Get back to the knitting, Boulder
Published in the Boulder Daily Camera, July 27, 2019
Leaders who see themselves as cultural warriors like to think bigger than the rest of us. Never content with solving life's little problems, they want to take us to a promised land by punching holes in the sides of whatever box they're stuck in.
But, while ambition to change things in a big way is never a bad thing, the time and energy our leaders spend on Really Big Things in the interest of what could be is time they don't spend tending to what already is.
This danger was highlighted in the 1980s when research on successful American organizations identified eight leadership behaviors that consistently led to success. The book describing this research, In Search of Excellence, changed the way American leaders managed large organizations with ideas like "Bias for Action," "Productivity through People," and, most relevant to this conversation, "Stick to the Knitting."
The principle that successful organizations will "stick to the knitting" means that, however much leaders may want to move on to Bigger Things, the successful leaders also understand that, if they do so at the expense of the less exciting stuff that they must do well, they will fail.
Boulder's elected leaders today seem to be having trouble sticking to the knitting. I mean, let's face it, the job of running a smallish town and county like Boulder can feel pretty mundane when the world around us offers up great big juicy problems that beg for solutions and-I-mean-now. With global warming, population explosion, and racism beating at our door, how can Boulder City and County leaders spend most of their time dealing with things like road maintenance, traffic problems, and affordable housing? Pontificating on and waving swords at the defining problems of our time is much grander than nitty grittying ourselves over the details that will allow Boulder residents to live a comfortable life within our borders.
The problem with this thinking is two-fold. First, when our local leaders are trying to solve global problems, they lack both the expertise and power to do so. Boulder County includes roughly .004% of the world's population and .001% of the world's landmass and our local leaders' ability to significantly influence much of anything stops abruptly at our County's borders. While our leaders have occasionally invoked the idea that Boulder is a "Shining City on a Hill" destined to lead the world down the path of all that is good and righteous, the rest of the world hasn't seemed to notice.
Second, when our leaders spend their time focused on problems shared with the other 99.996% of humankind, they risk running short on time to solve the problems that 100% of us Boulderites are worried about. Like, for example, the housing and transportation problems that are threatening to transform Boulder in ways we know we don't want.
We know that we have a transportation problem now because we sit in traffic that wasn't there just a few years back and our leaders tell us that it's going to get much worse soon. There are known solutions to help us move around faster and more efficiently like buses, ride-shares, better maintained and wider roads, more bike lanes, electric scooters, different parking arrangements, and work-at-home opportunities. But, Boulder leaders like to view our transportation problem largely as a piece of the world's global warming problem. Tesla charging stations, a commuter rail system 40 years from now, and making transportation by car difficult will not solve the transportation problems we Boulderites face today. While I'm not suggesting that the global environmental considerations aren't important, our local leaders must view them as secondary to our need for local transportation systems to support us in our daily lives.
We know we have a housing problem because we can't house enough of the people who work here and we're approaching the point where only the wealthy can own property in Boulder. There are numerous paths open to alleviating these failings such as increasing density, opening up some of the land set aside for "future" homebuilding today, imposing rent control, building public housing, and limiting commercial job growth in Boulder. Every housing solution will help some and hurt others, but making the tough decisions that will allow Boulderites to live closer to their jobs in more affordable housing is what we elected our leaders to do.
But, instead of focusing on these difficult-but-solvable problems, our leaders have spent much of the past decade doing things like trying to take over our electric utility, buying used hospitals, filing lawsuits against oil companies for the crime of providing us with gasoline, and, just this week, regulating 5G cell phone technology.
We know you've had the best of intentions, but that's just not good enough anymore. Boulder's real problems won't wait for you to tire of fiddling as the fires approach. Get back to the knitting, guys.
Leaders who see themselves as cultural warriors like to think bigger than the rest of us. Never content with solving life's little problems, they want to take us to a promised land by punching holes in the sides of whatever box they're stuck in.
But, while ambition to change things in a big way is never a bad thing, the time and energy our leaders spend on Really Big Things in the interest of what could be is time they don't spend tending to what already is.
This danger was highlighted in the 1980s when research on successful American organizations identified eight leadership behaviors that consistently led to success. The book describing this research, In Search of Excellence, changed the way American leaders managed large organizations with ideas like "Bias for Action," "Productivity through People," and, most relevant to this conversation, "Stick to the Knitting."
The principle that successful organizations will "stick to the knitting" means that, however much leaders may want to move on to Bigger Things, the successful leaders also understand that, if they do so at the expense of the less exciting stuff that they must do well, they will fail.
Boulder's elected leaders today seem to be having trouble sticking to the knitting. I mean, let's face it, the job of running a smallish town and county like Boulder can feel pretty mundane when the world around us offers up great big juicy problems that beg for solutions and-I-mean-now. With global warming, population explosion, and racism beating at our door, how can Boulder City and County leaders spend most of their time dealing with things like road maintenance, traffic problems, and affordable housing? Pontificating on and waving swords at the defining problems of our time is much grander than nitty grittying ourselves over the details that will allow Boulder residents to live a comfortable life within our borders.
The problem with this thinking is two-fold. First, when our local leaders are trying to solve global problems, they lack both the expertise and power to do so. Boulder County includes roughly .004% of the world's population and .001% of the world's landmass and our local leaders' ability to significantly influence much of anything stops abruptly at our County's borders. While our leaders have occasionally invoked the idea that Boulder is a "Shining City on a Hill" destined to lead the world down the path of all that is good and righteous, the rest of the world hasn't seemed to notice.
Second, when our leaders spend their time focused on problems shared with the other 99.996% of humankind, they risk running short on time to solve the problems that 100% of us Boulderites are worried about. Like, for example, the housing and transportation problems that are threatening to transform Boulder in ways we know we don't want.
We know that we have a transportation problem now because we sit in traffic that wasn't there just a few years back and our leaders tell us that it's going to get much worse soon. There are known solutions to help us move around faster and more efficiently like buses, ride-shares, better maintained and wider roads, more bike lanes, electric scooters, different parking arrangements, and work-at-home opportunities. But, Boulder leaders like to view our transportation problem largely as a piece of the world's global warming problem. Tesla charging stations, a commuter rail system 40 years from now, and making transportation by car difficult will not solve the transportation problems we Boulderites face today. While I'm not suggesting that the global environmental considerations aren't important, our local leaders must view them as secondary to our need for local transportation systems to support us in our daily lives.
We know we have a housing problem because we can't house enough of the people who work here and we're approaching the point where only the wealthy can own property in Boulder. There are numerous paths open to alleviating these failings such as increasing density, opening up some of the land set aside for "future" homebuilding today, imposing rent control, building public housing, and limiting commercial job growth in Boulder. Every housing solution will help some and hurt others, but making the tough decisions that will allow Boulderites to live closer to their jobs in more affordable housing is what we elected our leaders to do.
But, instead of focusing on these difficult-but-solvable problems, our leaders have spent much of the past decade doing things like trying to take over our electric utility, buying used hospitals, filing lawsuits against oil companies for the crime of providing us with gasoline, and, just this week, regulating 5G cell phone technology.
We know you've had the best of intentions, but that's just not good enough anymore. Boulder's real problems won't wait for you to tire of fiddling as the fires approach. Get back to the knitting, guys.
