Are you the problem or the solution?

Are you the problem or the solution?

 

I’m an expert at identifying problems.

Put me in traffic and I can tell you what every other driver is doing wrong.

Plant me in a mall and I can point out foot traffic problems, why folks aren’t going into stores and a thousand other data points that any business can use to improve their numbers.

I’m especially good at city problems.

Why people are moving away, why downtowns are dying, why tax revenue is falling.

I can find and point out problems like an expert.

Take Pine Bluff for instance.

Five years ago, one of the historic buildings crumbled and fell onto Main Street and blocked it for three years.

I wrote a letter to the then Mayor on how to fix it.

I wrote a second letter to the newly elected mayor to go over my points again.

I wrote letters to the Chamber of Commerce about how to stop the population exodus.

I wrote editorials on how to save the city.

And nothing happened.

The building blocked the street. People still left.

I know the reasons for it.

They are the same reasons cities slide downhill across the country.

Crime.

No jobs.

Poor infrastructure.

Affordable housing.

 The exact same thing that happens to hundreds of cities every single year.

 The new Mayor responded to my letter.

 She said thank you and told me she was forwarding it to a friend.

 The friend was starting a new initiative called GO FORWARD PINE BLUFF and he had a list too that he shared with me via email.

 Our lists matched.

 Not word for word. His priorities were different from mine.

 After all, he lived in Pine Bluff, and I was just a frequent visitor who once lived there.

 But his list had a main difference.

 A time. A date. And an invitation.

 Meet at the corner of 6^th and Main on a Saturday morning for a clean up.

 It was a litter patrol to pick up trash, not the bricks that blocked the street, but it was an Action.

 With time and date.

 And they did.

 Again and again until he had a small squad of civic minded individuals who wanted to make the city better.

 Then he went on to the next point on his list even as the Mayor attacked the blocked Main St problem.

 The solution was action.

 Not just listing the problems.

 Not even listing the answer to the problems and hoping someone else solves it.

 Action solves the problem.

 It goes back to something that has been drilled into high performance players (business, athletics, any field really).

 Make a decision and move.

 Even if it’s the wrong decision, you can adjust.

 Take an action and make it happen.

 If it’s the wrong action, move in a different direction.

 If it’s the right action, then keep going.

 For Pine Bluff, it meant a cleaner city to start, including a Main Street that’s passable, and five years later, GoForward is reinvigorating the historic downtown area.

 Grants followed to beautify Main St, along with new storefronts and new small businesses opening up.

 Will crowds follow?

 I hope so.  The Covid pandemic has put a kibosh on a lot of planned festivals, but 2021 looms with promise.

 For traffic, my action is to slow down a little, to pay better attention to drivers and try harder not to call out their many faults.

 I like to think of it as an action in progress.