A personal rant…
Like Mike, I’m very concerned about Michigan. I’ve been trying to be a good citizen by helping rather than simply complaining but I’m getting very frustrated by my limited experience with government and non-profits that attempt to help the situation. I don’t mean to disrespect those involved. The people I’ve met through my involvement in these organizations have been some of the brightest people I’ve known. However, despite all of our best intentions and energies, I have personally observed almost zero tangible positive results. (with a few rare exceptions)
The other day I was notified that a new IT organization called ConnecTech is coming to Lansing and they would like someone from our organization to serve on their board. I’m sure ConnecTech is a fine organization with lots of people with great intentions, but what about the 3 other “IT Groups” in Lansing with nearly identical highfalutin goals and almost zero budget?
The Capital Area IT Council, LINC, ITEC, in my mind, all share a very similar goals. To a lesser extent, LEAP, Prima Civitas, The Lansing Chamber of Commerce, Capital Area Michigan Works, GLUGG, MEDC, SBAM, all too share similar goals. My frustration is that I get asked to join more organizations than I get to see tangible positive results from my participation in said organizations. Why can’t these organizations unite and make a real substantive change? We are past the point where band-aid solutions will fix Lansing. Government is not going to fix Lansing. Only we, the engaged public, can fix Lansing.
Some would argue that each of these organizations serves a unique purpose and mission and that more people working on the problem will provider greater results sooner. I dismiss this argument now that I have seen how it works first hand.
One of the primary inefficiencies of the multitude of nearly identical programs is that each one of these organization spends a significant amount of its resources on two key items 1. Growing Membership 2. Increasing Revenues. This accounts for 90-95% of our work in some of the organizations I’ve participated in. That means 90% of the time we were NOT furthering our stated goal, just fueling the bureaucracy. And since most of the revenue comes from government and private charity, it means that government is using your tax dollars to finance multiple organization’s with duplicate missions with almost no regard for tangible results.
My desire as a tax payer and a private corporate sponsor of many of these organizations would be that they unite and focus on results based programs utilizing collective input from our incredibly small Lansing “IT market”. This community is so small that we should be careful to avoid dividing it, and that is the result of multiple organizations. Lansing is the past the point where small changes are going to make an impact. In my opinion, if these organizations don’t unite they are all just polishing the brass on the titanic. It’s all going down.
3 Ideas to focus on for Lansing:
- Excite our population about Science and Math, you can start by requiring Science and Math teachers to have a background in their subject matter. An English philosophy major shouldn’t be teaching Physics.
- Lower and simplify corporate taxation rates for all companies, stop picking winners with complicated tax incentive programs like MEGA and Invest Michigan.
- Stop supporting GM and the UAW. Stop making excuses for both of them. GM hasn’t innovated in years and the UAW is protecting a monopoly. Give it up guys.
my.02.
