Originally published in Crain’s Detroit Business, June 13, 2022
Today it is hard to find common ground, especially if the other side has no intention of compromising or meeting you in the middle. While we think we want to move forward together, we live in a volatile, uncertain, complex & ambiguous world. While politicians in Lansing and Washington continue to focus on polarizing positions on polarizing issues, executives & their boards are under tremendous pressure from consumers & investors to say & do the right thing. Regulators, such as the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), ask companies to disclose information about their impact on society and the environment, from greenhouse gas emissions and plastic waste to diversity and social inclusion.
So, how can we move forward? The discussions held on the porch of the Grand Hotel during the Detroit Regional Chamber's Annual Leadership Policy Conference were helpful. Remarkably, people are talking. Yet, building back better in a post-pandemic polarized economy requires that we approach our region's most challenging issues differently.
We should not have to rely on elected officials to focus on issues that matter. The talent and expertise needed to solve real problems already exist in our community. We need to seize and mobilize the political will to overcome these challenges by bringing together people to find a better way forward and find practical solutions that focus on solving the root of the problem rather than satisfying one's short-term gain.
Politicians have very few incentives to focus beyond the next election. While business leaders, unions, community organizers, and the faith-based community are determined to think ahead and move forward.
But barriers remain. Just as we want our political leaders to set aside the political rhetoric, we need our regional leaders to come together and think collectively in prioritizing the critical issues our community faces, consolidate resources, and find a better way to solve them, with or without the help of Congress or the legislature or local government.
More specifically, our existing civic agencies should come together to create a collaboration modeled after the Civic Consulting Alliance - a consortium of business and nonprofit leaders that lends its private sector implementation expertise to solving problems in the community. It's time we emerge from our silos and work collectively to solve the region's most significant challenges. At the same time, build a new generation of civic leaders and create a pipeline for a new generation of government leaders. They did it with the "Grand Bargain" to help Detroit resolve its financial crisis. They should come together again to help create a region focused on equity, diversity, inclusion, and civility.
Our region is faced with new challenges and new opportunities that demand we think and act differently. Whether it is addressing mental health gaps, workforce shortages, or preventing the next mass shooting, the expertise needed to solve these problems already exists in our community. We should develop a network of pro bono consultants to address these issues. By working in teams around specific projects on significant challenges, we will build strategic relationships around problems and find ways to celebrate the success that can begin to permeate government.
To become resilient, we need to engage a new generation of entrepreneurial leaders, mentor them, and help them develop their network to sustain our region's growth in the future. At the same time, we can address our region's most significant challenges and focus on projects that can move quickly that address challenges that existed before the pandemic and were made worse over the last few years.
Two years ago, I ran for the County Commission and lost. While the best way to create change is to vote, we should not have to wait for the next election to identify our priorities and bring people to the table to help Detroit or Michigan move forward. Everyone's voice deserves to be heard, but, in our society, the most vocal voices get the attention. That is why we need a collective voice. As private citizens, and by working together around a set of principles using a unified process for getting things done, we will prove that we have more power to create change than the people we elect.
