What’s “endogenous” got to do with it?

Tuesday, March 13, 2007

We had great weather here in southeastern Michigan over the weekend so I decided to drive into Detroit and see the other half of an exhibition that is at the Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit (MOCAD). It’s entitled “Shrinking Cities” and MOCAD and the Cranbrook Museum of Art in the Detroit suburbs (Bloomfield Hills) are co-sponsoring this exhibition locally. I’ll let the folks at MOCAD describe it for you:

Shrinking Cities, a project by Germany's Federal Cultural Foundation, the Kulturstiftung des Bundes, explores a form of urban development that has become a global phenomenon. Starting in 2002, local teams were commissioned in Detroit (USA), Manchester/Liverpool (Britain), Ivanovo (Russia), and Halle/Leipzig (Germany) to investigate and document processes of urban shrinking. In more than fifty exhibition contributions, artists, architects, filmmakers, journalists, culture experts, and sociologists reveal and illuminate the changing realities of these cities.

Here’s why I’m talking about this on a blog dedicated to corporate culture. It’s all about perceptions, human systems, and leadership.

When I toured the Cranbrook part of the exhibition a few weeks ago, the story of Detroit’s devastation overwhelmed me. It added to my familiar perceptions of Detroit (being a non-Michigan native) as being a city totally devastated, a wasteland, with little viable human activity. If pressed, I would probably conjure up images of its citizens on the brink of psychological paralysis because of the overwhelming devastation. Think of post-World War II Europe without the Marshall Plan. And the Cranbrook exhibit gave me examples of where civic leadership contributed to the devastation through corruption, complacency, or incompetence. I left the exhibit with the perception of Detroit as devastated beyond hope and any private or public intervention would only postpone, but not prevent, its inevitable death. Then I went to MOCAD.

One of the exhibits at the MOCAD is a documentary video produced by Interboro, a New York City-based research and design firm in collaboration with the Center for Urban Pedagogy. The video describes, among many things, the phenomenon in the city of Detroit called “blots.” A blot is the larger lot that results from a homeowner taking, borrowing, or buying one or more adjacent lots. Some residents have been able to piece together a number of contiguous lots because the City of Detroit has demolished a significant number of abandoned houses over the years. By acquiring adjacent lots, these residents have acquired an acreage size that is typically available only in suburban communities. Some have added gardens, gazebos, parking space, or just left the lots empty. The video authors use the homeowners’ grass roots efforts as an example of a positive, “endogenous” (produced from within) response to localized, urban blight and name it “The New Suburbanism.”

I’m not saying this documentary gave me hope, but it did alter my perception of this human system called Detroit. It gave me examples of where people are making efforts, albeit small and localized, to re-claim their immediate surroundings. And these folks have often taken initiative in the face of antagonistic or distracted civic leadership with their own agendas. Action to fill the vacuum of true leadership. And in numerous cases, these actions have been a creative response to improve their bleak circumstances. Innovation born of self-interest. Any application to other types of human systems, such as corporations?

What if we looked at organizations that are going through their own version of decline and possible extinction and the perception that outsiders have of the viability of the organization as a human system. Keeping with our Detroit theme, let’s take Ford Motor Company as an example. The perception is that it is on life-support. Bleeding billons of dollars. Closing facilities left and right. Selling off assets like Aston Martin to get its hands on some amount of cash. Leadership that has not kept the company competitive and responsive to rapid changes in the global market. A devastated workforce, emotionally paralyzed, waiting for the hatchet to swing their way. It’s easy to imagine the new CEO, Alan Mulally, and his management team totally focused on survival. Do whatever it takes to stop what some think is inevitable: Ford’s disappearance from the global marketplace.

So, Mr. Mulally, before you start blaming the Ford culture as one of the many culprits for Ford’s predicament, look deep into the organization for your version of blots. Listen. Ask questions. Send out your spies. You, yourself, poke and probe everywhere in the organization to find those pockets, albeit small and localized, of innovation borne of self-interest. As Lester Burnham said in “American Beauty,” “I’m just an ordinary guy with nothing to lose.” The Lester Burnham’s of Ford have something to show you.