Well thank, you. You know I had these two thoughts, one thought was God how boring I sound. Just sitting around reading all of the time. The other thought I had, was interesting, I came down here about 6:30 this morning because we were testing out some computer stuff. And, there was a woman on stage and I was the only one here. And she was sort of up here and the place was empty and she was sort of heading for the stairs. And so we started talking and she was this happy woman and I said, "Boy, you got here early." She said, "No, I am just getting off work." She had came in and worked the overnight shift here. And I said, "Boy, you must be looking forward to going home." She said, "Yes, I am tired. I just want to go home and sleep." And I said,"Well, what will you do sleep until you come in tomorrow night?" She said, "No, no, what I have to do is I want to go home and get to sleep as soon as possible because I have to be up at 11:00 for my second job." And, we began talking and I discovered she had a third job. So when you talk about this, and we are talking about sort of out there, but it is really here. It is back home in our own communities.
The other thing and I want to say that I am happy to be here and by the way, good morning everybody. I am happy to be here and I have to say to you that last year I traveled like crazy. You are probably traveling too. But for me I was in 35 states between planning things and things like that and I had this trend going. In fact I was in Hawaii for part of this trend. Where everywhere I went it was bad weather. And if you think about that, do you remember last year when we had all the in Northern California, Oregon and Washington when the rain came in the floods and all of that. I was there for all of that. And remember, out in Iowa when they had the blizzards out there last year, I was there. And, Ruby can remember back last year Hawaii had so much rain. This is rare, I mean, incredible amounts of just downpours they closed the schools which is a rarity. I was in Hawaii for that time. And do you remember last year, when we had all the blizzards in New England? I mean, we had blizzards like crazy in New England where they were closing things down. I was in New England. Now I know some of you are saying, What is he doing here now? Get him out of here.
Is there anybody out here from North Carolina? Oh, some folks in the back, I have to tell you this. Do you remember last year when North Carolina had not one but two hurricanes? I was there. When I was down there I learned some interesting things about North Carolina. In fact, some of you down south probably know this, folks from up north don't appreciate this quite as much. When you get, hurricanes in a number of factors happen. And this actually happened to me. I had a client down in Goldsboro, North Carolina for those of you who live down there. And I was coming down for a two day planning retreat. And, I am flipping through the stations back in Massachusetts and I see there is a hurricane coming. So, I called the woman up who runs the agency, her name is Beverly. I said, "Beverly, there So I jump on a plane and I fly to Raleigh-Durham. I get into Raleigh-Durham, and Goldsboro is sort an hour and a half east towards the ocean in North Carolina. So, I jump on there and I start driving to Goldsboro. I get there at 11:00 at night. I go to bed. At six o'clock in the morning, I get a phone call. It's Beverly. She said, "Bob, I was wrong. The hurricane is coming and the hurricane is coming to North Carolina." So, I say, "If it's coming to North Carolina, I am leaving North Carolina." It seems like a logical sort of thing. So, she comes along and she says, "Well, you can't." Well wait, I am calling Raleigh-Durham. When I called Raleigh-Durham, up and when I called them they said, "Our airport is closed." I said, "Oh, this is great." So, I am staying at the Hampton Inn. So, at the Hampton Inn what ends up happening is I learned an interesting thing. First of all, when there's hurricanes all the people who live on the coast, and those of you from the coast know this. All the families they leave the coastal area and they come inland and they stay at the hotels inland.
And, so in my hotel at the Hampton Inn there were hundreds of families and each one had either two or three thousand little kids. And, the little kids are running around and first of all I am not a happy person at this stage here. I am on the third floor. I leave I go to Wal-Mart which is across the street. When I get to Wal-Mart one of the things I discover at Wal-Mart is that they are almost out of everything. So, I grabbed sodas, chips, pretzels I bring it back and I grabbed flashlights. Because I figure electricity is going to go out. I come back at 5:00 it is roaring and by 7:00 it is going like crazy. Then the electricity goes out and I learn an interesting thing, what you don't think about up north. Then the electricity goes off, expect that you lose the lights, you lose the TV you lose the radio and you lose the clock, sometimes you lose the phone. You know, there's some systems that actually can continue to run on the phone. But, one of the things that you also lose is the air conditioner. Now, you don't think much about that up north because it is really not a big deal. But down south, I mean, air conditioning is a big deal and the windows don't open. But of course, you are in a hurricane who wants to open a window. The windows don't open. So, I said this is unbelievable. So, I go to bed the kids are screaming they are stuck on the elevator. It is just not where I want to be. Midnight I wake up and I can hardly breathe. Because the windows don't open the room is like a tomb. So, I said the heck with it, I get up and take two blankets and wedge them under the door to try and keep the door open to get whatever air in. And, I go back to sleep. And at 2 o'clock in the morning I hear, thump, thump, thump. So, I wake up there on the end of my bed are these two little kids. And they are trying to pull themselves up to the high bed. And their parents, must have gone out in preparation for this, have bought them this light that they wear on their head. So, I wake up and all I see are these lights going back and forth. I am trying to figure out what the heck is going on. So, finally the little boy who must be three years old a little bit tall, he pulls up and he looks at me. And he says, "Who are you?" You know, and you don't know what to say, so I say, "Well , I'm Bob Fazzi." He was not impressed. But the funny thing is that the little girl, pulls herself up as high as she can and she looks to the right and she looks to the left and then she says, "Is my mom in there?" The answer is, "No." I want to point that out.
So, I am happy to be here. But I need to tell whoever the high-tech people are, I need one of you to figure out how to start this machine up because it went off. Oh, there it goes. Did it come on? We are set to go. It is interesting that we are talking about organizational change. Let me tell you why. I believe that the history of community action is one of change agents. We are change agents, that is what we are. That is what we are founded on. Back in the 60's we came because we said the status quo isn't acceptable. And we got out the change book. But, here is an interesting thing about change. Many of you know, Harvard Business Review, Harvard business review publishes either monthly or quarterly. But they have a number of articles in the business review. One of the things that some of you may not know is that they take the articles that are in the business review and they take them out and they will sell them as reprints or single articles. I think we pay five dollars for them. For years and years and years, the top article, or top articles, I should say, is what was called the "Business Review Classics."
These are written, and everyone wanted to read them they were things that year in and year out people really order like crazy, until last year. Last year all the "Business Classics," were surpassed by a new article that was written by a guy named Cobler. And what was the article on, leading change. What suddenly happened at Harvard Business Review is that there is a recognition that we not only have to lead change, but we have to do it faster than we have ever done it before. And what we are beginning to see now is that we are now moving into an era where it is not just change. I think the issue of change is not something that is foreign to us. It is not just change. It is basically the issue of accelerated change.
And when you look at the issue of community action, and I want to sort of frame it and sort of go into some of the aspects of it. When you look at the issue of community action, there is certain parts of the history. There's a dedication to assuring that the issues of the poor are effectively heard and addressed. If you ever get on the NACAA's website, one of the things you will see is information about community action. And one of the things they point out is that's what one of the mission and goals are of this organization. The second thing is that fairness, safety and accessibility is our guarding principle. And what we basically say is, "Hey, if it isn't fair and if it isn't accessible to all, we have got a real concern with that."
The third area, which I think that people have talked about the last two days, if the status quo does not assure fairness, safety and accessibility then it is not acceptable. If it is not acceptable then change it, and I think that is where we are. What we are looking at is we are looking at an environment where we can not accept the status quo. That's is where we started. We said that we got started back in the 60's, something is wrong here. So, instead of whispering it, we began saying out loud--something is wrong here. It is not just the riots that happened in the 60's. But we began to look and say things can't stay the way they are.
One of the things that I want to be really careful with, a lot of people say, you are "living in the 60's." Forget that. There are parts of the 60's, and the 50's and the 40's that you want to take forward with you. One of those things is passion. Back in the 60's we had passion, and we were out there and we were fighting because we believed in it. We had heart and soul. We have technology right now, but the thing that we got to be careful with is we don't want to leave that passion. You know it is a changing world. And sort of the motto that we have is: A world that is not standing still.
What I want to say about us is that we need to take a look and let's sort of use some of our collective knowledge and let's look at some other industries. And take a look at what happened to those industries. You know, as you start looking at those industries, one of the areas that you are going to look at in the future is that those industries who didn't change never were able to make the kinds of differences that they wanted to make. If you look at our future, our future is one that's the same as our past. The future is really the same as the past. The destinations we are going after are the fairness, the accessibility; those destinations have not changed. The barriers we are facing are changing. But if they are not acceptable, we have got to look at changing it. But, we also have to look at other industries. And I think one of the things we have to look at when we look at those other industries, is what in fact has been happening to those industries. What I tried to do is I tried to pick out four industries that everybody knew about that we are familiar with and begin asking the question, what happened to those industries?
If you take a look at the share of the auto market, and I am not going to stay off on this for long, but I want to use this as a basis. Because I want you to look at them and look at what happened they stood still and start asking the question about us. Are we standing still?
The auto market. In 1950, 76% of the cars sold in the world were made in the US. 76% of the cars! Thirty years later, we were down to 21%. By the year 1990, we were in the teens. You know what happened? There were two things. And let me, since I can hardly see you out there with the lights on here, there are two things that happened in the American market. And I will tell you what they are. They both happened between 1972 and 1976. Anybody know what they are? You want to take a chance? The price of oil. So if you were around then--and I know a lot of you were around then--if you were around then, one of the things you remember is sitting in gas lines. Remember that? We used to sit in those damn lines and what did we do when we got gas--we got into our next line. Because we would run out of gas, before we got gas. So, we were making these cars that were gas guzzlers. And, we never cared in the 70s because it was like $.25 or $.30 cents a gallon. That was our first problem. When the gas crisis came in, the price of gas went up, we couldn't afford it plus we weren't getting it in. There was a second one.
The second problem we had is a word we often use in our agency. The word is quality. We made junk cars. I mean, I have to tell you, we made junk cars. And it wasn't a problem with the people on the line. It was the leadership looking at the return on investment that caused part of that problem. And their lack of willingness to change. And let me say in terms of that willingness to change, you need to understand how bad they were. In 1976, I was married at the time. My wife and I were looking for a new car. So, we went out and we looked for and we were trying to decide what to get, and there was this. We weren't sure what kind of car to get, but there were advertisements on the t.v. that the manufacturers were running which was called, "Buy American." And they had all these workers marching, singing "God Bless America" in the background, and carrying babies. So we said, "We are going to buy an American car." So Joanne and I went and we went to what a lot of you have done--we went to Consumer Report. And we said, let's find a car--the best car there. And those of you who don't read Consumer Report, in the April issue they have a list of all the cars that are sold in the country. And in that issue, they have all the cars and they have these little circles next to them. They have happy circles and unhappy circles. So, Joanne goes through it and she says, "Hey, look at this, there's lots of happy circles." But, when we looked closer and guess what kind of cars they belonged to--the foreign cars.
So she says, "Uh-oh." So, we looked at it and found all the unhappy circles belonged to the American cars, so Joanne says, "Okay, let's use a different strategy. Let's buy the American car with the least number of unhappy circles." So, we go through this and we bought a Buick century. I know it has gotten better, and I want to be fair to Buick. It did last the full 90-day warranty. But what I had to say is that that damn car--you have got to understand Joanne was driving it, not me. In the first year, we spent 4,000 on repairs, the second year 2,000 on repairs and it was not me that was driving. It was Joanne, who is the kindest, gentlest driver. She would see a light three miles ahead on an interstate where she is only doing 30 mph and she begins slowing down. But that car broke down. And what do we end up doing the second year, we end up trading it in. And what do we get, a Toyota. And I felt guilty. That was the part about it. I felt like we should donate some money to General Motors. But what happened? They didn't change with the times. They didn't change. They stood still in terms of what they were doing. Well, that is part of the issue that we are looking at. Are we standing still or are we changing?
When you begin looking at some of the competition that is out there; percentages of US products with no competition. I think this is a phenomenal figure. In 1970, 80% of our products had no competition. By the year 1980, 20% had no competition. When you look at community action agencies out there in the community, for a while in the 60s and 70s we really were the only game in town. And while our mission was God's work, we were the only ones out there. Now there are lots of organizations that are getting out there and I am not saying that that is good or bad. I am just sort of pointing out that we really need to step up if we are going to respond to it.
I love this one because it is not us, it's another country. And some of you know this story, it's a great story. The percentage of watches sold by the Swiss. In 1968, 65% of all watches made in the world were sold by the Swiss. What this doesn't tell you is that 85% of all the watch products, all the watch profits were gotten by the Swiss. Twelve years later it dropped from 65% to 9%. Anybody know what happened? Something was invented. Anybody know what it was--the digital watch. Yes! You win. For all the money in the world, do you know who invented the digital watch? Some say the Japanese, but it was the Swiss. And here is what happened. The Swiss, you know when they brought the watch, the inventors the Swiss brought it to the Swiss. They handed it to these guys. And they said, "What a stupid watch this is?" Of course, they said that in Swiss. This watch has no fulcrum, it has no gears. Who would want a watch like this? Well, this poor dejected guy walked out the door, down the stairs, across the street, jumped on a plane and he flew to Texas. He went to a watch fair. And two groups, Texas Instruments and the Japanese, both bought the rights to the watch. Both gave him millions and millions of dollars and he was no longer dejected. But, what happened to the Swiss? They basically fell out as a result of it. Because they were not able to change with the time.
And the last one, US Consumer Electronic Industry, they did not change. And when you look at it and talk about percentage of marketshare. And this is the last one I am going to do on this. In 1955, 96% of all the radios were made by us. In 1965, it dropped to 30%. In 1975, we were out of business. We basically stood still. And some of you remember what happened. Remember, those of us who were kids back in the 1950s and 1960s, do you remember those radios we used to get? They had those glass tubes. Do you remember what some of us used to do when no one was around? We would break open the glass tube. And then there was another little glass tube inside with that little silvery stuff. And we would break that open and it was Mercury and we would play with it. Little did we know. But here is the issue, as you look at this. The answer that people would say is, "Hey, but wait a minute." The answer they would say is look, why didn't the electronics industry, the radios industry simply change? Understand what change means, at least in terms of them, it not only means change in the products they come out with. It means change in the way everybody works. Change in the way everything that is done there.
When we are talking about community action and we are talking about change out there, that means we are talking about change inside in terms of how we are doing things. Those industries, it is interesting if you look at why they went into problems. There were significant forces that were taking place in their environment. Those forces were out there, but here is the interesting thing. They knew it. They knew those forces were out there. It wasn't a surprise to them, but here is what happened. They stood still. They sometimes said, "We were the first, we are the biggest and the best. Everybody knows us." And they stood still. And as a result of that, they didn't survive. When you begin looking at that, the question that obviously that comes up is, what does all of this mean to community action?
You may ask. One of the things that we are trying to do is we are trying to learn from other industries. And we look at those industries and try to get a sense of what is taking place. What we are beginning to look at is what that future is going to be. And, the future of community action will be one where we will never lose sight of our vision. But, we are going to have to begin looking at changing the vehicles. And, there's some points that we have to remember as we get in there. The first point is that the new forces that we face will be more formidable, more challenging and potentially more destructive than anything we have dealt with in the past.
There is a subtlety that is out there that says that everybody agrees in terms of what is going on. But, when you begin looking at all the forces that we are facing out there. The forces of welfare reform, health reform, the lack of reasonable jobs, and the job issue is a real issue. In some of the states, and I am not saying that all the states are doing a bad job on welfare reform but some of the jobs that are out there are atrocious. And we are looking at the people going out there, when there is no health insurance. How are they going to get by? This poor woman who was over here working three jobs. Is that fair? It makes no sense that we are doing things like that. You look at those things, the issue of safe, affordable housing, the inequalities in the education system.
You look at some of the things in the education system and you look at what is going on and you look at some of the southern states, the northern states, and out to Hawaii. What is it in Hawaii, about 1/3 of the population is in private schools. Guess where all the money is, where all the affluence is--it is in the private school. So if all the affluence and all the influence and all the money is in the private school, guess how those public schools are doing. That is, Where are kids are going to?
We have got to begin looking at what is actually taking place out there. You look at the drugs in the community. But another area, I was thinking about this flying and driving down, looking at different newspapers. There is an unspoken tension going on in our communities. People are not talking about it--we know about it. You look at the Rodney King thing out in California. You don't even have to look that far. Look over in Baltimore, what in fact is taking place. Look over in Springfield, Massachusetts, my home area.
Maybe I might even be back on horse and buggy trying to get there. If I look at it today, the destination is the same, but the vehicle has changed. If I understand what the destination is then I have to start questioning the vehicles. Keep in mind that a lot of the vehicles that we are using, vehicles meaning programs.
A lot of those programs were created in the 1960's. Are those the best vehicles to get there? Do we have the best vehicles? Dare we begin questioning some of the programs we have that have been sacred. Because our destination hasn't changed it is the vehicles that we have to begin to look at. And when we look at that, 1964, when we created some of those programs. And you look back at 1934, and you say are you using some of the programs and stuff that you were using in 1934. I say, "No, that was too long ago." That was thirty years ago; today it is thirty-five years back to 1964. We have got to begin asking the question, "Are there new and better ways?" The collaboration of partnership is certainly one of them, the use of technology. Many of the programs you are dealing with are certainly them. Some of the issues that we dealt with in the 60's are different than today.
Healthcare was not the issue it is today. If our commitment is to people who are struggling on poverty then we have to ask the question, "What's the biggest needs?" And then, that is what we need to begin going after. When you look at that, we have to remember because it is something that we have always done. It doesn't mean it is something that we should always do. We have got to have the courage to look at ourselves as well as to look out, which brings us to point 4. When you change the status quo you threaten those who benefit or who are comfortable with the status quo. There's a theorist named Richard Beckheart. He says, "Change destroys the known and creates the unknown."
One of the things that we know when we get to change is that people very often fear the unknown and try to keep the status quo. We hold onto it. I mean, how many of the folks have been in marriages long since dead but afraid to leave them? We have a marriage counseling program out in the back. But how many folks have been in such jobs that are long since dead, and they have stayed there for fear of moving on? We have got to begin questioning what we are doing as we begin looking at that. When we start questioning it, we have got to remember what we said about community action. If the status quo is not assure fairness, safety and accessibility, it is not acceptable. If it is not acceptable, then we have got to change it.
If we truly want to change the status quo, what have we got to look at? Look at all the systems, problems and barriers that have to be addressed and then look at ourselves--our vehicles, resources and level of commitment. That is what we have to look at, not only out there, but look at ourselves if we want to get there. And there is a quote that I like from Alexander Graham Bell, "When one door closes, then another one opens, but we look so long and so regrettably at the closed door that we do not notice the one that opened for us." What we know is that there are doors opening up.
The partnership stuff, is some incredible stuff. It has been interesting doing this study for NACAA. We are learning things out there. There are some agencies out there who need to be put on a pedestal, in terms of what they have done. They stepped away and said, I know we did it in the past, it is not the best way, and we are moving on. That's what we have to begin looking at.
When it comes to change there are three realities that we have to look at for community action. Number one: We have a history of commitment to change. We have a history that is what we are founded on. Not many organizations were founded on the issue of change, but we were. Number two: We have a value system that does not accept non-fair status quo. Our system in our agencies and in the hearts of the people in this room is we can not accept it. It makes us sick when we see some of the things that are taking place out there. And we have a responsibility and a destiny, that this is the one group in the community. When I look out there, you have to understand, we work with a lot of industries out there, there is only one industry that I see out there who is above it all who can step out and say we are committed to this area, who can go to any group out there. The last point...Number three: During times of rapid change and rapid threat it is the responsibility of the moral leaders of our society to step forward.
We need to point out that rapid change and rapid threat is happening now. Welfare reform, and health care reform and jobs--those three alone would indicate that. When you have got it that bad, community action leaders have been our moral leaders. What we are saying is that you have a responsibility. Everyone in this room has got a responsibility. And when you look at it, the future role of the folks that are in this room. I think it is pretty clear. Recognize that you are change leaders. If you think you are not, if you think your job is status quo, you are in the wrong field. This field is change, we are basically committed to making change. We don't accept the status quo as unfair. We have got to get out there and do that.
The second thing is Use the newest technologies. Don't be afraid of them. I know it is fearful for some folks who have not got on computers. Get on those damn computers! You are all nonprofits, apply for grants. There are a lot of organizations who will put money out if you show that that computer is going to get out in the field and affect it. We have the capacity to do that and foundations have the capacity to support us. Because we are working with the people who need the help the most.
The third area is Collaborate and partner in the community. The resources are limited. No matter what happens, you have to acknowledge that the resources out there are limited. We are not going to get an infusion of incredible new resources. We need to fight for it. I am not suggesting that we don't. I think one of the greatest things that we did over the last couple of the years is when we initiated the effort where a hundred and fifty thousand people came together to discuss the issues of poverty. We put ourselves on the map on that. To me, that is an example of an organization that is changing. Instead of holding out to the status quo, what NACAA did is to say, look some of those things are good but you have to step up. And so, you began seeing those kinds of changes.
The fourth thing is recognize the Light One Candle finding (That, is Recognize the power of the light-one-candle philosophy.) in the NACAA Collaboration Study. One of the findings in that study, which I hope all of you will take to heart when you leave here, is that when we asked the question how many people brought a collaboration together. We were guessing 8, 10 or 12. You know, what the finding was, over 60% of them was done by either one or two people who said, "We have got to make a change." We have got to do something, and they in turn brought people together. And they were recognized as the people in fact who made that happen. That "light-one-candle" philosophy is something everybody in this room knows and believes in. But what this is saying is, it in fact can work.
The final thing is never lose a vision and moral commitment for a world that is better for all of us. I mean, that is what we started off. We said, "There's got to be a better world. This can't be a country. We have got to be able to make the changes." The thing that we have to look at as we start moving into this is that there are changes that we have to look at. The last slide is this one, and I like this because I think this creates where we want to go. This is Peter Drucker. Peter Drucker is a sort of management guru, who some of you know about. Drucker's quote in terms of the future is "The best way to predict the future is to create it." We are in the position to create the future. We have a responsibility to create the future. We have the moral stand to create the future. We are the people who really have to stand up and make that future happen. Everyone in this room has thought this way, and everyone in this room knows how to do it. The question is are you ready to step up even further?