A refusal to succeed

Fittingly, it was an education story that got me thinking about this.  The piece by Sam Dillon in yesterday’s New York Times was about Arne Duncan,  the Obama administration’s education secretary, wanting to push the reset button on failing schools by closing them down and starting them over – a tactic he used as CEO of the Chicago municipal school system.

The story ends with a quote from Bryan Hassel, an education consultant:

“A lot of these school turnarounds are going to fail because the work is so difficult,” Mr. Hassel said. “But as a nation, we’ll never have the capacity to do this work successfully until we make the commitment.”

Hassel’s words struck me, because I had never chanced to think of change in these terms before – that commitment is the heart of deliberate change.

And that’s the reason why so many people fail to be creative, because creativity is the result of deliberate change and deliberate change means hard, determined, don’t-give-up work.

It’s so easy to be inert. And fatalistic. And hopeless. It doesn’t demand anything of you except to stay slumped at your desk or on your couch and do as you’re told. Being inert also gives you permission to crab about what’s wrong as much as you want without actually trying to solve any of the problems that bug you. And if you ever go so far as to attempt a little creative change, inertia allows you to give up easily and say you knew all along it wouldn’t work.

I live in a city and state where inertia is the perpetual Zeitgeist. There are plenty of creative and committed individuals here, trying in their one- or few-person ways to transform the place into the vital, prosperous, exciting region they see in their dreams, but the prevailing mood is one of defeat.  We are resigned, here, to our loserhood. In fact – heresy alert! – I think we enjoy it.

Because it means we don’t actually have to collectively get up off our large butts and do something. What would be the point? We’re losers and nothing we do will ever change that. Loserhood is our brand and we’re perversely proud of it. We don’t demand the best of our leaders or schools or communities because we don’t want to ask the best of ourselves – which is to make hard decisions, stick with them and labor ceaselessly until we get the right results.

I guess we’re too scared and lazy to do that. So, apparently, Duncan and Obama are going to have to reinvent America without us. Well, so what? Every sturdy, beautiful, redone house needs a basement drain. We’ll be happy to take that role so we never ever have to climb the stairs.

You might say we’re so convinced we’ll fail that we’re … committed to it.

Photo by Kat

Innovator-in-Chief

It’s hard to change things. Particularly if the things you’re trying to change are huge.

Part of what gives me some hope for the future – in spite of how grim life is at the moment for most us, financially – is the fact that the United States has an executive leader who’s actively trying to improve the nation and the world by changing what we do and how we do it.

  Though he faces enormous tasks, from our hurting economy, environment and international standing to our ailing infrastructure, educational and health-care systems,  Barack Obama seems eager to get going and restructure all the desperately tangled, outmoded policies and procedures that make the U.S. inefficient and less successful in some ways than other advanced nations.  

I’m hoping Obama’s example will encourage the rest of the population to be brave, too, and stop clinging to ways that don’t work. If the U.S.’s long, long season of social and economic paralysis changes to one of imagination and daring, our entrepreneurs of all kinds will step up and supply the ideas we need to redesign the poorly functioning parts of our country. 

One thing’s sure: If we’re going to become innovators ourselves and understand what needs changing and why, we’re going to need a lot of information. Take a step in that direction with us and visit Geniocity.com’s blog pages on Thursday, April 16,  to find out how the growing revolution in wind energy may be one way to remake America and Earth.

Looks like it’s time… .

The new Geniocity Shop brochures arrived in the mail yesterday. There’s something about having your information printed in well-designed, professional-looking form that makes you feel like a real grown-up.

Some days earlier, I had a new head shot taken for my blog page, one that I think makes me look surprisingly like a successful adult (probably all in the lighting…). I’m also adding a number of new bloggers to our roster over the next couple of months and have been rapidly expanding the range of merchandise in the shop this fall, adding glass works, more photography and, soon, jewelry.    

Change! I love it, especially when it’s the kind that looks like progress.  Maybe by January, our nation will get that kind of change, too, and life will get a little better for all of us, at home and at work.  On that happy note, I leave you with a tune for the weekend.

You need to know about this

If you still have moments in which you truly can’t believe that creative ideas and entrepreneurship are changing the world for the better, have a look at this: 

Then check out Ashoka.

End this failure of imagination and courage

WHITE RIVER JUNCTION, Vt. – My feet really hurt. So do other parts of my anatomy, including my brain.

I’ve been traveling around the Northeast all week by car, alternately staring out the window of a blessedly fuel-efficient hybrid car at our national network of interstate highways and walking until my shins throb through New York City, Providence, Boston and Hanover, N.H. 

Perhaps to those who inhabit those places on a regular basis, the signs of our current economic malaise are manifest. To me, coming from what Forbes magazine recently called one of America’s fastest-dying urban areas, each of the East Coast metropolitan areas looks like a new and shining Emerald City compared to Cleveland.

I’ve been thinking and writing about Cleveland’s failure to thrive for nearly 17 years now, both as a journalist and as an artist. Along with countless other Greater Cleveland citizens and civic leaders, I’ve hypothesized and analyzed and admonished and prescribed until I’m blue in the face and spirits. I’ve even started a business in hopes of changing both Cleveland and the world for the better. 

And still my adopted hometown continues to crumble and sink, in spite of many people’s nearly superhuman efforts to find or make solutions to its appalling problems. The trouble is, the Clevelanders with imagination and guts generally have little money or power. And most of the ones with money and influence have greed in place of vision and guts.

They care only about controlling their little patches of turf, about getting re-elected, about promoting their own enterprises, even at the expense of the public good. Politicians or philanthropists, tycoons or trustees, they’re all too busy protecting their personal empires to embrace bold ideas, make bold decisions and bring about big change. 

We get the leaders we deserve, right? Whether by ballot or by civic indifference. So Cleveland, I have to conclude, simply lacks the will to alter its doom. Depressed, dulled, fatalistic – whatever. We give up.

Can that be true? Are there really only a few fighters in this city willing to try something vividly new in spite of the political do-nothings and stick with the struggle until the new thing really happens? Do the rest of us have the courage to elect the kinds of leaders that have transformed Chicago and New York and Providence in recent years or decades and then support them? Can we say no to the cartel of old, traditional power-brokers in business and party politics and take control of our own welfare and future?

We can. And what we need first is to look around and see who we are – the individual citizens with the brains and heart to see a better future and to insist that we reach it. We need a summit.

All of us - employees, small-business owners, family people, artists, educators, entrepreneurs, laborers, union members, techies and scientists, office workers, retirees, even leaders dissatisfied with where the current leadership has dumped us – need to come together to meet and hear each other, choose a few ideas that will change Cleveland significantly and commit to making them happen. Starting now. Right now.

The lakefront? The educational system? The reuse or resale of foreclosed homes and the repair of infrastructure? Whatever you think must be done to turn Cleveland around right now, post your ideas in comments on this blog or send them to carolyn@geniocity.com.

Enough of aimless talk and shrugging defeatism. The wrong people have been charting our course. All of us need to revolt against this terminal inertia and spinelessness and despicable self-interest and save our city. Wake up. Stand up. Write in.