Have you ever faced a challenge so daunting you literally didn’t know where to begin to solve it? This seems to be the reaction most of us have when considering the possibility of improving our city. There is no shortage of ideas on what to improve and yet so few people seem to do anything to make those improvements a reality. The first step may be to quit viewing our city as a problem to solve. Instead, we should look around for what’s already working and create more of that. Or, in the words of Dan and Chip Heath “find a bright spot and clone it”.
The Heath brothers are the authors of the widely acclaimed book Made To Stick (Amazon affiliate link) and the upcoming Switch: How to Change Things When Change Is Hard (Amazon affiliate link). In Switch the Heath brothers challenge us to consider the ratio of time we spend solving problems versus scaling successes. They encourage us to move beyond archaeological problem solving to bright spot evangelizing.
So what are the bright spots in your city? What do you most appreciate about your town and why?