The Top Ten Ways to Kill a Community
Recently Lifehack.org published a great post about how to live a stressful life. I am a true fan of the counterintuitive and reverse logic so it got me thinking about the concept on a greater scale. If we can destroy our own individual lives with such efficiency imagine what we could all do to a community if we worked together on it.
To that effect, here is my list of the Top Ten Ways to Kill a Community. These same concepts can be applied to your business or organization if you have the foresight to view it as a community which must learn to thrive in a global market.
- Provide subsidies which retard the natural evolution of the local economy
- Migrate all governmental authority to locations distant from the community
- Siphon off any gifted community leaders into the larger government body
- Train residents to rely on outside parties for leadership and guidance
- Centralize manufacturing to the extinction the local craftsman/artisan
- Through lending practices create an undesirable local market
- Draw as many wage earning males out of the community as possible
- Encourage inflation by the steady increase in wage earning at the lowest level
- Encourage traditionally lower paying service industry development rather than manufacture.
- Allow a build up of substandard, low cost housing to corral the poor in one area
In the development of this piece Leon Ho raised an excellent question.
“How could readers prevent them (the ten killers) from happening?”
As you see, Leon has a true talent for getting straight to the essence of an issue.
Are these issues actionable, and if so, how?
Item number 1 – When you make decision about how to allocate your resources, give careful thought as to whether you are providing a means for growth or are shoring up a failing initiative.
Item number 2- Be certain that the decisions being made in your organization are being made as close as possible to the level at which they must be implemented.
Item number 3 – If a gifted leader develops in one part of your organization, leave him there! Moving him to a new area in need of leadership does not encourage the growth of leaders there. AND it is demoralizing to the group that grew this leader in the first place.
Item number 4 – Hire and train from within the community in which you are located. The community loyalty to your organization and its perceived value within that community will increase exponentially.
Item number 5 – Maintain the diversity in your leadership meetings. Be sure to involve someone from every level to maintain and appropriate perspective.
Item number 6 – Do what you can to help other businesses develop within the community in which you are located. Justification ? See number 4.
Item number 7 – Find a core, stable group in your community and draw on them for as much of your staffing as possible. The greater your connection and investment in the community the greater the ferocity of that communities loyalty to you.
Item number 8 – Don’t inflate artificially inflate the wages of your staff simply because they have been there for a while. Base salary increases on value added to the organization.
Item number 9 – Do as much as you can to build your business model to develop the repeat “value added” business.
Item number 10 – Provide the best quality facilities for your staff that you can afford.
Now, get out in the community and work to achieve the same goals for the entire community. It is time consuming, it does cost you some focus from your own personal organization, but it the long term returns make it well worth while.
Related Post:
The Myth of Racism Part 8.
Reg Adkins writes on behavior and the human experience at (elementaltruths.blogspot.com).
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Comments
praetorian says on January 25th, 2007 at 10:57 am
Welcome to conservatism! Upside: you have a reasonable mental framework in which to make political judgements. Downside: your friends will call you a heartless fascist. You can always wimp out and call yourself a libertarian though.
Cheers,
prat
Zoeman says on January 25th, 2007 at 8:20 pm
In ten points you’ve managed to sum up Australia perfectly, and at what a fitting time, happy Australia Day!
jmnlman says on January 26th, 2007 at 4:20 am
I always enjoy when technology people wine about government intervention much of the computer and technology revolution was built on the back of the Department of Defense. Funny how the EU has violated basically all the rules and yet are doing fine.
Reg Adkins says on January 26th, 2007 at 6:50 am
That comment couldn’t possibly have come from the same person who just posted their own article of condemnation about the USPS could it?
http://jmnlman.blogspot.com/
In any case the point was more along the lines of maintaining self sufficiency and independence than a critique of any government policies. Governments are after all made up of people like us.
jmnlman says on January 26th, 2007 at 9:37 am
Actually it supports my argument. I’d argue that providing mail service yes international mail service to [helps with your exports] is something that a nation’s government should provide. Even if it’s a money losing enterprise as USPS has been historically. Now the alternative situation which is what we have in Canada is an arm’s length corporation that has to make a profit. Not surprisingly we pay substantially more for a weaker service.
jmnlman says on January 26th, 2007 at 9:40 am
I’d argue that providing mail service yes international mail service to [helps with your exports] is something that a nation’s government should provide. Even if it’s a money losing enterprise as USPS has been historically. Now the alternative situation which is what we have in Canada is an arm’s length corporation that has to make a profit. Not surprisingly we pay substantially more for a weaker service.
Brian Carnell says on January 27th, 2007 at 12:03 am
“Encourage traditionally lower paying service industry development rather than manufacture.”
That one was just stupid. Riight. Encouraging manufacturing to increase employment just won’t work given continued productivity efficiencies in manufacturing and competition from cheap labor in underdeveloped countries.
To echo another poster, its weird to see a bunch of computer geeks blathering on about the glories of manufacturing (presumably this is why Redmond is such a depressed area — all of those service workers not manufacturing anything).
Reg Adkins says on January 27th, 2007 at 9:33 am
Brian,
You seem to be saying that encouraging manufacture of goods is an unrealistic goal. I disagree. Albeit it IS unrealistic to assume you can begin a mass production factory regardless of economic climate, that isn’t the type of production that is ideal for maintaining a SELF-SUFFICIENT community anyway. As you so aptly mention, those organizations are prone to head to underdeveloped areas to exploit cheap labor anyway. Smaller self reliant business are the backbone to an economically healthy community.
Your second point jumps to a conclusion that I also question. Why do you presume that I am a “computer geek?”
However, rather than monopolize Leon’s post space, if you would like to continue this discussion hop on over to
http://www.elementaltruths.blogspot.com
and we’ll continue until you’re bored of it.
Romer!can says on January 27th, 2007 at 9:49 am
An interesting series of points about what America does backwards, from my vantage point.
Overall, I’d say the notation of political woes was cleverly turned around into preventative advice for corporations and organizations.
It is a good prescription for any entity who seeks long-term survival and growth to first protect the environment which nurtures such visions.
Nice job.
For praetorian – the fascists who have been ruling/ruining the nation are not conservatives. It is the libertarian thinkers who could best re-balance things, but that is unlikely to happen.
For jmnlman – I would not say the EU violates all those principles. Not at all. In fact, the EU is *far* more community-oriented than the US… and I think that’s one of its strengths. Of course, it does violate some of that list.
christina says on July 11th, 2007 at 10:16 am
why wage earning *males*?
Reginald Adkins says on July 11th, 2007 at 10:33 am
For Chistina,
Statistically, this is the higher earning wage group. So, drawing those individuals away from the community erodes the tax base available to that area.