Southern Oregon Business Journal - January 2024

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SouthernOregonBusiness.com INTERVIEW WITH SOU’S PRESIDENT RICK BAILEY AFTER 2 YEARS AT THE HELM - PAGE 18

The Journal for Business in Southern Oregon WHEN DO YOU MAKE A DECISION TO STOP PROVIDING A SERVICE? - PAGE 14

January 2024

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“WISHING YOU A YEAR OF GOOD”

A MASTERCLASS ON LEADERSHIP BY SOU PRESIDENT RICK BAILEY INTERVIEW PAGE 18

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A Few Words from Jim January 2024

Happy New Year!

2024 is off to a great start.

I had the opportunity to have an amazing lunch at the Twisted Cork in Grants Pass with Trever Yarrish and he shared with me his end of year ritual when I asked him what he did to celebrate the year end. As expected, it's full of insight. He writes down what he remembers. He looks at all the photos he took throughout the year with his wife and children on the big screen at home. They discuss each photo and it helps him realize how many things he did not remember. Then he looks at his schedule. What he intentionally put on his calendar. This retrospective process he goes through seems very useful and deep and I want to try it monthly in 2024.

He also gives himself 15 minutes of dedicated focused time to create 3 lists.

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What do I want to start doing this year?

What do I want to stop doing this year?

What do I want to continue to do this year?

He also asks himself what a perfect Tuesday looks like and what he would do if he knew he could not fail as well as what he would do even though he knows that he will fail.

I love my lunches with Trever. The man is a fountain of inspiration.

What are your goals for 2024?

This issue marks one of mine. I wanted to write more so I wrote three of the stories inside.

PEOPLE’S BANK - PAGE 5 MANAGED HOME NET - PAGE 41 SOU - LEADERSHIP BEGINS HERE SOUTHERN OREGON UNIVERSITY PAGE 27 PROJECT A - PAGE 11 TRUE SOUTH SOLAR BACK COVER

One is a very fast and deep interview with Southern Oregon University’s President Rick Bailey. I call it a master class in leadership. I got so much out of my 30 minutes with him that I can’t stop thinking about it.

Another is a wandering reflection on the process we went through at one of our companies when we stopped providing a core service that we have provided for decades, CABLE TV. It was a loss leader for far too long and I wanted to share some insight on our process with hopes that if you are holding onto a loss leader you can find a way to move away from it.

The final story is about the new Apple Vision Pro launch date (February 2nd) and sharing with you that yes we are getting one (or more) and yes we are writing something for the new platform and it’s been hard to do without having one and without seeing what everyone else is doing as well.

Let me know your thoughts on my stories and check out our guest posts from Lisa Manyon, Greg Henderson, Marshal Doak and new in 2024, Jason Schneider from Civic* Possible.

Happy New Year. I’m wishing you a year of good!

SOU President Rick Bailey - Interview Page 18

Founder Greg Henderson ghenderson703@gmail.com Greg started the Southern Oregon Business Journal in 2015 and retired in 2020.

2 | Southern Oregon Business Journal January 2024

SOU President Rick Bailey and Rocky at a SOU Sporting Event. Photo from SOU.

Thanks for reading…

Jim Jim@SouthernOregonBusiness.com

5350 HWY 66, Ashland, Oregon 97520

www.SouthernOregonBusiness.com

A JOURNAL FOR THE ECONOMICALLY CURIOUS, PROFESSIONALLY INSPIRED AND ACUTELY MOTIVATED

JANUARY 2024 - TABLE OF CONTENTS

Book Review - Tribal Leadership: Leveraging Natural Groups for Organizational Success 4 More Hispanic families are reaching the middle class 6 Oregon Gov. Kotek’s first year in office took her to 36 counties. Here’s what she learned 8 The cornerstones of long-term, sustainable business success by Lisa Manyon 10 Opinion: Why Incentives to Attract Doctors to Rural Areas Haven’t Worked 12 Turning off Cable TV —- When do you make a decision to stop providing a service? By Jim Teece 14 Junction City Jumps into the Fast Lane with Hunter's High-Speed Internet! 17 Southern Oregon University President Rick Bailey celebrates 2 years at the helm by Jim Teece 18 A Fine Line by Greg Anderson The Baby Boomer Effect 29 SBDC - Success Building in 2024 by Marshall Doak, SOU SBDC Director 30 Apple Vision Pro(AVP) is coming on February 2nd, are you getting one? By Jim Teece 34 Become an Altruistic Mischief-Maker by Jason Schneider 36

READING LIST A book review

Tribal Leadership: Leveraging Natural Groups for Organizational Success

leaders assess the current level of their tribe, and guide them to the next level, where collaboration, innovation, and performance are enhanced.

In the ever-evolving landscape of business management and leadership, one book stands out with its innovative approach to organizational success: “Tribal Leadership” by Dave Logan, John King, and Halee FischerWright.

Tribal Leadership is a book that explores how the culture of any organization can be improved by understanding and influencing the tribes that exist within it. The authors, Dave Logan, John King, and Halee Fischer-Wright, based their book on a 10-year study of 24,000 people in more than two dozen organizations. They discovered that there are five levels of tribal culture, ranging from "life sucks" to "life is great", and that each level has its own characteristics, behaviors, and language. The book provides a framework and tools to help 4 | Southern Oregon Business Journal January 2024

This groundbreaking work presents a unique perspective on how to elevate a company’s collective culture to improve productivity and collaboration.

The Power of Tribes The authors introduce the concept of tribes, which are socially networked groups of 20 to 150 people. These tribes are the basic building blocks of any organization, determining the quality and quantity of work produced1. The performance of a tribe relies heavily on one person: the tribal leader.

The Five Stages of Tribal Development Logan, King, and Fischer-Wright describe five stages of tribal development, each representing a different level of opportunity for success. The higher the stage, the greater the potential for organizational achievement. The authors provide strategies for tribal leaders to identify each stage and guide their tribe towards victory.

The Role of the Tribal Leader The tribal leader plays a crucial role in moving the members through each culture stage. They are responsible for fostering a positive and productive culture within the tribe. By effectively implementing the leadership stages and strategies, tribal leaders can significantly improve both the organization’s bottom line and the happiness of its employees.

“Tribal Leadership” offers a fresh perspective on organizational success. By understanding and leveraging the power of tribes, businesses can create a thriving, collaborative environment that drives growth and innovation. This book is a must-read for anyone seeking to revolutionize their approach to leadership and organizational culture.

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SPECIAL

By Tim Henderson - December 28, 2023 https://oregoncapitalchronicle.com/2023/12/28/morehispanic-families-are-reaching-the-middle-class/

More Hispanic families are reaching the middle class

they’ve reached it, based on data through 2021. Black and Hispanic Americans still lag in college education, which is associated with greater chances of economic success, Rakesh Kochhar, a senior researcher and author of the report, said in an email.

Furthermore, the percentage of Hispanic households that make more than twice the median income, 10%, is still far lower than the 21% of white households in that category.

The Hispanic middle class has grown faster than the white or Black middle class in the past decade and has reached near-parity with the white middle class in seven states, according to a new Stateline analysis.

Between 2012 and 2022, the percentage of Hispanic households in the country that qualified as middle class grew from about 42% to 48%, while the share of white households in the middle class remained about the same at 51%. The proportion of Black middle-class households grew more slowly, from 41% to 44%.

Hispanic households’ increasing economic success reflects the maturing of a community that now has more U.S.-born residents. But it also reflects a change in fortunes for immigrants filling service jobs that are in high 6 | Southern Oregon Business Journal January 2024

demand, as well as a broader labor shortage that has pushed up wages.

However, the gains are fragile and could evaporate over time, said Thomas Saenz, president of the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund, which advocates for fair labor practices for Hispanic workers.

“While I welcome the progress, it’s not enough to say we’re close to solving the problems with inequity for communities of color. We’re not,” Saenz said. He noted that middle-class income takes a long time to translate into wealth, which often entails passing the financial benefits of homeownership to future generations.

A Pew Research Center report last year found Black and Hispanic adults are more likely than white adults to fall out of the middle class once

For purposes of the analysis, Stateline defined as middle class those households making between two-thirds and twice the state median income adjusted for family size, which ranges from about $70,000 in New Mexico to almost $108,000 in Massachusetts. The analysis is based on responses to the U.S. Census Bureau’s American Community Survey provided by the University of Minnesota at ipums.org.

According to the Stateline definition, a threeperson household would have to earn $46,000 to qualify as middle class in New Mexico. The same size family would have to make $53,000 in Florida and $72,000 in Massachusetts and New Jersey. The analysis only included the 15 states where at least 10% of the population is Hispanic.

Among those states, the share of Hispanic families who are middle class is nearly the same as it is for white households in seven states: Arizona, California, Florida, Illinois, Nevada, New Mexico and Texas. In Illinois, Nevada and New Mexico, the Hispanic middle-class share is

higher than the white share, and it is within 3 percentage points in the other four states.

In 2012, the only state where the Hispanic middle-class percentage approached the share for white households was New Mexico.

Nevada illustrates the progress that Hispanic families have made. Fifty-seven percent of Hispanic households in Nevada are middle class, compared with 52% of white households.

That’s a reversal from 2012, when 53% of white households and 49% of Hispanic households were middle class.

Recently, the roller-coaster fortunes of the Nevada tourism industry have been an economic boon to Hispanic workers. Layoffs came in both the Great Recession and the pandemic, but lately jobs have come back with higher wages than before.

Last month, the Culinary Union ratified a contract for 40,000 Nevada resort workers that will raise pay 32% over five years. For Elsa Roldan, a single mother who cleans guests’ rooms at the Bellagio resort in Las Vegas, that would put her over the middle-class threshold she is already approaching at her $25-an-hour pay. In Nevada, the middle-class household income range is about $54,000 to $161,000.

I couldn’t be more happy or more proud. I feel like I’m middle class, or maybe working class, but I have my benefits, my health care, I own my house in Henderson, a very peaceful area where I feel safe, and my son is in college.

– Elsa Roldan, single mother in Las Vegas “I couldn’t be more happy or more proud. I feel like I’m middle class, or maybe working class but I have my benefits, my health care, I own my house in Henderson [a Las Vegas suburb], a very peaceful area where I feel safe, and my son is in college,” said Roldan, who was born in Chicago and lived in Mexico for a time before moving to Las Vegas 17 years ago.

Las Vegas has changed a lot since Antonio Munoz grew up there as the son of laborers who arrived in the 1960s as part of the Bracero Program that brought workers from Mexico to ease labor shortages. Back then, neighborhoods were segregated into different areas for white, Latino and Black families, but now neighborhoods are mixed, he said. Munoz is the first in the family to own his own business, the 911 Taco Bar restaurant and catering service.

Being a small-business owner is not easy, though.

“I feel like we’re doing pretty well, though there are always ups and downs in the restaurant business. We’ve been busy, but with all the inflation we’re not making any more money,” said Munoz. He’s considering buying his own restaurant building, but prices are as much as $1.5 million for a simple drive-thru location, and he’s not sure he can afford such a big loan.

The gap between Hispanic and white middleclass households is largest in Northeast states, where living costs are higher. Hispanic residents in states such as Rhode Island and New Jersey are also less likely to be U.S.-born and to speak English easily, factors that have been shown to boost access to middle-class incomes.

The disparity between the Hispanic and white middle class is still 10 percentage points or more in Connecticut, Massachusetts, New Jersey and Rhode Island.

Rosa Flores at the Disnalda Beauty Salon she bought in Providence, R.I. (Michael Salerno/ Rhode Island Current)

In Rhode Island, where 13% of households are Hispanic, 39% of Hispanic households are middle class compared with 56% of white households, a gap that’s about the same as it was in 2012.

Many Hispanic residents in Rhode Island are single mothers from Central America with lowpaying work in house cleaning and child care,

with little chance of buying homes and building wealth in today’s inflated housing market, said Marcela Betancur, director of the nonprofit Latino Policy Institute in Providence.

“Being middle class means more than money. It means being able to pass it on to the next generation,” Betancur said, adding that she sees hope for the future in increasing college enrollment among children of immigrants.

Rosa Flores was born in the Dominican Republic and owns a beauty salon in Providence where she moved after studying at a beauty college in New York City about 20 years ago. A single mother, she endured some hard times in the pandemic, living on her savings when the salon, Disnalda, closed for 72 days.

“People came back, thank God, that was a big relief and we’re doing well now,” Flores said. “I do feel middle class and it’s much easier to get by now that I have my own business. I’m very happy.”

The middle-class gap between white and Hispanic households is 12 percentage points in Massachusetts, 11 points in Connecticut and 10 points in New Jersey.

Overall, the growth of the Hispanic middle class is “rapid but not surprising” as the community matures and includes more U.S.-born citizens who are educated and speak English, said William A.V. Clark, a geography professor at the University of California, Los Angeles, who wrote a 2003 book on immigration and the middle class.

A report published this year by The American Journal of Economics and Sociology also emphasized the importance of fluency in English.

The report looked at spending between 2010 and 2019 and found that English-speaking Hispanic families spent more than those who spoke only Spanish on expenses considered middle-class like home mortgages, car payments and family vacations, said author Hua Zan, a family economics researcher at the University of Hawaii.

Southern Oregon Business Journal January 2024 | 7

SPECIAL By: Julia Shumway - January 9, 2024 https://oregoncapitalchronicle.com/2024/01/09/oregon-gov-koteks-firstyear-in-office-took-her-to-36-counties-heres-what-she-learned/

Oregon Gov. Kotek’s first year in office took her to 36 counties. Here’s what she learned.

COTTAGE GROVE – Tina Kotek peered into a metal microshelter on a brisk December afternoon, turning with a question to Kris McAlister, executive director of the homelessness nonprofit Carry It Forward in the small Lane County city.

Oregon counties, which began in December 2022 in Yamhill County and ended in Lane County in December 2023. She met with nearly 1,000 people in nearly 100 towns across the state, with First Lady Aimee Kotek Wilson joining her on most visits.

The governor had seen a lot of microshelters like the dozens of units at Carry It Forward’s low-barrier adult shelter on the outskirts of Cottage Grove. She wanted to know what worked well – and what could be better.

“Having an opportunity to sit down with Oregonians in their home communities and hear about what’s going on is an experience neither of us will forget, and they will actually help me be a better governor over the next several years,” Kotek said in a press conference after the Lane County visit.

Those questions defined Kotek’s nearly year-long tour of all 36 8 | Southern Oregon Business Journal January 2024

The tour brought her to familiar territory – a day shelter and park mere miles from the Portland home where she lived before moving to the governor’s mansion – and to areas of the state she’s never visited.

It started with a narrow focus on three key issues: Kotek’s first visit to Yamhill County consisted of conversations at a community clinic about behavioral health, a preschool about education and a local government office about the housing crisis. As the tour continued, she began adding more conversations with elected officials, usually over meals at local restaurants.

Kotek told the Capital Chronicle in an interview that those meetings are making it easier to do her job. A June coffee with Tillamook County Commissioner Erin Skaar meant that Kotek was able to directly call Skaar after torrential rains caused flooding in the coastal county in December to talk about how the state could help with recovery.

Most of her conversations were with invited guests, local elected officials and community leaders. Reporters covered each discussion in Yamhill County, but at subsequent stops most or all of her events were held in private and followed by short briefings with local reporters.

Some unexpected interactions did happen, though. The Capital Chronicle joined Kotek on a walking tour of businesses in downtown Independence, where Kotek hopped on a passing trolley with Rep. Paul Evans, D-Monmouth; Polk County Commissioner Jeremy Gordon and Mayor John McArdle and sang “Happy Birthday” to a fellow trolley rider.

While the tour remained largely focused on housing, education and behavioral health, Kotek also added local issues, including tours of farms in rural Oregon. Her October visit to Linn County brought her to the Pugh Seed Farm in Shedd, where sixthgeneration farmer Denver Pugh showed Kotek and state Rep. Jami Cate, R-Lebanon, around his family’s farm.

Linn County boasts that it’s the “grass seed capital of the world,” and the Pughs grow seed-producing grasses for pastures across the world. They also raise other crops, including wheat, radishes and meadowfoam, a flowering plant that’s used as an oil in cosmetic and hair products. Kotek knew that Linn County was the grass seed capital but admitted that she

knew nothing about growing grass seed and had never been on a grass seed farm before, Pugh said. He jumped at the opportunity to show her his work.

“There’s a handful of us in my area that open our farms up to tours and stuff like that,” he said. “But I don’t know too many that had the opportunity to do it at the level that as of the governor. Their state representatives come by every once in a while, there’ll be opportunities for them and local leaders, but as far as the governor, you just don’t hear of a governor reaching out like that.”

His politics don’t align with hers, Pugh said, and he suspects she knows that.

But he said he looked past political differences because Kotek wanted to learn.

‘Normal person’ Judging from body language, Kotek said she could tell that some people she met over the year started off hesitant but most were smiling by the end of the conversation.

“Some of the feedback we’ve received third-party has been that she seems like a normal person,” she said.

“I’ll take that. I’m a very straightforward person. I think a lot more people know about my story, about how I got to Oregon, because we’d have those conversations. They certainly have gotten to meet the first lady so that’s always helpful. They see us as a family and that’s important.”

Jake Boone, assistant city manager in Cottage Grove, said he hopes Kotek continues to visit rural communities and that future governors do the same. Towns like his, with a population of about 10,600, don’t have the same resources or pull with state leaders as Oregon’s big cities, and the tour was a rare direct line to the state’s top official.

“One of the standard complaints about every governor is that Portland drives the bus and we all kind of get dragged along by it,” he said. “We have 261 cities in the state. Only one of them is Portland. Only one of them is Salem. Only one of them is Eugene.

The rest of them, a huge number of them are in the roughly 10,000 range, but it’s hard to get our voices noticed because we’re small. Unlike Portland and Salem, we can’t afford our own lobbyists to go be there in the Capitol building every day.”

U.S. Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Oregon, praised Kotek for visiting each county.

Wyden and fellow Democratic Sen. Jeff Merkley hold town halls in every county each year.

“You can’t do your job well, sitting behind her desk, and guessing what is on somebody’s mind,” Wyden told the Capital Chronicle. “You gotta get out, and that’s what she’s doing and I commend her for it. I’ve had my way and everybody’s got their own approach, but my understanding is that no governor in Oregon has done what she’s done.”

It’s not an experience Kotek plans to repeat this year, but she said she hopes to continue meeting with Oregonians and visiting different parts of the state in future years as governor.

“This has been an amazing experience to do the intense, very targeted conversations we were having in communities,” she said. “I think future visits will shift a little bit.

We want to try different things and communicate with folks around the state. I’d like to be able to visit different places as well. I don’t see us doing every county next year, but that doesn’t mean that we’re not going to have different ways to communicate with Oregonians.”

Southern Oregon Business Journal January 2024 | 9

MARKETING

By Lisa Manyon WriteOnCreative.com https://writeoncreative.com/the-cornerstones-of-longtermsustainablebusiness-success/

There are four cornerstones of long-term, sustainable, business success: Messaging/Copy Branding/Image Planning/Strategy Publicity/PR Each of these elements must be in place to ensure your marketing success and longterm business sustainability.

While these cornerstones are invaluable, it's imperative that you deliver on your promises.

We'll talk more about that later.

In order to get your big mission and message out into the world your message must be in alignment with your core values and the value you deliver. I often say values equal value. It's vital that your CORE message is clear and compelling.

For example, I teach, train, and transform with my simple, values-based, 3-step "Challenge.Solution.Invitation." framework to create marketing messages with integrity and improve all communications by highlighting PASSION points instead of poking at pain points. THIS is the CORE message of my brand and 10 | Southern Oregon Business Journal January 2024

The cornerstones of long-term, sustainable business success

everything that I offer is in alignment with this message.

People are often confused about what a brand really is and so it's important to break down the elements of a brand. I say stand by your brand and take a stand for something because if you don't stand for something you'll fall for anything.

Planning and strategy are vital to business success. You need to know where you are going in order to get there. In addition to your business plan, you'll need a Content Strategy Plan. This is basically your marketing calendar for the year (or, at a minimum, 90 days).

Once you have these three foundational pieces in place, it's time for the final cornerstone... it's time to share your magic in the spotlight via media exposure aka publicity and PR. Of course, you'll need a plan for that, too.

When you have questions about mapping out your plan, I invite you to ask here.

Original post: https:// writeoncreative.com/? s=the+four+cornerstones

Lisa Manyon is known as The Business Marketing Architect. She's the President and Founder of Write On Creative, host of the podcast Your Message Matters and a bestselling author.

She teaches, trains, and transforms on two core topics 1) Marketing With Integrity (it’s time to take the pain out of planning and the pain points out of your marketing message). Her strategies are known to create million-dollar results, and 2) Healing With Love (based on her bestselling book Spiritual Sugar: The Divine Ingredients to Heal Yourself With Love with a foreword by Dr. Joe Vitale and an afterword by Neale Donald Walsch.

Lisa lives in Magical Ashland, Oregon.

Visit WriteOnCreative.com to learn more. Feel free to ask questions via https://writeoncreative.com/ about/ask-lisa/ and be sure to let her know SOBJ sent you.

Southern Oregon Business Journal October 2023 | 11

OPINION

BY ARJUN V.K. SHARMA 01.11.2024 This article was originally published on undark.org https://undark.org/2024/01/11/opinion-doctorincentives-rural/

I

N THE 1960s and 1970s, researchers offered financial incentives to patients to get them to lose weight, quit smoking, and abstain from alcohol. To some degree, it worked. But when governmental bodies proffered a pecuniary boon to physicians to move their practice to rural areas, the outcomes were less clear-cut. In fact, new evidence suggests that such monetary incentives barely move the needle.

In 1965, as Medicare was being launched, state lawmakers were in the process of identifying regional gaps in the American health care landscape.

These places, which were designated under the nationally established Health Professional Shortage Area program, or HPSA, disproportionately lacked medical practitioners and are now areas where a single physician could be tasked to juggle the health of thousands of people. Such medical deserts include more than 5,300 rural areas, in which almost 33 million people face a dearth of primary care services.

To correct that imbalance, the HPSA program trots out various enticements aimed at doctors.

Over decades, increased reimbursement rates for patient visits and forgiveness packages for doctors’ gargantuan student loans amounted to a billion12 | Southern Oregon Business Journal January 2024

Opinion: Why Incentives to Attract Doctors to Rural Areas Haven’t Worked Increased payments and student loan forgiveness haven’t reduced physician shortages in medically underserved areas.

dollar-a-year national effort to shift physicians to underserved places. But researchers reporting in the journal Health Affairs in 2023 found that, despite the bevvy of incentives, neither physician density nor resident mortality changed appreciably after a county gained HPSA status.

“Federal officials expanded benefits across time, but we saw no benefits over time,” Justin Markowski, a doctoral student in the department of Health Policy and Management at Yale University and lead researcher on the study, told me. After an initial HPSA designation, 73 percent of counties retained the status 10 years on.

Luring a physician workforce to rural areas is hardly a modern predicament. Over a century ago, the report of the Country Life Commission, convened under President Theodore Roosevelt, briefly mentioned the subject of access to health care. A few years later, Charles Wardell Stiles, an American parasitologist and later a division chief at the National Institutes of Health, elaborated on that idea in his manifesto, “The Rural Health Movement.” He wrote: “In rural districts, medical attention is not as a rule so easily available as in cities, partly because of long distances, partly because of poor roads, partly for other reasons,” adding that “free clinics are practically unknown,

district nursing almost unheard of and hospital advantages rare, as compared with these advantages in the cities.”

Health care in rural settings is perhaps only understood when it is experienced. Heart disease, cancer, and unintentional injuries, such as motor vehicle accidents and opioid overdoses, are more likely to claim a rural life than an urban one. (Urban dwellers live nearly two extra years on average compared to their rural counterparts, according to a 2014 study, a gap that continues to widen.) Much of this is the fallout of a convergence of socioeconomic fault lines: poverty, lack of insurance, limited education.

But part of it, too, has to do with being far removed from the regular watch of a primary care physician or the safety net of an emergency department (if a hospital is still around). The reality is not unique to the U.S. Other high-income countries, such as Canada and the U.K., face the similar challenge of supporting the health of their rural populations. Likewise, residents of those regions tend to follow a familiar pattern: older, sicker, poorer, less connected. And doctorless.

As research has shown, incentivizing physician behaviors doesn’t always lead to better

outcomes for patients. What makes or breaks an incentive may have less to do with what is being offered, and instead, more to do with what it is trying to accomplish.

According to behavioral science experiments, greater financial incentives motivate greater effort and therefore more often achieve the desired goal. The principle forms the basis, for instance, of Medicare’s merit-based incentive payment system for physicians.

But research suggests they’re effective primarily for routine, repetitive tasks, say, quitting smoking — and can backfire for more complex ones, for example, a doctor’s decision to move to a remote area to practice medicine.

Consider a doctor’s decision to make such a move: Often, it is interminably fraught — already hard work is made harder, significant others are uprooted, and certain city comforts and sensibilities may be sacrificed.

Physicians, then, must rely on forces internally summoned — autonomy, altruism, competence — to propel them forward. These qualities are harder to define and measure, which make them difficult to meaningfully pin to any reward.

When I left the city for work in a rural hospital, I put those virtues to the test. I was unsettled, initially wading through the steady stream of “hellos,” “good mornings,” and “good nights” from passersby in the corridor, and unsure of how to interact with psychiatric patients who ran a café near their small ward to ease their transition to the world outside. And I was uneasy,

at times, with the care we provided — even if patients were appreciative of what they received. The same decisions we fashioned in the city — to get antibiotics delivered at home or to get a surgeon to clear out an abscess — came together with fewer resources, and with doctors stretched hundreds of miles apart.

Strategies to attract doctors to rural areas can take many forms, but it is hard to imagine any being successful without the doctor seeing the benefits of the community in which they reside.

This, however, lent a power to something decidedly tangible.

Interactions with patients had an unflinching honesty and tenderness about them. One morning, an older man with anxiety was referred from the emergency department to a senior physician. They ran into each other at the grocery store and at local hockey games; living down the street, the physician would often check in on him. She reviewed his chart, shook her head, and told him to lay off the CBD product he’d been using.

“It’s making him forget his other meds!” I remember her saying. In the Venn diagram of patients and providers’ lives, we didn’t occupy the separate realms I was accustomed to, but rather that sliver in the middle that overlapped.

Such moments can’t fit into an ad seeking a prospective physician for a rural practice. Nor can they surely be packaged into a financial payback. But taken together, I feel that they’re worth something. I was reminded how

profoundly our lives are affected by a community. This drew me closer to my colleagues, to my patients, and to those long-ago ideals that inspired my drive to become a doctor. Strategies to attract doctors to rural areas can take many forms, but it is hard to imagine any being successful without the doctor seeing the benefits of the community in which they reside.

A connection to a rural identity could be bought with incentives, or it could be learned. Or, I realized, just as importantly, it could be lived through simple and heartfelt things: a teary “thank you,” a firm handshake, or the question, over and again, from patients of your plans to stay.

These gestures don’t absolve the system of its responsibility to make positive reforms. But they affirm value and purpose of work that, whittled down by staffing shortages and burnout, can still impact lives our society willfully neglects.

“What we’re doing right now doesn’t work,” Markowski emphasized in our interview about the HPSA program. In a sense, he was right. The problem with relying largely on financial incentives is not suggesting that physicians have only one motivation. It is the misconception that a rural place has only one thing to offer.

Arjun V.K. Sharma is a physician whose writing has appeared in the Washington Post, L.A. Times, and the Boston Globe, among other outlets.

Southern Oregon Business Journal January 2024 | 13

FEATURED

By Jim Teece CEO Ashland Home Net JimTeece.com

A

shland Home Net has been a CABLE TV, Internet and Phone company for nearly two decades.

I remember going to my first CABLE TV conference. I’m from the tech world, so I’m used to big lavish trade shows, but this was something completely different.

This felt like a million SQFT of crazy. They poured cocktails at the Disney booth, before noon. Booth babes were not for hire by the day like they are at Tech Conferences but actual employees of the channels with 401Ks. And you had to have appointments and meetings to buy content, not just wander through a booth. I was blown away. I was invited to sit with the Kardashian’s on a couch for a photo op after one meeting (I had no idea who they were), and the young and beautiful cast of G4 called me a virgin when I wandered by to say hi to let them know I loved their show. What a weird experience that was. I’ll never forget it.

Turning off Cable TV —When do you make a decision to stop providing a service? customers telling them we were not a local company, or we were going out of business. They once bought billboard space telling commuters to switch from us. The problem was Ashland doesn’t allow billboards and they bought it in the town next door, where we don’t offer service. I loved that. My customers posted pics of how silly it was on FaceBook.

Ashland is a funny place for many reasons. One quirk is how much churn there is. Because the city owns the electric department they report how many disconnects and connects they do.

Almost 25% of Ashland, yes it’s a college town, but this number doesn’t include those transients, disconnects and connects power every year. This is a move out, move in event. This is churn. With so much churn, you lose customers and have to win back the new one. It’s a constant battle and we do pretty good.

It is kind of cool owning a small company that competes directly with multi-billion dollar companies, I won’t lie.

Our office is downtown and we have a good reputation, so if the new person asks a neighbor we get a good share of recommendations.

Ashland Home Net does it against Charter/Spectrum and Project A has done it over the years against IBM, Microsoft and others.

But over the last several years we noticed that more and more of our new connects did not want CABLE TV. The “kids”, that's what we called them because a majority of our customers were over 65 at one time, didn’t watch TV, they streamed it.

These “kids” just want internet, not CABLE TV.

Ashland is a small town and we provided a service that competed with and was a choice with Charter/Spectrum. Over the years they played hard ball, sending door to door sales teams out to our 14 | Southern Oregon Business Journal January 2024

We kept an eye on the business and intentionally let it become a loss leader when the number dropped and dropped every year.

We bought all of our content from a single co-op except for “local” channels and we hired Randy, a top notch cable operator when Charter/Spectrum went digital and laid off their local crew years ago. Randy kept the operation going and we didn’t have to worry about it much. It was just another service we offered.

We have had loyal customers that have been using our services for decades, so I never wanted to do anything that would disrupt or upset them. Ashland is a small town. Many of our customers are our friends.

But when COVID happened everything changed very quickly as we all know. The dependability of the internet and speed upload became the most important thing and the channels started to move 100% online with their own streaming products and content. Hulu and Youtube TV became more popular and added local content. People that were loyal CABLE TV customers were cutting the cord.

Instead of breaking even on CABLE TV, we were subsiding it to stay afloat. Dena and I struggled to find ways to make this work, but we did.

Then in 2023, the COOP we bought channels from went bankrupt, overnight.

It seems that this “cut the cord”

movement was happening everywhere.

Not only did it go bankrupt, they did not pay the channels for several months as they bled to death without us knowing about it and the channels came after all of us directly for back payments. We made payments to the COOP in good faith but as they struggled they didn’t pass the payment on to the channel. It was a mess.

Channels are run by giant corporations.

They hire beautiful people to serve drinks, make appointments and take your photos with the stars, who are also beautiful, at the tradeshows, but they also hire ugly people. The lawyers they hire are ruthless. They are mean. They are just not nice humans to deal with. So instead of dealing and negotiating with one entity we had to deal with several. It was not a good experience.

They don’t care how small your company is. They don’t care about your aging customers that don’t like change. They don’t care about your dwindling customer base. They don’t care about a win/win. They just want you to sign contracts and pay. We needed time to rework a business model that would work and negotiated to stay month to month until the end of the year.

That’s when Randy let us know that he wanted to officially retire in January 2024 and join his wife who retired in 2023.

So Dena and I poured ourselves a big glass of whiskey and sat down feeling defeated.

It’s still there. We try to be a HOT company. Always Honest, Open, and Transparent.

She has been telling me for the last 3 years that this was going to get worse and she was right. I held on because I wanted to take care of our aged customers.

We let the city know, as they are our business partner. They own Ashland Fiber Network of which we are a reseller.

In my mom’s final years CNN was her 24 hour a day lifeline.

We tried negotiating with the channels and they basically forced our hand.

Across the board they told us to sign a 3 to 5 year contract with escalations or get out of the business. They didn’t care. We fought hard for 6 months, hoping to find a solution, but we couldn’t. I lost a lot of sleep worrying about my friends.

But we couldn’t find a way out, so we made the difficult decision and started the process of stopping the provision of CABLE TV service.

The truth is that we are a profitable internet service provider that was losing money on CABLE TV. Without the weight, drain and operating loss of this service, we would be even stronger.

We let the customers know with an email 30 days out. Dena personally called people that we didn’t hear back from as we got close to the date. When you only have a couple hundred customers, it’s easy to do. Not pleasant, but easy.

We posted the same email on our website with a front and center link to it.

We had lots of meetings internally and externally.

I serve on a local community bank board and we made a difficult decision earlier this year to close the home mortgage division. I watched closely how they went through that process and tried to keep calm going through my own.

We offered free demos and classes in our office on streaming HULU and YouTube TV. We set up a relationship with the local Dish reseller to transition folks to Dish if they wanted to keep the remote and the old way of changing channels.

But the writing is on the wall. We will all be streaming TV soon. We are rolling out fiber to the home soon and when fiber is how your home gets internet there is no CABLE TV. It’s all going to be streaming.

The large CABLE TV companies are providing streaming boxes to combat this.

I remembered when the YMCA stopped providing daycare services and we all scrambled to find a new day care service.

We survived that. Our customers will survive this, I kept assuring myself.

The immediate flood of responses was very positive. Many people said they had Southern Oregon Business Journal January 2024 | 15

our service just to support us but never really watched TV and they wondered what took so long.

But a few took this as a personal attack and let me know how stupid I was, or how pissed off they are. Some went on social and posted that we were going out of business. I got hate letters about how they couldn’t believe that we picked college playoff and NFL season to do this.

They were pissed.

The day of the disconnect came and went. Randy shut it all down. Some people that were shocked called and we talked them though it. Some were pissed and some were understanding.

We learned a lot about the process for next time if there ever is a next time.

Since this was our first time, we made a couple of mistakes.

One of the biggest mistakes we made was not telling our non CABLE TV customers what was going on. We focused so much on the CABLE TV customer that was affected that I didn’t think the non affected customer would care.

What I didn’t count on was Charter/ Spectrum sales people knocking on my internet customer doors and in telling them they were going out of business and convincing them to switch right then and there so that the internet would not go down. We didn’t catch this until 4 elderly customers called us to let us 16 | Southern Oregon Business Journal January 2024

know that they were switching internet service providers.

don’t, you might just collapse the whole company and that would be stupid.

What I didn’t count on is social posts from non customers talking about our business.

What part of your business can you get rid of and make your business stronger?

I’m looking at all of our companies and asking the same question.

In some ways the last 6 months of 2023 were hard on me. I nearly stopped posting on social. I just shut down. I should have done the opposite. I should have shared my journey. But I didn’t want Charter/Spectrum to win. I didn’t want to let my customers down.

I took this too personally. In the same way I got hate mail about football games, I did the same thing. I internalized my angst and my fears and I pulled the cover over my eyes.

It’s over now. We made it through it. Our company will be even more financially stronger now. We have plans to start reselling AFN’s fiber to the home in the spring. I’m focused on marketing and growth.

So I’m writing this with hopes that if you run a small business and you have loyal customers that are your friends, you may have to stop providing one part of your business which will impact them and upset them but you just need to do it.

Don’t wait as long as I did. Don’t subsidize something just to hold on to it.

Shut it down and move forward and move onward stronger because if you

Epilogue. NFL has 4 playoff games this weekend. 1 of them is streaming only.

That’s a first but not the last. Next year it might be half and the year after that all of them.

The internet is the most important utility after electricity, water and sewer. It’s important. It empowers us to improve our lives. When CABLE TV costs more than all of your utilities combined something is wrong. The channels don’t care. They raise rates every year.

We have a vacation home in Redmond. It uses TDS (formally Bend Cable) for internet. We pay more for internet only there than we would in Ashland. As I’m writing this, Dena handed me a piece of mail she got from them. If we add CABLE TV+ to our internet we will get CABLE TV+ for $59 and Internet will increase in speed to 1 gig and reduce in cost to $59 for life. The fine print is $59 for life is internet only. TV will return to normal prices after your first year and go up year after year after that. You also have to pay $6 a month for the box rental.

Someone has to pay for the beautiful people taking photos of the Kardashians on a couch.

BROADBAND

By Caitria Aldrich HunterFiber.com Press Release

Hunter Communications, a respected local leader of cutting-edge internet solutions, is pleased to announce the expansion of its high-speed fiber internet service to Junction City. This significant step enhances the connectivity landscape and provides reliable internet access to the community from a local company that truly cares about its neighbors.

Fiber-optic internet, recognized for its superior speed and reliability, is set to revolutionize how residents and businesses can connect and interact online.

Hunter Communications, a local cornerstone for 30 years, is committed to bringing new opportunities and possibilities to communities across our region, through services like seamless browsing, streaming and remote work.

"We’re thrilled to bring the fastest internet at the fairest price to the people of Junction

Junction City Jumps into the Fast Lane with Hunter's High-Speed Internet!

City," said Stephen Parac, General Manager and Sales Director at Hunter Communications. "This expansion aligns with our mission to provide the best technology available to the people in our communities, enabling them to reliably and safely navigate the online landscape in our increasingly digital world."

For 30 years, Hunter Communications has built a remarkable trust with its customers, as demonstrated by its exceptional 4.8 out of 5-star rating on Google—a rarity in the industry. Their approach, combining local customer service with a neighborly attitude, affectionately termed 'the fiberhood,' ensures a welcome level of connectivity in every area they expand to.

The introduction of fiber internet signifies a significant upgrade to the internet capabilities available

throughout Junction City, promising faster download and upload speeds, low latency and a more stable connection. This advancement benefits individual households and holds the potential to foster economic growth by attracting businesses that rely on robust Internet infrastructure.

About Hunter Communications Hunter is headquartered in Medford, Oregon, where the company has established a legacy of service excellence and commitment to local communities. With multi-gig speeds, no data caps, competitive pricing, and customer service representatives who genuinely care, Hunter’s 3,000-plus mile fiber network is nationally recognized for performance and reliability.

For additional information, please visit hunterfiber.com/ Southern Oregon Business Journal January 2024 | 17

LEADERSHIP

By Jim Teece JimTeece.com

I

Southern Oregon University President Rick Bailey celebrates 2 years at the helm

SOU President Rick Bailey and Rocky at a SOU Sporting Event. This is the photo on the Happy New Years card.

got a “Happy New Years” card from the President of Southern Oregon University, Rick Bailey, this year and proudly held it above my head and danced around the room showing it to Dena and the dogs. With the dance moves I was making you would think that I was starring in a YikYak video or something.

18 | Southern Oregon Business Journal January 2024

The card has a fun picture of the president with Rocky the mascot at a sporting event along with students who are cheering behind him.

At the top of the card it says, “Wishing you a year of good” and on the side it says “Cheer” but I didn’t see the word cheer. It was lost on me. I only saw “Wishing

you a year of good”. Those words gave me great joy. I loved it. I loved that wish and I cherish the card.

Rick is celebrating 2 years at the University this month and I have had the opportunity to watch him work during my service on the Southern Oregon University Foundation Board.

SOU President Rick Bailey and the author/interviewer Jim Teece. Photo taken in the presidents office before the interview.

He was selected from a deep pool of amazing candidates. His background was flying jets in the Air Force for a career and he was president of another university for over 5 years before applying at SOU. He’s kind of like Taylor Swift. No matter what event you go to, he is there and the camera loves him because his interactions with students, faculty, staff and

community members are so genuine.

He leaves you excited about the future of the University and thankful that the only job he applied to was the one in Southern Oregon.

I was asked by the marketing department if I would like to do a quick interview for the journal and I jumped at the chance.

It snowed like crazy this week, campus was on break and his trip to Salem was canceled so I took the only 30 minute window available and showed up 15 minutes early.

The meeting prior to mine ended on time and he walked the folks out of his office and saw me sitting there and ushered me in without taking a break. He offered me cupcakes that someone made

Southern Oregon Business Journal January 2024 | 19

for him to celebrate the 2 year mark.

He asked if I wanted to do a photo with him in front of his wall of awesome life memorabilia. The shelves were filled with books and models of all the planes he flew and his pilot's mask as well as other cool things. He told me that the word on campus is that he has the office of an 8 year old boy. We got the photo taken and sat down to do the interview.

I only had 30 minutes and I wanted to ask him about the last 2 years and the next 2 years as well as his thoughts on leadership, AI, Harvard, Economic Development and more.

When our time was up, I left his office feeling lucky and inspired and excited about the future of SOU and our region as a whole. I truly felt like we are all in for a year of good.

Our interview follows. Get ready, we covered a lot of ground in 30 minutes and it is a master class in leadership. Enjoy.

Jim : You went through a lot during your first two years here.

Was it everything that you thought it was going to be for yourself?

20 | Southern Oregon Business Journal January 2024

Rick: After five and a half years at Northern New Mexico college, I do feel like together, we had really solved a lot of heavy challenges and at the end, the institution was in a much better place.

But I didn't necessarily come to SOU because I wanted to dive into another huge challenge. I was excited about a new perspective at a different institution and I will tell you and to the readers of Southern Oregon Business Journal, this is the only job to which I applied. There were 130 jobs available for senior executives in higher ed at the time. I thought SOU had something really special and so it wasn't so much about going in and trying to tackle another challenge. It was, hey, I really want to serve this institution. Two years in, I can tell you, there is absolutely no other job in the world I would rather have than this one. That's a really, really good place to be. Now it is “how do I do this job as long as I can and how do I make sure that I'm still of good service to the institution?”

Jim: Do you find that you are in an interesting place again, because you're rebuilding your leadership team? You're able to

put different people in place now with retirements and other changes. Is that a good thing? Or is that a distraction for you?

Rick: I was very intentional when I moved here, not to make any changes. Because to me it would be foolish for me to come into a new place, with the expectation that I somehow have answers that other senior leaders don't. So I didn't make any changes and really learned from the people and continue to learn from the people who are in positions here.

You're right, we're at this very interesting, almost an inflection point, where by this summer, the senior executive team will be dramatically different than the one that I joined in. I think it is both a challenge and an opportunity. The challenge is that we have all of this wonderful knowledge, decades of experience that we're losing. And so we're in the moment now trying to make sure that we're still capturing all of that. And at the same time, I think there are opportunities to take fresh eyes, to unique challenges and to be open to thinking differently about how we serve. I think all of those things have the potential to be really, really positive.

SOU President Rick Bailey and Rogue Community College President Randy Weber enjoying tailgating before a SOU football game in 2023 Photo by the author/interviewer Jim Teece.

I'm optimistic.

Anyone in a chief executive position has a responsibility but not sole responsibility to nudge the culture of the organization and to really represent and demonstrate the values that define that institution. Those subtle changes happen over time, with new leaders coming in. If they are wise, they look at how

that culture is evolving, and they help contribute to that culture.

Jim: I've seen you in the community at different events and you have been with the president of Rogue Community College at a couple of them. Is that intentional? Is that relationship a strategic one that you're working on?

Rick: It is absolutely intentional. It is far more than just the symbolism of us together. Dr. Weber is a dear friend. So in addition to a partner, and a colleague, we are really, really close. He is one of my closest friends in Oregon. And partly you know, a lot of that speaks to who he is as a person and as a leader.

We both have very similar visions for our schools and the community. We both passionately Southern Oregon Business Journal January 2024 | 21

believe in the transformative power of education. We both believe in higher education as a public good. We both have a boundless optimism that there are opportunities to serve more students than our two institutions do now and that there is a pathway to do that. And we are both very, very conscious and deliberate about making decisions for our institutions that complement the strategic initiatives of the other. When you know you have a friend and a partner like that you can move mountains.

In my first two years here, I have visited with the better part of a dozen community college leaders on their campuses. I've gone as far north as Portland and visited with PCC. I went out to Coos Bay to meet with Southwest Oregon Community College. I've been to KCC, I've been south to Shasta College in Redding, and I've been out east to Blue Mountains and everywhere in between. In every one of those engagements, I ask “how can we serve them and how can we serve their students?” To a person those presidents have been really receptive to that approach and by the way, I think those efforts are starting to bear fruit. Our first year enrollment 22 | Southern Oregon Business Journal January 2024

numbers went up 15.9%. Far higher than it's been in the last five years. But what's also really exciting to me is that we went up in transfer enrollment by 10%.

Those are students who came specifically from another college or university. That's pretty remarkable. So to me, that says that we're starting to build more trusting relationships that are where their students are seeing a pathway into higher ed. And by the way, a majority of those transfer students are not coming to us from community colleges.

Jim: Jumping around now, when you were in the Air Force they taught this concept of the OODA LOOP. Does it still apply to your job now?

Rick: You're the first person to ask me that. It stands for Observe, Orient, Decide, Act. It's basically a model of strategic decision making. Yes it applies, but with some very, very distinct differences.

You can make the argument that a decision made by a CEO of a corporation is like that of a CEO of a university but there are principles that need to apply.

How culture is important and how you establish the core values, how you take care of people, how you inspire them to do selfless work and and bring unity and collaboration, and fresh ideas and risk tolerance and all these things that that can contribute to a positive strategic environment.

But I will also say that a university is so wildly unique in its structure.

Similar to a CEO of a corporation, I report to a board, I do have a board of trustees. But the difference is, although I serve at the pleasure of the board, in many ways because of how higher ed is woven, I also serve at the pleasure of students and faculty and staff and donors and alumni and the governor and legislators and business leaders and community partners, city and county governments. And this is going to be a bold thing to say to your readers, it's shocking, but not all of those entities have exactly the same agenda.

So that makes my job really exciting.

But I will also say this, it is the thing that makes this job so incredibly challenging, but

incredibly rewarding, because if you want to work on becoming a better leader, this is a really good way to do it.

One of my mentors, Bill McRaven, is a retired four star admiral who ran Special Operations Command for the Department of Defense.

Right after he retired from the military, he became the Chancellor at the University of Texas.

I had a chance to have a conversation with him one on one about the transition because both of us had done exactly the same thing. We retired basically on a Friday and started as a college president on a Monday.

I started at a much smaller college than he did, but it was funny how we shared that we kind of had very similar stories.

The thing that both both of us agreed is that the DNA of a university is so vastly different than the military. There is a hierarchy in the military, it is very rigid. There is a demand for allegiance and discipline and order.

In higher education, it's far more fluid, probably not a fair word. It's far more intentionally

collaborative. And I think that's a good thing. Because of the nature of what we do. And we aren't putting lives at risk on a daily basis. It's just a fundamentally different mission. So the type of leadership to be successful in higher education, is far more nuanced, and far more collaborative and far more about coalition building and really welcoming of wide variety of decisions.

There also has to come a time and we saw it over the last two years, where sometimes decisions are so difficult that no one wants to own those decisions. Ultimately it comes to the senior leader to make decisions that not everyone is going to embrace. I understand that's part of the responsibility.

But even in those cases it's important to make sure that everyone knows that they have a voice before that decision is made.

Jim: So, kind of jumping around again. With the recent news at Harvard and what's been going on there, do you feel the scrutiny on you as a leader for every movement, every word you say and everything you write? It's got to be daunting.

Rick: It is. But again, it's part of the thing that makes the work so rewarding, and gratifying because it helps you. I'm grateful for so many things that I have learned from my colleagues and community members and partners, over the last two years.

What I come back to, is the fact that I am an inherently flawed thinker and decision maker and human being so I don't pretend and will never pretend that I have all the answers. My dad once told me that if you think you're the smartest person in the room, then you're in the wrong room, and I think there's some real truth to that.

In answer to your question about Harvard, I do think that that unfortunately, there has been a hyper politicization of higher education. I'm not blaming anyone. I think part of that is coming from inside institutions. I think part of that is coming from outside those institutions. But the way that we address that at SOU is to be mindful of the fact that we are a marketplace of ideas, and that if there is going to be a place in our society where we should be able to have conversations, particularly on topics about which we don't always agree, the

Southern Oregon Business Journal January 2024 | 23

university should be one of those places.

then accept responsibility for that position.

One of the other places where that should happen is the legislature. They are actually grappling with and thinking about laws that are going to be applicable to everyone.

Jim: AI is everywhere now, it’s been here for a long time, but last year it really became normalized.

All students now have immediate access to create anything by just asking AI to do the work. Beyond the ethical side of that are they really learning if they are just having the machine do the work for them? What's your personal take on AI?

At the same time, we welcome a marketplace of ideas, we should be able to talk about topics even if they are uncomfortable and at the same time and in the same breath. We have principles that help define who we are as an institution. One of those is inclusivity. We are very clear that hate is not part of our identity. If it is in any way, then let's work on getting better and educating ourselves on how to be better about that.

Sometimes, those two principles, this marketplace of ideas and this commitment to certain principles, come into conflict with each other.

We're making the best judgment that we can. They're trying to do the best they can, but even they are flawed decision makers and flawed leaders. I think at some point we just have to do the best we can and stand up for what we think is right at the moment and

24 | Southern Oregon Business Journal January 2024

Rick: So it's interesting because I kind of approach it from a 30,000 foot view. When I was a kid, going through school, a lot of what we did education wise, was based on what we could absorb, remember, and communicate. We did multiplication tables. We memorized history, historic dates.

It was rote memory, and that's how you were rewarded, by how much you could remember and repeat.

At the point that students could have really inexpensive, almost ubiquitous calculators, well, then that changed education and so I almost see AI doing the same thing.

Now granted, it’s a far more complex concept, but I think as

educators, it's incumbent upon us to say, “Okay, how does that change the way we think and make decisions?” and let's not try to shoehorn this into a 20th century model. Instead, let's look at what that technology is going to provide. Then let's make sure that as an educational institution, we are equipping students with how best to thrive in that environment.

Some say, “let's go back to blue books”, you know, a notepad, a ballpoint pen, nothing else, and you got to just write this manually, and then they'll know that this is your own work. But how often are our people going to do that after they leave the classroom? That's just not happening anymore.

So how do we leverage AI to help computer programming? How do we leverage AI to create content?

And then how do we optimize that to help us with with strategic endeavors that we're accomplishing?

Depending on the discipline, there are probably wildly different perspectives on it.

I do think that we need to be mindful. I certainly, as a president,

want to be very mindful of letting the faculty help guide us as we make those decisions.

I read somewhere recently, and I'm probably going to butcher this but, 10 years from now 20% of jobs that will be out there don't exist right now. They are going to be invented in the next 10 years.

There's also a very interesting dynamic when you ask an SOU student about their career plans, most of them will give you six or seven wildly different ideas about things that they want to do sometime in their lives. That is so different than the 20th century model of, hey, you're gonna go to high school or college, you're going to learn some specific thing. And then you're going to do that for 30 or 40 years and retire.That model is fundamentally different now.

As a university I think we need to be adaptive to say okay, knowing that this technology is expanding so quickly, and that the time horizon is getting so much smaller, and knowing that our students themselves, in this generation for the most part, are planning on a wildly diverse career path, then it means what we provide in terms of education

has to be far more holistic, and it's really more about creating habits of intellectual curiosity and adaptation and basic fundamental traits around communication, strategic thinking, critical thinking, teamwork and team building.

Those are the things that no matter what discipline a student chooses, as a pathway here, there are those core things that we're going to focus on. Over the last couple of years, the faculty have been marvelous about retooling our general education curriculum.

Those are all the classes that that students have to take as part of their bachelor's degree experience here. They are addressing how they retool that and that started this past fall. I think SOU is the only university in the state that's really made that change. I'm really proud of what our faculty have done that way.

Jim : What do you think the university's role is in economic development within the region?

Rick: I think that universities and community colleges should be the economic engines. I think we should be involved in helping to ask the right questions and helping to craft what that that

looks like. I don't think we should be the sole authors of that, because I think that's where business leaders, even elected officials come together to help establish what that is.

I think if we are the partners that we need to be, then colleges and universities end up as the engines for making that change and really building the curriculum that helps to drive that.

Especially regional institutions.

We're Southern Oregon University. I always say from Redding to Roseburg, we should be an agent that helps to move economic development, strategic initiatives, workforce development.

We should be part of all of that and moving forward.

Jim: You have been here two years, and if we have this conversation again two years from now, what would you like to have said to me… I got these things done.

Rick: In the next two years, several things.

One is to continue to build on and strengthen all of the external partnerships that we've Southern Oregon Business Journal January 2024 | 25

developed. That's K-12, school districts, community colleges and universities, tribal governments, state and local entities, business leaders.

Two, Replicate the momentum when it comes to enrollment and student success. Let's keep on this train that we're on because it's really positive for us and for the community.

Three - We have spent the last two years really focused on budget, because the budget crisis was so real and so challenging. A lot of our energy was spent on how we could free ourselves from under that cloud. It was very defensive in nature.

What I want the next two years to be characterized by is offense.

Now let's go out and be entrepreneurial. Now, let's take these ideas about how we are going to transform our fiscal model and, transition from idea to putting pieces in place and bringing partners in to start translating that into actionable steps.

This is a pledge I'll make to your readers. We've already moved the needle in energy transformation.

We've already started work on 26 | Southern Oregon Business Journal January 2024

projects, and in the next two years, you're going to see far more renewable energy on our campus. You're going to see the very first solar covered parking lot.

So that's moving forward and I'm excited about that. I'm pretty confident about that.

I also think that about the university business district, which is a project that we are envisioning on our campus, which could include retail space and attainable housing and a senior living facility which will inhabit where the current Cascade Hall sits.

With a goal of both of those projects being to cut a ribbon in 2027.

It means that the next two years we have to start putting all of those things in place so that we stay on that timeline. And that means the bulk of the action will take place here in the next two years. I suspect that we will have request for proposals go out in the next six months for both of those projects.

Exciting.

My last answer to that question is I and everyone I serve with here knows what a gem SOU is. I want

that universe of people who recognize that to grow. I want everyone from Redding to Roseburg to see SOU as their hometown University, whether they attended here or not. I want innovative things that we're doing with the senior living facility and the business district and the energy transformation and the general education curriculum, and our K12 partnerships to start to make waves on a much larger stage. We should be and we will be seen within the next two years as a role model for what 21st century higher education can look like. That's a tall order but that's what I'm hopeful for in the next few years.

Jim : Anything else? Anything you want to make sure that gets said here.

Rick : The last thing is that as challenging as these two years have been, I am conscious of how extremely fortunate I am to be at this university, serving with the people with whom I have the privilege to serve. Every day here has been a gift and I need to make sure that I don't take that for granted. That's one of my New Year's resolutions. Make sure that I enjoy the heck out of it.

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8554703377 Southern Oregon Business Journal June 2022 | 27

Southern Oregon Business Journal January 2024 | 28

by Greg Henderson

L

egacies follow generations affecting others that follow. Some are created by a single event, others built over a lifetime, some overlap one lifetime over another.

How will we be remembered? How will I? Do we have any way of controlling what the legacy may be?

Can we have more than one legacy or is it singular?

Baby Boomers are members of a generation that began in 1946.

“More babies were born in 1946 than ever before: 3.4 million, 20 percent more than in 1945. This was the beginning of the so-called “baby boom.”

In 1947, another 3.8 million babies were born; 3.9 million were born in 1952; and more than 4 million were born every year from 1954 until 1964, when the boom finally tapered off.” www.history.com/topics/1960s/babyboomers-1 It’s no wonder this generation is seen as legacy filled. Shear numbers only begin to explain it. Babies cry and scream for attention when they are hungry or disturbed. The Baby Boomers never stopped screaming. And it worked! Their demands became strong enough to change the direction of the world in many, many ways.

Photo by Denys Nevozhai on Unsplash

The Baby Boomer Effect

Is there a Baby Boomer Legacy already established? Perhaps the gains in Women’s Rights should be at the top of the list. There is also seriously impressive gains in technology, space exploration, computers, medicine, and agricultural food production reducing worldwide hunger. The 50’s, 60’s and 70’s are recalled in a surprisingly long list of times that made a difference and the interest beyond those decades that has not only continued but been amplified.

Many in ways to enhance the discoveries and creations of that 30-year span.

A significance of the legacy determination for the participants of the time is the creation of markers in history, a memory assist perhaps.

Serious consequences of the surge in births beginning in 1946 have been felt for eighty years and will continue beyond the lifetime of the last baby boomer. From the demanding need for infant medical attention to schools and expanded housing and income growth for their parents to current community needs in infrastructure repair or replacement after fifty years of use – causing increases in local taxes and budgets of communities, counties and states.

The population of the United States in 1946 was 141 million. Our population is now over 326 million, an increase of 185

million since the first Baby Boomer was born, well more than double. It is no wonder demands in every imaginable sector has grown steadily and significantly.

The world that Baby Boomers were born into is not the same world they will be leaving at the end of their lives. There are footprints on the moon now for over fifty years. Wars have been fought around the world and many thousands of this generation have died in them, and now their children and grandchildren bear that burden, while attempting to improve on every facet of living in this new world.A world population that has eclipsed 8 billion increases the demands of its citizens and leaders in ways those at the end of WWII could not have expected. Forecasting all of these is an inexact science, but much has been learned. The education continues.

All of this would most likely have occurred without the rapid surge in birth rates between 1946 and 1964, just not at the same speed. The effect has been exciting, frightening, and magical to this generation. My generation.

Greg Henderson is the retired founder of the Southern Oregon Business Journal. A University of Oregon graduate and a six- year U.S. Air Force veteran.

Southern Oregon Business Journal January 2024 | 29

SMALL BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT CENTER

By Marshall Doak, SOU SBDC Director

Success Building in 2024

This image was created by AI on BING when asked to read the article and come up with an image about it.

30 | Southern Oregon Business Journal January 2024

S

ome of the most fascinating aspects of business management revolve around the nature of change as a business progresses through the stages of the Business Lifecycle. The lifecycle analogy is similar to human development where there is a start, growth, maturity and decline phases as a stylized structure to understand the dynamics of business change over time. As a business moves along the development curve it faces unique sets of challenges in each phase to overcome in order to continue along a pathway of success.

A simple diagram from Wall Street Mojo illustrates the business lifecycle to provide a visual representation of the

nature of business change over time. The diagram implies that a business is created and continues growing along the curve with an inevitable senescence and death at the end. If it is a foregone conclusion that all the efforts involved with organizing, sustaining and supporting the entity we call a ‘business’ ends with a dissolution at the end, why bother with creating one in the first place?

The obvious answer is that it is not an inevitability that all businesses end with nothing gained over time. Owning a business is one of the most rewarding endeavors a person can do in a lifetime. The challenges in sustaining creativity, luck, opportunity,

strategy and relationship development over time can be the most impactful experience a person can have. The rewards in satisfaction, financial gain and legacy are not easily dismissed as well.

In the figure above, there are four phases in the Business Lifecycle illustrated. Some authors show five, others have a different view on how a business grows and progresses over time. Each phase has certain characteristics attached to it that govern the dynamics and activities in that phase.

Entrepreneurs can accelerate their business development and progress along the curve at a more rapid pace when an understanding of the dynamics are understood.

Southern Oregon Business Journal January 2024 | 31

The Introduction or Startup phase can be the most energizing and creative times a business can enjoy. This is the time to utilize your creativity in designing a business that will be sustainable over time.

Utilizing design thinking, business planning and investigation into structure, legal aspects of business formation and market research are a few of the areas where competencies need to be built in order for a business to launch successfully. It is not uncommon in this phase that early adopters for the products and services the business will have are identified and also not uncommon for initial sales to start and be pretty reasonable to indicate sustainability is a possibility. Investment capital is scarce and expensive, making it a challenge to survive. This is a great time to manage your accounting by hand, as the transactions are easy to understand and the financial education an entrepreneur will gain outweighs the time needed to do the work by hand.

And then reality hits and a ‘Valley of Death’ is encountered.

Realization sets in that the initial sales successes were built on a small group of customers who might not return for additional sales, are satisfied with the initial purchases, or are too few in number to make a success out of the business over the 32 | Southern Oregon Business Journal January 2024

long term. There is a need for marketing and market analysis in order to increase sales and understand who the ideal customer is for the product or service offered. At this point, a majority of new ventures fail.

Failure typically is attributed to a lack of sales or sustainable interest in the company’s offerings or a lack of working capital in hand at the outset to sustain the business until the continuing revenues are adequate to insure survivability.

For the businesses that survive, growing the revenue stream typically is the driving force in the growth stage. Realization has set in that the fledgling business can’t reduce expenditures enough to insure viability. The only way to survive is to grow. A second realization is discovered that the entrepreneur as a person is not capable of dealing with all of the demands and competencies needed by a growing business and the question of hiring or contracting help is at the forefront. Occasionally, an entrepreneur will decide to run a business ‘off of the books’ and skimp on meeting the legal requirements for hiring employees. This is a mistake that kills businesses through the diversion of attention, to maintaining the energy needed to subvert the legal system, and to hiding the evidence that will cause future legal penalties to

be incurred. This diversion of practice has bankrupted a substantial number of business ventures.

In the Growth Stage, systems to build efficiencies are needed, employee training is needed, market share needs to be gained, marketing and branding are needed along with protecting the intellectual property built. It is time to stop doing the company’s accounting by hand and go to a computerized accounting system and contract with a competent accounting firm. All of these elements need to be built or acquired, meaning that financial resources are being put into the business at a time the entrepreneur wants to start removing money from the business, but is unable to do so.

The question of an entrepreneur’s dedication to the vision and plan is now front and center in the thought process. It can be an astonishingly short period of time between having leisure time to be creative and design initial products and services to being cash poor and stressed to maintain a growing business.

As time progresses and the surviving businesses realize some solid success in the marketplace, the daily stress on cash flow lessens and a measure of stability is gained by the business. It is not unusual for company ownership to relax

at this point and congratulate themselves for a job well done.

Professional management oftentimes is hired and the resulting overhead increases to match the revenue stream.

Once again, company growth is the best option to take to increase the revenue streams available to service the increased demand on cash resources.

Diligent businesses adapt to the changing dynamics and build workforce competencies, perform regular financial reviews, and develop systems to increase efficiencies in order to maintain margins and subsequent profitability. If attention has not been paid to work / family balance, it is not uncommon for this to start happening during the late growth stage of the lifecycle.

Once the business volume stabilizes, FINALLY excess cash is generated and the financial promises the business has had since inception are realized and tax planning becomes vitally important.

All too often, the story of growth stops at this point. The majority of business starts have dropped off and most of the few survivors stagnate with a secure small market presence that is sustained through convenience and loyalty between suppliers and customers. Initiative and sustained energy are removed

or dissipate. The businesses that follow this model die, but the death of the business is not always realized until the entrepreneur ages, divorces, or becomes ill and the fragility of the model is exposed, well after the point of the business being able to recover its vitality. This is a description of business senescence and decline.

Business decline is not automatic and is not inevitable.

There are numerous ways to avoid business decline and senescence as long as company ownership and management are involved with a growth mindset. How then is it possible to avoid decline once a business is mature?

In a nutshell, elements that need to be kept in place and attended to in a mature business are: keep setting goals with mileposts to measure progress, plan strategically, develop new markets, new products, new divisions and new market segments, train your workforce, develop leaders within your company, develop systems and measure the results, plan a transition from current ownership to successors and use that plan to develop the methods to insure success, protect branding and other intellectual property, maintain some research and development activities, stay current with your industry’s trends, lower your turn rate for

employees in a tight labor market, and use your financial information to benchmark your operations against yourself from prior periods and against peer businesses. You might expand through the strategic purchase of another business or form a joint venture. The final analysis is that you either have a culture of continuous improvement or you don’t.

Clayton Christensen was a distinguished professor at the Harvard Business School. His work in disruptive innovation set the stage for understanding how businesses can start with a small innovation at any time and develop it to become a disruptive feature in a market to gain share. He also developed theories from observing the computer chip industry to illustrate how the product growth curve, or “S” curve, can be used to understand how and when to introduce new products or features to maintain growth and company success.

In simple terms, he gave us an understanding what we need to do to continue building and achieving higher levels of success. The benefits of this approach are incalculable for the entrepreneur, owner, employees and for the community.

May you have success in your quest to maintain your business on a growth curve throughout 2024 and beyond.

Southern Oregon Business Journal January 2024 | 33

FEATURED

By Jim Teece JimTeece.com

Apple announced the Apple Vision Pro in June. A company that has pivoted over the last 20 years several times with the iPod, iPhone, iPad is now causing a stir with its first Spatial Computing Device.

The price is $3,500 and that is the first thing people tell me when I ask them about it.

I remember when the original Macintosh launched. I bought one. I was a fan of the Lisa but couldn’t afford the $7,500. The $2,499 Macintosh was the same thing but affordable. I bought it on my first credit card which Apple conveniently setup as well. That major purchase (I paid $1,250 for my first used car that same year - a 1972 Smurf blue Plymouth Duster) changed my life. It took me years to pay it off, but I have no regrets. I have built a career on that investment.

34 | Southern Oregon Business Journal January 2024

Apple Vision Pro(AVP) is coming on February 2nd, are you getting one?

I googled how much $2,499 would cost today and with inflation Google says it's over $9,604. Makes the AVP sound like a bargain now.

So now I’m looking at the future again. I’m looking at the opportunity to learn and experience a new platform.

Spatial computing is an emerging technology that brings together digital and physical worlds, allowing users to interact with computers in more seamless and immersive ways. It is a set of technologies that enable humans to interact with computers in threedimensional spaces. Spatial computing encompasses concepts like virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR), as well as the related concepts mixed reality and extended reality.

Here's how spatial computing compares to AR and VR: **Virtual Reality (VR)**: A fully immersive visual environment that blocks the view of real environments and replaces it with a virtual one. VR immerses users into a fully simulated virtual environment, entirely isolated from the physical world. **Augmented Reality (AR)**: Digital content is transposed onto the real world while still allowing visibility of the real world environment. AR overlays digital elements, such as virtual screens, 3D models, or interactive graphics, onto the physical world. **Spatial Computing**: It is an umbrella term that includes VR, AR, and MR. Spatial computing enables more immersive and physically interactive

experiences. It uses technologies like computer vision, sensor fusion, spatial mapping, haptic feedback systems, machine learning, edge computing, and robotics. It allows for realistic and natural interactions with virtual objects, because they can be placed and manipulated in a way that corresponds to the physical world.

In summary, while AR and VR are subsets of spatial computing, spatial computing offers a broader field that encompasses technologies that enable interactive experiences within threedimensional spaces.

We have also been working on software for the new device. I’m writing this before the launch and Apple has us under strict NDA until the launch, so I’ll be able to tell you more about it in the next issue.

The challenge is what to write without seeing it in person and seeing what others are writing. The challenge is trying to figure out the right mix of AR and VR to bring into your app.

Apple Vision Pro has cameras that watch your eyes. Your eyes look at an object on the screen and it highlights it. I’m not sure how it works with lazy

eyes or one blind eye, but it sounds cool.

Apple Vision Pro has cameras that watch your surroundings.

It can bring the room into your experience or alert you when someone walks into the room.

I’m not sure how sensitive this is or what your peripheral vision is. Will the cat set it off and take you out of your immersive experience? Will you get startled or freaked out when someone walks into your space?

Apple Vision Pro lets you use gestures like pinch or twist of your wrist to control the experience of apps. There is no controller, just your fingers.

Apple Vision Pro will run over a million apps for iphone or ipad without modification.

Wow! Apple Vision Pro will allow you to insert prescription lenses and reader lenses. Yes they cost more, but it seems that the challenge of individual optic needs can be handled.

Apple Vision Pro can work in tandem with your computer or standalone. The computer that drives AVP is in the device itself. This blows me away.

How heavy is it? How hot will it get? Imagine duct taping your iPhone to your forehead. Is that what this will be like?

Is this the way we will watch movies? Can we sync start or do Dena and I just watch separate shows.

Is this the way we work? It has unlimited desktop space and monitors. That is perfect for me. I live in a cluttered office.

Will my work environment mimic that?

Will it let me focus more? If I work with it on, and it shuts off the real world, can I focus?

Will this be a great way to zoom? Or are all the cool features for FaceTime only?

Will I be able to wear it for hours and hours of focused work? I read that the battery only lasts 2 hours. Maybe that’s a good stopping point.

It's been weird developing for one without actually having one or knowing what the actual experience will be like.

You know I’ll be up at 4:30 am on the 19th, like a fan boy trying to buy season tickets to my college football team as they open the store at 5:00 am. It’s not whether or not I’ll buy one, it’s how many I will buy.

I’m sure I have that old Apple credit card around here somewhere.

What apps will we use on it?

Southern Oregon Business Journal January 2024 | 35

FEATURED

by Jason Schneider - www.civicpossible.com Original post - https://magazine.thestriveproject.com/issue/jan-mar-2023/become-analtruistic-mischief-maker/

W

hile being heavily reprimanded by my department head, my internal voice reminded me that I did good work, even if getting in trouble was the result. An organization’s immune system will fight like hell to protect the way it operates,

36 | Southern Oregon Business Journal January 2024

Become an Altruistic Mischief-Maker

even if that hinders achieving its stated goals or vision. This isn’t the first time I’ve been singled out as the cause of friction because I identified and solved a problem outside of traditional channels. It won’t be the last. Accept it.

Learn from it.

I’ve experienced this type of tension my entire life, and until recently I thought it was a bug in the way I operated.

Only in the last few years have I realized it’s a feature that I have to offer. I can now look back to see a throughline of positive outcomes despite the

reactions I’ve experienced. As a mentor told me years ago, “There is such a thing as good trouble.” In learning to embrace what some might call my quirky skill set of challenging the status quo in short periods within various roles, I finally found a title that feels right: Altruistic Mischief-Maker.

By coming to terms with this role, regardless of my formal position, title, job description, or project’s scope of work, I’ve come across a few insights worth sharing with those who have found themselves in similar challenging scenarios. These core lessons are that informal structures matter the most, pain and damage are not the same, and self-reflection is valuable.

Lessons from the Past In 2021, a fire ripped through the North Santiam canyon in Oregon. It burned 400,000 acres and 1,500 structures and killed five people. It grew from a few hundred acres to more than 200,000 in a matter of hours and was one of the most destructive fires in Oregon’s history.

Rebuilding from a disaster is as complex as the fire is tragic. The immediate scenario required an all-

hands-on-deck crisis response. At the time I was the economic development manager for Marion County, but my job description and labor laws were on hold while I spent twenty-hour hours at the fairgrounds setting up and caring for evacuated animals. After the initial response, volunteers from neighboring cities were pulled in, allowing me to focus on my regular duties, but what does that look like when 25 percent of the cities you support just burned?

Understandably, all chains of command, traditional communication channels, and routines broke down as leadership focused on caring for a few thousand evacuees and putting out the fire. But what about the rebuilding process? Where does that fall? Who’s responsibility is it?

And, when do we start the work? Leaving messages for my department head, who disappeared for two weeks in crisis response, I took on the work of preparing for recovery.

I called a meeting and invited more than fifty people representing each county, city, and state department that in some way dealt with permits, inspections, and infrastructure. I started the

meeting with one question: in your role, what are your biggest concerns for the rebuilding process? In a three-hour conversation, we identified six pages of bullet points to address and built relationships that hadn’t existed previously that would prove vital to the rebuilding effort.

Government systems are challenging to begin with without crises, and our situation was more complicated because the five cities affected by the fire spanned a county border.

The same border was a dividing line for state department representation.

Bureaucracy is a challenge at the best of times, and this scenario is a perfect storm of complications creating a quagmire for any resident or property owner to rebuild.

Together, we produced a report for our respective elected officials and executives that went where most reports go: on the proverbial shelf. As for the real work, we continued to meet weekly to coordinate efforts across silos and across organizations untangling as much red tape as possible.

Besides the new relationships and communication channels, the best thing to Southern Oregon Business Journal January 2024 | 37

come out of it was a publicfacing map that would allow every resident and property owner to easily learn where their property was in the multi-stage federal and state clean-up process, what assistance they had access to based on federal and state assessments, and most importantly, their pathway to rebuilding through the multilayered bureaucracy. One resource, built collaboratively by all entities to be embedded in each entity’s website. In my fifteen years in government, it’s the most user-friendly tool I’ve ever seen.

Fear Stymies Change The day before the map went public, it was squashed by leadership. Not only squashed, but the work had to be erased so it could not be rebuilt, and all staff from Marion County (my organization) were barred from attending any further coordinating meetings. The reasons given were that the coordinating meetings were operating outside of the chain of command, and the map was sharing proprietary information.

The map only made publicly available information easily navigable. And each 38 | Southern Oregon Business Journal January 2024

participant did work within their job descriptions and with the permission of their supervisor. The ideation and solutions came from nontraditional cooperation and open communication across traditional silos and organizations. I wasn’t in the chain of command for anyone on the call. My role?

Facilitator, catalyst, or fall guy depending on one’s point of view.

Not only was I in a lot of trouble, ultimately leading to me leaving the position, but the residents impacted by the fire were never able to access a tool that would have helped them navigate a rebuilding process. Regardless of the unfortunate outcomes, there were some key successes: those that attended the meetings built relationships and collaboration skills that have far outlived the ill-fated project to help not only with the recovery process but all future work. The dividends of these successes are not immediately measurable; they pay out over the years of work each participant will engage in over their career.

The internal challenge we altruistic mischief-makers face is focusing on the right goal and the right ways of understanding our impact.

Often the important things are bigger, deeper, and more fundamental in terms of social change than any specific job or project requires. Society, and the way we operate, face an urgency to rethink the way we work together to meet rapidly evolving needs. It requires more collaboration, creativity, and agility than tradition is ready to accept. This type of work will often generate a lot of friction that we must learn to manage.

Color Outside the Lines Circumstances and scenarios will differ, but there are common throughlines of challenging traditional roles, leaning into new collaborative efforts, and seeing discomfort as an opportunity to learn.

1. The informal structures matter the most.

Meaningful change doesn’t come from mission, vision, or values.

It can’t be directed by leadership, put into a job description, or assigned to a team. It comes from a shift in the way participants feel, work, and relate to one another.

This type of change doesn’t come from formal or traditional structures.

While there may be a formula for doing this, it would only be a superficial explanation of the deeper phenomenon of listening deeply and nurturing the latent desire and capacity of people you are working with.

Change that, and everything else will shift.

2. Pain and damage are not the same.

Pain is a signal. Damage is real. While they are often connected, they do not have to be. We can learn to discern between the two with deliberate attention and practice.

Every athlete pushing themselves understands this challenge. I’m not saying to ignore pain, but learn to discern between pain and damage so that you can walk the line between them when needed. This is important because change will create discomfort, often crossing into pain, and it takes practice and discernment to walk that line even when others are uncomfortable. This is true for organizations and oneself.

3. Self-reflection is valuable.

Embracing and

encouraging systemic change will be ambiguous, precarious, and painful. This brings up strong emotions for everyone involved, and those emotions often get aimed at the perceived source of friction. Selfreflection is essential to evaluate the cost-benefit of the change versus the discomfort in a compassionate way. Selfreflection is also important to keep questioning yourself to avoid getting caught up in self-righteousness supported by your own confirmation bias. When emotions are high, it’s critical to use as many tools as you can to maintain your bearings and adjust your course as needed.

When I started writing this article, my intent was to focus on the tangible work of making structural shifts to meet society’s exponentially evolving needs. However, once I started writing, I kept returning to the root of change: oneself. We face many challenges in our work as change makers, but little of it will be lasting unless we learn to change ourselves, then help others learn how to navigate this change for

themselves. I spent two decades feeling the failure before I started seeing the throughline of successes in my work. I share it here in hopes of helping others caught in the hard feelings of making change, so they can navigate their way to seeing and valuing their own skill set and use it to make the world a bit better.

—-

Jason Schneider is an altruistic mischief-maker, hell-bent on helping communities and organizations become more collaborative and agile in meeting rapidly changing demands. He’s facilitated meaningful change in a broad range of roles throughout two decades, including as a Marquette city councilor, Alaska’s innovation officer, Marion County’s economic development manager, executive director of the Marquette Chamber of Commerce, and business/organizational coach in Michigan, Tonga, Vietnam, and Australia. Through these experiences, he’s developed a deep curiosity and skill set around civic ecosystems and a passion not only for sharing these lessons but also for helping others create meaningful change. civicpossible.com

Southern Oregon Business Journal January 2024 | 39

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