Some New Years Resolutions for the Midwest

Well, it’s time to write another article for the Entrepreneurial Advisor Blog. I promised myself I would write one each week but took the Christmas week off. Don’t think it is advisable to skip two weeks – Don’t want to get out of the routine. This seems to be the week everyone does their retrospective of the year and this year, of the decade. I get tired of reading them so I don’t think I will write one. I don’t know what I would say anyway. I could also write about my New Year’s resolutions but why would those reading this really care if I ate less, exercised more or kept my office neater. What I do think most reading this is a list of resolutions for typical Midwesterners. So here I go.



1. We need to have more confidence in ourselves and others. By this I mean we need to stop believing that because we are from Iowa, Nebraska or Kansas we cannot accomplish what others in New York, Chicago (yes I know Chicago is in the Midwest) or Los Angeles can. We need to support others with good ideas instead of criticizing them for taking a risk and labeling them failures when there is a setback.


2. We need to understand that we are in the 21st century and as much as we yearn for the late 19th and early 20th century, it is not coming back. By this I mean we have to stop believing that we can save every small town and continue to maintain every rural road or bridge. Finally, we cannot continue to believe that attempting to recruit the ever shrinking manufacturing jobs left in the U.S. is the best economic development policy for our area.


3. We need to expect leadership out of our leaders – On second thought, we need to demand it. They and we need to understand that short term fixes that might seem the best alternative for today are not necessarily what is best for all of us in the long term. I think this is a problem nationwide but may be more pronounced in the Midwest. It’s easy for us to say no to higher taxes, school consolidation or environmental regulations without know why they might be needed or how it will adversely affect the future. Leaders should explain these issues better and stick to their guns instead of always going with the popular flow. Much of leadership is convincing followers to do the “right thing.” It is not necessarily a popularity contest.


4. We need to pull our collective heads out of the sand and understand that there are worldwide crises occurring and I don’t mean Korea, Iraq or Afghanistan. These crises are hunger, illness and climate change and all of these issues are directly impacted by a global population explosion! How do we feed double our current population on the same or less land with fewer chemicals?


5. We need to realize that corn and soy beans are not the solution to the world’s energy needs and that all of us need to eat less meat for our own health and so that more calories are available for the rest of the world.


6. We have many of the resources in the Midwest to solve these problems but we must first believe they are problems, we must develop a can do attitude, we must take risk or at least support those that do and we must redirect resources from less productive to more productive uses.


7. Finally, we must be more tolerant of those not indigenous to the area or the nation because, especially in the Midwest, this is our future work force. In many rural Midwestern states the number of people reaching child bearing age is decreasing and will for years to come. We must rely on those from outside the region if we wish to grow and prosper.


I know all of this is hard to swallow and that some of you will reject what is here. I may even lose followers, but again this is not a popularity contest and if I can just move a few to action we may change our little part of the world. Happy New Year – may 2010 be a year of change for the good.