There are plenty of “green” websites out there that do their own research. There’s even a green channel on cable now. So, green has become more than a small niche. It’s a mainstream consideration that’s made even more mainstream by presidential rhetoric. President Obama has introduced policies around green technology, green jobs, green transportation, and green energy. So, in the coming years, you can bet there will be more green magazines out there with green city surveys.

Before all this hoopla, Country Living was partnering with Sperling’s Best Places to rank green cities. When green was still a niche, the large publishers assumed that green consumers were probably reading a magazine about escaping the urban jungle. In 2007, Roanoke ranked 198 out of 397. This survey examines 24 data metrics in 5 major categories — including air and watershed quality, mass transit usage, power usage, farmers markets, organic producers, and number of green-certified buildings. In 2008, Roanoke had dropped to 331 in the same survey.

If being a green city is one of the priorities of our city government, this drop to the bottom of the pack should have set off alarm bells at city hall. Even if it isn’t a top priority, it should have raised some concern that the city was being portrayed as non-green. Being 331 out of 397 puts Roanoke just ahead of some heavily polluted areas of Louisiana and Alabama. So, what’s behind Roanoke’s environmental slide?

A look at healthcare rankings could shed some light on the issue. Every year, US News and World Report publishes America’s Best Hospitals. Carilion Clinic would love to be on this list. Unfortunately, 65% of the ranking is based on a combination of reputation and mortality rate. If you ask physicians around the country to name the best hospitals for any specialty, Carilion Clinic is not being mentioned. And, because it is a non-profit health system serving a vast rural population, Carilion Clinic accepts every critical case that can’t be handled at smaller hospitals, driving up the mortality rate.

In a lot of ways, it’s a classic chicken and egg problem. To build up a reputation, you’ve got to be successful treating the toughest cases. But, to consistently treat the toughest cases, you’ve got to have the reputation to attract and retain the best specialists. If the words “attract and retain” sound vaguely familiar, that’s been Roanoke’s mantra for young professionals for the last five years. Which brings us back to the issue of green cities. Young professionals like green cities. Obviously, Roanoke doesn’t have the reputation of a green city. That’s going to make it tough to attract the kind of people who will influence public policy to actually make it a green city.

Let’s face it. If the Roanoke City Council spends a decade debating a public venue, it’s not going to be able to craft effective public policy that establishes a green reputation for the city. Perhaps a consolidated government that brought all of the valley’s municipalities together would have better luck. But, that’s a completely different bridge that we can’t seem to cross.

As we search for a new City Manager, maybe we should add “green reputation” to the list of criteria. Maybe we should be looking for a new City Manager who will bring a progressive new outlook to the valley. This person may even be able to build consensus among other municipalities in our valley and our neighboring valleys. If recent history is any indication, the closest we’ll get to being green is the recycled cloth from which our leaders are cut.

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The Jefferson Center has become the epicenter of this fringe development. Within a block, the Cotton Mill Lofts and Fork in the City just opened. Those properties were developed by Ed Walker and David Trinkle, respectively. Go a few blocks further, developer Bill Chapman converted an old car dealership into the Fulton Motor Lofts. That property has sold out.

As new residents seek more comfort in downtown living, new businesses will sprout up to serve them. That’s exactly the dynamic that led Trinkle to expand his successful South Roanoke restaurant, Fork in the Alley, to the downtown area. If early traffic is any indication, the move was a good one. On weekdays, downtown workers and residents crowd the patio for lunch. On evenings and weekends, the location is quickly becoming a first stop before seeing a show at the Jefferson Center of attending another event downtown.

In June, Walker and Trinkle invited young professionals out to the new restaurant for a discussion about downtown development. The pair see their type of developments as a critical element to attracting and retaining this desired demographic. Attracting well-educated young professionals to Roanoke takes a music scene, a food scene and a party scene. With the Jefferson Center’s eclectic concert series, the Fork’s casual, sophisticated menu, and the Cotton Mill’s entertainment amenities, it’s hard to miss the direction the area is heading. To top it off, the new YMCA is at your doorstep as well.

It will take a few more clusters of developments like this to make the downtown districts more contiguous. But, as long as residential developments keep selling out, the businesses to support these new residents will not be far behind. It’s only a matter of time before a full-service grocery store shows up. Whatever makes it possible to live downtown without having to drive a few miles for necessities will appear downtown.

Eventually, the trolley may begin running laterally across town to connect the Civic Center with the Jefferson Center and beyond. There will be more workers who venture out on their lunch hour to discover parts of downtown they haven’t experienced. The art and music scenes will become more coordinated, as will retail.

If you drive around and look at everything that’s evolved, you’ll quickly realize that the same old Roanoke is being replaced. You’ll notice a few buildings that are in shambles too. But those are the flats and restaurants and stores of tomorrow. The law of highest and best use of real estate will always hold true. For Roanoke, that means there’s a lot of opportunity to jump on the bandwagon and turn downtown into something we can’t wait to share with the world.

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The article mentioned some green businesses that are tucked out of sight along the corridor. One of those businesses just moved into of the most visible buildings in the Valley. ADM Micro has developed new technology that saves companies millions of dollars on energy costs and reduces greenhouse gasses in the process.

When you look at their products and read about the big energy roots of its founders, this doesn’t immediately strike you as the typical “green technology company.” These guys view the reduction of traditional electric power consumption to be just as valuable as the conversion to alternative energy sources. It’s hard to argue with their success.

The point is that green technology means a lot of different things to different people. But now, with a flood of federal funds earmarked for green energy development, the only definition that really matters is the government’s. That definition is being forged in Congress as lobbyists for big energy companies and environmentalists each group tries to protect its own interest.

Whichever way the money flows out of Washington, green technology companies stand to profit. In South Boston, Virginia, a region that was devastated by the loss of textile and tobacco jobs, they hope they are floating in the right place to catch a wave of green. Several years ago, the economic development authority in the region tapped into a tobacco settlement fund to build a technology park. Through a partnership with Virginia Tech, the park is now home to Virginia’s Green Energy Incubator as well as a very advanced simulation and modeling lab. When you combine federal incentives, some matching funds from the tobacco commission, and some pretty nice tax credits, green energy companies could really take advantage of the situation.

The big question for companies like this in the Valley is whether or not the synergies among them can be packaged in a way that attracts other like-minded entrepreneurs to the area. It would be interesting to see what the list of green technology companies in our region looks like. Not many people know that Tetra Tech, a public company in the alternative energy space, now has a presence in South Boston. While we don’t include Southside in NewVa or the Roanoke Region, it may be worth the effort to redefine regionalism if that’s where investments are being made.

Positioning Roanoke to be in the path of the green wave of stimulus dollars should not be difficult. The most efficient way to do that may be through a simple partnership among companies that stand to benefit. If your company is developing green technology of any kind, could benefit from research grants, and would be interested in forming a collective marketing plan, please respond to this article. Two years ago, this column proposed that we lobby to have our region designated Virginia’s Green Technology Corridor. With stimulus money being appropriated right now, there’s never been a better time make it happen, one way or another.

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But what about not-so-young professionals? In most cases, professionals who have already built a reputation in their field have more flexibility. There are more opportunities to work virtually. Let’s face it, the older you get, the more skills and connections you have. It becomes more and more possible to work from home and not be so dependent on a single job. At one point, these types of professionals were called consultants. Today, with 9.5% unemployment, there are a lot more professionals calling themselves consultants who may just be out of work.

In the last ten years, working virtually has become more and more commonplace. Technology has enabled professionals to work from home as effectively as they could from and office. For businesses that rely on professional talent, this shift creates quite an opportunity. Now, businesses can recruit talent from all over the world, avoid costly expenses like relocation, and essentially create a virtual team that fits the exact requirements of each client.

It would be interesting to aggregate the consultants in the Roanoke area and see what kind of offering it makes up. There are professionals in virtually every field who perform most of their work for companies outside of Roanoke. Most of them have retainers or contracts that account for most of their time and income. Some may maintain an office outside of their home. But all of them have chosen to stay in Roanoke for the lifestyle and do work for companies who can pay what it takes to live it.

We should ask ourselves what it takes to attract this not-so-young professional. Until the area has a higher percentage of well-paying jobs that advance careers, the young professional is going to be an illusive catch.

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The City of Roanoke engaged the group and will be responsible for administering the year-long project. The group will accept applications from members of the community who are willing to commit four or five hours per week for the next year. From that group of applicants, they will tap 30 emerging leaders to become “Creative Connectors.” According to the City they will represent a diverse cross-section of the community as defined by background, industry, age, race, orientation, and experience. The team’s task will involve working with the community to build a more authentic and prosperous region through the creation of sustainable projects. Furthermore, this group will encourage the entire community to support these projects, which will be aimed at fostering a creative base for Roanoke.

The project kicks off with a two-day seminar for the selected leaders on March 30 and 31, where the Creative Class Group will work with them to build an understanding of the creative economy. The proprietary framework is based on Richard Florida’s 4T’s of economic development: Talent, Technology, Tolerance and Territory Assets. They also prepare a tool kit and playbook equipped with the latest community-building practices and the most current regional economic demographic information.

Roanoke will prove to be an interesting case study for the Creative Class Group. In his latest book, Who’s Your City?, Richard Florida chronicles the “Rise of the Mega Region.” His research shows that talent tends to cluster around the cities where innovation occurs. This creates a virtuous cycle that causes successful cities to grow and become connected with other successful cities. For example, the largest of these Mega Regions, “Bos-Wash,” stretches from Boston through New York to Washington, D.C. Another, “Char-Lanta,” clusters around Raleigh’s Research Triangle, stretches through the banking center of Charlotte, and down through Atlanta. Roanoke happens to exist in the void between those Mega Regions.

It will be interesting to see how this reality factors into the assessment of Roanoke’s long-term prospects. We’ve got to consider how our neighboring Mega Regions will contribute to our success. The issue of regionalism has been front and center for many years in Roanoke. Our economic development authorities continue to consider regionalism a key to progress. The moving target has been the definition of our region. While the City is sponsoring the project, the Creative Class Group will need to think about issues in a regional and mega-regional context.

Regardless of what that the 30 Creative Connectors end up implementing over the next year, our new affiliation with the Creative Class Group will yield enough exposure to put Roanoke on the radar, if not on the map. As the author of two bestsellers, Richard Florida brings a following that is made up of the very people we are trying to attract. The members of the Creative Class who read his books and blogs will see that Roanoke “gets it.” That alone will generate more buzz than any media buy.

The buzz will also put us on the hot seat to make the most of the opportunity and produce some positive results. That means we’ll need to attract creative talent, support the development of new technologies, promote tolerance and leverage our territory assets. And, we’ll need to do it in a way that’s measurable. To provide a comprehensive empirical understanding of the region, the Creative Class Group employs multiple economic models, quality of place frameworks, and a broad range of variables, including over 30 economic indicators.

The process promises to be inclusive and transparent. It will not be a plan developed behind closed doors by an exclusive group and carried out by an inner circle of supporters. The Creative Connectors will be charged with bringing community members to the table, working with organizations to build consensus and actually carrying out the plans. The entire process will be open and accessible through public meetings, alternative media and blogs. And, the group will be connected to other communities around the country that have been through the process.

As a participant from Tallahassee described the Creative Communities Leadership Project, “I’m very excited about the project and in fact, feel as if this is not going to be another ‘white paper’ no one will ever read, but rather actions that will definitely impact this area for years to come.” For those of us in Roanoke who take on the commitment, let’s plan to support their efforts and help turn this project into a better quality of life.

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Basically, social networking means interacting with other people over the internet. People sign up for an account and complete a profile that tells people who you are, where you’re from, what you like, what you do for a living and what you’re doing right now. Then they look for other people they know or people they don’t know who share something in common. But, pretty soon you have a group of “friends” on facebook.

Some are people you haven’t seen since high school. Others are people you’ve worked with. There may be neighbors, members of your community organizations, or members of your family. There will even be a fair number of people you think you may have known at some point, but you’re not sure. And, you’ll even get a few who are pretty sure they’re not your real friend but insist on being your facebook friend. For them, facebook provides you with a convenient little “ignore” button. You can even seek out people who fit that profile and forever block them from finding you on facebook.

Facebook includes a growing number of applications that allow you to do things like throw virtual snowballs at friends or give virtual gifts. You can share photos, videos and music with friends. You can put a friend’s name on a photo so that all of his friends can see your photo. It really is an amazing way to interact with people. If you think about it, there probably has never been anything in Roanoke that has brought 63,603 people together in one place. And, there’s certainly never been anything that’s given those 63,000 Roanokers direct access to another 90 million people all around the world. But that’s how many people are members of facebook.

For the type-A personality and those of us who have to work for a living, there’s the more practical social network for professionals, called LinkedIn. 9818 Roanokers have taken the time to build a business profile on that site. LinkedIn allows you to seek out people in your profession to share ideas. It gives you an easy way to identify potential customers and make contact with them. And, it’s just beginning to deliver some real business applications that allow professionals to share files, make presentations and collaborate on projects. It’s also not a bad place to look for a job or find a new employee.

Just like facebook connects you to friends of friends, LinkedIn actually tracks the number of people that you are ultimately connected to indirectly. For instance, you may have 200 direct business contacts on LinkedIn. But, if you add two degrees of separation, you may be connected to more than 2 million contacts that are only a couple of introductions away. That’s a long way from the old style Rolodex.

Stuart Mease has been advocating social networks as a way to attract young professionals to the Roanoke Valley since he was tasked with that job by the City. It’s hard to argue with the fact that social networks are an incredibly cost-effective way to reach people in a meaningful way. Let’s say that the 63,603 Roanokers on facebook each has an average of 50 friends. That’s more than 3 million people with a personal connection to Roanoke. Unlike traditional direct marketing, social networks give you the ability to combine the power and credibility of word-of-mouth marketing with the exponential reach of a viral marketing campaign. And, there are no printing or postage expenses.

Price Gutshall has been developing a presence for the Roanoke Region of Virginia on facebook and LinkedIn since he was hired by the Partnership to bring a younger perspective to their marketing. So far 527 of the 63,000 Roanokers on facebook have become “fans” of his group. Other businesses and organizations in Roanoke have also developed a presence on facebook and LinkedIn as integral tactics in their marketing plans. The use of social networks as a primary media strategy is still in its infancy. But, as more and more businesses, organizations, independent professionals and ordinary people sign on, the potential grows just as exponentially as the latest viral video that got passed along to you.

In the past year, this writer has seen several Fortune 500 clients cut their television advertising budgets and steer money toward social networking and viral marketing projects. In almost every case, the return on investment was greater percentage than they were achieving through traditional media. If it works for some of the biggest brands in America, it will certainly work for Roanoke’s local brands. And, it doesn’t cost a heck of a lot to give it a shot.

So go out there and explore these two social networks and the dozens of others that are cropping up. If you haven’t done it yet, you’ll be amazed at how many people you’ll run across that you may have never seen in your daily life. And, you’ll be equally amazed at how much those virtual worlds reflect your own real world.

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Back in the day, the same held true for the railroad. If the railroad had never come through this area, a small few of us would be living in a little place called Big Lick. In fact, Roanoke was an original railroad boomtown. We don’t necessarily think in terms of interstate boomtowns. But, there are cities all over America that would not exist as they do today if they weren’t near an interstate exit.

As Roanoke became less of a railroad town, I-81 took the rail’s place. Today, a substantial percentage of our local economy depends on the distribution and freight industries that run on that interstate. Unlike larger cities that have multiple interstates feeding into an interstate beltline, Roanoke’s I-581 operates like one long off ramp that runs right through the middle of the city. Unfortunately, no matter which direction you drive out of town on an interstate, you don’t hit a major metropolitan area for about three hours.

Well, that could all change sooner than we thought. We’ve all now heard the term “shovel-ready.” Obama’s new New Deal, is promising to fund these types of public works projects as soon as he can get another injection of cash pushed through Congress. That could mean new investments in everything from high-speed rail to hybrid fuel cells. But one thing it’s always meant is more spending on highways and bridges, which we affectionately call our crumbling infrastructure.

It’s not wishful thinking to hope that some of that money will land in our valley. If you look at the Federal Highway Administration’s top five priorities for interstate development, two of those new interstates run right through Roanoke. If you recall, a lot of people in Southwest County were trying to dodge the route when planners debated the point several years ago. Now, Interstate 73, which will essentially follow Route 220 to the North Carolina Triad, is fifth in line for construction. At number two on the list is an East-West Transnational Corridor that connects Hampton Roads on the east to San Diego on the west.

Before the green contingent among us gets too upset, let’s consider the economic impact. Or better yet, let’s imagine that Roanoke rises up and tells the Federal Government that we will have none of it. After all, they could just as well run 73 up through Lynchburg. And, they could run that awful East-West road along Highway 58 to help out Southside. Where would that leave us? Pretty much right where we are right now, only more economically depressed.

However, if we drag ourselves kicking and screaming into this 21st century and ponder the possibilities, we can quickly conclude that no other city in the United States would benefit as much as ours from these new interstates. The boom would arise from three major sources: tourism, service businesses and freight. So, let’s briefly look at each one of those economic drivers and try to find it in our hearts to embrace change.

We can say with a fair degree of confidence that Roanoke is not a tourist destination. It is certainly a pass-through destination. But, it’s not on many families’ top ten list for summer vacation. Even for hikers on the Appalachian Trail and caravans on the Blue Ridge Parkway, Roanoke is a stop-off on the way to other scenic wonders. However, if we combine those two great pathways through the Great Valley with an interstate that connects to the old Route 66, Roanoke really does become an American crossroads. Add to that Interstate 73, which will end up in Myrtle Beach, and you’ve got a whole other stream of Yankee tourists passing through on their way to the Grand Strand. Now, if we had some passenger rail, we’d really be cooking.

If you think about all of the service businesses that pop up along interstate highways, it may not conjure up visions of scenic beauty. But, neither are hotels, restaurants and retail stores the bane of our existence. The additional tax base that these businesses bring allows cities and counties along the interstates to fund better education, more attractive amenities and raise the standard of living. Best of all, the money isn’t coming out of our own pockets. It’s being passed along as people pass through.

Then there’s transportation. We probably all agree that more interstates jammed with 18-wheelers is not what we want. However, with intermodal hubs like the one being built in Elliston, we can identify outlying areas where we can transfer freight from truck to rail. These new interstates will connect Roanoke directly to the ports in Norfolk and manufacturers from Michigan to South Carolina. The firm that conducted the feasibility study for I-73 concluded that the corridor would support a major new distribution center and would attract new manufacturers from a range of industries.

If government spending kicks in this year and these projects get accelerated from their anticipated start dates of 2012, the last thing we need to do is shuffle our feet and wring our hands. If we do, our kids will look back twenty years from now and ask, “What were they thinking?” There’s a balance we can strike between conservation and development. But when the government wants to funnel a few billion tax dollars our way to link us more directly with the rest of America, we shouldn’t look that gift horse in the mouth.

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Our state’s capital has been hit very hard by the financial downturn. There couldn’t be a worse concentration of industries in these times than financial services, real estate services and retail. Some companies are laying off employees. Others are filing bankruptcy. And a few have seen their stock prices sink so low, so quickly, they were gobbled up by larger competitors and simply disappeared. When the new economy dawns on Richmond, the landscape will look very different.

In the meantime, markets like Richmond are crawling with talented people looking for new opportunities. Not to minimize the anxiety and havoc that accompany losing a job, but there’s a new energy on the street as all of these people make new connections. Before long, those big empty buildings will fill back up with smaller companies hatched during the downturn. Companies that weather the storm will emerge leaner and more focused.

On this side of the state, we are more insulated from the collapse of public companies. But, that doesn’t mean that we should just ride out the financial crisis and wait for things to pick back up. Instead, it’s a time to make new connections in the broader valley and pursue them as if our livelihoods depended on it. If thousands of people were suddenly out of work in our area you would see people you know out searching for new opportunities. And, you would be thinking about how you could make referrals that would help them out. Just because we’re not losing as badly doesn’t mean we shouldn’t play like it’s the fourth quarter.

When things do begin to rebound, those who benefit most will be the ones who built new relationships during the downtime. The natural inclination is to circle the wagons and look for anything that will pay the bills. Of course, the bills do have to be paid. What we miss is that every company is trying to find more efficient ways to do what they do. The innovators during downtimes find those solutions that help other companies retool and emerge stronger and more profitable.

What’s different about such a broad recession is that it’s not just companies that will be retooling. It’s the whole economy. National policy will drive innovations to make our overall economic infrastructure more efficient. How do we transport goods and people more fuel efficiently? How do we retrofit a power grid to incorporate alternative energy? How do we lower the cost of healthcare by introducing new technologies?  There’s an entirely new economy waiting to bud and our region can be positioned to provide the solutions to make it happen.

As companies downsize and even disappear, we look for a silver lining. Then we talk about bailouts in amounts we couldn’t have imagined a decade ago, and all we can see are massive clouds of doubt. But when we look closer to home, we see pockets of talent, capital, and intellectual property that have an incredible amount of value. As it happens, these pockets are ideally situated to take advantage of new investments in the technologies that will drive a major shift in our economy.

If you connect the dots of companies already doing business in the broader valley that deal with alternative technologies, you would think that someone had planned it that way. Add to that a higher education system that is educating a nice mix of engineers and entrepreneurs, and you have a valley of a different sort. Then there’s a burgeoning presence of healthcare technology interests supported by a new, research-oriented medical school. This place seems ideally suited to benefit from the financial rebound.

Our legislators will be looking for new sources of funding to support any innovations that will create jobs. Our universities and healthcare systems will be looking for ways to commercialize new technologies and bring investment dollars to the area. And, a whole new crop of engineers and entrepreneurs will be entering a workplace where the traditional job is in short supply. The building blocks are there to create a bright spot that breaks through the clouds of recession.

While it may not be time to whistle away the fact that our nation made some bad errors of financial judgment, it is time to accept the new ground rules and move on. And, it’s a great time to do some digging and find the hidden opportunities in the broader valley that will be real gems in the new economy. As you dig, bookmark what you find and share your discoveries with other business contacts who may have an interest. The more you share, the more opportunities will come back your way.

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If there’s one thing that makes the markets crazy, it’s uncertainty. Not knowing whether a company’s earnings will meet expectations makes it difficult to know whether to buy, sell or stay away. Wondering whether the Fed will raise rates may keep you from refinancing. But waiting out the last days of a lame duck President can feel like torture– especially when your 401k is tanking, your friends are losing their jobs, and your nation’s in an endless war.

Knowing who the President’s going to be for the next four years removes a lot of uncertainty from the picture. While fundamental issues like the recapitalization of the credit markets will not be solved by an election, some psychological issues will be. After all, the wild swings in the stock market are not purely logical. Mass psychology plays a major role in the fear and greed that move the markets. If you look at the recent drop in stock prices, there is simply no way that the fundamental value of American companies has dropped by more than $8 trillion in one year.

No matter who the President-elect may be as you read this, you have a choice. You can either spread the message of gloom and doom or you can encourage your colleagues and clients to peek around the corner and see the road ahead. It’s amazing how contagious either massage can be.

That’s not to say that we should strike up the band as the Titanic sinks. Blind optimism is not a strategy. Instead, spreading a positive outlook does work to combat uncertainty. Simply telling all of your clients or customers that you expect the economy to rebound soon and reassuring them that your company is building for the future can actually result in positive outcomes.

Mass uncertainty is like a virus. The media often seeds the virus by reporting negative economic news in a sensational fashion. Then, the word spreads of impending doom and causes everyone to reign in spending and sit on their hands. It’s a ripple effect that reaches down to individual households.

Taking a step back from the global economic crisis, the role uncertainty plays in individual communities and companies follows the same dynamic. In these smaller settings, negative news travels like wildfire. Very quickly, morale drops, compounding the effect of the initial problem. This compounding effect can be completely avoided by injecting some level of certainty by managing the message.

Our region shares a tremendous amount of potential that is waiting to be realized. Yet, in conversations on the street and online, you consistently hear discontent over the lack of opportunity. Part of this negativity comes from a shared uncertainty about the future direction of the region.

Getting everyone who lives here to agree on a common direction may never happen. However, if a common direction is clearly defined and effectively communicated to the citizenry, a framework develops that guides progress. When the direction is nebulous to the public, it’s as if we are all involved in a game with no rules and no clear way to win.

So, as we face down the next four years with the certainty of a new President, let’s urge our local leaders find common positive ground and encourage each other to pursue a common destiny of progress. Otherwise, we’ll remain mired in the uncertainty that holds us all back and keeps us from realizing our collective potential. With 2009 right around the corner, make it a point to share a positive outlook and find new ways to win in this new economy.

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In a lot of ways, community succession planning is a function of the businesses that make it up. As business owners identify the next generation of leadership in their companies, they place these individuals in positions of influence within the community. They may sponsor these young professionals’ participation in community leadership programs. They may nominate them for various community board positions. However they choose to tap these new leaders, their motivation is largely the same: securing a say in decisions that will affect their businesses in the future.

The whole idea of succession planning is setting up a leadership structure that will continue to increase your wealth after you have let go of the reigns. This principle holds true whether you’re talking about a small business, a large corporation, or a community. The ideal scenario is one in which the younger generation recognizes new opportunities that will grow the business or community beyond the founders’ imaginations. And, in a lot of cases, that means a new leap of faith for the stakeholders.

A true passing of the torch involves a new vision that will be more sustainable than the previous one. It involves creating that vision within the context of a world yet to come– one that includes new technologies, new modes of communication, and whole new economies. Sometimes, that means embracing a vision that you might not fully understand. But, that is the nature of risk.

At its worst, a succession plan gets tied up with the ego and a spiral of ill-conceived plots are hatched. Leaders attempt to pass the responsibility for the future without passing the rewards of the future. The fear of relinquishing control gets in the way of providing the kind of real opportunity that shapes new leaders. The end result is usually an exodus of real talent to competitors. In which case, the leaders are left with a less talented pool from which to choose their successors. And, in grasping for control, the leaders compromise their own futures.

At its best, a succession plan becomes a shared vision that provides a new rallying point. Leaders take an active, collaborative role in defining the vision. They identify the merits of future leaders and give them challenges that will be most rewarding for the individual and the company or community. In doing so, they engage younger talent, incorporate new possibilities, and secure a bright future for generations to come.

For leaders that hang on without a plan, the results rarely do much for posterity. Aside from alienating the very people who hold the key to the future, they further alienate their company or community from more progressive-minded partners. This is the point at which the torch begins to burn the fingers of its bearer.

In this region, tenure is something that is not taken lightly. Carilion Clinic boasts more than 500 employees in their Quarter Century Society, who have more than 25 years of continuous service. Railroad and utility jobs are equally coveted. In the Valley, these kinds of jobs mean security for life if you can just roll with the changes. That’s not to say that loyalty is something that shouldn’t be valued. It’s increasingly rare.

However, when a community relies so heavily on a few large employers, the collective vision can become fairly shortsighted. We need only to look to the coalfields to our west and the mill towns to our south to see examples. There is no real shift in vision when your job is to extract coal from the ground or weave cotton into fabric. There is only the security of another day’s wage and the promise of a pension.

In these instances, succession planning is fairly autonomous. Those who have reaped the rewards and held the responsibility pick people who will continue the status quo. They pick people who won’t rock the boat and upset the natural balance of the working poor and the privileged few.

We face similar succession issues at the national level, the state level and the local level. The question on each of those fronts is whether or not the vision of the future is compelling enough to justify the risk. None of us know exactly what the outcomes of our decisions will be. But, given the choice, we can either embrace new possibilities and proceed with optimism, or we can grasp for some level of acceptable stability and preserve the status quo. If we choose the latter course, we have to accept the risk that the torch will burn our fingers because we were unable to pass it.

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