Guest blog by Ron Gullberg, LEG ’23
Lions and camels and hippos, oh my!
The Leading Economic Growth (LEG) course provided the necessary tools – and wild kingdom metaphors – to navigate the complexities of identifying and addressing binding constraints to growth in Wyoming as a state and in communities.
I entered the course having had the benefit of participating in housing and workforce workstreams with co-workers, partners and stakeholders, and Growth Lab staff. Some of my co-workers had participated in previous LEG courses.
Much attention had already been placed on Wyoming’s lack of economic complexity and workforce and housing issues, to name a few. Clearly, networking, diverse viewpoints, collaboration, leadership and communication were, and would continue to be, necessary elements of ongoing problem analysis and solution creation efforts. The Problem Driven Iterative Adaptation (PDIA) process runs counter to the historical economic development practice of solution creation in search of an under-researched problem.
Given all of that, I focused on connecting my problem statement with my state economic development agency role of strategic partnerships director. I scripted a few problem statement iterations and settled on “Wyoming is stuck in a boom-bust cycle that inhibits collaborative, sustained solutions to economic resilience.”
In essence, my problem statement process was: “Let’s admit we have a problem and start talking about it.”
Some of the data I reviewed during the LEG course affirmed Wyoming’s perpetual boom-bust treadmill.
Wyoming’s energy-driven economy was the third-most volatile in the U.S. – behind only Alaska and North Dakota – during a 20-year period ending in FY 2021, according to a Pew report.
Data from the Wyoming Department of Economic Analysis show that since 1970, Wyoming industry employment numbers indicate greater industry diversification during busts and less during booms. The numbers proved misleading. The consistent pattern revealed that any gains in non-energy industry employment during busts were not the result of increased economic complexity. The non-energy industry employment gains were the result of energy industry employment loss. When the next boom came, the cycle began anew.
These data connected well with Wyoming’s circular cycle of losing/retaining/attracting knowhow – as a result of the boom-bust cycle.
The LEG course’s 1804 westward wagon train journey exercise – early in the course – resonated with my problem statement development. Three historic trails ran through Wyoming in the 1800s (Oregon, Mormon and California). Historians estimate at least 500,000 emigrants used these trails from 1843-69. These travelers had to rely on a diverse set of skills and knowhow, from mechanical repairs to the iterative process of going a distance, then stopping to calculate next steps and inventory supplies, etc. They were mostly left to their own devices and ingenuity. There is an analogous story to be told here. It should be in Wyoming’s DNA to collaboratively tackle complex problems. However, given Wyoming’s low population still to this day, the state’s history of being a pass-through, and of a transient workforce tied to commodities booms and busts, and by losing diverse, skilled workers, we are still searching for answers.
In short, how does Wyoming continue to benefit from its extraction-based industries while diversifying its energy and its non-extraction industry portfolios? How do we build the Wyoming we want, with a resilient economy more immune to market pressures beyond our control? How do we maintain and attract knowhow in our population?
One key part of answering these problematic questions is collaborative, sustained solutions to economic resilience.
I was pleasantly surprised to learn that while I had developed functional knowledge of the PDIA process through involvement on workstream teams, the LEG course provided the foundational “teach a person to fish …” knowledge necessary to assume leadership and education responsibility going forward.
The LEG course provided a pathway to not only continue having meetings and conversations, but to implement the PDIA tools to ensure these efforts don’t become spaces for chit-chat and no action. To get commitments from people and hold them – and myself – accountable, while keeping in mind that commitments should be manageable and should build on previous work.
There is an element of consistently “taking the temperature,” though, when pushing individuals and groups of people to identify and address binding constraints and develop solutions. Change can bring anxiety to Wyomingites, for good reason. The extraction industry has driven the economy for generations. Wyomingites are serious about land and wildlife conservation and responsible outdoor recreation, hunting and fishing. The population thrives on rugged individualism and at the same time, care for their neighbors. In some minds, economic growth is good; change, maybe not so much. This is why outreach and collaboration are so essential to building a resilient economy the Wyoming way. True to our bootstrap mentality and the 1804 wagon train example, we must face the growth problem and solve it as Wyomingites.
This is where the tools come in. I foresee meetings where fishbone diagrams, the five whys, change space and myriad other tools will help make buy-in and collaboration much more efficient and effective. And, perhaps more important, allow others to bring their diverse opinions and experiences to the discussion.
My introduction to PDIA has been transformative.
Solution-based approaches, in hindsight, often produced one-size-fits-all projects. Others and myself often wondered how truly unique Wyoming was in terms of economic growth. While there are some similarities to other energy-rich states and countries, the LEG course showed how truly unique we were in our Intermountain West region, nationally and globally. There is uniqueness even within Wyoming. The least-populated state in the union has rural (some might say “frontier”) communities, larger communities (although none approaching 100,000 people), and communities in between.
My peer group, which included representatives from Middle East nations, plainly showed that while we shared commonalities in our energy-dependent economies, our binding constraints oftentimes were considerably different. The peer group sessions are a critical element of the LEG course, allowing group members to test their theories and gain inspiration from others struggling with equally complex issues.
Some long-held assumptions about Wyoming’s economy have now been turned upside down. General concepts such as, “We just need more value-added opportunities,” for example, require a Wyoming-centric PDIA approach rather than, “They did it this way in “X” state, so we can replicate it.” Or, “We have this commodity, so why can’t we build that?” It’s much more complex than that. In fact, Wyoming might be more in the “strategic bets” category.
The collaborative PDIA process will help drive better use of the “public good” principle for state and local investment in things like infrastructure while stepping back and allowing private industry to take projects to scale. This will require communication, collaboration and diverse viewpoints – and action.
I was particularly inspired by the final week’s course content, which focused on leadership.
Leadership is about developing systems, not heroics. Change requires leadership, not just policy. It doesn’t happen by edict.
Going forward, I will focus on the multi-agent leadership practice (which, to some extent, we’ve been doing without knowing it; we just have better tools now).
Multi-Agent leadership convenes, authorizes and motivates participants.
It will be useful to have this suggested list of multi-agent roles and responsibilities as a checklist. These categories recognize that no one person has all the answers; a diverse set of strengths, knowhow and experiences will lead to greater success in identifying the barriers to growth and developing solutions:
- The authorizers
- The motivators
- The convenors
- The connectors
- The problem identifiers
- The ideas people
- The operational empowerers
- The implementers
- The resource providers
These roles can comprise diverse groups including business and industry, governor’s office, legislators, state agencies, higher education, local leadership and associations such as economic development professionals and Chambers of Commerce, and the general public.
Many of us can agree on the problem and identify the binding constraints, and now we have the tools to address them.
This is a blog series written by the alumni of the Leading Economic Growth Executive Education Program at the Harvard Kennedy School. 58 Participants successfully completed this 10-week online course in December 2023. These are their learning journey stories.