On Thursday, October 3, Leadership Texarkana will be offering a FREE First Thursday program downtown at the Stained Page Coffee Shop for anyone interested in hearing why there’s such a fuss and buzz about Strategic Doing in Texarkana USA. The informal Coffee and Conversation presentation will be led by Ruth Ellen Whitt, Executive Director of Leadership Texarkana, and a Strategic Doing Fellow, currently one of fewer than fifty in the United States. Whitt will share a bit about the process, the successes and why Texarkana leaders might want to invest in it for their own successes.
On Tuesday and Wednesday, October 29-30, Leadership Texarkana will also be offering a two-day Training to become a Strategic Doing Practitioner/ Workshop Leader, led by REWhitt with Mary Marshall VanSant, a Strategic Doing Fellow from University of Northern Alabama’s Agile Strategy Lab. The cost for the two-day training will be $1500 per registrant. Individuals may register at LeadershipTexarkana.com.
Texarkana, USA has been in the global spotlight for multiple times in 2024 for conversations emanating from Brussels, Belgium. One of the hosts in an August session declared that “Texarkana was one of the biggest success stories of Strategic Doing.” Strategic Doing founder Ed Morrison has said previously that Texarkana USA is doing something unique and very different from other places: We are making it part of our culture for how we get things done. The more common platform for Strategic Doing is having consultants who are learning the process in order to lead and offer workshops in businesses or communities where interventions have been requested – by a consultant. On the other hand, the LIfT Strategic Doing Core Team led by Leadership Texarkana has been focused on tapping the benefits and progress which Strategic Doing makes possible by working with intention to grow the numbers and capacity for DOING of leaders and teams throughout Texarkana.
The LIfT effort has been process- and capacity-focused – as part of Leadership Texarkana’s overall vision of creating a culture of leaders throughout Texarkana who are ready to work together for community excellence and progress.
At the same time, although connected at the hip in one way or another, the myriad Strategic Doing based collaborative teams producing outstanding outcomes over the past five years have been driven independently by numerous community leaders as they have pursued a portfolio of amazing projects – from Broadband access, to the cross-state line award-winning Courthouse Square Initiative, from Pitch It competitions, to everything goTXK, from TexAmericas recent honors for being top five Industrial Park in the nation, to the Assembly Line. And beyond.
Those in the global audiences want to know what the keys to success have been in Texarkana USA – what might they learn from our community-wide success. REWhitt’s answer was that Texarkana’s key is that this opportunity has been championed by community leaders at the leading edges of our community initiatives BECAUSE they have each taken the time to learn it, and are using it to their own benefit! There is no more valuable testimonial in Texarkana these days than having LIfT Strategic doing Core Team member Rob Sitterley (CEO of our AR-TX Regional Economic Development corporation) declare: “Strategic doing works – and is a game changer!!!”
Texarkana’s unique success has come from the LIfT Core Team’s ongoing commitment over the past five years to increasing the numbers of leaders who understand the potential, the value and the opportunity, who are willing to invest in learning it, and who are successfully using Strategic Doing throughout Texarkana.
LEADERSHIP TEXARKANA is an independent non-profit organization dedicated to WORKING TOGETHER for COMMUNITY EXCELLENCE. To those ends, Leadership Texarkana dedicates its efforts to
• Unleashing Texarkana Talent and Ingenuity
• Blazing Trails for Community-Wide Strategic Doing
• Unifying all around Vision, Values and Priorities
• Bringing a Voice of Possibility and Responsibility
• Celebrating TXK Excellence and What’s to Love at goTXK.org–
PLUS a TXK calendar for all events
Additional information about Leadership Texarkana can be found at www.leadershiptexarkana.com.
