IECA EC13 Keynote Address OUTLINE
Introduction – personal connection (who am I and why would you want to listen to my story)
What is/tension – sets up the story, gives background. (moves from me to we – at some point
in our lives we have all…) making the case for continual improvement, discuss where to focus
change efforts, introduce the connection economy.
[change happens...] Change happens with us or without us. Change happens whether we
like it or not. Change happens whether we choose to adapt or choose to wither in today for
the rest of our lives.
Think about dirt and water, or at least our understanding of them.
Think about how we operate – the business environment, the regulatory environment, the
look of your construction site. Technology is changing, priorities are changing, expectations
are changing, traditional answers and solutions are no longer acceptable.
I learn and pay attention in order to get better every day.
Getting better every day means changing every day. Reid Hoffman calls this living in a state
of [permanent beta].
Change is much easier to accept when you are the one causing it. Change is a choice. Getting
better is a requirement.
There is no one that matters on this planet that expects us to be perfect, but there is an
expectation that we get better. That expectation may come from a number of places
depending on the topic, but for us, it comes from the people who pay us, the people who
trust us, and the people we share our community with. It also comes from the Clean Water
Act. With sediment being one of the top impairments of our nation’s waters and stormwater
runoff being one of the top causes of those impairments, how else are the goals of the Clean
Water Act going to be met. If this group can’t make it happen, who can?
There is tremendous value in incremental, continual improvement.
The act of getting better every day earns us benefits beyond measure. It shows a level of
caring, and when people think you truly care, they tend to give you a break. They begin to
trust that your heart is in the right place and they and offer grace. Trust and grace are two
things that we desperately need. We need a level of understanding of our work that shows
up when things go wrong… and things go wrong a lot in our world.
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Change for the sake of change causes confusion. We must be focused and engage change
where it matters.
We must work hard to understand what reality really looks like. If we don’t it will be almost
impossible to know if our solutions will fit.
We are finding ourselves responding rationally to a world that we understand and recognize
but does not exist. Eddie Obeng
Old trick, new game (Optical Illusion – brain overrides what it sees because it thinks it knows
the answer.)
We worry about some of the silliest things. While at the same we can be completely oblivious
to real threats.
[REAL THREAT: regulatory compliance] We should know by now that mere compliance will
not get us to where we need to be and living on the edge of a C minus is no way to go through
life.
Regulators love compliance and so do factory managers. Compliance is safe, its steady, its
predictable.
Problem - we don’t work in a factory. Mere compliance gives the impression that we do.
Traditional factory and production work and work that looks like factory work are on the way
out.
Factory work can be automated. It can be outsourced.
Factory work can be specified and programmed. Its output can easily be measured. Factory
work follows a manual and checks boxes.
SWTools blog post - Toolboxes, Manuals and Handbooks. Warning - be careful as we
prioritize the creation and promote the use of cookbook type solutions. We have allowed
EPA and other regulators to go from results based regulation to methods based regulation.
A lack of leadership in our own house caused someone else to have to lead us.
Fear for our profession - being required to install products and implement practices in the
name of regulatory compliance without regard to the true benefit to water quality. Being
reduced to an industry of installers and become check-the-box-compliant.
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There are elements of our work that can be taught with manuals and specifications and
checklists. I’m ok with us creating these tools for those areas of our work, as long as it isn’t a
part of an effort to keep us in some imagined zone of safety.
So if manuals and checklists can free us pursue the changing world; if they free us
professionals to spend more time leading and creating and moving ourselves and our
profession forward; I’m ok with them.
In addition to distracting us from water quality protection and giving us a good feeling of
having checked a box, compliance makes us average. And our market will not support
average anymore.
Our market is defining value differently than it did five years ago. And when we promote
mere compliance as our standard, our work becomes less valuable.
Regulatory compliance is bad for the environment.
We are creating an illusion that anyone can do it. We are making it safe, at least we think we
are. We are applying a factory mentality to a world that is in reality not at all like a factory.
We are shooting for and promoting the average and we are lessening the value of our
services and our professions
We cannot fool ourselves and others into thinking that the world of stormwater can be
simplified, summarized, minimized and dumbed down to a point where thinking and
creativity are no longer required. We cannot allow regulators and well-meaning advocates of
compliance-minded practice to fool us or anyone else into thinking that our work is cookie
cutter and it’s anything other than true art.
Because true art is valuable. And its valuable because it’s scarce.
[Scarcity = value] Scarcity defines value in any market. And in most markets today, quality is
no longer scarce; competence and compliance are no longer unusual.
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There are too many good choices
It’s too easy to find average
Today, average no longer makes the cut.
[trust, extraordinary, connection] Seth Godin lists trust and the extraordinary and connection
as things that have become scarce.
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[connection] Our market is no different. Our market is looking for someone to connect them
with solutions, with ideas, with innovation. They need to be connected to others for their
benefit. They need to be connected with the last generation and with the next generation
Our market is looking for people and companies that will be the cause of and at the center of
connections.
The new economy is being referred to as the Connection Economy. But don’t automatically
think you know what that is.
The name of our meeting – IECA’s Environmental Connection, was chosen to indicate that this
meeting is about more than just erosion control and that there are all sorts of ways to
connect here.
We see this as a social connection and we see it as being about me.
An opportunity to connect me with people; me with knowledge; me with new products.
The connection economy is not about you and not for the benefit of me.
It’s about others seeing value in our ability to connect. Our ability to connect them with
ideas, solutions, ideas, people, it’s about our market. And its about our ability to prove to
our market that they need us and our products and services.
What could be/truth – presents the drama and the truth (what does connection look like?)
The truth is – [sometimes we do connect.] Our world is sticky, it’s messy, its complicated.
And being able to navigate through and manage that messiness and stickiness makes us
valuable.
We run to the messes. Sometimes we find ourselves being downright remarkable.
[connection] A lot about connecting is what you have been doing for years but thought about
in different terms. It gets what you do and how you do it more in alignment with WHY you
decided to do what you do in the first place.
If you choose to be that connector, you can be.
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Contractors –You have an opportunity to help connect theory with reality and to make
sure our designs are successful.
Vendors –You have an opportunity to connect us with options that just might solve our
problem of the day.
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Researchers –You have a platform that can connect us (and every young/old person that
enters your classroom) with new and best information available.
Regulators – You have a unique position of being able to reconnect us with why we are
doing what we are supposed to be doing when the true intent of regulation gets lost.
Consultants and stormwater inspectors – you can connect us to the truth and connect
your client with security.
Connectors are trusted. They have our permission to step on our toes. We allow them to get
in our business.
Connectors change things. They change us. They change others. They change processes, they
change concepts, and they change history. They are innovative. They don’t fill known needs.
They fill the need before we even notice that the need existed. And once they do, we can’t,
or choose not to live without them.
Today is an amazing time for innovation and technology. We get excited when our world of
dirt and water crosses paths with the current world of technology.
For some reason, we see innovation and technology of the today as being separated from
technology of our world. But it doesn’t have to be. And I’m afraid that because we see our
profession as being somewhat stagnant, we limit ourselves.
Webinar – I sat in Montgomery, Alabama, being interviewed by Jimmy Eanes somewhere in
Texas during a webinar being facilitated by Natalie in Denver, Colorado. Sitting in on the
webinar were people in Arizona, and Ohio, and Calgary, and British Columbia, and Alaska,
and Hawaii, and Maryland and Caracass, and Wisconsin and Colorado, and Texas, and sitting
in offices just down the hall.
We have seen innovation and technology in stormwater. We have seen our operations
become more effective and more efficient because of innovation and technology.
Remember, the internet isn’t the only place you can find innovation and technology. Its all in
how you define them. Innovation just means that its new. Technology is simply an
application of scientific knowledge. We do that all the time.
I asked for help from a few LinkedIn groups and StormwaterTools.com subscribers to help
identify these connections that have changed our world.
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Mulch was a technological innovation if you think about the impact of our realizing that
we had to cover it up… with anything. Researchers connected us with that knowledge.
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The rolled erosion control product – another game changer. Who would have imagined
20 years ago that anyone would be willing to spend more than the land is worth in order
to keep it from eroding? Vendors and ECTC have connected us with that technology.
Ellis family in Centre, Alabama connected us with a hydraulically applied erosion control
product that made use of a waste product of cotton processing and at the same time
challenged the rolled and hydraulic erosion control industry to rise to a higher level of
effectiveness.
Roger Singleton in Georgia connected us with a product that addressed a weak link in our
construction stormwater plans and forever changed the face of our projects.
The act of evolving through and the five pillars of construction stormwater management
changed ALDOT. We moved from sediment control to managing sediment to managing
water, to work and finally ended up declaring out loud that communication is the BEST
management practice.
Mclaughlin – baffles, Faircloth - skimmer
Bill Gates is certainly a remarkable connector, Bill Gates - “The most meaningful way to
differentiate your company from your competitors, the best way to put distance between
you and the crowd is to do an outstanding job with information. How you gather, manage
and use information will determine whether you win or lose.”
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We have learned that having the best information possible leads to better communication
and better decision making.
Ted Sherrod – Sedcad
What if - input real soils data, real topographic and real rainfall parameters into a single
tool that more accurately and completely models hydraulics, hydrology, erosion and
sedimentation rates estimating both real and predicted upland and instream impacts.
GSSHA - What if - create more accurate and complete information than you currently get
by using SCS methods and rational methods and RUSLE? What if - look at your 200 acre
project on a 10’x10’ grid rather than by region or subwatersheds? Have you heard of
distributed modeling?
Gridded Subsurface Hydrologic Analysis modeling, or GSSHA is a two-dimensional,
physically based, watershed model being used on a few of our projects today.
What if - calibrate that model with continuous monitoring of stream quality and stage
data and tie it all to actual rainfall at any one point or several points on your project as
you would like to not only learn the frequency of the experienced storm event but also to
understand the frequency of the experienced discharge event?
We are doing all of this today.
Working with Hydroengineering Solutions connecting to all of this – to GSSHA, to
Rainwave, and Raingraph. They decided that rainfall data was too important to us to be
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left in the hands of a laborer with a supermarket rainguage. They developed Rainwave, a
rainfall monitoring service and connected us to the very best rainfall data available.
Connections are people, innovations and concepts that we can no longer do without.
They have demonstrated remarkable. They have earned our trust and have convinced us,
with our permission, that we need them.
We didn’t know we needed them until they demonstrated that we needed them.
We certainly have connectors in our profession and we should celebrate and promote their
kind of thinking as often as it takes to get our profession and the quality of our nation’s
waters to where they need to be.
How to make it happen/application – resolution – what you can do (move from we to you,
how to apply the truth?)
But in order to get ahead of mere compliance, we must become connectors. We have to stop
complaining about things that attempt to move us out of our comfort zone.
We must accept our fate as leaders. Not just leaders in our organizations or our state or in
our profession. We need to understand that meeting the goals of the Clean water Act is, to a
large part, resting on our shoulders.
We must act like we care in every instance. Not just that we care, but as if we are on a
mission. We must show that we care by getting better every day of the week. Starting right
now.
As you become a connector, your questions will change.
Those who lead, who truly care, love and embrace the questions. [?]
Connectors answer questions. They not only care enough to ask questions, but they care
enough to answer questions that no one else has thought of.
Connectors answer the obvious questions and the not-so-obvious questions.
Answering the obvious questions is the least we should do.
The best and most creative solutions don't come from finding answers to the questions that
are in front of us. They come from inventing new questions.
Closing/landing (10 – 15% of talk - 30 min = 3-4 minutes) provides what the listener needs to
know and do with what they have heard. The message began with a personal story or
observation, the message ends with a me mentality. Leave the listener with a clear sense of
what all of us should do with what we have heard.
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If I’ve done my job today, you are thinking about connection and how you can become one or
how you can improve your connecting skills.
But as you jump in, be careful with how you approach becoming a connector.
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There are no rules for connecting.
Connecting and becoming remarkable is also risky. It’s scary. You will begin to separate
yourself from the pack, from normal, from average, which is where your peers might be.
When you fail at being different, people will talk. They will say they told you so and they
will say of course you failed; you failed because you stepped outside of my comfort zone.
Where I’m safe.
Ridiculous and remarkable are risky. But so is being average and compliant.
Dave Ramsey – statistically normal in America: fat, broke and divorced.
I hope you will think differently today than you did yesterday.
And I hope you take that different kind of thinking with you into this conference.
Seth Godin - characteristics of a conference that works, one that is successful. One of
several traits of a successful conference The conference works if it’s a part of a movement. If every day is a building block on the way
to something important, and if the attendees are a part of a tribe that goes beyond
demographics or professional affiliation.
The IECA Environmental Connection is clearly one that works. Most of us here have
experienced its effectiveness first hand. And it works for the reasons Seth Godin mentions.
It’s about growth, it’s about a mission and it about us working together to get there.
Moving forward - you can choose to make a name for yourself, you can choose to make a
difference, or you can choose to make history. It’s your choice.
Thanks for listening. Now go connect.
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