Strategic Doing in Michigan's auto communities

“Excellence is an art won by training and habituation. We do not act rightly because we have virtue or excellence, but we rather have those because we have acted rightly. We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act but a habit.” Aristotle

About ten days ago, members of the President's auto communities task force asked a group of us from Purdue to guide a collaboration acceleration session in Lansing, MI. 

With all the funding going into Michigan, federal officials from the U.S. Departments of Commerce and Labor wanted to find some new approaches to accelerating collaborations among their partners in Michigan. They turned to us and we employed Strategic Doing for the job. 

Strategic Doing is a disciplined, practical process for developing and implementing strategies in open, loosely connected networks (like a regional economy). The steps are simple to understand, but not easy for groups to follow. Conversations in loosely connected groups are difficult to guide (think cat herding). To create effective collaborations, we must think clearly, communicate concisely, and stay focused on translating ideas into action.

Innovative (and often complex) initiatives take sophisticated thinking and a commitment to learn from experience. We also need reservoirs of trust to execute quickly, so we can figure out "What works". 

Strategic Doing, in the end, enables us to do complex projects by following some simple rules. The trick comes in following the rules. Like any new habit, practice matters a lot.

You can look at a resource page for the participants of the Lansing, MI workshop here.

If you are interested in learning more about network-based approaches to economic and workforce development, check out Purdue's new certificate course in Open Source Economic Development. To learn more about this course, please connect with Peggy Hosea at phosea@purdue.edu

Comments

[Brian Kelsey]

Ed, thanks for sending this out. I'm doing a one-day training for NADO in Michigan in July, and this material will be very helpful for framing the discussion. Good contribution - as always.