Greater Dubuque Development Corporation Annual Meeting Keynote Speaker Remarks Copyrighted
July 17, 2017
City of Dubuque Consent Items # 27.
ITEM TITLE: Greater Dubuque Development Corporation Annual
Meeting Keynote Speaker Remarks
SUMMARY: City Manager submitting remarks of the Greater Dubuque
Development Corporation Annual Meeting Keynote
Speaker, Dr. Thomas Tuttle.
SUGGESTED DISPOSITION: Suggested Disposition: Receive and File
ATTACHMENTS:
Description Type
Remarks for Dubuque Annual Meeting Supporting Documentation
Greater Dubuque: A Model for American Communities
am honored to participate in this event and I am very grateful to all the people here who
enabled me to include the Dubuque story in my book. Mayor Buol, Teri, Mike and Nancy and
Rick you could not have been more gracious. I have friends who invite me to dinner under the
condition that I will stop praising Dubuque.
Tonight, I would like to share with you the reasons that I have been singing your praises from
Bahrain in the Middle East to Hagerstown-a city in my home state of Maryland and more.
Both Bahrain and Hagerstown and many other cities can learn from your example.
First let me place my remarks in a wider frame. In his latest book,the NY Times columnist and
celebrated author Tom Friedman lucidly and in great detail explains what he calls the Age of
Accelerations that provides both opportunity and challenge for our times. This Age of
Accelerations is characterized by exponential change in three powerful forces—Environment
and Climate Change; Technology and Data Flow; and Globalization. The interaction of these
three forces is driving a rate of change that disrupts virtually everything.
For me, although I could not verbalize it at the time,the Age of Accelerations began when in
1969 1 saw this photo of earth taken by the Apollo 11 Astronauts. It was reinforced in the
early 90s at a White House Conference on the environment.There I began to grasp the
challenge of sustainability when a speaker told us that if the developing world raises their
standard of by utilizing the same technologies that the more developed societies have used it
will require the natural resources of 7 planet earths. Unfortunately, we have only one.
Countries and cities that successfully adapt to the three forces driving the Age of
Accelerations will benefit through increased productivity, innovation,job creation,talent
attraction and wealth.Those that do not will fall further and further behind.
If successful adaptation to these forces does not happen across the entire globe,the resulting
inequalities between nations will create risks for both the richer and poorer nations and will
accelerate global instability.Already the inequalities between nations account for much of
the tension and conflict that we see in the Middle East,Africa and beyond.
The rising inequality within nations between those who benefit from the Age of Accelerations
and those who do not will also create within-country instability.This helps explain the Brexit
vote and the Donald Trump phenomenon in the US.
When there is internal stability even when surrounded by high external instability,the nation
or local community has a chance to effectively respond and adapt to external change.
We should not confuse the idea of stability with "static." In the Age of Accelerations,the
concept of stability means "dynamic stability." Dynamic stability results when a living system
continually interacts with its environment and makes changes as necessary to maintain or
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improve system performance. As the former CEO of GE Jack Welch once said—for any
organization that is not changing as fast as its environment,the end is in sight. For
communities, we can say the same thing.
Friedman points out that the ability to thrive in the Age of Accelerations is significantly
enhanced if we live in a healthy community. Healthy communities support people as they
work to meet their basic needs and once those needs are met supports their ability to learn,
grow and develop. Such communities provide safe,trusting environment that challenges and
enables individuals and organizations to experiment, fail, learn and experiment again.
As he was driving to work and listening to a country song on his Sirius XM radio Friedman
discovered the idea that captured the theme for his book. In Brandi Carlile's song "The Eye"
she sings a chorus that says:
"I wrapped your love around me like a chain
But I never was afraid that it would die
You can dance in a hurricane
But only if you stand in the eye"
Healthy communities wrap their love around all of their citizens and enable them to dance in
the eye of a hurricane.
That brings me to Dubuque. I believe that you have shown the ability to create the dynamic
stability that has enabled you to experience almost three decades of sustained success. That
is why I have chosen to identify Dubuque as a model for America.
What makes Dubuque a role model for America?The first reason is that you have produced
measurable economic development results over an extended period of time. Since the
Greater Dubuque Development Corporation was established you have increased the number
of jobs,the average wage, construction spending, and the population has grown.
For me what is even more impressive than these results are that Dubuque's leaders have
developed a system for making these results repetitive.
Dr. W.Edwards Deming is best known as the quality guru who helped the Japanese create
their quality miracle following World War II. He was relatively unknown in the U.S. until
Lloyd Dobbins in an NBC White Paper called 'if Japan Can, Why Can't We?' introduced him to
American managers. One of Deming's key lessons was that the goal of management is to
create a "system of profound knowledge"that can make business results repetitive.
To illustrate this point Deming relates the story of Chanticleer the rooster. The barnyard
rooster put forth all his energy to flap his wings and crow every morning. Every morning the
sun came up. Chanticleer had a theory that his crowing made the sun come up. The
connection was very clear. Then one day, Chanticleer was not feeling so well and forgot to
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get up and crow. He looked out and saw that the sun came up anyway. He was totally
shocked and confused. Fortunately, Chanticleer did not cling to his failed theory. He used the
"facts" to alter his theory.
The importance of this story is that in order to learn, Chanticleer had to first have a theory
that could be tested.
Fortunately, the visionary business leaders in Dubuque who created the organizational design
for the Greater Dubuque Development Corporation realized that the community must create
a "big-tent" organization that embraced government, education, labor and not-for-profit
organizations.They realized that the problems faced by the city were too big for any one
organization to tackle from a single sector perspective. As Dave Lyons described it to me the
leaders of the community formed a "close communication process that continues to today. It
operates like an inter-locking Board of Directors in a holding company. There are separate
operating units but the boards are interlocked. Everyone knows what is going on and they
can act very quickly."
As I have observed the work of the Greater Dubuque Development Corporation, I have found
convincing evidence that you have a theory of how to create jobs, how to address workforce
needs, how to support the startup of new businesses, how to spur innovation, and how to
succeed at business attraction. Your approach is based on clear goals, disciplined action,
data, evaluation, communication and building partnerships.
With respect to economic development,the GDDC leads a community-wide "system"that
partners with all the organizations represented on its board and with others. Rather than
allow the breadth of this board to pull the organization into too many directions,the
organization maintains a laser focus on its mission.That stems from its leadership and is
reflected in each of the five focus areas of the organization. When Dan McDonald described
to me their Info-Action program -where Dan and his team conduct 345 information gathering
sessions a year with employers -1 thought this was a brilliant description of a process, but it
can't really be this good. So, I asked several business leaders if the problems they surface to
Dan and his team were listened to and acted on. The message I heard from the business
leaders was a resounding yes. However,this process could not work without the strong
public-private partnership between Dan, Rick, Mike Van Milligen and the city team who meet
weekly to review the data and take action based on the data obtained from the info-action
process. When data is used to drive actions this is how GDDC and the city build trust with the
business community and make the results repeatable. This data also informs the GDDC
strategic plan and the city budget process.
You may hear Dan, Rick and Mike crow a bit— but they really do make the sun come up when
it comes to assisting local businesses to create new jobs. I would make the same claim for
their Workforce programs, Startup Dubuque, and Sustainable Innovations.
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This system of profound knowledge owes its success also to a visionary mayor and city
council who have developed, with the help of engaged citizens, a compelling collective vision
for the city. This has been further aided by the city manager who upon his arrival on the
scene led the development of a comprehensive plan for the city that is a truly functional plan
aligned with the city's vision. Importantly,that plan and succeeding plans such as the
impressive Imagine Dubuque initiative under development have been skillfully executed over
the years by the Manager and his team.
Other key pieces of this system include the Community Foundation that in addition to its core
mission, serves as an internal R&D organization to develop and test new methodologies and
approaches for fulfilling the vision of the city.
The mayor's emphasis on strategic partnerships led to the creation of unique city position
filled by a unique individual who has shown incredible success in developing external
partnerships to bring visibility and resources to the city working with the ECIA and other
organizations.
The name of the game in economic development today is recruitment, development and
retention of talent.Another vital element of the community system is the engagement and
alignment of the K-12 and higher education community. The work of your community college
was recognized nationally this year by the International Economic Development Council along
with the leadership of your Mayor.
Healthy communities are characterized by safety and security, local leadership that
transcends self-interest and that is focused on strengthening the community as a whole.
Citizen commitment to the community comes from power sharing through citizen
engagement, shared community values, and the existence of widely understood goals, plans
and competent implementation of the plans with accountability to all citizens. In addition,
healthy communities are characterized by partnerships across sectors that enable "collective
action"to address challenges that no individual community group can address on its own.
Partnerships serve as a vehicle to align community efforts to attain goals, acquire and focus
additional resources. My research on job creation clearly points out that these are the
essential conditions for productivity improvement, and sustained economic growth. On the
other hand, communities that are characterized by divisive politics,fear, suspicion, and lack
of respect for differences will have great difficulty with sustained job creation and sustained
economic growth.
The GDDC's prospectus for the next capital campaign provides the challenge—Together we
succeeded.....but we must not anchor here.
As you move forward to continue your success in the Age of Accelerations I see five major
challenges.
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1. You must continue to refine and apply the "system of profound knowledge"that has
delivered almost three decades of sustained success and that has created the healthy
community that is Dubuque.
2. You must maintain a political environment that will support and nurture your ability
to drive positive change and invest in the future. What you have created is both
powerful and fragile. You must continue to identify and elect candidates in local
elections that will support efforts to learn your way to the future not try to turn back
the clock or deny the forces in the Age of Accelerations.
3. You must groom a new and diverse group of community leaders who can transcend
self-interest, embrace the values of inclusion, innovation, empathy and performance
excellence.As a developmental strategy,you might consider creating a Junior Board of
Directors for the GDDC that engages promising next generation leaders who can learn
through tackling real community challenges.
4. Talent,Talent,Talent. Over the next 10 years you are projecting a gap between the
number of jobs available and the number of people with the skills to fill those jobs.
You cannot solve the problem by increasing the birth rate.There are only two
solutions. One is to count on automation to reduce the number of people required to
do the jobs.The second is to recruit more people into the community either
domestically or internationally. Can you develop strategies to convince more of the
graduates from local colleges to remain in Dubuque?
5. The people in this room have a history of great generosity in supporting this
community.This must continue. Do not fall victim to the budget cutting mentality that
views government as the enemy. You cannot cut your way to excellence! You must
continue to invest. Driving change and community engagement requires both hard
and soft skills—don't neglect roles such as backbone organizations, community
engagement coordinators,facilitators, etc.
Thank you, Greater Dubuque,for sharing your secret sauce for job creation and community
building with me. Living next door to Washington, D.C. it is sometimes hard to remain
optimistic about America's future. However, because of communities like you I remain
optimistic.
The winds of the hurricane will continue to blow—but I know you will show Iowa and
America how to find the eye in the storm and keep on dancing!!
Thank you.
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