Since 2008, the Paris Texas Chamber of Commerce has repeatedly stated that our local community and economic development organizations need restructuring.
After 14-years, they still do. Every time we say it, the local organizational bureaucracy react as if we had called their mothers a bad name (or told the truth about them).
The first objective of our local community and economic development organizations seem to be protection of the status quo at all cost, regardless of how much it costs Paris.
So, allow us to re-frame the problem this way: Would bad organizational structure subtract from how citizen’s value their community?
Each of us can all think of ways in which it might do so: For example, when you encountered employees who face the public but are not empowered to make key decisions; where Artificial Intelligence (AI) robots have replaced live agents and you really want to talk to some high-management idiot; or when, signing up with a provider of Internet service, such as Suddenlink / Altice / Optimum (a franchisee of a City that protects the monopoly against any equal opportunities for access), you are, as with taxes, subjected to forced compliance: To give your money and every right you have under the Bill of Rights in exchange for Internet service, which is a “must have” in today’s digital age.
Forced compliance, it should be argued, is a violation of the 13th Amendment to the Constitution.
In those cases, restructuring by those organizations could generate improved customer experiences, enhance customer’s value, and enrich community value.
Years ago, the Paris Chamber realized that knowledge and knowledge flow must replace formal management structures and face-to-face administration. (As there is a world of difference between formal and informal management.)
Make no mistake, we’re not saying that daily production, a conventional planning-and-control approach, should be thrown out with the bath water. We are saying that greater freedom, flexibility, and an open attitude toward restructuring should focus on the individuals within the community; that removing boundaries and a constant exchange of transparent data and information with the community are ways of liberating their power – providing them a setting in which they can express their creativity.
These are a necessity for community and economic improvement.
After making sure headquarters are running smoothly, and cooperatively, the first goal is to try every initiative, while assuming that it could be a new opportunity.
Do not follow. Take the lead, change the standard, practice creative destruction (open dissent, when needed), and constantly try to understand how to increase value for the community – not the organization.
Promoters are bundling these common sense steps as “development of a process of innovation” – including, of course, calculation of how much they can charge!
It’s all terminology: Branding and Innovation; terms to relieve taxpayers of their money.
But all endeavors, except for government, live or die based on whether the market – the customers – pays for value perceived, or not.
Increase community value by more wealth generation opportunities, and this will reward the organization by its increased value to the community.
The advice is free.
The knowledge on how to do is is not.