John Plodinec

Remembrance, Renewal, Resilience

September 20th, 2011 - John Plodinec  

On September 8th, CARRI co-hosted the 9/11 10th Anniversary Summit in Washington, DC.  Entitled Remembrance, Renewal, Resilience, the event saw the premiere of four videos, each reflecting a different facet of the theme.  Together, the videos were always inspiring, often poignant, and sometimes funny – in a way that that showed resilience not as a passive virtue but as an active force in people’s lives.

Boatlift tells the sadly under-reported story of the marine evacuation of Manhattan on 9/11.  In 9 hours, almost half a million people were evacuated in all manner of boats – more people than were evacuated from Dunkirk in nine days!  This operation was called for by a Coast Guard lieutenant (on his own) and coordinated with a wide array of maritime organizations and individual vessel captains.  The scenes with the gravelly-voiced captain of the fishing scow Amberjack V were perhaps the most affecting of the day, as he talked about never wanting to have to say “I should have.”

Wounded Warriors focuses on a few of the “wounded warriors” from our mid-East conflicts.  It demonstrates forcefully their resilience in the face of devastating wounds, finding opportunities for themselves in the midst of their personal disasters.  In the panel discussion after the video presentation, Denis Oliverio (who had been wounded while warning others from the top of his tank) typified the upbeat feelings of the wounded warriors when asked what he would do differently – “Duck!”

Gulf Coast Resilience is a paean to the resilient spirit of those on the Mississippi Gulf Coast.  Mayor George Schloegel (Gulfport) told amazing stories about getting the Hancock Bank back into business after Katrina, while Chief Pat Sullivan and Bill Stallworth portrayed the human impacts so well.  After the video, Governor Haley Barbour accepted the first Community Resilience Award on behalf of the Mississippi Gulf Coast.

Renewal is a glimpse into the near future of the World Trade Center site.  The two cascading pools of water where the Twin Towers were are belted with a bronze ribbon honoring the names of those who died.  The new One World Trade Center skyscraper will make a statement while being the safest building in the world.  But, for me, the real star is the World Trade Center transportation hub that will open in about two years – a beautiful representation of a bird taking flight – it will be as striking in its setting as the Opera House is in Sydney Harbour. 

Interspersed among the videos were talks from a diverse group of speakers, each speaking to one or more aspects of the theme:  Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano; Mary Fetchet, Executive Director of the Voices of September 11th; FEMA Administrator Craig Fugate; Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta; former Secretary of State Madeline Albright; Mississippi Governor Haley Barbour; representatives from Canada; the chairman of the Rockefeller Foundation, and others.  The story of Gander, which more than doubled in size when on 9/11 planes from foreign lands were diverted there – the friendship and kinship with we Americans they showed – was a quiet coda to the earlier stories of resilience.

Closing the event, Warren Edwards announced the names of the 7 leading communities who will be the initial pilots for CARRI’s Community Resilience System (CRS):  Anaheim, CA; Anne Arundel County and Annapolis, MD; the Charleston (SC) Low Country Area; Gadsden, AL; Greenwich, CT; the Mississippi Gulf Coast; and Mount Juliet, TN.  These communities will use the CRS to enhance their resilience and at the same time will provide feedback to CARRI so that we can improve its usability and usefulness.

John Plodinec

Planning, Priorities and Resilience

July 25th, 2011 - John Plodinec  

One of the ground rules we in CARRI have set for ourselves in developing the Community Resilience System (CRS) is that it must be outcome-oriented.  As a result, everything in the CRS is focused on helping a community develop and implement a plan to improve its ability to avoid, adapt or learn from adversity.

Developing a plan, especially in a time when so many communities are strapped for resources, means making choices – we are going to do this, we are going to stop doing that, we’ll do the other later.  In the CRS, we invite the community to develop a vision for its future that in effect becomes an operational definition of its common values and aspirations.  This vision becomes the set of scales that the community uses to weigh the many options for action and to prioritize them.

CARRI recognizes that creating a common vision is hard work.  It often requires the patience of Job to reach a consensus about what the community wants its future to be.  But reaching that consensus is essential.  Lacking a common vision, it is virtually impossible to take any long-term action to improve the community. 

Our current impasse over the federal budget is a perfect example of this and a microcosm of the macrocosmic problem that plagues our nation at all levels:  an unwillingness to prioritize because we lack a common vision of what we want to become.  One of the primary reasons we lack this vision is because we do not have a common understanding of the problem. For example, surveys indicate that less than one-third of the electorate understands the realities of where our federal dollars go (40% debt, 40% entitlements, about 15% defense, and the rest everything else).

In developing the CRS, we have tried to provide community leaders with information about their communities – strengths, weaknesses, threats – that they can use to forge the necessary common understanding of the state of their community.  Once that is gained, then achieving a common vision becomes easier (I didn’t say easy!).  That vision can then drive the development of a plan to make the vision a reality.  If done well, the result is a more resilient, more vibrant and more vital community.

John Plodinec

Community Resilience and the Problem of Scale or There are Horses for Courses

July 7th, 2011 - John Plodinec  

In March, I had the pleasure of attending the Resilience 2011 conference where Brian Walker gave an excellent talk that got me thinking about community resilience and the problem of “scale.”  

If we think of a community in terms of a hierarchy of size or inclusiveness (individuals < families < neighborhood < community < state < country), we can see that a crisis can occur at any one of these levels.  If I’m having serious trouble with my kids, which is not a national crisis,  it’s up to me and my family to resolve it.  Conversely, the national debt is a national problem – I can’t solve it at my level (no matter how much I’d like to!).

Walker points out that in eco-systems we tend to focus on the scale of the problem but pay insufficient attention to the levels above and below.  Conversely in communities, we too often ignore the scale of the problem and waste precious resources by trying to solve problems at the wrong scale.  Thus, flooding is best controlled at the community level (or perhaps at an even higher level).  However, I must decide how and where to rebuild if a flood has destroyed my home. 

Poverty provides a good illustration of the problem of scale.  While it is clearly in a community’s (and a country’s) best interest to eradicate poverty, we must recognize that being poor is an individual and family condition – it has to be solved at that level.  The ineffectiveness of most of our federal poverty programs over the last forty years seems to indicate that we’ve been trying to solve the problem at the wrong level.  The relative success of the welfare reform enacted in the Clinton era implies that the proper role for higher levels in problems such as this is to facilitate problem solving at the appropriate scale either through providing resources or by removing barriers.

The myriad of urban renewal initiatives undertaken by our major cities provide more examples.  These efforts attempted to fix blighted neighborhoods by tearing them down and building anew, i.e., imposing a solution from above.  In most cases, this resulted in increases in crime, AIDS and other anti-social behavior with no real improvement (except cosmetic, and that only temporarily) in the neighborhoods themselves.  Initiatives that have focused on solving this problem at the neighborhood level have had much greater success (e.g., David Gershon’s work in Philadelphia).     

For me, these thoughts on the problem of scale thus resolve themselves into thoughts on setting appropriate goals.  Too often, we have seen initiatives started with much fanfare that ultimately failed because their goals did not reflect the scale of the problems they were to solve.  We should not try to “end poverty” but rather help people to avoid or quickly get out of being poor.  We should not attempt “urban renewal” but rather help neighborhoods make themselves safer, cleaner, prouder.  We should worry less about “health care” and more about living healthier lives.  In other words, don’t give out fishes; make fishing poles available and make sure there is someone in the community who is willing to teach how to fish – matching the scale of the solution to the scale of the problem is a hallmark of a resilient community.

John Plodinec

The Seven Ingredients of Community Resilience

June 29th, 2011 - John Plodinec  

Last week I read an interesting article by Karen Reivich on the resilience of children. I was struck by how relevant her seven ingredients were to communities.  So, with apologies to her for my modifications – the Seven Ingredients of Community Resilience. 

The first ingredient is trust.  For children, this means being aware of their emotions and being able to share them with people they trust.  For communities, it is building trust so that everyone can speak honestly and openly about their values, their hopes, their concerns and their community.

The second ingredient is impulse control.  Resilient children have developed a “stop and think” mechanism that helps them overcome the urge to act on their impulses. (Some of us are still working on that!)  Resilient communities recognize that, after a disaster, there is a tremendous urge to get back to normal life quickly.  Thus, these communities develop a vision and goals and sometimes even an action plan prior to a disaster to guide the thousands of individual actions that their members will take after it occurs.

Resilient children and resilient communities both have “realistic optimism.”  They are able to recognize that things are less than perfect, but nevertheless have an upbeat belief that things will get better.  For both children and communities, this optimism breeds health, effectiveness, and the ability to look at things honestly – what Nikos Kazantzakis calls “staring into the abyss.”

Closely allied with realistic optimism is the fourth ingredient – self-confidence.  Both resilient children and communities are aware of their strengths and of their ability to use them.  They both recognize that they can not only cope with adversity but can effect change as well.

The next ingredient is empathy – the ability to make meaningful connections with others.  Anyone who has followed the work of Rick Weil looking at recovery after Katrina recognizes that community connections – both the strong ones inside the community and the weaker ones to the outside world – may be even more important for recovery than material resources.

Just as realistic optimism and self-confidence are closely aligned, so are the last to ingredients – reaching out and flexible thinking.  By reaching out, Reivich means a willingness to try new things.  For communities, this implies an openness to innovative approaches to solve wicked problems.  Flexible thinking is the ability to look at things from different perspectives.  For communities this implies not only a willingness to consider new ideas, but an innate interest in getting the whole picture, not just that from the leader’s perch.

Mix these ingredients with a generous amount of community involvement and bake in the passion of people who care about their community.  All in all, a good recipe for a resilient community.

John Plodinec

Another Take on our Nation’s Infrastructure Crisis

March 22nd, 2011 - John Plodinec  

The excellent recent postings by my colleague Andy Felts are doing a fine job of pointing out the crisis our country is facing with its infrastructure.  It is a serious problem compounded by our federal deficit, and the very real lack of resources being faced by many of our cities, counties and states. 

The Chinese ideogram for “crisis” is made up of two characters – “danger” and “opportunity.”  One facet of resilience is finding the opportunity in a crisis.  When we talk about the state of our infrastructure we tend to stress the dangers – especially when talking to politicians.  We will eventually fix our infrastructure.  We may do it in a deliberate and planned manner, or in response to more incidents like the bridge collapse in Minneapolis.  In other words, on either a “pay me now,” or a “pay me [more] later” basis. 

But if we proceed wisely to repair and rebuild our infrastructure, I see real opportunities that are too often overlooked.  Here in the US, by using better materials, building in better locations, using sensors to allow us to know the conditional status of our infrastructure at almost any point in time, we can again make our infrastructure a competitive advantage.  Investments like these will reduce maintenance costs, provide greater safety, and allow us an extended life for what we rebuild.

And the use of these same new technologies can also spark real economic growth from foreign buyers. The infrastructure in much of the newer developed world (esp. what Thomas Barnett calls the “new core” – Brazil, India…) though younger than ours – is built on the American model, with American ideas.  If we can push to make good investments and solve our own problems soon, the solutions we develop will provide economic opportunities for us as countries in Latin America, Asia and elsewhere begin to face the same challenges we are now.  American firms can once more be in the forefront of rebuilding the infrastructure of the world.

Certainly we should stress the dangers when talking about our infrastructure crisis.  However, we should also stress the opportunities inherent in dealing with those dangers.  We should not allow our current fiscal mess to prevent us from investing in ourselves in ways that will provide a huge return on that investment.

John Plodinec

Recovering from the Great Recession –What Might a More Resilient Economy Look Like?

September 14th, 2010 - John Plodinec  

The Great Recession has had devastating impacts on every part of every community in the country – individuals and families with nest eggs severely depleted or disappeared often along with their jobs, businesses treading water, governments caught between the greater demand for services and fewer resources to provide them.  Recovery will be protracted, and may potentially take a decade.

In any and every sense, the Great Recession has been a disaster.  But we will recover – we are already seeing communities that are using the Great Recession as an opportunity to look at themselves with a new perspective and to do things better than before.  We are also seeing the classic dichotomy of views about what “recovery” should look like – some want to rebuild the economy the way it was; others want to build a new and more resilient economy.

If we could describe our pre-Recession economy in one word, it would be “consumption.”  We as individuals piled up debt to buy things we couldn’t afford, and might not have needed.  Government encouraged (and in some cases coerced) financial institutions to make risky loans.  Speculators packaged those loans into even riskier investments, offering outlandish rates of return.  We were living off of our futures, while ignoring the lesson of the past that the future is never certain.

It is clear that the American people have recognized that the economic model of the recent past is not very viable, and certainly not resilient.  Instead of spending, most of the almost 90% of us who are working are saving more than ever.  Individual savings are at a level not seen in decades.  Clearly, those who want to go back to a consumer-driven economy are likely to be disappointed.  This begs the question, what might a more resilient economy look like?

I’m sure there are several possible alternatives.  One that I can envision is what I call a “value-driven” economy.  In a value-driven economy, economic decisions are made on the basis of overall value at each step of the economic chain.  Individuals and families would make their purchasing decisions balancing protection from future contingencies against the value of the goods or services to be purchased.  Thus, we would see a return to saving for a house or a car, and a lessening of future debt.  Instead of spending so much on health care, individuals and families might spend more on health – eating better, getting outside more, spending more time together (Somehow in the debate about health insurance all sides seem to have lost sight of the fact that Americans rank somewhere in the 25-30 range in terms of almost all health measures – when we don’t rank even worse!).

Businesses would recognize that employees are not interchangeable parts, but significant assets to be nurtured (Loyalty might even make a comeback!).  Businesses would recognize that we live in a time of almost frenetic technological change, but that success in business is built more on relationships than technology.

Government and business would forge a new relationship.  In times like these, government would not try to create jobs (at $240K per job!), but would help businesses – especially small businesses – create many more and better ones.  Government would not champion energy measures that actually add to our already bloated energy budget (e.g., carbon capture), but would encourage and reward efficiencies that reduce that budget. Communities would balance incentives to attract new businesses against actions to nurture the ones they already have.  Communities would also recognize that the natural environment is just as important to the community as the built environment.  And most importantly, communities would encourage and help individuals and families to be as self-reliant in the face of disaster – of any type – as possible.

 An unrealistic pipe dream?  Perhaps.  But clearly the old model didn’t work – this one just might.

John Plodinec

Wall Street, Main Street and Resilience

July 7th, 2010 - John Plodinec  

Last evening I read a fascinating essay by Michael Lewitt called “The Death of Capital” (based on a recently published book of the same title).  Lewitt shows how our financial system (including the federal government) has become an instrument that does not encourage growth of our economy but rather rewards speculation.  The Wall Street bailouts, and their use to aggrandize a few at the expense of all of the American taxpayers, are an example of how we have privatized gain while socializing loss.  The credibility of the security rating services has been dealt a severe blow as we have seen how they failed in their primary mission – to accurately inform investors about the risk of investments.  As a result, there is widespread mistrust throughout the financial system.

When disaster strikes, businesses can’t rebuild without financial resources; for most that means credit.  The mistrust that has become endemic in our financial system has upped the ante for businesses seeking credit.  More information is needed; more security is needed; but less credit is available.  The burden of proof of creditworthiness has almost gone beyond the reach of many small businesses.

Earlier in the day I had a phone call from a friend in Nashville.  He told me about a vet there who had nearly been swept away twice while trying to save the animals in her care.  As the owner of a small business, she is desperately trying to recover and rebuild after the flooding that occurred (see the photograph below).  She is discovering what too many have found before – there is little help for Main Street when disaster occurs.  There is a smattering of private credit available for recovery.  The federal Small Business Administration offers low interest rate, long-term loans, but the already high burden of proof of creditworthiness becomes almost unreachable for disaster-crippled businesses.  And then there is … nothing else for our small businesses.

In propping up those “Too Big to Fail,” we seem to have forgotten the real engines of our economic growth and vitality – the tens of thousands of small businesses across the country.  As we strive to make our communities and our country more resilient, we need to recognize that our small businesses are a crucial part of our communities and that they deserve special attention.  I don’t have an answer but I do know that without one, our efforts to make our communities more resilient will fail.

John Plodinec

The Art of War on Leadership

June 22nd, 2010 - John Plodinec  

“Leadership is a matter of intelligence, trustworthiness, humaneness, courage, and sternness.” – Sun Tzu

As I discussed in a previous posting, The Art of War – the two millenium old classic Chinese treatise on war – has great relevance to community resilience.  In this post, I’d like to discuss how SunTzu’s observations about leadership can be applied to communities.

According to Sun Tzu, a successful leader must have the five traits listed above.  In the context of a community and its resilience, these traits might be better described as follows.

Intelligence.  Intelligence in leadership means that the leader knows how to clearly identify an objective, communicate it, and then plan to achieve it.  This implies that an intelligent community leader recognizes when the community must adapt to changing circumstances.  The intelligent leader is able to articulate that need and initiate the planning effort needed to affect change. 

Trustworthiness.  A trustworthy leader is recognized by the community as a person of integrity.  Thus, the community believes that a trustworthy leader will carry out promised actions, and will provide support to the rest of the community to implement action plans.  Such a leader is thus able to communicate more effectively to the larger community, because even unpopular messages are more likely to be heard. 

Humaneness.   An effective leader cares about the community, and that caring is manifested in actions.  The community feels that a humane leader “feels their pain,” and therefore are more likely to follow where the leader is going.  This recognized innate humanity of the leader is especially important when trying to reconcile different factions within the community.

Courage.  A leader must have the courage to persevere even when obstacles are encountered.  In essence, the courage needed by an effective leader is born of a certain innate confidence in one’s own integrity – the leader believes the community is on the right course.

Sternness.  By “sternness,” Sun Tzu means a sort of rigorous fairness.  Rewards and punishments are strictly based on actions, and not the person acting.  Ultimately, this sternness is the result of a sort of self-discipline in which the leader may have favorites but does not favor them.

The transformation of Charlotte, NC, from a textiles to a financial center illustrates the importance of several of these leadership traits.  Up until the 1970’s, Charlotte had been one of the leading centers for the textile industry in the country.  The heads of two of the largest banks in North Carolina and the head of Duke Power recognized that the demise of that industry threatened Charlotte’s vitality.  All three were a part of the community, and passionately cared about Charlotte’s future.  Acting largely independently of city and county governments, these three formed an organization aimed at helping Charlotte to adapt to these changing conditions.  As plans were developed, these three spearheaded the transformational effort.  They helped rebuild some of the poorest sections of the city (encountering opposition because many of these were predominately black), making what had been almost slums into desirable neighborhoods.  In spite of criticism and carping, these three eventually transformed Charlotte into what has become the second largest financial center in the country.

John Plodinec

People with challenges and community resilience

June 3rd, 2010 - John Plodinec  

As many of you know, CARRI has embarked on a massive undertaking focused on developing – and then testing – a community resilience system.  Recently, during a meeting of the Community Leaders Working Group, I was asked why we had included “The community works to maximize the value of those with special challenges” as one of our important community functions.  In fact, two of the most in-my-face questioners (both former mayors of sizable cities) actually accused me of being politically correct (If this were true, it would come as a huge shock to the rest of the CARRI team, not to mention my wife!).  By the way, these are my thoughts I share today and not necessarily the voice of CARRI.

 I thought it would be worthwhile to talk about who are the challenged, and why it makes practical sense for communities to treat them as potential assets, not liabilities.

 If we look at our communities today, 5-10 % of the population has some debilitating mental or physical condition.  Last year, one in eight Americans received at least part of their food through food stamps – and one in four of our children.  Officially, about 10% of our population is unemployed; but if we include new college grads, those who’ve stopped looking for work, and those who are underutilized, the rate increases to almost 18% nationwide.  It should also be noted that unemployment among the college-educated is at an all-time high – almost 5%.  In the Rust Belt and parts of the South, the official unemployment rate is over 20%, meaning that the actual unemployment rate approaches 30%.  Thus, in many communities, a large fraction of the population – and sometimes a majority – is facing significant challenges.  

 After a community is hit by a disaster, recovery makes huge demands on the permanent personnel who actually keep the community running.  More people are needed to remove debris.  More people are needed to handle the flood of permits for rebuilding.  People are needed to reconnect families and to help get services to those who need them.  Many communities meet these needs by hiring “outsiders” to provide these services, but if they do so, they lose in at least two ways: 

  • These communities send the resources to pay for these services outside the community.  Since the federal government will pay for many kinds of temporary workers after a disaster, it makes good sense to hire these workers from within the community – to keep as many precious dollars within the community as possible.  The challenged – particularly the employable unemployed – should be the first resource tapped by a community (To their credit, BP has agreed to do just that in southern Louisiana communities affected by the oil spill.).
  • These communities have to spend more of their resources helping the challenged recover from the disaster than they otherwise would. That means much less accomplished with limited resources and possibly a longer recovery period.

In other words, communities who don’t use the challenged to aid in the extraordinary challenges of recovery are turning potential assets into real liabilities.

 Thus, by making use of its members who face significant challenges to meet the extraordinary demands of recovery from a disaster, a community can keep dollars in the community while maintaining a more productive and motivated permanent staff.  This isn’t political correctness but enlightened self-interest.

John Plodinec

Three things I think I think – about resilience

April 19th, 2010 - John Plodinec  

With apologies to Peter King of Sports Illustrated …

I think I think I’m starting to hate resilience.  Not the concept, but the word.  Like sustainability, it has been adopted as a fad by so many, that it is losing its meaning.  In CARRI, we are focused on the concept of being able to bounce back better, but that injects a tincture of resistance into our definition that sometimes confuses people.

I think I think that our ballooning federal deficit is the single greatest threat to the resilience of our communities.  From 2005 to today, the federal government has lost one “Katrina” – the federal government’s payments to service our national debt have increased by slightly more than it cost to recover from Katrina.  Simply put, communities will have to develop creative ways to find and use the resources they will need to recover from a disaster.  This is one area where I hope that CARRI’s Community Resilience System Initiative will have a great impact.

I think I think that we as a nation need to put a spotlight on rural America.  In a very real sense, our rural communities are under siege.  Their ability to respond to disasters is at its lowest ebb since the Depression.  Many are struggling to reinvent themselves because they have lost their original reason for being; others are just holding on trying to stave off their inevitable death.  But if some of the predicted impacts of global warming are real, it is likely to eradicate a large number of rural communities across the country.  Rural citizens most likely will go to coastal areas that will already be coping with their own impacts from climate change.  Ideally, we’d like to see the migration go the other way – away from coastal communities.  We need to figure out how to help rural communities become more resilient – in this case, able to recover quickly from acute disasters and respond to the chronic problem of reinventing themselves in a changing world.

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