S6:E11 - How Thinking Like a Futurist Can Benefit Small Towns with Rebecca Ryan

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We're so glad you're here. Our guest on today's episode is Rebecca Ryan. Rebecca is amazing. And I have to admit that I got the pleasure to meet Rebecca. I got to hear her speak at an HR event hosted by the Fargo-Moorhead-West Fargo Chamber of Commerce, specifically encouraged by their director, Executive Director Shannon Fuls. So shout out to Shannon. She was just like, "You two need to meet." And I don't think it's just because we share a name, although that's very cool. And so I went to this event and I listened to Rebecca speak, and honestly, the second she walked into the room, I was like, "Pretty sure this is gonna be a thing." Which makes it sound really weird, but literally, like, I'm just, energy is such a big deal to me, and in fact, that's a little bit of what we talk about. Rebecca is, she's a futurist. Did you know that was a thing you could do? I am gonna be honest, I genuinely didn't. So we talk a bit about that. She's just brilliant. And so I share a bit that, you know, I got to sit and listen to one of her keynote presentations, and I didn't wanna, you know, go point by point through that because I want you to hire her. Like, if you have like a regional community event where, you want kind of fresh and innovative approaches to just community planning, community development, economic development, you know, just, she was there to speak to businesses, but so much of what she shared, again, I have this weird thing where I believe that companies that are great places to work, there's like parallels between those places and communities that are great places to live. But Rebecca would be great. So we isolated just a couple of specific things that I really thought could add value to you as our listeners, our beloved audience, you know, you're out here trying to do probably something either kind of unique or innovative or progressive in a small community, or trying to make things happen. And I just felt that Rebecca, the kind of the research, the data, that lens that she brings to the work, and also just a heart and passion for people, I was so excited to bring this message to you and to bring Rebecca's story through our podcast. I just feel so grateful. I think, I believe in kismet. I believe in that like magic of meeting special people, and she's definitely one of them. So let's talk about the future through a futurist's perspective. Please enjoy this episode with my friend Rebecca Ryan.

Well, hey, Rebecca Ryan, welcome to the show, friend. It's so good to see you.

Oh, thank you for inviting me. It's a really— it is a privilege.

You know, um, I don't know if this happens to you, so I'll just ask if this happens to you, but, um, I often have people say, oh, you got to meet this person, right? That happens to me a lot, and I— and usually that goes really well for me, um, and that's how you came into my world. And I, like, I loved you from the moment, like, you walked in and I was like, okay, well, she's fantastic. And already my head had been filled with how great you were. But even just the way that you walked up to me, the way that you were, your presence is delicious, which is a very specific word, but it's really good.

Oh, thank you. Well, I think, listen, we have our names in common. So yeah, right? Like recognizes like, baby.

Yeah. Yeah. It's, you're just, you're, you're very smart, but you're very warm. Um, and I don't find that all the time. I don't, especially speakers, right? Like that's was the, the situation where I got to meet you was you walked in, I knew you were the keynote speaker, um, for an event in Fargo. And, um, I'm not, I'm not, I'm not gonna say that I'm hard on speakers or critical of them, but I, I, I don't often meet people that are just so warm in their affect, like you're really special. So I didn't mean to be like, let's just goo all over you as we start, but that's how I feel.

Well, it's very nice. It's very nice of you to say. I know what you mean about speakers or experts or whatever, you know, right? Who often have the stage. Been around a fair number of those folks myself. I think every listener can identify with that phenomenon.

Right. Yeah. It's just, it's just icky. And so it was, it was really, really fun to listen to you. And I, I told you that I did, I just made like copious notes, um, as you, as you spoke. And it was a brief presentation too. It's not like it was, I had like all this extended time with you. I was like, oh my God, I like wanna, I wanna like drive to Madison and just hole up with you. You're just so fascinating. So I, I think like when I think about, okay, why, why did I, when I met you, did I think my listeners need to meet this woman? So I just wanna share a few of the 2 things that hit me. Um, first of all, I mean, I was so taken with— and I don't know if this is something— well, I think what this should be something we can do is actually link this in the show notes— but the Phoebe— we'll talk about that momentarily. Um, we'll talk about what that is.

Wait to hear your results.

Oh my gosh, I know.

Just for the listeners, we did not do like a pre-call interview, so I'm about to be surprised in this, in this. Well, that's why I don't wait, right?

That's why I don't like pre, pre-episode or pre-recording interviews, because I like real responses. So we'll talk about that. But I think so. And at the time when you were on stage, you didn't necessarily— I think you probably called it out. No, you didn't. You just, you just touched on it, um, as you were talking about being a futurist and what it means to be a futurist. And I remember thinking like, what is that? And that was like one of the first things I asked you too, was like, what are you talking about? Right? You know, um, so we're gonna get into that. So we're gonna get into the Phoebe, and then, and then, um, as an organizational development person, right? So I like this idea of getting to go into companies and helping them optimize culture is really what I focus on. And then thinking about that now in community, there were so many things that you said, Rebecca, that I was just like, what I love it too is I, there's a couple things that I like live for in my life. Um, first time feels, I live for that. Like, like getting that feeling of like, oh, I've never done this before. Right? Like trying new things is one of my favorite. Oh yeah.

Cool.

You get novelty.

I love that too.

Yes.

I love novelty, but I also I love a genuine brain spark where something hits my brain and I've never— like, I feel like I've never heard it before. That happened listening to you. And that does— I feel like that's— it's probably something I chase because I just genuinely love the feeling so much. But what it was— and we can bring any of what you shared in Fargo that day to this conversation, but the two things were the Phoebe is one, and then the second was this idea of— casting three separate futures. And like, in the— in that kind of the, the broad scope of visioning, right? You talked about three separate futures, and I just, I was so taken with that idea. And I, I just think there's so much— the context— and any— we can get into kind of your work, you know, for the listener, obviously, like, get some background, talk a little bit about what it is you do. But I right away was just like, what would it look like if small communities could adopt some of these things. What would shift? What would change? And so that's, that's the two things I'm super interested to talk about. But please give us the background, like, take us through as much as your journey as you feel like sharing, and I'll pop in with, with questions as we go.

Hmm.

Well, I— hmm, it's hard to talk about yourself. Um, I heard this, I heard Cal Newport once say, and I really respect the work he's done on focus time and, you know, how to be productive and make your unique contribution, etc. Anyway, I heard him say once that a bunch of valedictorians, like college valedictorians, were interviewed about, you know, how they became valedictorians so that they could design study skills for every other student, you know, to like increase their GPA. And Cal was like, nobody really knows. None of those valedictorians actually knows like when they self-report, you might walk away thinking it comes down to color-coded folders. And he's like, I guarantee if you just use color-coded folders, you're not going to be the valedictorian. And I— so I'm just aware of how limited I probably am in talking about my own sort of arc. But what I will say is, to the point of brain spark, you know, like when you're— I had a professor in college who was an economics professor and macroeconomics. And he really sparked my brain so much so that I took a class from him every single semester. And one of the degrees I ended up with was an economics degree. I did not go to college to get an econ degree, but it was that spark, you know?

Yeah.

And so again, like, I love— I always love like a throughline or a takeaway. And so for every single one of us, there's a takeaway. And in just that, it's like, don't dismiss something out of hand. And also So if you're an educator listening to this, oh my goodness. You, I mean, truly I feel the same way. Like I found myself interested in things I never, I never would've like just on the surface thought, oh, this is inter— like I didn't take the class out of the interest of the subject matter.

Right.

But just the right teacher, the right person framing it out. Yeah. That's so special. That's really cool. Econ. Econ doesn't, I, I'm like interested in it and I, it's al— you know what econ is for me, Rebecca? It's one of those topics where I'm like, I, I really wish that I understood more about it. And like, if I were to try to figure it out, like, where should I go and how should I do that? But that's really cool. So you had an econ degree. What were you there to study though? Like, if that was kind of your supplemental thing, what did you— what did you set out to do?

I was there for poli sci, so I ended up with a political science— I ended up with a double major in economics and international relations. And I think the thread to being a futurist is at least in macroeconomics, I've always been very interested in trends. So the best example was, you know, in the United States we have this trend of a huge cohort of baby boomers and then a much smaller cohort of Generation Xers and then a bigger cohort of millennials or echo boomers. And so, and I happen to be a Gen Xer, so I'm in this smaller cohort sandwiched between these two bigger ones. And it's been so interesting to see how systems and communities have changed as these generations sort of move through, you know, their different life stages. And that was the other big aha I made in the early part of my career was I loved to read about demographics. There were demographics magazines I read at the time. For you younger listeners, a magazine is this thing that used to be delivered to your mailbox. It was like a very, a very small book.

It was very cool is what it was.

Yeah, yeah. I was—

magazines, right, right.

So when I started to make the connection to trends, like, oh, I'm really interested in trends. So my career started— in fact, my business is still called Next Generation Consulting because I was consulting on demographic trends. And then when the Great Recession happened, Nobody really cared about young people anymore. Everybody was like, we're gonna just fire young people because we're trying to save the ship from going down. And then I found out that there's this field called professional foresight, you know, strategic foresight, and you could get a degree in this at the University of Houston. It was like the only place in the US you could get this degree. So I went, I just went and did their certificate program during the Great Recession and You know, now I'm more of a futurist than just a demographer or an economist.

Yeah, it's so interesting though. So like, how did you— how did you find out about that? Like, were you— I mean, how did you find out about that? I mean, because you were— you were— were you in Wisconsin then?

Yeah, I was. Okay. So I just— because I love magazines and I had subscribed to this magazine, I think it was called Futures. And, you know, leafing through it, I found this program and then I called one of my mentors and said, do you know anything about this Foresight program? And he said, oh, is that the one run by Peter Bishop at the University of Houston? I said, yes. He's like, Peter's great. You should do that. And I was like, wow, okay. I didn't even know this was a profession. I didn't know this was like a thing.

Right.

I don't think, I don't think it's widely known even yet. Now, I would guess anyway.

Right. I mean, and I think the reason is because our, our systems in the United States Like, think about your high school, your college if you went to college. Most people are required to take history classes.

Correct.

No one is required to take a futures class. We do not offer them.

So, and, and what a shame. I mean, does that feel true? Like for you? Like what a sh— it feels like such a shame, such a miss. Because, so I would, I'm, I'm wondering this whole idea, notion, and kind of anecdote that past performance is the strongest indicator of future performance.

How does that hit you?

As a futurist?

Well, past performance under the exact same conditions.

Yeah, right.

Might indicate future performance, but I feel like the conditions are never the same.

Yeah. Well, and I, you know, you're literally talking to somebody. I, so I live in a town of 1,800 people, um, and I'm 110 miles from Fargo. Uh, so in a, in a, you know, in a, in a rural small community. One of the things that all of us in these kinds of, you know, again, I, I'm in this weird, I create, I tried to create my own path, uh, just because there wasn't a, a clear lane for me to be in, in my little town. Um, but if you're in community or economic development or, you know, anything where you're trying to kind of move your community forward, one of the most common phrases that we hear is, that's not gonna work. Or we don't, you know, or we don't do things like that around here, or we tried that once. You know, granted, it might have been 15, 20 years ago, but we tried that and it didn't work. And I constantly want to push back against that and just say, but pick any one variable. The people are different. The technology, if nothing else, the technology around us is constantly evolving. Even if people are staying kind of the same, the world that we're living in, the water that we're swimming in, never stays the same. So I just don't understand why and how people are so quick to dismiss things, but that's That's why I think I wanted to bring your perspective to our listeners. To especially— Oh, it's okay. You've got a companion.

There's Pip. She's 13 pounds, but there are certain dogs she just does not like in the neighborhood. And she's letting us know that one of them is walking by.

Right. And she is bigger than her 13 pounds, I would guess. Yeah.

She thinks she is.

Yeah, for sure.

Like all small dogs.

Like all small dogs. It's great. Um, so that's why I was so excited. I thought like you have such a, and, and the trends that you share heard in that presentation that day, I was just like, I want everybody— the only thing is I want people to bring you to their communities or bring you to their state. So I don't want to just do a rundown of it, but I just think of all the things you've seen, what are some practical things that small communities— what can we start to do differently so that we kind of get out of that loop of only doing— because like, seriously, how does anything new ever happen, Rebecca, if all we do is what we've always done.

Exactly. You know, you know, I want to, I want to, I want to go back to something you said earlier about when people say, well, that'll never work here, or we tried that once. And, you know, like, you are so right. Like, pick any variable. If the conditions have changed, this now might be the right time for something.

Right.

And I learned— so change management is this whole field that I am only now starting to really understand, which it's so critical because when we help a community define a vision for itself, there's no way it's going to get to that vision if some things don't change within the community, you know.

Right.

So, so, so once we cast the vision, it's like, okay, now how do we execute the change? And what I learned from an associate who's a change management expert expert is she said, when we look at system failure, like when change fails, when change fails, we look at these things in this order. And I'm going to list the order and then I want to kind of just— I think it's going to help. So the first thing they look at is the system. Is the system set up so that the change won't work? The second thing they look at is, are the processes— what are the processes that we use? And the third and final thing they look at is the people. And I'll be honest, when, for example, in my small business, when something goes wrong in my small business, I often look first at the person. It's so easy to like say, well, you must have done something wrong. But 9 times out of 10, upon further evaluation, it wasn't that person at all. It's that we don't have the process written up, you know, or their software systems aren't updated, or there's— so system, process, person, in that order. And so I think, you know, like a helpful thing for communities who are trying to change is if you want a better future, right, you're going to need systems and processes and people who are in alignment with that. So a system might be, you know, do we have a system as a smaller community? Do we have a system to be able to find the grants that can help us fund things? You know, is there somebody waking up up every month just scanning, like, what are the grants that are available to us? And then do we have a process for writing those grants? You know, do we have somebody on call who can go and bird dog those? And if we get that grant, who is going to help administer it? What are the projects that we want to— that we want to work on? So system process people.

Hey, I love that.

It's been so helpful. Um, and then, you know, when you— when you're thinking about your future. So I'm thinking about a smaller community, like a community your size of 1,600 people. And I think there, in my experience, I've only been doing this for a couple of decades, but there are some things that are like time—

well, I'm always learning. That was awesome. Only a couple of decades, folks. Like, yeah, there are people who've been doing this for a long time.

Sure.

Yeah, sure.

Yeah. Um, and sometimes experience is a curse. Because you think, oh, I've seen it all, I have all the answers. That's not—

you lose the hunger. Yeah, you lose the hunger and the curiosity, right, that needs to accompany something like this. Yeah, I totally get that. Yeah, you don't strike me that way at all.

So, well, may it never be so. When I stop learning, I think it's, it's curtains for this one.

But me too.

Yeah, see, we are like cut—

the Rebecca's, the Rebecca's cease to exist.

Exactly. Yeah, may it never be so. So, right, so I think there are 3 things that will determine whether a community, a small community, can become a better version of itself. That doesn't mean a bigger version of itself.

Amen. Right.

Just, just, just better, you know, a better place for the current residents, a place where people feel like, oh, I can, I can prosper here, you know, I can, I can meet my life's goals here, not just my business goals, you know, but my life's goals here. One is, does the community have, I would say, a vision, but at least a sense of what it wants to be, you know? And, and so often people don't think about what they want in this community. So maybe one neighbor says, I want privacy, and the other neighbor says, I want a small-town feel. I don't know that those things are both possible, you know, right? So what is the vision that we have for our community? So vision is the first one, or statement of purpose, a vision or statement of purpose. The second one is, do we have trust? You know, do we, do we share a sense that, um, our town manager or our town clerk, um, and, you know, whoever the biggest developer is in the community or the biggest farmer is in the community, whomever it is, right, but that Is there trust among the sort of de facto leaders, the people with power or money or influence in the community? Do they trust each other? Because if they're not, it's just Hatfield and McCoys, and that's just on rinse repeat, right?

Okay.

I have so many things I want to say. I want to hear your third one though, and then we'll kind of go back because—

Third one's capacity. So I was just in a small town in Texas maybe 6 months ago. And they really wanted a reboot for their community. And they looked at all of their assets. And one of the assets that they had wasn't about people and it wasn't about money. They had this old, like, defunct train station that had an icehouse attached to it going back way, way, way long ago.

Right.

They were like, this is actually in such a great part of town. This could really be something. So they use that little project as the reinvention project for their quote-unquote downtown, because it's, it's almost too small of a town to have a downtown, but like for their sort of new town square. And it's now a place where, you know, like the, the indoor air-conditioned capacity can probably hold about 80 people comfortably, and the outdoor capacity can easily hold 150 people comfortably. And they did a nice job with like the finishes on things. So it's a place where people from outside of town want to come and get married and have all their photos taken. It's just so charming. And so they had this latent capacity in their community, sort of the raw materials of like, this could be something. So you have a vision of like, hey, we want to refresh for our community. We need like a new start. You've got trust among the people who are like, alright, what could we do it? Like, let's try to do it. And then you've got this— these assets or this capacity. So those are the 3 things. What do you— now tell me, what are you thinking about?

Yeah, okay. So my first question, I want to just take them in order. Um, so how does a community— because I don't— I'm going to tell you, I, I have struggled with this. Like, this Growing Small Towns is the name of the show, it is the name of our nonprofit organization, it is— I started it with The hope that we would help the communities that we serve be places people love to call home. Okay. That's like my broad— I just want people wherever you're living to actually love where you're, where you are enough that you would call it home, that when you're inside your home and out on the streets in your community, it would feel like you belong there. There's a lot to that, right? But the growth for me is not about growing necessarily in population, but it's growing in our love for place. Our understanding of ourselves, like a growth mindset kind of growth, right? Where we're always learning, we're always evolving, we're always changing, and we're open to that. So that's the— so just to tell you, like, that's what I wanted to create here. And I felt in my heart like, okay, all the things I know that make companies great places to live, if we were to translate that over to the community, there has to be parallels. The things that make a company a great place to work, there have to be things that would make a community a great place to live, right? So this was biologist, hypothetical, and I wanted to refresh and rehab this big beautiful building that was my grandparents' when I was a kid. So this, like, all of these things kind of mesh together. I think the challenge of, of visioning in a community setting— I, here's, I'll tell you some of the things I feel like I've bumped up against and help me process what we could maybe do differently, because one of the things that I find challenging as we translate that work from, because the, the biggest difference between a company and a community is that there's like a boss, like the buck stops somewhere on the community side, which, or company side, which simply means there's a person that does get to dictate, right? What happens on the community side, that authority is diffused. It's like, you can't say your mayor, it, you know, necessarily is that person, right? Um, and so you end up What I, what I have felt over and over, and I did local economic development, Rebecca, that as, as part of this journey, this was, this is one of the hardest things for me. And I, I, I've never, it's so weird. I've never asked anybody else this question. So here you go. New for you. I think your perspective will be fascinating. I have felt that, um, when I've tried to translate my energy, enthusiasm, love of people collaborative and kind of forward-focused visionary energy. We're gonna come back to the Phoebe, uh, in a little bit, right? To community, all of a sudden there's all these things that I have to do to do it correctly, like engaging stakeholders. So your stakeholders end up being these specific roles that people have. So like you have to have your mayor, you have to have your city council, you have to have your economic development, you have to have your chamber, you have to have your superintendent of schools, you have to have your police chief. Yeah.

Whatever.

Like, people have decided who has to be at the table, whether their energy and passion aligns with mine or not. And then I find it really challenging because I have a hard time managing my own energy, right?

Right.

As the person trying to bring people together, that's what I find so challenging about community work. What, what, if anything, would you say to me or anybody else that's that's maybe trying to lead that group, you know? Is it, is it about specific role, or what does, what does a meaningful visioning process in community look like?

Yeah, I think, you know, I, I think that, um, that way of thinking about it, like, of having the roles, the people who hold the roles in the room, that feels kind of like economic development 1.0 or 2.0, right? And my thinking has really evolved on this over the, over the years. So I remember turning down a project in an amazing community, like a community that would have been a real, like, you know, sort of feather in my cap. Wow, you worked with them. Because the first thing that the client wanted me to do was sit down with every one of the 55 people on their board who were all of the CEOs and leaders and have these interviews with them. And I was like, I would rather put a pencil in my eye because most of these leaders don't think about the long-term future of the community. They are paid to think about the domain that they are uniquely responsible for. So, so I think sort of lesson number one is When you ask people to think about their, the long-term future without a real structured way of doing that, you've already kind of lost. Because most, like we said, most people take history classes, they don't take futures classes. Most people probably aren't as visionary as you are, Rebecca. So they're not thinking about what this could be, you know. So what they do when they don't have an answer is they default to what they do know. Which is the past.

Yeah, right.

The past. They know their history. So we take really great care when we're designing processes to get to vision of who we let in the room and who we don't invite, because it's kind of back to that— if you've read the book The Art of Gathering by Priya Parker, this is—

I knew you were going to say that. And if you didn't, I was going to say your purpose is your bouncer. That's, that's the thing, right? Oh, I love that. I love— I like— see, I just like falling more in love with you the more I talk to you. I just knew, like, this is— because I, I can't tell you though how, like— and this is, this is getting more personal on my end of this than it needs to be, but it's just—

I—

you said that not everybody is as visionary as me, and that sounds awesome to some degree. I want to be very clear in saying this, that That is maybe true, and that doesn't make me better than anybody. And I genuinely don't believe that. Like, there are things I absolutely do not do well because I'm so wired for visioning and collaboration. Those are the things I am absolutely wired for. But it does make this piece— visioning is kind of as it sounds, it requires that kind of thinking. And I have felt it's lonely and it's, um, I feel crazy a lot, like truly. And, and then I have to like constantly bolster my personal kind of network of humans to stay kind of up. Um, that has been such a challenging part of this work for me. And, and what you just said is what I've always felt is likely the right way to do it. And there's just not a lot of— there's not a lot of history or like precedent of communities doing it that way that I can look to, right? To say, no, I promise this is, this is the way we could think about this. It's kind of just like, yeah, you don't, you don't even have the right people in the room, or you aren't even, you know, uh, you're just— so I'm so thankful that you're just saying that because again, I'm not trying to be right, I'm trying to help us unlock the possibilities and the future. Like, where are we going? And where do we need to go?

Yep.

And it's really hard to get people there, you know? It's just extremely hard work.

And it's even harder to get people there if their talents and energy and strengths don't lie. Like, if you ask me to come in and shoot left-handed free throws, I played professional basketball in Europe. I know my way around a basketball court, but that is the wrong ask of me. Like, I cannot shoot left-handed free throws. So it's like, just because I'm the chief of police doesn't mean I'm the right person to think long-term about the future.

Oh my God. Thank you so much. Just thank you for saying that, because I think the other thing too is there's a lot of people, I think, that listen to this, that listen to this show that are trying to do these kind of traditional roles differently, right? Whether it's chambers of commerce or economic development or, or even running a business., and they're involved in a board, right? Because that's so common. And, and giving them permission to let go of that way of doing it. I actually was on a panel once and we were talking about this, and this woman said like, well, what I would do first is gather stakeholders. And she went through and said like all, all the names of all the people that need to be in the room. And then the mic gets passed back to me and I said, well, what if the superintendent of schools is an asshole? You know, like, I just— I was like, what if, what if every time they enter a room, the air gets sucked out of it?

Yep. They don't get to come to the visioning, right? Why don't get to come to the visioning?

Thank you. I think, I think that's really important because I think what this ends up falling into, and maybe you have a take on this too, is how is visioning different from strategic planning? Because I think those— that might be where, um, not the confusion, but I think sometimes we might mix those things together. And if, as long as the word strategy's in it, there's this like assumption that it's forward focus. And I don't know that that's true. So what would be like, what's, yeah, what's your take on that?

I think, you know, my take, because I talk about this almost every time I have the opportunity, but you know, when, when I was in Fargo, I mean, one of the questions that I talked about is you have to decide if you're trying to create a place that your grandparents would be proud of or that your grandchildren would, would be proud of. So from my perspective, most strategic plans are things that our grandparents would recognize because, you know, the— this year's strategic plan is often based on your greatest hits, you know. So you look backwards and you say, well, what was last year's strategic plan. And did we hit our goals? Did we not? Can we do everything a little bit better, faster, cheaper? You like the most lazy way to do strategic planning is in a Word document. Just use find and replace. Find this year in the, you know, this year's date in the title and just replace it with 2 years from now or 3 years from now. And that's how you're going to update your strategic plan. And if you think that all the way through, if your current strategic plan is based on last year's strategic plan, last year's strategic plan is probably based on the year before it and the year before it and the year before it. So what your strategic plan actually is, is a rinse and repeat of a historic document.

The Growing Small Towns show is recorded locally at the Growing Small Towns podcast studio located in Oakes, North Dakota. It's produced by Pheasant Canteen Studio in Aberdeen, South Dakota, with marketing support from Cassidy Johnston in Canyon City, Colorado. Our intro music was created and produced exclusively for Growing Small Towns by James Bergman, singer and songwriter from Fargo, North Dakota. Local and small, it's what we support and it's who we love. Get your community a shout out on the podcast call 701-203-3337 and share your small town success that you just don't feel is being celebrated quite enough and let us shout you out. You can also share your biggest people challenge and we'll dedicate an episode to offering ideas to help. Hell, you can basically tell us anything and we'll do what we can to answer. We can't wait to hear from you. Right. And that just kills my soul. It does. I'm just like, oh my goodness. It doesn't inspire me. And again, I'm a person. I realize that I'm not it. It's very hard to— I think, again, I'm saying things out loud on this episode that I've never really said out loud before. You don't have to release this episode.

This can just be something Private between us.

Don't feel, I mean, wouldn't that be, wouldn't that be a thing? I, I think, I think the thing is, is I, I don't want everybody who is in, like, has that kind of need for novelty. So just describing how I just described myself to you in what, in this brief conversation so far, where I love novelty and I love brain sparks and I'm, I'm thirsty for learning and I love people, right? And I love visioning. I don't want every small town to not be hospitable to people that move through the world like that. Right. It's not just about saving me, right? But it's literally saying if our communities operate in a way that those people can't exist and thrive, then what?

Yeah.

You know what I mean? And so again, it's not about me. It's just that was why everything you talked about just It literally was like one giant brain spark. Well, you know, I was like, this is what we need in small towns is a futurist to come in and be like, hey, this is what we need to be thinking about.

Yeah. So let's— we— you had wanted to talk about the Phoebe, and I think there's kind of an elegant way to pull these two things together. So perfect. The Phoebe— Phoebe is an acronym that stands for the Focused Energy Balance Indicator. It was invented by a colleague Dr. Virginia Whitelaw. And basically, if you've— if anybody listening to this has ever done the Gallup StrengthsFinder, you know, it looks at where your strengths are, because research shows that when you're working in your strengths, you are 10 times— not 10%— 10 times more productive. So the really enlightened, you know, organizations will look at the they're, you know, at a team level, maybe like, let's look at this team strengths. And oh, let's stop thinking about job titles or like specific roles. Like, if Rebecca is better at writing grants, and that's the kind of thing that sucks the life out of Yasmin, then let's not have Yasmin worry about that. Let's have her do something where her strengths can really shine. You can get so much more done. People are so much happier. Yeah, there are still some things you have to do that you don't love to do, but overall your cup is much more full. So if you know Gallup StrengthsFinder, the Phoebe is, is similar in this way. It looks at your natural home pattern, like where your energy is highest, and there are only 4 buckets, right? And, and each of them is actually tied to building a great town. So the first bucket is visionary. So these are the people like the Steve Jobs of the world who say like, oh my gosh, imagine if you could put 1,000 songs in your pocket. That was outrageous at the time he uttered it, and now most of us are walking around with access to many more than 1,000 songs in our pockets. Under then the next level, the next kind of set of energies, and when I say next, I'm kind of going in the order that I learned them.

Neither one is more important. Yeah, it's not a hierarchy.

Exactly.

So the next energy pattern would be the collaborator, and Rebecca has indicated that she's a visionary collaborator. So the collaborator is the kind of person who can get the team hyped up and moving forward. So they're the kind of person who, you know, if you need to get things done and it's going to require people, you ask your collaborator like, who do we need on the team? What roles should they play? And can you help me get them together? So that's the— oh my God, the collaborator is in their happy place when they are working with a team. Then you've got the organizer. The organizer is the one who says, give me your chaos, I will make you a spreadsheet. And that spreadsheet is a plan, and which is great because we need that plan. To get big things done. So, so, and then the final energy pattern is the driver energy pattern. This is the person who says, we have 4 downs to get into the end zone. These are the plays we're running and nothing is gonna hold us back. So they are just— you've all met these people who I'm putting my fist into my hand right now, like they are gonna get it. Get it done. So, the way this translates to a community vision is, you know, the visionary people need to be free to think their big thoughts, their big what-if thoughts. What if we could do that? If you introduce too much organizer energy into that too early, you will kill the vision. Because the organizer's like, well, how are we going to do that? I can't get that into a spreadsheet. I don't know how I'm going to measure success for that, the organizer has to come along a little bit later. So the visionaries get your vision kind of up and cooking, and then you start to put the other energy patterns around it. Okay, well, what would success look like? You probably want your driver and your organizer to map that out. And then, okay, how are we going to get there? You probably want your collaborator and your organizer to kind of map that out. But when all 4 of those energy patterns are working together, wow, you have got some strength to, you know, to take on any challenge.

Okay. So thank you for the overview of that. When I, when you first talked about it and I was listening to you in the audience, it felt, it felt aligned with the DiSC profile.

Interesting.

Some, somewhat, I would say. Um, because there's only 4, which I also just wanna say, like, I, I do love a, I do love an assessment tool, Rebecca. Like, I just, I just think they're so fascinating. Fascinating. Um, but this one, what I— I'm gonna— I'm just gonna express as a person that's done Myers-Briggs, I've done the DiSC, I don't— I've done the Enneagram, I've never studied it, right? But like, I've trained on these other things. StrengthsFinders is a whole certification that you can get, right? And I, I, I, I think it's great. Any company that chooses one and then kind of decides to implement it however that looks, I think that's great, whatever. Um, but this one, what I loved about it was I think there's something very powerful about the word energy being, being what we're talking about, because it's, it literally is like the, it's life force. Energy is life force. Like my soul's on fire when my ener— when my energy, my natural state energy is on full throttle. And it's the best feeling in the world. And so what you just described, um, I, I personally experienced, and I'm just gonna say it like, this isn't, this isn't because anybody did anything wrong, but I tried to cram my visionary collaborator or collaborator visionary, because that basically, it was like, you could be either of these because they're both, they're both pretty, pretty high, right? And I tried to cram that into a traditional thinking board with a traditional, you know, economic development. It was just kind of like, this is how we've historically done these things. And I was like, oh, and we don't need that, you know. And literally, you know, it was, I was, I think I was probably almost offensive to them. Now, nobody said that, but I mean, I definitely— and I was very much like, oh, it was all— I, I kind of— I've made a joke about, about it because it's how I cope, um, like just humor. But I'd be like, I swear to God, there are moments where people will see me coming and they'll be like, oh crap, like, here, here all of that comes again, right?

Yeah.

And, and it's like funny, but it's not because a person can't stay there. Like it, it really was. I, I had such a hard 2025 because of this, like just that reckoning of like, where does this energy, where does my energy, where does it, where is it best suiting? Not only me, not only my business, but my community, my family, all of the things, right? So I, we will put the link to the Phoebe assessment in the show notes so anybody can take it because I think also I've said this so many times. You know, burnout is like, um, it's like an epidemic right now. So much so that the Surgeon General is even talking about loneliness, you know, and just what's happening with it. So I think the more people— my, my dream and my goal and hope is that people will understand themselves first. And I think that's a big ask for us in the Midwest. Holy crap, right? It's like, actually, look, it's okay. Look in there. It's okay. Like, whatever's in there is okay cuz it's human, right? Assess it, figure it out, figure yourself out. I think the Phoebe can be a tool to do that. And then it, the hard, the harder, maybe hard, equally hard. I don't know. You do the internal alignment and then it's like externally aligning, right? Saying, okay, now is where I'm showing up, is where I'm giving my time, is where I'm working, is where I, whatever, right? Is there an energy match? Am I allowed to bring the fullness of my energy to this thing? And can you just imagine, Rebecca, the difference if more of us— I'm not even saying it has to be everybody because there's going to be people that are like, I hate everything coming out of your mouth, Rebecca. I understand it. I get it. Right. But the people that decide to do that work, I actually can close my eyes and imagine just like lights coming on.. And I just feel like the whole world would improve if more of us were doing these things. And maybe that's ridiculous, but that's where we're at. That's where I'm at. That's why this work matters to me. That's why I'll continue to do this show. I think there are people that everybody listening to this is going to— they're going to take what they take from it. But that's why I'm here. That's what I think my actual purpose is.

I think that's your purpose too.

Thanks. And thank you for just— I mean, it was like I said, I met you and I thought, oh, okay, she's like my homegirl. Like, I can feel this. Like, I can feel the— and also just the, the intellect and the intelligence. Like, you're so smart. And that these are, these are ideas and concepts that I really do want to see more communities embrace and try. Just trying something differently, you know? So, okay, so we talked about vision. What was the second thing? Because the third was capacity, right?

Yeah, vision, trust.

Trust.

Okay, what do you— what, how do you, how do you improve the levels of trust in a community?

This is a, this is a great question. You said that when you started this, you were thinking what makes great places to work and how can we translate that into communities? And so you— I'm sure you know that trust is one of the things that makes companies great places to work. When there are high levels of trust, it is a very sticky workplace. So another economic development professional, Amy Holloway, just wrote a book called Trust Builders. It is on fire.

And she's—

she's worked—

yeah, she's worked in economic development about as long as I have. And she— I'm so proud of her because she's, she's like coming out and she's saying, I've been doing this very specific kind of work for a long time. And I have long suspected that the one thing we never measure, we never talk about, trust, is one of the invisible like force multipliers. And so the book has a couple things that anybody would benefit from. One is an index of these trust-building characteristics. I found it very interesting, and there are some areas I really need to improve. She also has an assessment. You can do the assessment, but the bulk of the book is interviews with some of the most decorated economic development professionals talking about how they themselves build trust in their communities. So that book, I think, would be an awesome book for like any board to read. Mm-hmm.

Oh, that's fantastic. So we will absolutely link that cuz I do, I think, I think I, I know that, I know that trust is, is the force multiplier. I, and again, I always come at it though and it sounds anecdotal, you know, like if it's not like researched and, and I'm just like, yeah, no, I, it's, but I can feel it. But that's not always an answer, right? So I love that she's taken the time, written a book. And also I think like there's a lot in economic development traditionally that would break down trust. Like, just the way, the way that they behave, kind of holding things close to the vest, the lack of vulnerability, the lack of transparency. I see sometimes, I see those things in pockets in our community, and I just think, oh, you have no idea. I, I often say to people, like, if we communicate with a lot of white space, meaning there's a whole paper and we give them 5 lines of communication, that white white space gets filled, and it gets filled with whatever bullshit people— I mean, whatever they're conjuring up in their brains. So like, your big fear of like, well, we might tell them too much or over-communicate, air quotes, it's like, that's actually just not a thing.

It's not a thing.

It's not a thing.

One of my, one of my friends, um, I met him through work, um, he's an economic developer in Western Michigan, now. He's done a lot of different things, and when he took this job, he made the decision that they weren't going to assign code names to projects anymore. Because, you know, that's a big thing. You assign these code names to keep everything wrappy-wrappy.

Hush-hush.

So, and they shared, they shared the spreadsheet across the entire team and the entire division, and he said they are having having exponentially better results because they're just within their staff. They're being open. They're being transparent. They're talking about things freely and clearly with each other. It's, it's again, a force multiplier.

I actually think that that's part of the reason I don't, I couldn't like excel in economic development kind of the way I was doing it. I am not wired to do that.

You're a collaborator.

Yeah, to do that, to like, to to have to do all of the mental hurdles and kind of mental gymnastics to think through who I'm in front of now and which audience. Like the— yeah, it's almost like code switching or like— yes, I just— I'm not wired for it. I'm wired for openness, transparency, you know, like it's—

yeah, being political is a skill set and some people just don't have it.

I don't think I have it. I don't think I have it. I can be diplomatic, like I can be diplomatic and tactful, But truly like pandering, I, I, I don't do that well. I just don't do that well.

So you need somebody else who does that, cuz there are plenty of people who do. Again, work in your strengths, you know?

Yes. Yes. Yeah. Okay. So then the third thing is capacity.

Mm-hmm.

How does a community go about determining, is it just kind of asset mapping? You kind of alluded to that. So yeah. What do people, what should they be thinking about?

Yeah, they definitely should be thinking about assets. We did a— during the time of COVID we did some asset mapping here in Madison where I live, and it was so sweet because we were doing it around everything that had happened when George Floyd was murdered. And we were like, how can we be a more welcoming community? And we had this huge venue like full of people, everybody being so careful but well-intentioned. And they were doing this asset mapping using the Strategic Doing framework. And I remember this one guy saying like that for his asset, he was— he looked like he was maybe in his 60s or 70s. You know, he had let all of his white hair grow out, which I think is like a sign of like men who are like, I don't have to do this corporate bullshit anymore. I'm just going to let it grow. Yeah. And so he sat there and he said, well, Well, he goes, my wife and I have a giant living room and it's a great place to like host meetings. And I loved the humility, the clarity, the open-heartedness of saying this is an asset that doesn't require anybody's permission and doesn't require any additional money. It's an asset that I have. And you just start where your assets are, you know, and you start to think, how could I link and leverage these assets in a way that can get us towards the goal. You're never going to meet the goal in one fell swoop, you know, like with your grandparents' building. You're not going to get there in 2 years. It might be a 10-year project, right? But in the next month, in the next 90 days, you look at the assets in the community and there are some things you can do to get you to that place.

Right, right.

Okay, that all of this, I think, I think, well, and I'm just feeling so grateful, um, to have the voice of somebody that's echoing these things that I feel like I've experienced. And again, I, you know, I'm, I'm not like totally crazy. I have friends in this community, right? But it's, it is just, it's really hard to feel like, um, like a rabble-rouser or something in this, in this space that it's just like, if we just treat it like an organization and we look at engagement levels Right? Like employee engagement is something that employers look at, right? Like how happy, fulfilled, and willing to go the extra mile are our staff.

Yeah.

And then think about that on the resident side. It, think of the problems that could get solved, right? Like low volunteerism. Well, that's an engagement, that's an engagement challenge. And there's learning on all ends of this. So I, I'm not ever one to be like, well, it's your fault or this group's fault. I don't feel that way. It's like we all have to take a part in it. But I sometimes just think we're not, we're not looking at, we're not looking at enough of the right things. They're like easy to dismiss because they seem fluffy. And when, whenever people call these things soft skills, I literally wanna, you know, flip my lid. Yeah, they're— I wanna throat punch somebody. Thank you for just— I was like, flip my lid is so sweet. I don't— it's worse than that. I wanna— it's violence, right? I just think like they're not— there's nothing soft about these things. It's literally what what's missing. Sometimes it's the missing ingredient, right?

Well, and they're the things, frankly, that enhance trust.

Yes.

It is so easy to be a Monday morning quarterback and call and talk about things that are wrong, even in consulting. I mean, this— and this is a profession that I'm in. In consulting, you can make so much money by pointing out the problems, but you come with solutions and people like, mm, that'll not— you know, all the arm crossing, that'll never work. Work here, this kind of a thing. Yeah, the solutions and co-building those together and proving we can do this differently, that is where like the huge payoff is. That's where the transformation is. That's where we build things that our kids are going to be proud of. It's work worth doing, but we do need each other. And I'm glad that we could spend some time together today because you might feel alone sometimes, but girl, you are not alone. There are thousands of us, hundreds of thousands of us in communities trying to do exactly these things.

Thank you for reminding me of that. That's exactly why I keep showing up for the show, because that's who we're reaching, I think, are the people trying to do, and everybody's trying. Like, that's, that's the other thing I know too, that most people are actually doing the best they know how to do. And I'm always just asking, well, what if we, what if we learned something slightly different? And then that means we'd be trying something a little bit different.

Yeah.

Before I let you go, um, can you offer a little bit about the three vision thing since I did actually bring that up at the beginning?

Sure, sure, of course. So what Rebecca's talking about here is in foresight, one of the things, one of the myths is that professional futurists like me predict the future. There's no predicting that happens, and there certainly is not one future. There are many plausible futures, right? So you, you know this in your own life if you're listening, listening. Like, maybe you thought you were going to go down one course in your life and you ended up zigzagging to something else, right? So there's no one future for a person, for an organization, for a family, for a community. There are multiple plausible futures. And one of the things my team does is we force our clients to consider three kinds of futures. The first one is an expectable future.. Okay, so if your community kind of bumps along just doing the same things in the same way that it has always done, what will that future be? And if yours is a community that has a lot of denial about its issues, if yours is a community where elected officials don't make hard decisions, if you're kind of a wait-and-see community or a kick-the-can-down-the-road community, your expectable future is probably probably a little worse than it is today, right? Because you just aren't doing the things that you probably should be doing. There are other communities where the expectable future is maybe pretty good because you tend to be proactive. Maybe you've got some different voices at the table now who are like, wow, what is possible? Maybe you've gotten a grant and you're making an investment in something that's going to be a transformation for your community. So your expectable future bends you know, up into the right a little bit, it looks pretty good. So that's one kind of future, the expectable future. Then you owe it to yourselves and to your future generations to think about a challenging future. If the wrong things happen at the wrong time in the wrong ways, what happens? So if your community faces that 100-year flood, if your community loses its biggest employer. If your community, you know, the town clerk ends up embezzling a whole bunch of money and you have an FBI investigation on your hands. These are all things that you know have happened in other communities, right?

Absolutely.

So you explore these things in the challenging future, not because you're trying to, you know, rehearse that future, but because you owe it to yourself to think we're not impervious. What if the shit does hit the fan, right? Okay, but then the third future that you're going to investigate is the visionary future. So what if the right things happened in the right way and we had the right people doing the right things? Wow, what could that future look like? Now, just doing that activity alone is going to help your community be more resilient because what you've sort of done now is you've rehearsed 3 different futures.

Right.

Which I think I, I, I'm telling you, I have to real quick, I had never heard this.

Yeah.

Most people don't.

I had never heard of anybody doing that. And I just, I'm like, it's really funny. I just said to one of our coworkers this morning, I was like, we're really good at forecasting the worst case scenario.

Yes.

We rarely ever envision the best case scenario. And you're, and you're encouraging communities to do, and I also love the, if nothing really changes. If we don't really change, we don't do anything outstanding or different, what— again, that expectable. I just love it so much. I think what a thought exercise.

Yeah, because, you know, I don't know, it's like, I think about like rural communities who like just are slowly losing residents, right? And then they see that their school has to combine with another school and now their kids are spending 25 minutes on the bus or whatever, or they lose a grocery store. It's like, I don't know why we think that these things are just foregone conclusions. They're happening because we're just waiting for things to get better. Well, waiting for who?

Right?

It's up to us. The future— and this is a big thing, I think, for people who feel like a little victimized about this— it's like the future is not this outside thing that happens to us. We also happen to the future. So all of us today, right, are listening to this because our parents and their parents before them made a series of choices that have affected how much inherited wealth you're going to get, if you're going to inherit property, how many siblings you have. You know, our forebears all made decisions that created a future that we are now living in. And we have that same power and I would say responsibility to do that for our future generations.

I just, I love it so much. And I, I do, I just, I appreciate you. I appreciate your brain. I appreciate your heart. I appreciate your entire soul. You're just such a, such a lovely person. And I, I really hope this is, I mean, I, I love every guest that comes on the show because we get to have these enriching and just just juicy conversations, but this is one that something shifted in my brain, I swear, the day that I met you. Um, and I hope that this episode hits our listeners the same way because the other thing I hear, um, I'm not afraid of the future. I see hope. And, and that's probably where I just have like unbridled optimism. I, I know that things can go wrong and I believe if we work together and we stay honest and, and, and we trust each other and we're good to each other will face that challenge. I just, I actually believe that. And that's what this whole conversation is, just kind of reignited my hope and my optimism, which, you know, how can that be a bad thing?

It's not a bad thing. It's a wonderful thing. And it's needed now more than ever.

Rebecca, thank you so much for taking the time to be on the show with me today.

It's a privilege to be with you and to be with your listeners, so thank you.

And, um, I'm guessing in the future, if I could be a futurist for a moment, I have a feeling I'm gonna be having you come back.

I would love it.

I just have a strong sense about this.

I would love it. Anytime.

Okay, thank you so much.

Thank you.

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