Our 2014 staff picture at Millennium Park. Our 80th anniversary year was a big one for MPC.
2014 was an informative year—whether I truly learned things, or whether the machinations of the year simply jarred long lost lessons from yore, is sort of irrelevant. Whatever the case, I enter 2015 with a few significant lessons/reminders under my belt, and am eager for more moving forward.
Here are few of the lessons I learned:
- Sometimes you get more if you let go: The Calumet Stormwater Collaborative got off to a great start in 2014, and the main reason for that was that while MPC facilitated the meetings with support from the Foresight Design Initiative, it was very much the case that nobody was “in charge.” We discussed, we weighed priorities, we polled opinions, we questioned each other, and as a result, we began to uncover root causes for some of our more vexing stormwater management challenges in the Calumet. The result is that a lot of people feel ownership over the momentum we built in 2014.
- Patience truly is a virtue: This one I seem to learn every year… The very first thing I worked on as a research assistant in December 2005 was a memo about formalizing regional water supply planning in Illinois. Nine years later, we have funding from the Ill. Dept. of Natural Resources to reinvigorate water supply planning here in northeastern Illinois (as well as four other regions of the state) and real interest from staff there to establish a long-term, dedicated revenue stream to support water supply management activities throughout Illinois. It took a long time and we’re not finished yet, and maybe we never truly will be, but without a fair dose of patience and persistence (and a drought every other year) this would have been dead in the water a long time ago.
- You can’t reap what you sow unless you sow it: MPC prides itself on investing in our research assistants, and in 2014 the dividends from that investment began to really pay off. In addition to the five current staff that came out of our research assistant program (including yours truly), we had two other alum staff that moved on to new and exciting opportunities. We also hosted our first Wayfinding Fellow and Allard Fellows. And our former research assistants are all over the place affecting positive change—at Cook County, University of Chicago, City of Chicago, City of Gary, heck, even Kansas Dept. of Transportation. It’s awesome to see the success everyone is having.
And my 2015 resolution:
- By the end of 2015, MPC will be the regional lead on something totally new and different. I don’t know what that is today, I just know that our current mix of staff, Board and committee members is entrepreneurial, strategic and foresightful. That’s exciting, and come this time next year it means we’ll have taken the lead on something we can’t even see coming right now. Maybe it’s something out there, like drones, or something necessary but mundane, like rationalizing services of some of the 8,000 units of local government we have in Illinois. I don’t know. But I am excited to find out.
Of course, I wasn't the only person on staff who learned things in 2014. A couple of my colleagues also wanted to put in their two cents:
- MarySue Barrett: At the end of last year, I participated in a webinar entitled "11 Deadly Presentation Sins," presented by Rob Biesenbach (find him @RobBiesenbach) to Northwestern University alums. I would highly recommend Rob's work to anyone who gives presentations regularly. The three nuggets that had the biggest shock value for me: 63 percent of people remember stories while only 5 percent remember stats; the human attention span averages eight seconds; and pictures, including videos, are six times stickier than words. In 2015, my goal is to do more speaking and writing—and I intend to use these takeaways whenever I create.
- Ariel Ranieri: My resolution for 2015 is to get out in the world more. It's easy to fall into the trap of the routine, and while routine is something my overactive brain is grateful for, I sometimes forget to explore the unfamiliar places in this region I call home. Whether it's paying a visit to a new neighborhood in the city or an architectural gem like the Mies van der Rohe-designed Farnsworth House in Plano, Ill., I hope to push my boundaries in 2015 and experience new things. I'm sure that knowing my region better will enrich the work that I do here at MPC.
- Marisa Novara: I was recently in Europe with the German Marshall Fund's Marshall Memorial Fellowship. I was given a gift of the opportunity to listen, learn and ask questions: For 24 days, my chief job was to be intensely curious—and all that curiosity got me thinking about its power and importance in our lives. A resolution for me in 2015 is to continue carving out space for curiosity, to not only plow through the projects on my plate but to take the time to be aware of what else in the realm of cities and planning interests me, what I’d like to know more about and who I can learn from, and to encourage the creation of that space for the people I supervise. It takes time, and for a society geared toward action, this can be anathema. But the results of time dedicated to curiosity creates places and relationships that cultivate meaning and emotional connection. Here’s to more meaning in all of our lives in 2015.