Nov 8, 2021
Resourcefulness and ingenuity are often found in rural America, and
the foundation of both of those things are connection and
community, and this week’s episode is all about how to go about
fostering connection, how we invite people in, and what happens
when people feel invested in their small towns. As someone who grew
up in a small town
(in
our very own North Dakota!) but who has lived and traveled in
communities of many sizes and is now a researcher and expert in
rural resiliency, our guest for episode 89, Dr. Kendra Rosencrans,
understands the power of community. In this episode, she shares her
wisdom plus some amazing actionable tips and tricks for building
community and inviting connection into our own lives to foster
resourcefulness and ingenuity to help our small towns grow and
thrive.
About Kendra
Dr. Kendra Rosencrans is a consultant and researcher focusing on
ways to encourage creative, inventive change through shifting
organizational or community imaginations about what's do-able,
what's possible, and what's good for a healthy, vibrant future. She
is also a postdoctoral fellow with Cynefin Centre Australia,
studying how groups that change their stories can change their
futures. Rosencrans earned a PhD in complex organizational systems
from Saybrook University in 2019. As a doctoral student, she
received the Margaret Mead Memorial Student Award from the
International Society for the Systems Sciences. The award, named
for the anthropologist Margaret Mead who was a co-founder and the
first woman president of the ISSS academic society, recognizes
doctoral research that addresses contemporary challenges within
communities in ways that empower agency with integrity,
imagination, and well-being. Rosencrans is also the co-founder of a
new digital academic publication, the
Systemic Change Journal.
Prior to her doctoral work, Rosencrans earned a master's of
divinity degree in 2004 from Luther Seminary in St. Paul. She also
holds a master's of journalism degree from the Columbia University
Graduate School of Journalism. Rosencrans started her
newspaper reporting career at the Jamestown
(ND)
Sun in 1990. In 1997, she was part of the Grand Forks Herald-Knight
Ridder reporting team that won the 1998 Pulitzer Prize for Public
Service for coverage of the Red River flood.
Kendra grew up in Hettinger, ND, where her dad was the county
extension agent and her mom was a reporter, social worker, and
teacher. Being a county agent's kid, Kendra was deeply involved in
4-H, and will always view being named North Dakota's 1983 Swine
Project Champion as one of her biggest accomplishments.
Kendra lives in Kirkland, WA, with her husband, their 3 teenagers,
a cat, and a dog, but no pigs.
Some thoughts from Kendra:
I grew up in an extraordinary small town in southwestern North
Dakota that never acted like it was too small to accomplish big
things. While Hettinger has been impacted by the shifts in
agricultural markets and other forces that continue to challenge
rural areas across the country, the community and people I know
there continue to impress and stand as one of many examples of what
can happen when people in small towns choose to work together to
invest in themselves and love where they live. Hettinger, now with
a population edging 1,110, has a nationally recognized rural
medical center, a newly restored bowling alley, a coworking/rural
incubator space, plans to upgrade its indoor swimming pool
--
and-- continues to demonstrate that small towns succeed in the face
of their challenges with big hearts and big
imaginations.
I've lived in the nation's biggest city
--
New York City
--
and in one of the fastest-growing cities
--
Austin, TX. I currently live with my family in Kirkland,
Washington, which is considered one of the nation's top 25
"best"
small cities and sits on the eastern shore of Lake Washington,
across from Seattle.
Each of these places are really a series of small towns, knit
together within a larger governing fabric called
"Manhattan"
or
"Kirkland."
To thrive, everyone needs a small town
--
and but some small towns are more spread out than others. Within
the relationships and imagination that drive what a small town is
and can be
--
come the strengths and vulnerabilities that make a neighborhood or
community what it is. We all have our small towns
--
no matter where we live geographically. However, I do believe there
is something incredibly special and important about rural small
towns
--
and that for health, success, and future of our nation
--
we need to invest in, restore, and nurture small
towns.
As a journalist, I dedicated my career to telling the living
stories of incredible small towns in North Dakota, South Dakota,
and Minnesota. I saw what kinds of transformation can happen when
small towns and small cities in these rural states shift their
imaginations about their future
--
and work together to create a new story about who they are and will
be in the 21st century. This happened when I was a reporter for the
Aberdeen American News in South Dakota
--
and it was the experience that drove me to get my doctoral degree
in complexity, stories, and organizational
systems.
I want to work with organizations and communities that are
interested in doing more with their imaginations and their
superpowers for making do. The ingenuity that propelled the
founders of these communities to lay the groundwork for the future
is needed today
--
and the key to unleashing this inventive energy can be found in the
stories that people tell about what's happening, what's possible,
and what they are willing to do
--
or not
--
to make things better today, tomorrow, and in the
future.
Ingenuity is a creative solution-crafting skill and an inventive,
adventurous spirit that finds a way around obstacles and moves into
the unknown one step at a time, trusting that each move opens the
way to resources, ideas, and solutions that are more resourceful,
more effective, and a much better fit, for what's needed to create
a vibrant small town with a higher quality of life for all
residents
--
present and future.
It all starts with curiosity, and a willingness to look at what's
happening, and what's possible, differently.
At the moment, I'm doing some of this work in my role as a
resiliency specialist with the Red River Regional Council in
Grafton, working with the amazing Dawn Mandt and her team there,
and I'm doing some of this work in the course I teach on
organizational theory for the University of Jamestown's Master's of
Arts in Leadership program. I'd like to do more, and that's why I'm
excited to connect with Rebecca and Growing Small
Towns.
In this episode, we cover:
-
The role of connection in small town development
-
How to be resourceful in a small town
-
The value of practicing being invitational
-
What belief and creativity have to do with building the
future
-
The power of asking
“What
if we…?” to get your idea going
Kendra’s Published Works:
Rosencrans, K., (2020). Tohu va-Facebook and Dave Snowden. In (D.
Snowden, S. Blignaut, Eds), Cynefin -- Weaving sense-making into
the fabric of our world. Singapore: Cognitive Edge.
Download a sample here: http://cognitive-edge.com/cynefin-wearving-sense-making-into-the-fabric-of-our-world/
Rosencrans, K. (2019). Narratives of Ingenuity: Using Coworking
Space Stories to See Systems Change. (Doctoral dissertation).
Saybrook University. ProQuest Dissertations Publishing,
13898081.
Rosencrans, K. (2017). Pilot case study: How two nonprofit
education foundations use social media to support systemic
engagement. Proceedings of the 61st Annual Meeting of the ISSS -
2017 Vienna, Austria, 2017(1). Retrieved from https://journals.isss.org/index.php/proceedings61st/article/view/3129
Rosencrans, K. (2016). Proposing values and practices for a culture
of organizational ingenuity: Hacking systems thinking to pursue the
preposterous and produce the impossible. Proceedings of the 60th
Annual Meeting of the ISSS - 2016 Boulder, CO, 2016 (1). Retrieved
from https://journals.isss.org/index.php/proceedings60th/issue/view/16
Rosencrans, K. (2014), Nurturing Faith for Action: Theological
Education and Global Responsibility. Dialog, 53: 304-311.
doi:10.1111/dial.12133
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