Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Catherine, welcome to the show. What a pleasure to have you on today.
[00:00:03] Speaker B: No, I'm excited to be here. Thank you.
[00:00:05] Speaker A: I want to ask you a question. So you mentioned that your daughter, keep me honest, daughter is going off to college and you said she is ready. What does that mean, she is ready?
[00:00:16] Speaker B: You know, it's a feeling that you get having being able to watch her these last few years and really taking a hard step back in being there to do everything or to think about everything with her and let her sort of test kitchen life with me here, but not really in here. And so I've seen her have to make goals. I've seen her with challenges. I've seen her with teachers that she had to negotiate with. I've seen so much that I think now she's gotten to the point that she's going to make mistakes. It's not going to be perfect, But I've seen her problem solve. I've seen her meet those challenges, balance her time, all those things that usually screw us up once we leave the nest.
So I'm optimistically hopeful that she's ready.
[00:01:08] Speaker A: And in your journey as a parent, helping her gain these skills, what were the values or what were the learnings that you focused on? What are the things that you absolutely wanted to get through? So ultimately she would be ready.
[00:01:22] Speaker B: Yeah. I always said, and I think having a background in social work helps me a great deal. So having a shrink for a parent has its ups and downs to it, but I always thought, if I can teach her resiliency, if I can teach her adaptability, and if I can teach her empathy, those were the three things I was pushing for with her. And I feel like we got there. But I think if you can get those three things straight, it goes a long way in catching a lot of other stuff as well.
[00:01:56] Speaker A: So I love that you brought this up. You said adaptability, empathy, and resilience.
[00:02:02] Speaker B: Right.
[00:02:04] Speaker A: I got to admit, you know, incredibly selfish, you know, question. I got three kids, they're significantly younger than yours.
How do you go about teaching adaptability?
[00:02:18] Speaker B: I think the thing with adaptability is a really simple thing. It really comes to talking with your child around how they can manage new environments successfully. So I think for me, one of the things I'd always teach her and one of the times this came up was always the beginning of the school year because teachers are different. Teachers have different ways of doing things. And so sort of keeping her cognizant, like, well, what are the new things you learned about your teacher today? You know, at the beginning when she was younger and saying, well, what do you think that will mean as far as her being a teacher? So little things like, well, she has six kids versus she doesn't have any kids. Or sometimes as simple as, well, she teaches poetry versus math, you know, and sort of like walking through with her and saying, well, what do you think that's going to mean to her as a teacher? Or what has she told you? I mean, usually people tell you what it takes to be successful with them. And so just making them cognizant of what are you learning about this person and what is it about you that you can adapt to, make that a relationship that's going to work.
And then always making sure they take advantage of opportunities when people ask them about their styles, their way of doing things, never give up a chance to tell somebody a little something about you too, because hopefully they will do the same thing in trying to integrate that information into how they work with you going forward.
[00:03:50] Speaker A: I mean, there's, I mean, I just asked you about adaptability, but you gave a really good example on how you can do all three at the same time.
[00:03:58] Speaker B: Right.
[00:03:58] Speaker A: So I mean, that, that's kind of beautiful because this idea of thinking about the other person and about how they think and what's important to them. Such an important question for us, right, to think beyond ourselves.
[00:04:10] Speaker B: Yes.
[00:04:10] Speaker A: And then also having that understanding of your environment and the challenges and the people and how, what they're feeling and experiencing, that also helps you become more resilient just by thinking about your environment. So that, that's absolutely delightful.
[00:04:24] Speaker B: Thank you.
[00:04:24] Speaker A: Does. Do. Do these personal, let's say, values or strengths, do they translate to a successful community or is that something completely different?
[00:04:36] Speaker B: No, absolutely. So one of the things that I've kind of built my whole career around is this idea of person and environment fit and how people are as humans can go into spaces, we're sort of hardwired to be in spaces and be able to tell almost immediately if it's a fit or if we feel danger or if we feel comfortable, if we don't feel comfortable.
And so a lot of times this whole relationship between person and place is based on fit. And the more you have people who seem to be fitting and thriving in an environment, usually the better the community is going to be on a lot of different things. It's usually the secret sauce, I would say, between successful communities and communities that struggle especially and including economic disadvantage in communities that are having a harder time. It's amazing to me that even when there's disadvantage. If you have a community who are all in love with that place, even if they come from a place of disadvantage, there's certain things they just won't tolerate to grow there, and it enables a better community for all. So I think they translate absolutely. I've built a whole career on the notion that they absolutely do translate.
[00:05:53] Speaker A: That is so interesting. I mean, I. I've spoken to a lot of quote unquote, economic development people. It seems to be a lot about infrastructure and roads and high speed Internet and bringing companies over to increase the tax base.
But you're saying there's something incredibly important about the fabric of the humanity in the community. Can you tell us a story that resonates strongly for you about either good or bad and what that looks like?
[00:06:24] Speaker B: I will say, you know, I've done a lot of work in a lot of different places, and there are a couple of stories that places that really ring home to me about why this work is so important. One has to do here in my backyard of North Carolina. I was working in Charlotte with a historically black neighborhood that was being actually the scapegoat and being portrayed as the scapegoat for everything that was wrong with Charlotte. They were not. Even though they were the most. They were the old neighborhood. They were the most historic neighborhood. They had all of this great history there. They had generations that were living in that same neighborhood. They could not get on the visitors map. You know, they wouldn't put their neighborhood on the visitors map.
Even though it was the heart, it was truly the heart of Charlotte in a lot of ways. They wouldn't get the trolley to stop there. So you start seeing all the systemic kind of manipulation to keep one group out.
And so I ended up doing a research study that compared attachment to place and the values and the benefits in that one neighborhood and compared it to the rest of Charlotte. And what we ended up discovering, easily, I mean, it wasn't even a close call, is that these neighborhoods of Charlotte that have been always left out of the conversation, that have been blamed for everything, when you looked at the administrative data, they were not proportionally more responsible for the crime in the area than the rest of Charlotte.
Their attachment, their love of place was actually higher than other areas of Charlotte. They tended to invest more of the finite resources they had back into Charlotte, and that included buying a house and owning a car, starting a business. They also went to church and was involved in civic organizations at a higher level than the rest of Charlotte.
And they were rated as a more open place. Where people went and actually felt comfortable than a lot of other places in Charlotte. And just the opportunity to reflect that data back to the. To all of Charlotte. You know, you have this one disadvantaged neighborhood who's been left out of everything and just wants to play and wants to earn a seat at the table with the people in charge of Charlotte who just assume so much that is incorrect and being able to reflect back the reality in the perception, not only the perception of what it's like to be there, but the reality that their crime wasn't any higher than per capita than the rest of the area. It made that one decision, enabled them to finally get on the tourism maps and be a part of the Charlotte community. So you had this community and neighborhood people absolutely crying, like, literally crying, because they knew that about themselves, but they didn't have any data. Right. And then the power people in Charlotte looking quite sheepish, I will say about. Well, we kind of missed this one. And we made assumptions that were incorrect. So that's just one example of really, the power of data and understanding how communities are built and where they're hurting and where people think the deficits are sometimes exactly where your strengths are. If you just look at it a little bit differently, what do you think?
[00:09:59] Speaker A: I don't know if your research and exposure was able to uncover this, but do you have any hypothesis around what drove those biases?
[00:10:09] Speaker B: I hate to say it, but that it was primarily an African American neighborhood with lower socioeconomic status, lower levels of education, lower price values of property, disadvantaged.
And there's an assumption, and it's not, you know, not to be pollyanna about this. Communities that struggle in disadvantage do sometimes create environments where there is that kind of exact perception could be true. I'm not saying it's never not true, but the point is, is that you have to check your perceptions with data before you start marginalizing people in places that may, in fact, be one of your greatest assets. So it's always like, don't assume you don't know.
[00:10:58] Speaker A: Right.
[00:10:58] Speaker B: You're making an assumption. You might be right, but you also might be wrong. And I think that it was just simply an assumption of where crime must be coming from in Charlotte, which was not necessarily true in this particular case.
[00:11:12] Speaker A: There's something delightful about being able to think about what we think we believe.
[00:11:19] Speaker B: Right.
[00:11:20] Speaker A: And then align that with data.
[00:11:22] Speaker B: Right.
[00:11:23] Speaker A: And confirm if our assumptions are true or not.
[00:11:26] Speaker B: Right.
[00:11:26] Speaker A: You know, with, you know, I just told my daughter, just got glasses, and I said, you know, there's a wonderful bias about glasses. People think you're smart.
[00:11:35] Speaker B: Yes, that's right.
[00:11:37] Speaker A: It's untrue. Right.
I'm sure there's plenty of dumb people that have glasses, and there are plenty of smart people that don't have glasses.
[00:11:46] Speaker B: Right, Right.
[00:11:47] Speaker A: But there's this wonderful bias, but it's definitely not supported by the data. But we still believe all kinds of things, and we have our own biases associated with them.
[00:11:57] Speaker B: No, it's absolutely true. You're right.
[00:11:59] Speaker A: So when you come into a city, how do you approach this?
Is this part of your mythology of kind of thinking about, okay, let's do a review of the data associated with the city. What does that look like?
[00:12:15] Speaker B: Yeah. So, I mean, to your point, I think the research that won me the Place Marketing Award was actually in Miami, where we just literally compared perception data to reality data to figure out where our perceptions are not correct with the reality of a place. And sometimes it's as simple as that, where you go in and you check perceptions against reality, because there's usually people, the economic development people focus on administrative data, you know, and then the nonprofit community and the more performing arts community. And that side always talks about how it feels and the perception, and there the two shall meet. So I always say when I first go into a community, is, you know, what. What is our goal here? Are we trying to build a better mousetrap in some way? Is something failing here? And if that's the case, is it the perception of a fail, or is it the reality of a failure? Because if it's a perception and the reality doesn't match, then you have a social psychology experiment that you need to get underway in intervention. If it's actually broken, as the administrative data will bear out as well as the perception, then you really know you need to build a bigger, better mousetrap. But in a lot of cases, they haven't done even that preliminary work, so they just come in and say, this is broken. Or. Or we're losing all of our college talent to other towns. Or, you know, whatever the assumption they bring to the table is, is you have to stop and say, well, how do you know that? And even though perception is reality, and I totally believe that is true, how you intervene on that as a result has everything to do with what is the basis of the assumption and what is right about it and what is wrong in other places, they just like a temperature check. We want to know how our attachment is doing in our. And we want to understand from a predictive standpoint what populations are we getting ready to Lose.
Where is attachment dropping off and what could we do? Why are they saying it's dropping off? And what can we do to work on that? And again, that's often a young talent conversation where communities are assuming that they're losing their talent, and they want to gauge that and they want to see, is it the attachment to the place and what is it about the attachment that's making them. Them do that brain drain on us that we don't want to do. But it really depends on the place. We could go in trying to solve a problem, or we could be doing more of a diagnostic kind of procedure there.
[00:15:02] Speaker A: So I might be pushing this too far, but is there an equation to attachment? Like, what are the variables that we need to look at to thank God that you just said yes, otherwise this whole question went down the drain.
What is the equation of attachment?
[00:15:18] Speaker B: So the equation for attachment is that if you can get residents to positively rate three aspects of their community, well, then you will most likely see higher levels of attachment. And this has been everywhere. I've studied 26 cities three years across time.
Corpus Christi during the pandemic, the entire state of Arizona at one point. You know, places up in Canada, Australia, these things don't change. And it's kind of crazy how these things don't change. But if you can get people to rate highly their perception of perceptions of the social offerings of the place, that they match their needs, that they find that they can have fun things to do, if the aesthetics is what they're looking for, they find that pleasing, and they find the community welcoming to the level that they would want. And I keep putting those little qualifiers in there because every place is different in how they manifest social offerings, aesthetics, and openness. As we. As we shorthand it, New York social offerings is way different than Cary, North Carolina, where I live. So that's where that person and environment fit comes into play. Does Cary manifest social offerings in a way that feels like home to you? It might not feel like home to everybody. Right. So that's where the homework comes in and finding your right place.
But we do know that it's cities that to their best ability and what they think is close to what they can pull off. Do the social offerings, the aesthetics, and the openness correctly, they will likely have higher levels of attachment. And what's really cool about this model is that if you tweak perception of just one of those things significantly higher, within 18 months, you see bumps in attachment. So this is a very nimble kind of model. And if you could only use one thing. You choose social offerings. It is by far the number one thing that makes people fall in love with their place.
[00:17:30] Speaker A: That's incredibly interesting. I mean, it's one thing to figure out that you're really good at something and kind of do the marketing to tell everybody else that actually this is true. It's a whole different ballgame to tweak and change and improve.
[00:17:43] Speaker B: Right.
[00:17:44] Speaker A: Give us an example. What does that look like? How is it done? What were the results?
[00:17:49] Speaker B: Yeah, so I think we've had a lot of different.
And a lot of times we stumble into these, into what works. I would say in my work with the production company, I will say the hidden gem in growing attachment, and the company has really bared this out for me is finding things that combine all of those things together. So I always use the model because this is a very complicated social science model. And the book that I wrote was just about how finding the right place to live is like finding the right partner to share your life. You want somebody that you can have fun with.
That doesn't make you want to throw up when you look at them that you think accepts you kind of for who and what you are. And if you find that person, hold on to them like sweet death, because that is someone who is invested in you. And places are the same way, which is crazy. So I will say that in my town, one of the things I've discovered is the best way to tell people who you are like you would on a date. If you're dating a place and you're trying to figure it out. One of the quickest things in a high growth community, which is what I live in, is telling the local story of the place and how it's sort of like that first date where you sit down and be like, well, tell me about yourself, you know, and the more you can show them who you are authentically, the quicker that growth to attachment is or the quicker they can say, you know what? This isn't probably my jam, you know, this probably is not going to be the place for me. So I would say a lot of my work these days focuses on helping places tell the story of themselves authentically to people in creative ways. But having said that, I mean, there have been places in upstate New York that I have worked in where the riverfront was a disaster because the industrials moved out and the river is now polluted. And the place was really struggling in a perception level of this because when you get decay, then there's implications of safety and environmental stuff and we did something very.
The group that I was working with did something very simple, which was they just put Adirondack chairs along the riverfront. Because we were talking about millions of dollars of investment to try to bring this place back to life. And one of the members just like, well, what if we just signal to people that it's an okay place to be, that it could be better, and we'll do some environmental cleanup and stuff. But let's. Let's keep it simple. Like, what's the simple, easy thing we could do to reset people's minds about our riverfront? And sure enough, I mean, they got news, they got coverage the first day of people putting these chairs out, and they were painting the chairs red. And a lot of community people who saw this happening were like, okay, leadership's lost their mind. They're painting chairs, and they think that's going to do something.
And sure enough, I mean, in a couple weeks, it was sort of like, people were like, what the hell are they doing down there? Well, let's go see. I mean, you know, where people kind of fall back into your trap because they don't believe it's going to work or anything. And so people started sitting there and sort of sitting in the chairs and taking selfies because it was like, oh, you saw this on the news. Well, I'm here now. And the next thing you know, the kids are coming and there's a Frisbee game going on because they have all this green space and the moms are sitting there, and then the yoga class shows up, and then the hot dog guy shows up, and then the balloon guy shows up. And next thing you know, I mean, this place in upstate New York now has a river, a riverfront destination that started with $300 of Adirondack chairs. Why? Because we changed the perception of what that space could be.
And then we allowed people to discover it and make it their own. Like, we didn't over structure the activities. We put chairs out. People could move the chairs. They sat in circles, they talked, they let their kids. I mean, and it can be that simple by just cueing people, hey, this is a place you can be. Give it a shot. And we really don't care if they came because they didn't believe it would work. They came to see what craziness have they come up with now? Well, we've come up with $300 of Adirondack chairs, and now it's a whole.
[00:22:37] Speaker A: Development that is absolutely delightful. And the funny thing is that by showing. Let's say the proof of the pudding. Then you're like, oh, people are into this. That justifies additional investment.
[00:22:48] Speaker B: Exactly.
[00:22:49] Speaker A: So it comes this, like, snowball effect.
[00:22:51] Speaker B: Exactly.
[00:22:52] Speaker A: I think is absolutely delightful.
[00:22:54] Speaker B: That's right. That's how the developers. Because when they saw the family show up and they saw the hot dog guy making a killing. Cause that was the only food option out there, they're like, what the hell are we doing sitting here going, oh, it's never going to work. You know, let's get in there. Let's. Let's start a restaurant. Let's move. And that's how places get. Can be revitalized for $300, is there.
[00:23:17] Speaker A: So when. When you think about the teams that you've worked with within, I'm assuming economic development, is there something that you've noticed over the years that is a cultural aspect that leads to success? And I'm fishing here, like always.
What have you noticed? What really helps teams be successful in this aspect?
[00:23:40] Speaker B: I think for me, breaking into a club of planners and economic development people has taken me saying, I'm not here. You know, I am here to help you look good. I am here to add a seat to the table. Not kick you off the table, but to add a seat to the table that's going to make us all look better as a result. Because I am not here to create more work. That's the one thing you got to tell them. I am not here to, you know, discount your work. I am here to optimize your work. Because you're forgetting a very critical component to the equation. And if you just let me slide up to the table, we can continue on. You don't have to start over. You don't have to, you know, give up your sacred cows. You don't have to.
And then they let me at the table. And I think that that's been the most critical thing to my success in working with those kinds of teams, is not feeling like, oh, God, here comes the shiny penny girl who's going to make us do all this wacko stuff and we don't see a connection to our work and it's going to be more work for us. And, you know, she's a social worker, for God's sake. What is she doing here? You know, you got to just say, hey, I just want to be at the table and I want to make you guys look good. And I see an opportunity here.
And they usually respond pretty well to that. And after you get your first success, then they want you there all the time. You Know, you got to, you got to choose a project to begin with that you know you're going to be successful at. You don't go for the hardest thing first and you don't do that to communities either. People are like, we're going to do the big thing. No, no, no. Do the low hanging fruit thing first. And then people go, hmm, interesting. And then you work your way up to the big stuff. But a lot of people, you know, they make people feel like they're gonna kick you out if you're coming in, which is a bad idea. More work, bad idea.
And you go too hard too quickly because you want to make a point. That's a great way to fail on three counts. Right up front.
[00:25:49] Speaker A: Yeah. I mean, your comments are so. I think beyond economic development, I think we see the exact same challenges in any project that brings change. I think I felt the exact same things working with Siemens on implementing information systems, electronics manufacturing, like, it feels the exact same thing. It's so strongly resonating. So I would argue that there's a deeper level of truth to the topic. The other thing, that topic of, oh, like, oh, she, or whatever is, or the system, whatever it is, is here to replace us. Oh, such a strong one.
And what I actually did, I said, look, you need to have a plan for the team once the system is in place, once the change will happen, what are they going to do? How are they going to contribute? What are they going to. So just this human element to organizations and systems. It's so interesting.
[00:26:43] Speaker B: Yeah, there's some things that are just universal about how humans respond and react to certain stimuli. And if you learn how to master that, again, adaptability, you know, if you learn to figure that out, you can take that to different systems and be successful using it.
[00:27:01] Speaker A: So, I mean, I didn't even notice, but we're out of time. This has been so much fun. I have one final question.
[00:27:09] Speaker B: Okay.
[00:27:10] Speaker A: If you had to go back to 20 something, Catherine, what would you advise her?
[00:27:15] Speaker B: That every detour in the road that you think means you're derailed is going to come back and make perfect sense within five to 10 years. You know, that's what I would say. Every detour is not a derailment and you do not have to fit in a square in a category. I mean, if you, Even as we were talking, it's hard to categorize what I do. And that is something that a lot of children, kids, mine included, that I'm trying to say, you know, 65% of the jobs that you might have. Haven't even been imagined yet. So don't worry if you don't feel like. Well, I don't really fit here, and I don't really fit here. That means you're doing it right, because you're doing systems work, and that's where the real social change comes from.
[00:28:04] Speaker A: Katherine, what a delight. Thank you so much for coming on the show. I appreciate you.
[00:28:09] Speaker B: Absolutely. I'm glad I could do it.
