"Economically as well as socially, it would be much more productive -- the Japanese argue -- to put the money spent to create blue-collar jobs in developed countries instead into advancing the country's education, and thus to ensure that youngsters learn enough to become qualified for knowledge work, or at least for high-level service work," proclaims Drucker.

He asserts that there is a place for manufacturing in developed countries, but manufacturing should be along the line of the state-of-the-art, high tech minimill steel plants (like Nucor at Crawfordsville, Indiana). He writes, "If a country has the knowledge base, it will also manufacture. But this manufacturing work will not be competitive if carried out by traditional blue-collar workers who serve the machine. In competitive manufacturing, the work will largely be done by knowledge workers whom the machine serves -- as computer consoles and computerized work stations serve the ninety-seven technicians in a steelmaking minimill." He says further, "Manual labor in making and moving things is rapidly becoming a liability rather than an asset. Knowledge has become the key resource for all work." He concludes, "The only long-term policy which promises success is for developed countries to convert manufacturing from being labor based into being knowledge based." It makes one wonder what assessment Drucker would make about a state whose "economic development" -- currently is so closely aligned with "First Wave" to "Second Wave" poultry-related endeavors

Critics are emerging across the board about states' "smokestack chasing" and "bidding for business" -- the so-called new "War Between the States." A recent study by Carl Rist, policy analyst for the Corporation for Enterprise Development, Washington, D.C., says that the costly incentives are "marginally effective at best and inconsequential at worst." Rist advises that the states would be better off investing in people, technology, existing businesses and infrastructure, the kinds of things that attract new businesses in the first place.

Once again, the focus is on developing human potential in an era characterized and buoyed by what Drucker terms "employee capitalism" and "pension fund capitalism" -- which is "capitalism without 'capital'," he says. Most of today's money capital, he notes, comes from those enormous pension-related money pools. And Drucker concludes that the function of this capital "will increasingly be to make knowledge effective in performance." That is, to assure that its prime "stakeholders" are the true beneficiaries of their "deferred wages."

Thus, what we now call "economic development" must -- and will -- evolve into human and community development. The days of what one might call industrial big game hunting should take a back seat to home-grown, within-the-borders, domestic-variety job creation activity through the support of capital formation/development and other means of supporting resident populations, firms and entrepreneurs.

New Views on What Constitutes and Contributes to Wealth.

Capital, capital formation, and economic development are buzzwords. But emerging realities must cause us to forge a new consensus about what these mean for the 21st Century. USAToday economic analyst Mark Memmot suggested in his September 18, 1995 column that the way we define wealth and capital needs broader interpretations and must include:

• Human Capital -- the productive value of people," and
• Social Capital -- the value of families, communities, and the other organizations that glue a society together."

Memmot says we may need to rethink priorities. "A nation that ignores or fails to adequately protect and invest in any of those areas risks ruining the long-term health of its economy in favor of short-term gains. It won't achieve sustainable growth...: (we must be committed to ) Giving future generations as many opportunities as, if not more than, we have had ourselves."

He asserts, "For nations that aren't blessed with abundant natural resources, the key to becoming wealthy lies in their people." He says that nations that invest in their people's education, training, nutrition, and health care rank high in the creation of wealth: "They (their citizens) can expect to earn good incomes most of their lives." With more of these responsibilities now settling squarely on the shoulders of the state, we believe this is worthy advice for Kentucky and her people as well.

Drucker observes in his November 1994 Atlantic Monthly article, "Increasingly, the true investment in the knowledge society is not in machines and tools but in the knowledge of the knowledge machines. Without that knowledge the machines, no matter how advanced and sophisticated are unproductive." He cites these examples:

• Market Researcher. They need a computer and it goes wherever they go. But, "the true 'capital equipment' of market research is the knowledge of markets, of statistics, and of the application of market research to business strategy, which is lodged between the researcher's ears and is his or her exclusive property."

• Surgeon. They need hospital operating rooms with all their expensive capital equipment; but, "the surgeon's true capital investment is twelve of fifteen years of training and the resulting knowledge, which the surgeon takes from one hospital to the next. Without that knowledge the hospital's expensive operating rooms are so much waste and scrap."

Beyond this, Peter Drucker says in his 1993 book Post-Capitalist Society that Knowledge is the resource for today and the future. Our people are our foremost capital, and our children -- and they are all our children -- are our basic capital for tomorrow. If knowledge is the resource, people are the only means to develop, expand, apply, optimize, and augment it! And in truth the only reason to do it. Viewing "kids as capital" may seem a bit crass to some, but, in fact, they are! So the Kentucky Commission on Poverty has clearly set as one of its major objectives the development and expansion of human potential, particularly that of our children, throughout the great Commonwealth of Kentucky.

We must encourage more worker-, family-, and community-friendly work environments. In the Knowledge Society just around the corner Drucker points out that it is the worker, not the workplace, that will own the basic resource and tool of production: Knowledge! Therefore, the competition will not be so much for industries as qualified workers. We're already seeing that in Northern Kentucky and other more affluent areas of the Commonwealth. This while many unqualified, ill-prepared would-be workers go unemployed. Meanwhile, "qualified workers" think and act like "independent entrepreneurs," to use an Ellen Goodman phrase.

Columnist Goodman says that two troubling factors worry even these workers: anxiety about employer/corporate actions -- resulting in employees' diminished loyalty to any employer" and the general "loss of the sense of community." She wrote in her September 26, 1995, column on the second breakup (the recent 1995 one) of AT&T, "The old rules and bonds between owners and workers have been cracking everywhere. Employers and employees often seem like two people trying to maintain a relationship while they're both out dating." That scenario will continue until the "knowledge worker" eventually gains virtual total mastery of his/her employment destiny; the "human connections" will then determine which enterprises rise and fall, succeed and fail.

The Ascending Significance of Investing in People.

Human resources already do dictate desired outcomes. Ray Smith, chairman and CEO of Bell Atlantic, speaking about Rosabeth Moss Kanter's new book, World Class, says, "The information economy puts a premium on the quality of human and intellectual resources" -- what Kanter calls the three c's: concepts, competence, and connections.' World Class gives communities and businesses a blueprint for claiming citizenship in the global community by replacing the declining significance of place with the ascending significance of people."

Dr. Edward M. Marshall also adds that the new, emerging workplace must become more "collaborative." In his engaging new book, Transforming the Way We Work: The Power of the Collaborative Workplace, Marshall illustrates that the new workplace will remain highly competitive -- and assertive" -- while also being high on cooperativeness" -- accommodating to workers. In addition, a high degree of compromising will occur rather than the more-likely-today, bureaucratic strategy of avoidance. Core operating agreements between employees and employers will define the culture and environment of the workplace. So it would appear that while large labor unions may be in decline, small workplace-specific employer-employee collaborations will provide the vibrancy of tomorrow's workplace. Joint actions at times of needed, critical "process interventions" will sustain and enhance that vibrancy and serve as an indicator of continued success and viability for the enterprise. The following chart is illustrative of that process.

We already, though, see some of it evolving. First, as Peter Drucker notes, the rise of the industrial worker and the "corporation man" was the most stabilizing social development in the Western World. Also as noted in Post-Capitalist Society and as summarized in his November, 1994, article. "The Age of Social Transformation," in The Atlantic Monthly, the advent of Knowledge Society promises to be increasingly more de-stabilizing to our society to the extent that many more people will likely fail -- while at the same time it will be imminently possible for more people than ever to be successful! This perhaps sets a stage for a potential tug of war. It may take the form of a "class conflict" between the new knowledge worker" -- a small, specialized and highly powerful minority -- and the mass of tradition-bound people -- as individuals and as workers Drucker predicts this kind of " New">class conflict" between the "large minority of knowledge workers" and the societal majority of undeveloped or underdeveloped worker who will lack competitive Knowledge Society skills and "make their living traditionally, either by manual work, whether skilled or unskilled, or by work in services, whether skilled or unskilled." But "knowledge workers" will drive the economy, dictate worker conditions, and enable economic and enterprise success. So Kentucky must prepare itself and" -- primarily through appropriate education and training, its younger generations" -- young adults and heads of families and children.

If we agree that we must value workers more in order to receive the best work from them, we must certainly also say that we must demonstrate that we value our children more highly in order to benefit, in time, from their creative and productive energy. We must provide the most nurturing environment we possibly can for our children in order for them to realize their potential. While a country like China, for example, is bashed by some for its one-child policy, one thing certain can be said for Chinese parents and China in general: they love and heavily invest themselves in the nurturing and development of their children.

Michael Crichton's new book, The Lost World, is based on a relevant premise. As reported in the September 21, 1995, USAToday, Crichton's thesis in the book is that the dinosaurs became extinct because of " negative behavior patterns." When a group of scientists returns to Jurassic Park' s Isla Nublar and The Lost World's Isla Sorna they find a " terrible social disorder." The dinosaurs live violently with their own species and they do not care for their offspring. Crichton says that this parallels what's happening in our country with "social collapse, abandoned children, crime, and widespread fear of violence."

Children of all ages and places have tended to, as the sage poem relates, "learn what they live." And children will, as research shows, tend to realize the expectations with which they grow up! And even on the downside, Plato understood as well the negative potential in his day when he gave this advice, "You get the behavior you tolerate."

Catching the Wave, Riding the Tide.

It was just 1970 when Alvin Toffler introduced us to the concept of disorienting "Future Shock." Indeed, we are "blessed" but at the same time overwhelmed by the pace of technology and knowledge.

This interesting quotation explains a great deal: "There is more information every day in The New York Times than the average seventeenth English country gentleman ever knew."

We are all familiar with the phenomenal progress of medical knowledge and discovery during our lifetime. Indeed, most everything that is known about human medicine, it seems, has come during those relatively few years of this century.

In Toffler's last book" -- written with his wife, Heidi, War and Anti-War: Survival at the Dawn of the 21st Century, Toffler devotes an entire chapter to how wealth is created in a Third Wave economy:

1. Knowledge becomes the central resource and factor of production. Knowledge is capable of reducing all other inputs -- land, labor, materials, money capital, and the like -- in creating wealth.
2. Intangibles such as ideas, insight, and information will drive Third Wave firms' " capacity for acquiring, generating, distributing and applying knowledge strategically and operationally."
3. De-massification of production will produce infinite differentiations of products and services targeted to an equally infinite number of niche markets,
4. Value-added Work will itself will be the new definition of productivity.
5. Constant Innovation will be required to remain competitive.
6. Dis-economies of Complexity will outweigh the Second Wave "economies of scale," so work units will shrink into smaller, differentiated work teams.
7. Matrix Organizations and other flexible, maneuverable work configurations will replace hierarchical schemes.
8. Systemic Integration will demand entirely new forms of leadership and management.
9. "Electronic Pathways (will) form the essential infrastructure of the Third Wave economy."
10. "Economies of Speed replace economies of scale, which will produce more time-based competition.

Just recount Toffler's "Waves." The First Wave was the Agricultural Revolution, commencing around 8000 B.C. and ending in the hundred years preceding 1750 A.D. The Second Wave was the Industrial Revolution. That "transformational era" for the most part occurred between 1650 and 1750. So-called Industrial Civilization reigned supreme through approximately 1955 to 1970, the same era that brought the advent of Information Society, which is the Third Wave we are now in. Peter Drucker says the resulting evolution of this era will be Knowledge Society -- again perhaps ten to fifteen years from now. Already, Toffler is predicting the Fourth Wave, which he says will be a merging of the informational and biological "revolutions" into some unknown but tremendously jolting form.

Perhaps this will come in terms of the fusion of man and machine" -- or at least a "blurring of the boundaries," like HAL in the movie 2001: A Space Odyssey, which some cyber-gurus are already predicting as imminent and do-able. After all, as one cyber wizard recently noted, what is DNA but another information-data transfer and manipulation system, more sophisticated for sure, but similar to the software that now runs our automated systems.

In any event, just look at the developing trend: The First Wave lasted some 9,650 years. The Second Wave lasted between 205 and 370 years, depending on how one reckons its beginning and end. The Third Wave will, it appears, last some 55 to 80 years. And in all likelihood the Fourth Wave and the subsequent ones will be even shorter than the Third -- and perhaps each succeeding one briefer than the one before it.

So just the known and expected progression of change and the rapid expansion of knowledge are part of the phenomenal time we're experiencing. The veritable "knowledge explosion," the comprehension overload it entails with most of us, and its societal impact. "How did we get here so soon?" we might ask.

Even for those who love the technology, people are seemingly always constantly "behind the curve" in mastering all the new gadgetry and personal "productivity tools" that are so universally available! This dizzying pace adds to the apprehension and cynicism about our technological advances and our feeling of "being out of control.". George Pompidou, former president of France, may have had it right, though, when he said, "There are three roads to ruin; women, gambling and technicians. The most pleasant is women, the quickest is with gambling, but the surest is with technicians."

Still, pray as we might, we're not going to slow it down. Physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer, the father of the atomic bomb, bore that out when in 1954 he said, "When you see something that is technically sweet, you go ahead and do it and you argue about what to do about it only after you have had your technical success."

Indeed, the Western World "worships" its technological capabilities. It characterizes and supports us, but it also divides and blinds us, and that is why we must take extra care for human concerns as we prepare for our place and role in the future. " New">High touch" must proceed in tandem with "high tech" if Kentucky is to successfully navigate its way to a better Tomorrow.

Balancing Technology With "Touch" and "Imprudence" With Prudence.

Relying on technology alone blinds us in ways that the Spanish philosopher and essayist Jose Ortega y Gasset wrote about in his classic 1930 work, Revolt of the Masses, in which he advocated the rule of the "intellectual elite" -- New">the wise and the truly learned across a broad spectrum of knowledge" -- versus what he viewed as "mob control," New"> or populism.

In one chapter entitled "The Barbarism of 'Specialisation (sic)'," he criticized specialists who know only one "tiny corner of the universe" versus the intellectuals of the past who were "encyclopedi -- " in their knowledge and broader in their outlook. The specialist, he says, is neither "learned" in the broader sense nor "ignorant" either, because he is well versed in one very small area. Ortega y Gasset" -- writing in 1930! -- says the specialist is "a learned ignoramus." The problem inevitably comes, according to Ortega y Gasset, when self-believing "learned" man impudently asserts himself in areas where he is unqualified to do so. It happens all the time, and it is often injurious to society when "technicians" -- or other "specialists" -- take control of arenas where they are out of their element. Ortega y Gasset writes:

"Such in fact is the behavior of the specialist. In politics, in art, in social usages, in the other sciences, he will adopt the attitude of primitive, ignorant man; but he will adopt them forcefully and with self-sufficiency, and will not admit of" -- this is the paradox -- specialists in those areas. By specialising him, civilisation has made him hermetic and self-satisfied within his limitations; but this very inner feeling of dominance and worth will induce him to wish to predominate outside his speciality. ... The result is that he will behave in almost all spheres of life as does the unqualified, the mass-man."

We see that today's information gatekeepers -- including the "cyber-elites" -- who someone has called "a wild libertarian lot" -- often approach the "new world" with no sense of place or connectedness. They have mastered the new art of controlling and manipulating information systems to their own advantage. We used to have the "intellectuals" in charge. We thought of them as the cultural elites.

So it is that contemporary man probably has much greater need of "classical" foundations than of arcane scientific fact or ritual. Indeed, most of what we praise in the name of " New">science" is hardly more than subscribing to the accepted body of technical. Anyway, real science is virtually always out there on the fringes" -- outside the paradigm, to use a term popularized by Thomas Kuhn and Joel Arthur Barker. So the lesson in this must be that we should always keep our "technology" in proper perspective.

Our brains are flooded. With more to know and be responsible for, a growing number of people appear to feel that what they really need to know or to enhance concern those things which are more "foundational" and more philosophical in nature. It's a key theme running true in our time -- as opposed to Yesterday when the belief in "science" reigned supreme. Today's hunger is for what one might characterize as " New">spiritual," not religious, but marked by the highest qualities of human actualization versus natural-world discovery.

Peter Drucker's contribution to this debate came as he wrote (in the November 1994 Atlantic Monthly), "There was endless debate in the middle ages about the hierarchy of knowledge, with philosophy claiming to be the 'queen.' We long ago gave up that fruitless argument. There is no higher or lower knowledge. When the patient's complaint is an ingrown toenail, the podiatrist's knowledge, not that of the brain surgeon, controls -- even though the brain surgeon has received many more years of training and commands a much larger fee. And if an executive is posted to a foreign country, the knowledge he needs, and in a hurry, is fluency in a foreign language -- something every native of that country has mastered by the age of three, without any great investment." No, in Knowledge Society knowledge is "knowledge" only when "applied in action."

"Complexity Theory" and Community Building.

Much of this chapter deals with the impact of the increasing pace of change and the importance of responding quickly" -- and ultimately, in "real time." But another issue that looms prominently is the diminished need for large scale and complexity" -- both of which are dis-economies in the scheme of the Information Age.

If it's not too much of a stretch, let us use the example put forth by Michael Crichton in Jurassic Park and now The Lost World. As Time magazine noted in its September 25, 1995 issue, one thing that can be said about author and Harvard-educated M.D. Michael Crichton is that he always gets his scientific detail right. One of his premises in Jurassic Park involved "chaos theory" and how one small element or event could cascade into a system-wide collapse" -- or on the positive side, one might suppose, create serendipity or fortuity.

In The Lost World Crichton makes another "major excursion into cutting-edge science"into the "trendy field of complexity theory." (Time, September 25, 1995) To continue the Time analysis on this subject, "Building on chaos theory, the big thing of the 1980s, complexity theory argues that groups of randomly operating independent units -- amino acids floating in primordial seas, humans acting in their own interests, populations of animals -- can spontaneously and without outside direction self-organize themselves into complex systems -- self-reproducing DNA molecules, functioning economies, social groups. The downside is that these complex systems can easily become unstable given the slightest change in conditions."

Paraphrasing Crichton's own written word, underlying complexity theory is a belief that the complexity of the world -- and he notes such systems as corporations in the marketplace, neurons in the human brain, enzyme cascades within a single cell, the group behavior of migratory birds" -- New">conceals an underlying order which had previously eluded science, and which is so complex that prior to computers it had not been possible to study them.

Also, once formed, complex systems will then adapt or in time become extinct. Using as the vehicle of his views his character Ian Malcolm, the mathematician, Crichton writes, "But even more important is the way complex systems seem to strike a balance between the need for order and the imperative to change. Complex systems tend to locate themselves at a place we call the edge of chaos.' We imagine the edge of chaos as a place where there is enough innovation to keep a living system vibrant, and enough stability to keep it from collapsing into anarchy. It is a zone of conflict and upheaval, where the old and the new are constantly at war. Finding the balance point must be a delicate matter -- if a living system drifts too close, it risks falling over into incoherence and dissolution; but if the system moves too far away from the edge, it becomes rigid, frozen, totalitarian. Both conditions lead to extinction. Too much change is as destructive as too little. Only at the edge of chaos can complex systems flourish."

This premise helps us understand why regimented, controlling governmental actions won't work: they stifle creativity, dynamism, and synergy. In fact, Peter Drucker strongly asserts the "futility of politics" as a vehicle of social change. He wrote in the November 1994 Atlantic Monthly, that social transformations that have lasting, permanent effect occur far below "the violence of the political surface" "like ocean currents deep below the hurricane-tormented sea."

Government and political leaders can set the stage, but only affected people act out the roles which produce social change. Increasingly, they do so in self-organized communities of interest. Drucker calls these, collectively, "the social sector." He briefly reviewed community effort in America as follows:

The old communities -- family, village, parish, and so on -- have all but disappeared in the knowledge society. Their place has largely been taken by the new unit of social integration, the organization. Where community was fate, organization is voluntary membership. Where community claimed the entire person, organization is a means to a person's ends, a tool.

But who, then, does community tasks? Two hundred years ago whatever social tasks were being done were done in all societies by a local community. Very few if any of these tasks are being done by the old communities anymore. Nor would they be capable of doing them, considering that they no longer have control of their members or even a firm hold over them. People no longer stay where they were born, either in terms of geography or in terms of social position and status. By definition, a knowledge society is a society of mobility.

That volunteer spirit is alive and well in America. You will recall that John Naisbitt's megatrend number six is a return to self-help, or "Americ"'s traditional sense of self-reliance," as he calls it. All the recent data seems to bear out that while Americans tend to doubt that government can resolve problems on a national and state scale that people feel they can still solve their own problems on the community and neighborhood scale, however they choose to logically define that "community" that they feel they can deal with.

Drucker writes:

One thing is already clear. The knowledge society has to be a society of three sectors: a public sector of government, a private sector of business, and a social sector. And I submit that it is becoming increasingly clear that through the social sector a modern developed society can again create responsible and achieving citizenship, and can again give individuals" -- especially knowledge workers -- a sphere in which they can make a difference in society and re-create community.

The social sector will increasingly be crucial to the performance, if not to the cohesion, of knowledge society.

To create the broadest possible community ownership and synergy, these citizen- and consumer-driven collaboratives might serve as the local partner with the respective state agencies to help devise and oversee local efforts, but they probably should not compete with local service providers nor serve as conduits for public funding.

A number of models for this approach" -- all different, but all effective -- already exist in Kentucky. At least four of these (the Gateway area; Louisville-Jefferson County; Northern Kentucky; and Owensboro-Daviess County) have been sanctioned by the Kentucky Commission for Families and Children. These initiatives represent the kind of self-defined, self-organizing initiatives that 1) overcome the problems of complexity, 2) engage the social and private sectors and create synergy, and 3) predict what this Commission, the General Assembly and the people of Kentucky want: successful outcomes and brighter futures for all our citizens.

While such collaboratives may seem at first blush to be somewhat loosely constructed, they, in fact, would carry the same safeguards on public resources presently found in more controlled, restrictive, and bureaucratic approaches. But community collaboratives are much more dynamic. And possessing truly shared community ownership, they invite everyone and every organization to "the community table" to bring what they can to help set and achieve community goals. Is there anyone left out there that does not understand the critical importance of the dynamic of ownership? That does not accrue when one party, political or otherwise, stands supreme and all others function as "junior partners" -- if indeed the concept of partnership could even be conceived in that kind of configuration. No, people and organizations today respond to and flourish in an environment of empowerment, relationships, teamwork, and shared goals.

The various interests are -- quite rightly for themselves -- strategizing, positioning themselves, and working to create the next " New">paradigm" for the delivery of human services. With block grants and increased state discretion over virtually every human service program's rules and design, there will indeed be a new day in addressing human needs within the Commonwealth. The Kentucky Commission on Poverty would suggest that it is not nearly so important who or what entities control or "deliver" human services as how the system is conceived, implemented, and directed. All of us are aware of the saying (which is no doubt paraphrased here) that "For every complex problem there is a simple solution...which is logical, neat, plausible -- and wrong!" Does this Commonwealth want " New">solutions" that neat, controlled and -- like previous politically soothing approaches -- ineffective? Or do we want results? We believe the public outcry is for effectiveness, broad citizen and institutional participation, and good outcomes (results!) for our people.

If what we are proposing appears to be akin to working on the "edge of chaos," remember that that is where complex systems flourish! For emphasis sake, let us repeat the thinking, as expressed so well by Michael Crichton in The Lost World, "But even more important is the way complex systems seem to strike a balance between the need for order and the imperative to change. Complex systems tend to locate themselves at a place we call the edge of chaos.' We imagine the edge of chaos as a place where there is enough innovation to keep a living system vibrant, and enough stability to keep it from collapsing into anarchy. It is a zone of conflict and upheaval, where the old and the new are constantly at war. Finding the balance point must be a delicate matter -- if a living system drifts too close, it risks falling over into incoherence and dissolution; but if the system moves too far away from the edge, it becomes rigid, frozen, totalitarian. Both conditions lead to extinction. Too much change is as destructive as too little. Only at the edge of chaos can complex systems flourish."

Before we leave this section, one last word on the importance of relationships in producing creative, synergistic, and effective -- solutions to intractable societal, community, and family problems. That might best be summarized in this thought: There is no "power" (influence) where there are no relationships!

Dr. Vaughn L. Grisham, Director of the McLean Institute of the University of Mississippi at Oxford, is one of the foremost community development experts in this nation. Speaking at the "Communities of the Future" conference at Western Kentucky University in May 1994, Dr. Grisham said:

We're now on the brink of a new kind of community. We must return to a new sense of community.

Our ideological development is crucial to this. During the agricultural and industrial eras great differences arose between urban and rural dwellers. The "powerful" were those who had information and money; the power-less were those without these resources. Over time, those who held control of the power developed a sense of " New">divine rights."

Today we must shed the ideology that some are vastly superior to others. It's just not so!

I served on the Southern Growth Policies Board. Every six years we develop an assessment on the South. We just finished one. In our last two reviews we concluded that we: 1) must develop our human resources, and 2) must improve our population.

There are basically three elements to community:

• Place -- a given location of defined characteristics
• People -- an "asse" or a "liability;" either way, they're your only real resource
• Inter-relationships -- interactions...this is the key!

We must start with leaders and leadership. We usually think of leaders as being "at the top:" the richest. Leadership is different! It's about relationships.

I was commissioned a while back to research leadership in the Mississippi Delta, the poorest part of the United States. What's it like? Who are they (the Delt"'s leaders)? What do they do? I interviewed 152 key leaders -- mostly white -- and found that those "at the top" were bright, knowledgeable, articulate. But still, nothing got done in the Delta.

Those powerful people "integrated into themselves." They proudly recounted and proclaimed how they could get virtually anything done legislatively at the state level in Jackson or nationally in Washington, D.C. -- but not locally!

They had no power in those areas where they had no relationships! In the Delta, blacks had the numbers and the local " New">political" clout -- but none outside the Delta.

Leadership is about practical interactions. A doctor friend teaches about these in his medical model. (In the doctor's case it would be doctor and patient, but here we shall substitute leader and constituent):

                       Situational Types (of problems)

                                  Problem           Treatment              Locus of
                                  Definition         (Solution)            Work 
               
                Type I             Clear              Clear                Leader
                Type II            Clear              Unclear              Leader and Constituent
                Type III           Unclear            Unclear              Constituents

We're good at solving Type I problems. "Leaders" (and public officials) like these" -- and these are the most common problems: The leader (doctor) knows the problem, and he/she knows the "treatment." It is rendered and the patient/constituent's situation improves.

In Type II cases, the doctor knows the problem, but the treatment is unclear. For example, "lifestyle changes" may be recommended. The leader (the doctor) says, in effect, "I can't do alone what's needed. You've got to do as much or more than I." Both the doctor and patient must team up on the solution/treatment.

Just a few leaders can't achieve success over Type II problems. They must ask, Who do we need to involve who can help us? They list them, rank them , then engage them.

Community leaders have to be deeply involved in their community. In Tupelo, Mississippi, business leaders give 50-75% of their time to "the community" -- and business is prospering!

Type III problems -- like education -- are unclear...and the solutions are unclear. In fact, there are multiple (many) definitions of the problem" -- and there's truth in all of them. These problems can only be solved by the constituents themselves!

We must think as "community builders" rather than as "leaders." And use the new term! Success over complex community problems is not about an "issue." It's about building a community. It's about Trust. Relationships!

Politicians, "don't tell people you're going to do things for them. You can't." "Political leaders can do all they possibly can, but in the final analysis it's up to constituents. "Leaders" can't save us in the most complex situations.

The non-fiction novel by John Berendt entitled Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil carries this account of Savannah, Georgia's resistance to change:

I, too, had become enchanted by Savannah. But after having lived there for eight years, off and on, I had to come to understand something of its self-imposed estrangement from the outside world. Pride was part of it. Indifference was too, and so was arrogance. But underneath all that Savannah had only one motive: to preserve a way of life it believed to be under siege from all sides. It was for this reason that Savannah had discouraged Prudential from establishing its regional headquarters in the city in the 1950s (and why Prudential ended up in Jacksonville instead). It was why Savannah had given Gian Carlo Menotti's Spoletto U.S.A. Festival the cold shoulder in the 1970s (and why the festival finally settled in Charleston). Savannah was not so much interested in what went on outside Savannah. It had little enthusiasm for the popular culture, as headline entertainers like Eric Clapton, Sting, George Carlin, and Galdys Knight and the Pips discovered when they brought their acts to Savannah and found themselves playing to half-empty auditoriums.

Savannah spurned all suitors -- urban developers with grandiose plans and individuals (the "Gucci carpetbaggers," as Mary Harty called them) who moved to Savannah and immediately began suggesting ways of improving the place. Savannah resisted every one of them as if they had been General William Tecumseh Sherman all over again. Sometimes that meant throwing up bureaucratic roadblocks; at other times it meant telling tourists only what was good for them to know. Savannah was invariably gracious to strangers, but it was immune to their charms. It wanted nothing so much as to be left alone.

Time and time again, I was reminded of what Mary Harty had told me on my first day in town: "We happen to like things just the way they are!" I had no idea how deeply that sentiment ran until a revealing incident occurred late in my stay. The Chamber of Commerce hired an outside team of urban consultants to study Savannah's economic and social problems. When the consultant's submitted their final report, they appended a note saying that in the course of their research they had asked twenty prominent Savannahians where they thought the city should be in the next five, ten, and fifteen years. None of them had ever given the matter any thought.

For me, Savannah's resistance to change was its saving grace. The city looked inward, sealed off from the noises and distractions of the world at large. It grew inward, too, and in such a way that its people flourished like household plants tended by an indulgent gardener. The ordinary became extraordinary. Eccentrics thrived. Every nuance and quirk of personality achieved greater brilliance in that lush enclosure than would have been possible anywhere else in the world.

Are there not many parallels between Savannah and our culturally rich Commonwealth? We can keep the world out; we can ignore the potential and perils of the Industrial-to-Knowledge Age transition era we are in; we can be America's quaint "Savannah." But let us make a conscious choice of our possible futures: poor, quaint, marginal versus progressive, contemporary, and prosperous. Kentucky can have it either way. We can create the future we want for ourselves and our progeny, but we must choose now before our progressive options on Tomorrow expire and we are left forever behind.

Bright Morning of New Beginnings.

Daniel Burris says in Technotrends that we are at the convergence of "Four Great Rivers of Change." They are: 1) technological innovation; 2) globalization; 3) decentralization of power and authority; and 4) global demographic changes" -- and "2,3,and 4 are tributaries of 1." We are not immune. Indeed, we are absolutely caught in their wake. In her new book, World Class, Rosabeth Moss Kanter terms it aptly -- and expressively -- as a "globalization cascade" which is driven by the four processes of:

• Mobility -- of capital, people, knowledge, information and ideas
• Simultaneity -- where everything is available virtually at once via electronic interconnectivity and "fresh technologies" are designed with the world in mind" -- and can create the same infrastructure everywhere
• Bypass -- a multiple choice world where innovators can simply go around unresponsive systems and use alternative channels to achieve their own and their niche-customers' needs
• Pluralism -- the dispersion of once "monopolistic centers" to "multiple centers of expertise and influence."

Information technology changes everything. Anyplace and every place on earth can be the "center." So in place of monoliths, "centers of excellence" are emerging in their place. Would you care to guess where the world's first Internet bank is located? Pineville, Kentucky. Believe it or not. It's called Security First Network Bank, FSB. Well, it just goes to illustrate that Kentucky and Kentuckians can do or be anything they want in this exciting new era. Our only limits are our creativity, vision, energy and desire.

Another example appeared September 24, 1995, on the CBS Nightly News. It seems that the small town of Lusk, Wyoming, population of some 1,650 persons, now thinks it can be a world-class center. It has tied all its classrooms into the Internet to orientate its children and its citizens to the fact that they now have direct and immediate access to the Information Age! The world is, thus, their oyster. That's the kind of thinking that can propel anyone, any community onto the world stage as a vibrant participant and competitor. The former advantages of location, scale, and complexity are turned upside down. Reversed! Electronic pathways link everyone and every place. We -- each one of us, if we so desire" -- are "the center." Now if we only work to create ourselves as a "center of excellence" the world might well beat a path to our door.

The world is inviting our participation. The changing world represents wonderful new opportunities for us to make "quantum leaps" forward. So, behind the turmoil of this transformational era there are opportunities galore.

Readiness for Change.

Politically and socially there is at least one imposing force in our favor -- that is timing... and our readiness or expectancy for change. So then, what is it that might make one suppose that we are so ripe for dramatic change? Some call it "The Millennial Effect."

In less than six short years we will meet the "New Millennium." January 1, 2000 and the thousand years of human history that follow. Based on Dionysus' calculation error in 525 A.D., the Third Millennium may have arrived as early as 1993 or will actually be here any time between now and the year 2000, notwithstanding what our calendar says. And true to form we've been in "crazy" times befitting a millennial transition for some years now. Many "futurists," including John Naisbitt and Marvin Cetron, attribute much of today's upheaval to this "Millennial Effect," as a notable fact of contemporary life.

John Naisbitt and Patricia Aburdene have an extraordinary account of the last millennium, 1000 A.D., in their book Megatrends 2000. Naisbitt and Aburdene say that in the 990s most of the Western world believed the world would end in 1000 A.D. Call it "Millennia mania," according to some. Naisbitt and Aburdene relate Oscar Halecki's work, The Millennium of Europe, which speaks of "the vision of the year 1000." That "vision" did not produce the popularly expected end of the world ot the "Millennium" of Christ's reign, but in fact did influence Europe for generations. (One outgrowth was that, "thanks to the postponement of Judgement Day," as millions viewed it, many grand churches went up throughout Europe, particularly in France and Germany.)

Whether with religious or secular connotations, the Millennium is "an intensifier" in our already troubling times. It's an energizer of the religious, scientific, social, and political.

In her September 29, 1995 column in the New York Times, columnist Maureen Dowd chided politicians for "vaporizing about the meaning of change" within our society and for " looking for alienation in all the wrong places." She says, "The information superhighway is not what's rattling this country. What's rattling this country are politicians who worry about the perception of leadership instead of leading on moral and social issues." She questions the popular premise that our era is any more tumultuous in term of change than that of our forebears:

The turn of the century and electricity, automobiles, airplanes; the Great Depression when the capitalist system tottered; and the emergence of Fascism. "Is the World Wide Web more disturbing than the Soviet Union was? Is the commotion now greater than it was in the 60s?" she asks.

Leadership into the "Promised Land."

With the technological, economic, and political environments changing so fast, how do we move to our own advantage? In Future Work: Putting Knowledge to Work in the Knowledge Economy, ( The Free Press, a division of Macmillan, Inc.) Charles D. Winslow and William L. Bramer advise that it's not just the technology but our using the right approach to technology that makes the difference. We must take care to understand the context of events, trends, possibilities, or we will either take precipitous action based on invalid assumptions or we will ignore what we see and what's needed to be done. A sense of relevancy, Winslow and Bramer suggest, only emerges through "the elements that might nourish and quench our thirst: meaning, analysis, history, context." Otherwise, they say, it s as though were in Samuel Taylor Coleridge's "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner," "We swim in a sea of information, yet cannot drink any of it: it is too coarse, too salty."

Daniel Burris (with Roger Gittines), writing in Technotrends: How to Use Technology to Go Beyond Your Competition, identifies four keys to success in this technological environment. Those "Four Keys to Success" are: Integration, Flexibility, Communications, and Orchestration. The first three are pretty clear to us, but the key of orchestration, it appears, is not either well understood or utilized by American public or corporate policy and decision makers. It should be. Burris cites Japan's Ministry of International Trade and Industry (MITI) as the model. "Without an orchestrator you can't have everyone singing off the same sheet of music." What we see in America instead of a MITI approach, says Burris, is like "the western sheriff's posse that saddles up and rides off in every direction. That's what happens most of the time."

This "orchestration" is not analogous to our traditional control techniques. It's about creating desired outcomes, a vision, and the means and the benchmarks to achieve and measure progress toward the overarching goal(s). Winslow and Bramer say:

• "Knowledge is more than just knowing something. It is also knowing that you know, knowing why you know, and knowing what to do with what you know.
• "There are at least six characteristics of knowledge. It is: (1) applicable or practical; (2) contextual; (3) experiential; (4) historical; (5) communal or social; and (6) individual.
• "Performance systems, by providing proactive support services, help workers gather, analyze, and use information, thereby turning it into knowledge."

And to enable that we need a new approach in leadership. In Transforming the Way We Work, Dr. Edward Marshall advises that there must be a fundamental cultural change and new approach to leading and managing in the new, more collaborative ways of work and governance. The is an emerging shift in how we work -- and work together to achieve common goals. "Time after time, the message keeps coming back: Collaboration is the way people naturally want to work together," Marshall says.

Leadership is the essential element that must emerge. Perhaps Max DePree said best what we are looking for in his book Leadership Is an Art, "The first responsibility of a leader is to define reality. The last is to say thank you. In between the two, the leader must become a servant and a debtor."

Then in addition to demonstrating the appropriate style and approach to leadership, transition-era leaders must understand the basic substance and needs of the era. Drucker offers these recommendations, which must largely be accepted as by faith:

• "We will have to think through education" -- its purposes, its values, its contents. We will have to learn to define the quality of education and the productivity of education, to measure both and to manage both.

• "We need systematic work on the quality of knowledge and the productivity of knowledge -- neither even defined so far. The performance capacity, if not the survival, of any organization in the knowledge society will come increasingly to depend on those two factors. But so will the performance capacity, if not the survival, of any individual in the knowledge society. And what responsibility does knowledge have? What are the responsibilities of the knowledge worker, and especially of a person with highly specialized knowledge?

• "Increasingly, the policy of any country" -- and especially of any developed country -- will have to give primacy to the country's competitive position in an increasingly competitive world economy. Any proposed domestic policy needs to be shaped so as to improve that position, or at least to minimize adverse impacts on it. The same holds true for the policies and strategies of any institution within a nation, whether a local government, a business, a university, or a hospital.

• "But then we also need to develop an economic theory appropriate to a world economy in which knowledge has become the key economic resource and the dominant, if not the only, source of comparative advantage.

• "We are beginning to understand the new integrating mechanism: organization. But we still have to think through how to balance two apparently contradictory requirements. Organizations must competently perform the one social function for the sake of which they exist" -- the school to teach, the hospital to cure the sick, and the business to produce goods, services, or the capital to provide for the risks of the future. They can do so only if they single-mindedly concentrate on their specialized mission. But there is also society's need for these organizations to take responsibility -- to work on the problems and challenges of the community. Together these organizations are the community. The emergence of a strong, independent, capable social sector -- neither public sector nor private sector" -- is thus a central need of the society of organizations. But by itself it is not enough -- the organizations of both the public and the private sector must share in the work.

• "The function of government and its functioning must be central to political thought and political action. The megastate in which this century indulged has not performed, either in its totalitarian or in its democratic version. It has not delivered on a single one of its promises. And government by countervailing lobbyists is neither particularly attractive. Yet effective government has never been needed more than in this highly competitive and fast-changing world of ours, in which dangers created by the pollution of the physical environment are matched only by the dangers of worldwide armaments pollution. And we do not have even the beginnings of political theory or the political institutions needed for effective government in the knowledge-based society of organizations."

We began this Information Age/Knowledge Society chapter with a quote from Microsoft Encarta '95, a technology-based reference perhaps appropriate to this topic, so let us close as well with its conclusion from the article entitled "Future As History:"

We hurtle forward into a future that is forever unknown while history watches, daily transforming the future into the past. Like our ancestors, we live on the razor's edge of time, poised between the known and the possible, hoping to discover ourselves and in our past some small clue as to what awaits us.

Hopefully, this chapter sets the stage for providing useful insights in helping best accomplish that.

Context of this presentation:

This document was prepared upon the September 11, 1995 request of the Kentucky Commussion on Poverty to serve as a basis for a chapter in its report entitled FAMILIES FIRST: Uniting Kentucky Through Strengthening Communities. This document attempts to place the issue of poverty into the context, nature, and impact of current economic/institutional restructurings -- along with a bit of history and philosophy. It also attempts to synthesize popular opinions on the related societal transformation, i.e, the transition to "knowledge society." And, in the writer's opinion, it suggests what Kentucky should do differently to address its increasingly critical human resource development needs.

                                                                             Ronald Lee Logsdon, Member
                                                                             Kentucky Commission on Poverty
September 25, 1995