We Fought the Flood--Now We Need Leaders

The Small Business Administration adjuster said, “Many places people just abandon their homes when it floods. Then the city comes in and dumps a bunch of dirt in the road.” The FEMA adjuster said, “We’ve brought in bus loads of volunteers to help save homes in other places and those whose homes we are trying to save, sit and watch us do the work. You people up here care and fight.”

While the details of our individual stories vary, the underlying care, courage, and commitment our neighbors and those throughout the area displayed during the recent record flood distinguished our region in ways that transcend geographical boundaries.

My family’s story reflects so many.

We began to build our 20,000 sandbag dike on March 20, 2009. While we suffered 20% flood damage this flood, no water came over, under, around, or through the sandbag ring around our home. When the Army Corps of Engineers took the behemoth down, an Army supervisor said it was one of the best dikes he’d seen. Without a dike of that size and quality, our main floor would have flooded.

As many as 150 people worked 16 hours or more a day for two days and a dozen worked for four days after that to construct this dike, which had to get larger daily due to constantly changing National Weather Service forecasts.

By March 25, 2009, our home was surrounded by water. Yet the crest forecasts continued to raise the crest level. We had no sand. We traveled by boat in and out of our neighborhood. The city built a dike on our access road communicating “we cannot protect you.”

Our home is not safe in a major flood. If a fire, the fire department could not reach us. In a medical emergency, help would have had difficulty getting to us at all, let alone quickly. If a boat motor quit, the strong currents would take us into the main channel and would put us in peril. We are lucky that we did not fall climbing over the slippery dike (due to plastic and snow) to get into the boat in water several feet deep.

To meet the challenge of the daily crest forecast changes, our family members and flood crew climbed over our dike, traveled by boat to the diked access road, walked through snow-filled neighborhood yards to pickup trucks blocks away, traveled throughout Moorhead to find filled bags, loaded the trucks, parked blocks away from our home because of city dikes, pulled a sled filled with sandbags through the snow, pulled the sled over the dike on the access road, loaded the bags into the boat, and boated back to our home. This happened over and over again.

On March 25, 2009 family and friends worked all day, night, and until 2:00AM on March 26, 2009 and had to break the ice forming in the flood waters to get the boat through the water. The situation was dangerous and some advised us to let the house go to the flood. We could not do that and stayed and sandbagged until ordered to evacuate by the police.

Now we clean up, many suffer post traumatic stress but few talk about it, and we feel vulnerable to the Red River like never before. We cannot make these kinds of efforts year after year. Soon fall will be here and a new flood watch will begin. Leaders at all levels on both sides of the river call for cooperation and long-term flood protection. Most have never worked cooperatively for the larger good. The threat of the Red River calls for visionary and servant leadership: leaders who can imagine a safer future and care about the region, not just their city or state. Today’s leaders need to develop new skills or we need to elect new leaders.

ENOUGH ALREADY WITH THE FLOOD PROJECTIONS

It is flood season in Fargo/Moorhead. The politicians showed up last weekend to lead a pep-fest, get their faces on television, promise money for permanent flood protection (again), and extolled the virtues of our citizens. Who really listens to them?

The National Weather Service, criticized in 1997 for their constantly changing forecasts of the Red’s crest, bombard us with predictions and probabilities: There’s a 50% chance the river will crest at 38 feet, 1 in 3 chances that it will crest higher than the 39.5 feet recorded in 1997, a 90% chance of major flooding in Wahpeton, there might be a snow/rain storm in 10 days (it is March after all), and on and on. A week ago all those predictions and probabilities were different. As they cover their behinds, citizens are confused and unduly upset.

Recently WDAY weatherman John Wheeler said “Tomorrow will be cloudy all day.” The next day was cloudless all day. Last summer Wheeler said at a 5:00PM weather report: “Those of you going to the Red Hawks game will have a dry night.” The downpour began early and didn’t stop all night—his colleagues on other networks are no better at prediction. These folks are good at telling us what happened not what will happen.

The experts have a credibility problem.

One thing I can predict with almost 100% certainty: The Red River will crest in April, and we don’t know today what the crest will be.

Weather is a dynamic system virtually unpredictable with certainty until it happens.

As we enter flood season, the river approaches the extremes of its normal chaos (order without predictability). The combinations of the weather, snow melt, and the river (along with many other variables) make conditions incomprehensibly complex.

We are familiar with the “butterfly effect” meaning a small change at the beginning of a process can have a large impact at the end of that process. In the weather this dynamic is called sensitive dependence on initial conditions.

Many butterfly effects are happening every day in the life of the spring floods. Some we are aware of; others we are blind to. All can impact the eventual outcome, some for good and others for bad. These dynamics are so complex and interconnected that it is beyond the human minds ability to process them. While computers are a tremendous help, they can only model the data people put in. Accurate prediction is impossible, and we can only speak in probabilities that become more accurate as the anticipated dynamics gets closer in time and place.

The weather folks should quit trying to create the illusion that they can get it perfectly right. They know they cannot. People need to understand this and learn to live with uncertainty until the weather happens. The National Weather Service should give their best guess of crest levels daily always pointing out that it is an educated guess. They might give a range of the crest levels that they are 75% certain that the eventual crest will fall within. After a few core measures, more become meaningless.

Fargo Mayor Dennis Walaker has universal credibility. I’d like to see him give a daily news conference at 4:00PM with his thoughts and best predictions. The community can then hear what he has to say at the 5:00PM and 6:00PM newscasts.

We live on the river in south Moorhead. My wife watched neighbors lose their homes in 1997. We are concerned. I trust the judgment of my wife and neighbors who are experienced with floods. Right now many are skeptical of what they are hearing from the experts. We will watch as Mother Nature runs her course and will adapt our plans as the days pass. We will listen to those who have demonstrated their credibility under fire. Our community will come together as it always has.

THE CULTURAL CREATIVES

As we continue the world’s transformative change journey, we must understand that the leaders who led us to success in the now exhausted ways of doing things are rarely the people to lead renewal.

Auto industry executives will not lead a transformation to a new energy paradigm. Wall Street money men and entitled bankers will not reform the financial system. Influence-peddling Washington lobbyists will not clean up corruption in our Capitol. If they could provide that leadership, they would have long ago.

President Obama must understand the risk he takes when he chooses Washington veterans for his Cabinet and for leadership roles in his government. Can they see with new eyes?

Traditional Democrats are the “either” to the Republican “or” in the Washington D.C. political game. We don’t need a liberal version of the same old game to be replaced in eight years by the failed conservative model.

We need a new game. President Obama understands this. Can he change the rules for all?

In 2000 Paul H. Ray and Sherry Ruth Anderson wrote a book entitled “The Cultural Creatives”—a group of 50 million Americans who are creating a new culture in America.

Cultural Creatives care about the planet, relationships, and servant leadership. They have an organic, systemic, and holistic worldview. They value authenticity, believe in purpose, and live by strong values. They are idealistic, altruistic, and spiritual—not necessarily religious. They are creative and optimistic problem-solvers; they model new ways to live.

Cultural Creatives, disenchanted with greed, materialism, and status displays, oppose the abuse of rank; inequalities of race, class, and gender; and the narrowness and intolerance of social conservatives and the Religious Right.

They are the leaders for the times. They will provide mature and responsible leadership that will replace what Bob Herbert, columnist in the New York Times, called the “reckless, clownish, shortsighted, and self-absorbed” leadership we have grown weary of.

These new leaders will continue to unite under a shared purpose: to save the world by creating sustainable organizations, a sustainable global economy, and a planet that endures for future generations to enjoy.

The people in this movement created the conditions that allowed Barack Obama to emerge from seemingly nowhere to become our president. He is the externalization of their decades of difficult effort--their reward for the risky and thankless work they have done.

Now our President must free the Cultural Creative leaders within our organizations and institutions across our nation from the shackles of an exhausted worldview so they can lead our collective vision to renew the world.

Time is running out. Our ecological crisis and national decline require an acceleration of natural processes: a conscious and sustainable fast-forward of human social evolution without harming life in the process.

We must think big, move fast, and address all our interconnected problems at once. We must see reality accurately, develop a powerful vision for the future, learn to manage massive change organically, and develop trust in others so self-organization and other natural dynamics of life can burst free from repression and emerge in full creativity.

As we move through this massive reorganization of life no one has a “fail-safe” plan. We live as pioneers who step into the unknown potential of life. We must “plan, do, reflect, and adapt” daily until we find what works.

Creativity is messy and inefficient. Mistakes will be made as we move beyond our knowledge. Not all will be done well. Such is the nature of transformational change. Those who follow can spend the next 100 years making incremental improvements.

We created the world of today that no longer works for us. We can change it.

Tom Heuerman (Heuerman, Ph.D. is a former Secret Service agent, newspaper executive, and organizational consultant. He lives in Moorhead. Email: tomheu@cableone.net)

THE SAD DECLINE OF THE STAR TRIBUNE

This commentary appeared in The Fargo Forum on Sunday December 14, 2008.

Like many around the region, I follow the painful decline of the Star Tribune newspaper with a sense of disbelief. How could a once dominant newspaper fall so far so fast? Was this collapse inevitable or was it caused by a lack of bold and visionary leadership at the Star Tribune over the past 20 years?

The Star Tribune’s story of decline is not unique. It is the story of many in the newspaper industry, of the auto industry and many other traditional industries, of the national and global economy, and of America’s decline and need for renewal.

This pattern of decline is similar at all levels of scale and is the story of how world views trap us and the story of how people struggle to adapt to discontinuous and chaotic changes in their environments. Ultimately the story is one of human courage, creativity, flexibility, and adaptability as systems large and small—families, communities, organizations, and nations—renew themselves boldly and routinely or stagnate and die.

In 1998 the Star Tribune was sold to the McClatchy Company for $1.2 billion. While the short term value of the company was maximized by Star Tribune executives, I wondered then if the changes needed for the long-term sustainability of the newspaper were neglected.

The Star Tribune remained threatened by demographic changes, technological advances, circulation decline, the potential of the internet, and other unknown variables and systemic dynamics. Rapid decline, long in the making, would soon begin.

Many efforts to reform the Star Tribune were made over the years. New editors redesigned the look and organization of the newspaper, new technology was incorporated, distribution models were changed, and departments reorganized. New executives came and left. The changes gave the illusion of progress but proved to be like rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic. In the end, all the energy expended simply recreated a lesser version of the newspaper they were trying to change.

On December 26, 2006, the Star Tribune was again sold. The sale price was $530 million plus a future tax benefit of $160 million. The sale price was not a good omen for a newspaper industry with plunging advertising revenues.

Since then I’ve watched as the Star Tribune continues to suffer declines in circulation and advertising revenues. A revolving door of executives downsizes staff and outsources work as the company cannot pay its bills. Morale plunges, behavior regresses (the Star Tribune recently agreed to pay over $300,000 to settle a sexual harassment complaint), and people become bitter, cynical, and disillusioned. Leaders lose all credibility. The Star Tribune is not a good place to work.

The future looks bleak for the Star Tribune. Bankruptcy looms on the horizon.

Forum Communications was rumored to be interested in buying the Star Tribune. Owner William Marcil responded that he had no interest. Marcil is way too smart to get involved with the Star Tribune. He’s impressed me as a very smart man, a natural entrepreneur with an eye for talent and a nose for good properties.

Was this decline at the Star Tribune (and in industries across the nation) inevitable?

Leaders created these messes by the decisions they made and failed to make over many years. Are people helpless to change what they created?

Are leaders and workers not ready to change how they do things? Have they grown too lazy, myopic, cynical, fearful, arrogant, complacent, and too entitled to do the hard work of change?

Are the systems we organized our nation and lives around too big and complicated to transform? Are they unable to adapt to changes in their environments? Should we abandon these systems and begin anew?

How we answer these questions may determine the fate of countless organizations and enterprises and of our nation.

In the end it is all about leadership. And a leader’s first responsibility is to have foresight.

THE CRIMES OF SANDY BLUNT

This commentary appeared in the Grand Forks Herald on December 12, 2008.

Sandy Blunt, former CEO of WSI (Workforce Safety and Insurance), goes on trial on December 15 in Bismarck.

What are the alleged crimes of this notorious outlaw from Ohio?

In April 2007, based mostly on findings of an enfeebling state auditor’s performance audit of WSI, Blunt was charged with a felony for rewarding employees with gift certificates, buying lunches for legislators, giving employees a party with costumes, flowers and other such normal and nominal corporate activities. I’m told that the charges against the audacious Blunt included the purchase of forks, plates, coffee and a cake to welcome him to WSI.

A second count alleged he had authorized bonuses for three employees—an illegal act in North Dakota. Blunt said he gave deserving employees a pay raise based on the recommendation of a nationally respected compensation consultant.

Do the citizens of North Dakota believe that these administrative actions are worthy of criminal charges, an appeal to the state Supreme Court after the charges were initially thrown out by a district judge with common sense, and a jury trial?

Do the people of the state really believe that destroying Blunt’s career and reputation and forcing him to put his life on hold in Bismarck for the past year are the right things to do to a man brought to a historically troubled WSI to bring about change for the betterment of the workers and taxpayers of North Dakota?

I think the people of North Dakota are better than this.

Blunt didn’t benefit from his acts. He didn’t intend to break the law; he was trying to run a better WSI.

Blunt’s “crimes” were administrative in nature. If anyone had an issue with them, they were more appropriately handled in the governance of WSI—between the CEO and the WSI Board and between the Board and the North Dakota legislature.

Blunt’s decisions were easily within the authority of a CEO in even the smallest for-profit company. Similar decisions are made daily by mid-level managers in thousands of organizations across the state and nation. Criminalizing such actions will make agency heads paranoid and fearful of making good management decisions.

Independent consultant Neal Conolly, hired at the urging of Governor Hoeven, concluded that WSI under Blunt was doing an excellent job. He was puzzled to come to Bismarck and, after hearing everything being said about Blunt and WSI, to then see an organization that he “would stack up with any organization that does this kind of work in the United States.” Blunt did a good job for North Dakota.

What of the judgment of the provincial Burleigh County State Attorney’s Office? Does Burleigh County have too many attorneys—too little work and no serious crimes to solve? Why prosecute these “gotcha administrative issues?” Do they really believe that Blunt’s “crimes” rise to the level of being worthy of prosecution?

On April 1, 1940, Attorney General Robert H. Jackson addressed United States Attorneys:

What every prosecutor is practically required to do is to select the cases for prosecution and to select those in which the offense is the most flagrant, the public harm the greatest, and the proof the most certain.

Do the charges against Blunt meet this standard?

Based on media accounts and the report of credible independent consultants, the nose of this former Secret Service agent smells a politically motivated witch hunt from the day an unsuspecting Blunt crossed the state line into sleepy North Dakota. The message is: don’t come to North Dakota and try to change the way we do things.

Justice in this case will be “not guilty” for Sandy Blunt followed by accountability for those responsible for the charges against him.


(Heuerman, Ph.D. is a former Secret Service agent, Star Tribune newspaper executive, and organizational consultant. His web site is http://www.amorenaturalway.com/. He lives in Moorhead and can be contacted at tomheu@cableone.net)

OBAMA OVER EXHAUSTED REPUBLICANISM

Republicanism is exhausted—fatigue reflected by old, small or no ideas when it comes to solutions for our problems. John McCain—his experience mostly irrelevant in today’s world--embodies that weariness and represents decline—the continuation of vacuity. His lack of intellectual vigor, erratic leadership, poor judgment (Palin) and demagoguery exemplify a shadowy and narrow Republicanism with a distorted view of reality.

Gareth Morgan’s discussion of Plato’s Cave in his book Images of Organizations illuminates the challenge Republicans face if they want to renew their philosophy for the future. This allegory describes what happens as some see the world beyond superficiality and others do not.

The allegory pictures an underground cave with its mouth open toward the light of a blazing fire. Within the cave are people chained so that they cannot move. They can see only the cave wall directly in front of them. This is illuminated by the light of the fire, which throws shadows of people and objects onto the wall. The cave dwellers equate the shadows with reality, naming them, talking about them, and even linking sounds from outside the cave with the movements on the wall. Truth and reality for the prisoners rest in this shadowy world, because they have no knowledge of any other.

However, if one of the inhabitants were allowed to leave the cave, he would realize that the shadows are but dark reflections of a more complex reality, and that the knowledge and perceptions of his fellow cave dwellers are distorted and flawed. If he were then to return to the cave, he would never be able to live in the old way, since for him the world would be a very different place.

However, if he were to try and share his new knowledge with them, he would probably be ridiculed for his views. For the cave prisoners, the familiar images of the cave would be much more meaningful than any story about a world they had never seen. Moreover, since the person espousing this new knowledge would now no longer be able to function in the old way, since he would no longer be able to act with conviction in relation to the shadows, his fellow inmates would no doubt view his knowledge as being extremely dangerous. They would probably regard the world outside the cave as a potential source of danger, to be avoided rather than embraced as a source of wisdom and insight. The experience of the person who left the cave could thus actually lead the cave dwellers to tighten their grip on their familiar way of seeing.

The cave stands for the world of appearances and the journey outside stands for the ascent to knowledge. People in everyday life are trapped by illusions, hence the way they understand reality is limited and flawed. By appreciating this, and by making a determined effort to see beyond the superficial, people have an ability to free themselves from imperfect ways of seeing. However, as the allegory suggests, many of us often resist or ridicule efforts at enlightenment, preferring to remain in the dark rather than to risk exposure to a new world and its threat to the old ways.

McCain remains chained in the cave of failed ideas—unable to see a changed world.

Barack Obama—a seeker of knowledge and insight--sees the world through fresh eyes. He has the potential to renew and transform America in today’s new world. Obama, Colin Powell said, has the judgment, intellect, substance, and temperament to be a great president—“he is ready on day one,” said Powell.

Will we remain in the dark comfort of caves we know and decline as a nation or vote for a transformative Obama and the renewal of America?

THE REPUBLICAN MONOCULTURE

I watched as the television cameras scanned the faces at the Democratic National Convention. I saw men and women, old and young, African American, Latino, and Asian. I checked out the convention demographics:

White: 56.7%; African American: 24.5%; Latino: 11.8%; Men: 50%; Women: 50%

I watched the Republican National Convention. I saw mostly middle-aged white men. Their demographics:

White: 93%; African American: 2%; Latino: 5%; Men: 68%; Women: 32%

The U.S. statistics are: White: 74%; African American: 13.4%; Latino: 14.8%

The Republican Party is a monoculture.

Steven Nachmanovitch in his book, Free Play: Improvisation in Life and Art:

The conformity that is taught by the big school that surrounds us resembles what biologists call monoculture. If you walk in a wild field you see dozens of different species of grasses, mosses and other turf in each square yard, as well as a rich supply of tiny animals. This is nature’s insurance that changes in climate and environment will be matched by requisite variety in the plant life. But if you walk in a domesticated field you will see only one or a few species. Domesticated animals and plants are genetically uniform because they are bred for a purpose. Diversity and flexibility are bred out in exchange for maximizing certain variables that suit our purpose. But if conditions change, the species is locked into a narrow range of variety. Monoculture leads invariably to a loss of options, which leads to instability.

A metaphorical monoculture in society or a political party is a group where everyone looks alike and sees, does, wears, reads, watches, and thinks the same thing. The Republican Party composed primarily of white men cannot sustain itself as a vibrant system in a society that will be 54% minority by 2050.

Conservative New York Times columnist David Brooks provided an example of the Republican monoculture in action. Referencing the failure to pass the “recovery bill” on September 29, 2008, he wrote: “House Republicans led the way and will get most of the blame. It has been interesting to watch them on their single-minded mission to destroy the Republican Party. Not long ago, they led an anti-immigration crusade that drove away Hispanic support. Then, too, they listened to the loudest and angriest voices in their party, oblivious to the complicated anxieties that lurk in most American minds.”

John McCain tries to frame Barack Obama as an outsider, not really American in his values, not one of us: urban, subversive and even unpatriotic.

Obama’s story is the quintessential American dream in our rapidly approaching country of minorities: Born of an immigrant black father and a Kansas white woman, raised by a single mother and white working class grandparents, this bi-racial man rose to great heights on his merits and courage alone. His story is the best of America, and he reflects America’s near-term future: a nation that grows more racially and ethnically diverse daily.

Obama is like ‘the rest of us.” He just isn’t like the Republican Party. Obama represents the future of America--if not this election, then soon.

Republicans would be wise to understand this American future before they try to govern again. Instead of running fearfully to a romanticized past (Sarah Palin and white small-town America), they should move boldly to the future and embrace America’s diversity. Along the way, they must, as Brooks wrote, “…project a conservatism that emphasizes society as well as individuals, security as well as freedom, a social revival and not just an economic one and the community as opposed to the state.”

Republicans need to reinvent themselves for the future—not artificially as McCain is trying to do to win an election but for real.