{"id":12775,"date":"2018-12-03T05:56:59","date_gmt":"2018-12-03T11:56:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/ac7af1a7.ithemeshosting.com.php72-38.lan3-1.websitetestlink.com\/?p=12775"},"modified":"2019-09-17T13:03:51","modified_gmt":"2019-09-17T18:03:51","slug":"what-is-holding-us-back-why-does-every-project-take-so-long-in-small-towns","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/smallbizsurvival.com\/2018\/12\/what-is-holding-us-back-why-does-every-project-take-so-long-in-small-towns.html","title":{"rendered":"What is holding us back? Why does every project take so long in small towns?"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"attachment_12783\" style=\"width: 234px\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-12783\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-12783\" src=\"https:\/\/ac7af1a7.ithemeshosting.com.php72-38.lan3-1.websitetestlink.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/12\/Slow-people-sign-Hopeton-OK-224x300.jpg\" alt=\"Slow people sign\" width=\"224\" height=\"300\" srcset=\"https:\/\/smallbizsurvival.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/12\/Slow-people-sign-Hopeton-OK-224x300.jpg 224w, https:\/\/smallbizsurvival.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/12\/Slow-people-sign-Hopeton-OK-768x1027.jpg 768w, https:\/\/smallbizsurvival.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/12\/Slow-people-sign-Hopeton-OK-599x800.jpg 599w, https:\/\/smallbizsurvival.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/12\/Slow-people-sign-Hopeton-OK.jpg 898w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 224px) 100vw, 224px\" \/><p id=\"caption-attachment-12783\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Photo by Becky McCray<\/p><\/div>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>We all hold different titles, work in different fields or sectors, but <strong>we\u2019re all fighting for the future of our towns<\/strong>\u00a0and rural places. We want to be a place our children and grandchildren and our nieces and nephews can live a good life.\u00a0Quality of Life, a prosperous future for our towns, these are things we can all agree on, even if we\u2019re working different ways to get there.<\/p>\n<p><strong>All of us have faced the same drag on our efforts. <\/strong>It\u2019s our own people.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Wheel-spinning<\/li>\n<li>Wasted effort<\/li>\n<li>Meeting after meeting after meeting<\/li>\n<li>Talking ideas to death, but not getting very far<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>At the same time that we\u2019re being slowed down by all that drag, <strong>we also face social pressures not to fail.<\/strong> No one likes to look stupid in public. Especially in a small town, it feels like everyone is watching, everyone is judging and everyone will know if you mess up and you\u2019ll never hear the end of it. You\u2019ve seen people bring up decades-old failures, just to remind someone that they failed before. Have you ever felt that fear that your idea or project will fail?<\/p>\n<p><strong>Years of this pressure not to fail, of those voices getting inside our heads, can add up.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>You can see this in people in your town, people who have learned this lesson so well, who are so worried about risk that they never try anything new, and they don\u2019t want anyone else trying anything new either.<\/p>\n<p><strong>The people who do the most dragging think they\u2019re helping.\u00a0<\/strong>They\u2019ve told me so. Here&#8217;s how one person explained his desire to drag against progress:<\/p>\n<p><em>\u201cWe have too many high-energy people, accustomed to making decisions quickly. Negative people offer a balance, raising questions, slowing down the decision-making process so we can have time to consider the issues, before it\u2019s too late and we\u2019ve spent money on something that turned out to be foolish and ineffective.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n<p>What they\u2019re worried about is making mistakes. The risk of failing very publicly.<\/p>\n<p>You might be tempted to agree with him on his approach to avoid mistakes, but it\u2019s a trap because <strong>we\u2019re terrible at judging the risk of failing.<\/strong><\/p>\n<h2>We\u2019re far less likely to fail than we think.<\/h2>\n<p>Author Margie Warrell says that using the latest brain imaging technologies, researchers have been able to prove:<\/p>\n<ol>\n<li>We overestimate the probability of something going wrong.<\/li>\n<li>We exaggerate the consequences of what might happen if it does go wrong.<\/li>\n<li>We underestimate our ability to handle the consequences of risk.<\/li>\n<li>We discount or deny the cost of inaction, and sticking with the status quo.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<p>Once we realize how we\u2019ve all been misjudging risk and trying to slow things down so we don\u2019t make mistakes, we start to see what it is doing to our communities. Decade upon decade of this pressure not to make a mistake, not to fail, is built into our formal organizations, our government bodies, our groups, clubs and associations.<\/p>\n<p><strong>We\u2019ve built the drag and wheel spinning and endless discussion into our organizations thinking that we were dealing with the risk of mistakes.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>But as Margie Warrell pointed out, we\u2019re not very good at judging risk.<\/p>\n<p>The net result is that our <strong>towns are too closed to new ideas. <\/strong>People can take being closed to new ideas to such an extreme that they end up saying no to everything.<\/p>\n<h2>Why this has to change<\/h2>\n<p>But our whole society is changing fast. Trendwatching.com says \u201c<strong>we\u2019re in the middle of an epic power shift<\/strong> away from government, social organizations, and big business, towards the individual.\u201d We\u2019re seeing regular people accomplishing big things, with no formal organization, no structure, no officers in charge. No one to put the brakes on.<\/p>\n<p>We are crowdsourcing our future, the future of our communities. The power to shape our cities and towns is no longer just in the hands of officials, but now in all of our hands. When we want to accomplish something, we don\u2019t need to form a new committee. We can just make it happen.<\/p>\n<p>What changed? What is causing this shift in power?\u00a0It\u2019s our <strong>ability to communicate, coordinate and work together in new ways. <\/strong>Email, the internet, social networks, all shrunk down into the palm of our hands and we carry it everywhere with us.<\/p>\n<p>These new communications tools mean we\u2019re experimenting with\u00a0<strong>new ways of working together. <\/strong>That\u2019s why we are shifting from formal organizations to working together informally, as needed, and getting things done without all the formality and foot dragging we\u2019re used to.<\/p>\n<p>But it&#8217;s slow going, with plenty of people still dragging their feet. We&#8217;re stuck using old methods of organizing and working together. We&#8217;re drowning in committees, task forces, planning groups, meetings, and all the old ways of doing things that slow us down. We grew up with these methods. They are deeply ingrained in our people and our organizations.<\/p>\n<h2>A new method<\/h2>\n<p>What we&#8217;re missing is<strong>\u00a0a method of reducing the risk of making big mistakes while working together more easily to accomplish things quickly using the tools we have in our hands right now.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong>This is what I\u2019ve been working on.<\/strong> I\u2019ve listened as people just like you have written to me with real struggles in your small towns. I\u2019ve paid attention to what 473 people like you told us in two rounds of our Survey of Rural Challenges. It\u2019s our own people holding us back, slowing us down, even with the best of intentions, keeping us from moving forward.<\/p>\n<p>I\u2019ve been researching towns that succeeded, change science, behavioral motivation, open networks, crowdsourcing, innovation and how you build a revolution. Pulling lessons from all of those, I\u2019ve come up with a method that reduces the risk of making big mistakes while letting us work together more easily using the tools we have in our hands<\/p>\n<h2>An Idea Friendly Method<\/h2>\n<p>It\u2019s called the Idea Friendly Method, because our aversion to risk has had us acting <em>idea unfriendly<\/em> for too long.<\/p>\n<p>You start with your big goal for your community, the thing that you feel will improve your quality of life. You use that goal to <strong>Gather Your Crowd.<\/strong> You turn your crowd into a powerful network by <strong>Building Connections.<\/strong> And you and your newly-powerful network accomplish that goal by <strong>Taking Small Steps.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter wp-image-12781 size-medium\" src=\"https:\/\/ac7af1a7.ithemeshosting.com.php72-38.lan3-1.websitetestlink.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/12\/Idea-Friendly-Method-300x169.jpg\" alt=\"The 3 parts of the Idea Friendly Method are Gather Your Crowd, Build Connections, and Take Small Steps\" width=\"300\" height=\"169\" srcset=\"https:\/\/smallbizsurvival.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/12\/Idea-Friendly-Method-300x169.jpg 300w, https:\/\/smallbizsurvival.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/12\/Idea-Friendly-Method-768x432.jpg 768w, https:\/\/smallbizsurvival.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/12\/Idea-Friendly-Method-800x450.jpg 800w, https:\/\/smallbizsurvival.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/12\/Idea-Friendly-Method.jpg 1200w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><\/p>\n<h2>How to apply the Idea Friendly Method in your town<\/h2>\n<p>To help you learn and apply the Idea Friendly Method in your town, Deb Brown and I have created a video and action guide at SaveYour.Town. You&#8217;ll learn the Idea Friendly Method in depth, hear examples of how it&#8217;s used, and learn specific behaviors to create the most lasting change.<\/p>\n<p>It&#8217;s free to NADO attendees in October 2019 only.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/saveyour.town\/gift\/\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter wp-image-12303 size-full\" src=\"https:\/\/smallbizsurvival.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/06\/register_button_green-e1540748640922.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"150\" height=\"47\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p><em>New to SmallBizSurvival.com? Take the\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/smallbizsurvival.com\/guided-tour.html\">Guided Tour<\/a>. Like what you see?\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/smallbizsurvival.com\/get-updates.html\">Get our updates<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>&nbsp; We all hold different titles, work in different fields or sectors, but we\u2019re all fighting for the future of our towns\u00a0and rural places. We want to be a place our children and grandchildren and our nieces and nephews can live a good life.\u00a0Quality of Life, a prosperous future for our towns, these are things [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":12782,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","episode_type":"","audio_file":"","cover_image":"","cover_image_id":"","duration":"","filesize":"","date_recorded":"","explicit":"","block":"","filesize_raw":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[14,22,9,8,36],"tags":[358],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/smallbizsurvival.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/12\/IF-Sign.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/smallbizsurvival.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12775"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/smallbizsurvival.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/smallbizsurvival.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/smallbizsurvival.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/smallbizsurvival.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12775"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/smallbizsurvival.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12775\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13332,"href":"https:\/\/smallbizsurvival.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12775\/revisions\/13332"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/smallbizsurvival.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/12782"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/smallbizsurvival.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12775"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/smallbizsurvival.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12775"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/smallbizsurvival.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12775"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}