tait’s (Anaheim CA) “Hi, Neighbor” campaign is an example. It recognizes that in the event of an earthquake, one’s neighbors are the real first responders, and should be the enduring support structure for individuals and families. The campaign seeks to build up the “social capital” of Anaheim’s neighborhoods.

The Port Authority of New York and New Jersey provides another example. It has formed a public-private partnership to fund and operate a replacement for the Goethals Bridge that links New York and New Jersey. This type of arrangement would have been unheard of even five years ago; now, it represents a very innovative way for a community to do what’s necessary with less.

Thus, while resilience is not a uniquely American trait, this ability to make lemonade when you’re handed lemons is embedded in the American spirit. And it doesn’t take a dummy to see that our resilience is being tested as never before. In the next post in this series, I’ll begin looking at what makes up community resilience – starting with leadership.

John Plodinec

Searching for Resilience: A Walk in the Woods

October 20th, 2011 - John Plodinec  

I read an interesting article recently that crystallized several other thoughts for me. The paper – with the somewhat dry title of Resilience as Resource-based Design of Anticipated Situations (www.resilience-engineering-asso.org/ACTES/2011/Papers/13.pdf) – is couched in the language of safety and risk, but takes a very different approach to identifying resilience than I’ve seen before.

The authors start by talking about traditional safety and risk management approaches. To paraphrase the authors, these approaches have inherent limitations:

• They are based on analysis of failures. They do not reflect either that risks can emerge from “normal” situations, or that some of the greatest risks may actually be unanticipated surprises.
• They seek to mitigate without considering either the real gap between intended actions and real capabilities, or that coping with crises is dependent on “the strategies, initiatives, tinkering and ingenuity brought by individual and collective skills in real time.

The application of these to emergency management seems straightforward and very appropriate.

The authors then go on to quote a definition of resilience by Hollnagel:

The intrinsic ability of a system to adjust its functioning prior to, during, or following changes and disturbances, so that it can sustain required operations under both expected and unexpected conditions.

I’m not a big fan of defining resilience – too many have spent too much time in what becomes an unproductive exercise in navel contemplation – but the authors put legs under this one by trying to determine how anesthesiologists make decisions both in routine cases and in complex ones. Their conclusions are worth noting because they seem to apply so well to the relationship between the federal government and local community leadership.

• Resilience – in addition to vulnerability assessment – involves consideration of local resources and capabilities.
• Decisions are designed to empower those coping with crisis, and not to control them.
• Organizations should be structured so that local standard practices can be shared.

While some may argue about the conclusions, what was striking to me is the very different way of trying to find resilience. Most of the resilience literature focuses either on vulnerability or on case studies of past disasters. What the authors have done is look at behavior – both in routine and unexpected situations – to try to find clues to resilient behavior.

Thus, if we are trying to judge the resilience of a tree to a high wind, we may walk through the woods looking at one that has fallen and try to judge the cause and how to prevent it from falling. Or, as the authors have done, we can study the forest, during both calm days and those with brisk winds, and see how each tree adapts in its own context.

As we were putting the Community Resilience System (CRS) together, one of the strongest sentiments expressed by our Community Leaders Group was that the CRS had to improve normal operations as well as easing the transition to a new normal. This paper not only agrees with that, but shows that understanding how the community functions in normal conditions is a key to understanding its resilience to a crisis.

In other words, watching how trees bend and sway in the wind can often tell us more about the resilience of trees than exhaustively researching why one fell.

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