Engage our Brightest Minds to Find our Way Forward!

by Phil Enright

Just over a week ago, I attended the Agritourism Roundtable hosted by the Yuba County Alliance for Development. 2 presentations were made providing insight on how 2 of the Region’s most important organisations, Rideout Health and North Yuba Grown, are handling the very substantial challenges they are facing.

For North Yuba Grown, the challenges are those of highly price sensitive supermarket and hospitality buyers, a rising $US and cheap imported produce of unknown nutrition and hygiene quality.

The very significant problems of Rideout’s performance shortfalls were well publicised last year, and resulted in the employment in October of a Strategic Planning and Marketing practitioner. With external support, in less than 6 months, Rideout has produced, and is now in Phase 2 of implementation of a Strategic Plan. An overview of that Plan is publicly available on their website.

Both organisations’ challenges are substantial, but I suggest, not as life-threatening as those of the City of Marysville on a 30+ year decline. North Yuba Grown is essentially a group of local farmers and value-adding entrepreneurs, while Rideout is a massively well-resourced and experienced health provider.

Marysville Council should sit somewhere between the 2 in terms of resources and organisational sophistication. However it is well behind both in addressing its challenges. In fact, it is accurate to say, Marysville has not yet undertaken any process to accurately define its challenges within its competitive framework – competitive in the sense it is competing with other cities and regions across the State and Nation to attract industry, businesses and residents.

So more than Rideout and North Yuba Grown, Marysville needs to recognise and respond to its competitive environment, and develop a comprehensive strategy to address it; and cease its introspective wishful thinking, architectural vision driven process, that is ‘Bounce Back’ (BB).

When one appreciates the substantial progress made in a comparatively short time frame by the other 2 organisations in strategy development and implementation, one recognises the problem for Marysville is one of leadership competence and experience to address its challenges.

Clearly Rideout and North Yuba Grown have drawn upon resources Marysville City Council chose not to consider.

Marysville, and indeed the counties, need to develop a Strategic Plan – a Plan to attract new industries, businesses and potential residents, based on their identified wants and needs; not the dreams of our City Manager and Mayor, as is the case with BB.

So how does this community do it without additional funds?

The founders of MYCBD Group and others like it in the region have spent their careers re-building ailing and failing organisations. They are already providing their expertise and time free of charge to assist businesses and young people grow themselves.

They can direct and oversee the brightest and best enquiring minds from the region’s business schools. Those undertaking Bachelor’s and Master’s Degrees would benefit enormously carrying out the research, coached by those directing the Plan. The experience would be recognised to have accelerated the development of their skills sets.

So what process would be followed? How long would it take?

Depending on the participation levels and rates of stakeholders and community representatives, it could be done in 3 – 6 months. The most appropriate process in the circumstances is likely to be the more responsive and flexible ‘Issues Management’ approach, as developed by Dr John Gattorna. It differs from the more easily manipulated processes, in that it commences with research.

While engaging all of our community’s leaders to establish their needs, wants and aspirations is one important step in the process, in Issues Management, it is not necessarily the first, and hence, often key directional step.

Before seeking the input from our community leaders, the research (a comprehensive Environmental Scan) is done to establish who Marysville and the Region can attract, and what offers can be created to attract them. Having developed that framework, our community representatives can then bring their appreciation of community preferences and aspirations into the consideration process.

While the merits and processes of Strategic Planning are foreign to the Council, they are fundamental to the success of corporate America and established keystone organisations within our levee banks, like Rideout.

If you want to contribute to the development of a Strategic Plan for Marysville and/or the Region, or wish to appreciate more about the Issues Management Approach to Strategic Planning, email Phil Enright at ….. mycbdgroup@gmail.com