Building a Culture of Renewal

by Mike Davenport, Proud Citizen, Prosperity, Pennsylvania

I was elected Mayor of Pulver Forge, Pennsylvania a little over two years ago. We were in rough shape. Our steel mill had been closed for almost forty years. 3,000 of our 10,000 people were unemployed. When people talked about us, we heard the words despair, drugs, crime, loneliness, anger, and fear. Both our country and our state had forgotten us.

I knew conventional solutions wouldn’t work, so I studied companies, institutions, and even sports franchises that had pulled themselves back from the brink and turned themselves around. Now, they were thriving: why? How? What had made the difference?

Culture.

Real change isn’t about money or programs — it’s about making a fundamental shift in how we see ourselves and our community. It’s about getting people fighting for themselves and pulling in the same direction.

This insight was affirmed this past weekend when the New York Times published an article headlined “Luka Dončić, Jimmy Butler and the Culture Question: What So Many Leaders Underestimate.” The core of the story is about what Steve Kerr (above) did when he took over the Golden State Warriors. Kerr wisely shadowed Pete Carroll, the famously successful coach of the Seattle Seahawks. Here’s the big insight:

(Carroll said) “The key is what type of culture you create and what the guys feel every day when they show up to the arena.” It was an idea Kerr understood but had never heard expressed until Carroll.

(Kerr told the interviewer) “He (Carroll) told me how it took him 10 years to figure out for himself that to succeed, a coach has to have core values that come alive each and every day and with which the players truly connect,” Kerr said. “Because if the players cannot connect, values just become words on a page.”

To turn our town around, we needed a shared culture—a set of values everyone could adopt, live, and champion. I brought everyone to the table — ex-factory workers, teachers, retirees, young families, everyone. We had a two-day Charrette where, together, we hashed out what mattered most to us. It took us a while — there was a lot of grief, hopelessness and anger in that room — but when our townsfolk started finding common ground, it was exhilarating. Pulver Forge was dead. Prosperity, Pennsylvania was born.

Our people decided on three main values. These would be the bedrock we’d build our new town on. Nothing fancy, just solid principles:

CONNECTION/COOPERATION came first. Plain and simple: there’s no “them,” it’s all “us.” We’re in this together, so we did we want? Everyone who wanted a job got one. Everyone who needed a meal got one. Everyone who needed to see a doctor saw one. We held a weekly dance party on Friday nights. We turned our parks and sports fields into community gardens. We made simple changes to our downtown, creating coffeehouses and cafes, community centers, and a pocket library/used bookstore. This encouraged people to gather, hang out and make new friends.

The more people connected, the more they cooperated. Need a ride? A tool? Need your roof fixed? Need a babysitter? Basement flooded? Car won’t start? The more necessary we became to each other, the happier we got.

Connection produced PRIDE. Everyone began to see this place as "MY TOWN.” When you love something, you take care of it. Folks started picking up trash, planting flowers, and fixing up old buildings. They renewed a group tradition that had served Pulver Forge back in the mill days: meeting on weekends and renovating each other’s houses. The library started lending garden tools and basic construction gear, and pretty soon entire blocks started to sparkle and shine. Pride in action: who’d want to be left out of that?

Finally, INNOVATIVE ENTERPRISE. This is just a fancy way of saying we put ourselves back to work. Wherever we had grass — our parks, sports fields, even our larger front lawns — we planted vegetable gardens. (Jobs Jobs Jobs!) We renovated Main Street, two of our hotels, and one of our downtown movie theaters. One of those hotels now hosts our noontime community lunch (everyone invited!) The other hotel is a rehab center/halfway house, where ex-addicts help those just kicking drugs, staying with them through the ordeal, and sponsoring them in their new lives as gardeners, chefs, podcasters, artists, and medical assistants. On our own, by ourselves, we’ve put every one of those 3,000 people back to work.

Here's why building a culture worked when so many other plans failed:

First, this wasn't my bright idea or some consultant's recommendation. The people who live here created these values themselves. Hard to argue with your own ideas.

Second, success is contagious. Once folks saw things improving—cleaner streets, friendlier neighbors, new community projects taking off—even the biggest skeptics started coming around. Nothing changes minds like results you can see (and eat).

Third, we discovered these values complement each other. More connection/cooperation leads to more pride, which leads to more enterprise. It's a snowball rolling downhill, picking up speed and size.

Today we rarely talk about these transformative values. They’ve traveled from our heads to our hearts to our bones. We live them, and everyone we meet can feel the difference that these values make in creating this thriving, vibrant community.

AUTHOR NOTE: Mike Davenport is a character in the book “Prosperity, Pennsylvania.” You can buy a copy here and here.

You can find the Audible version here.

The book is about how an everyday collection of optimists transformed a downtrodden Rust Belt town. The town isn’t saved by a miraculous intervention of government or big business. The people save themselves by imagining a society that works together to work for them and then gets to work to make this vision a reality.

Here’s what bestselling author and Super Coach Steve Chandler said about the book in his Amazon review: “This is a wild, inspired, inside-the-park home run of a novel. Rich Procter lit me up in every chapter with humor and motivating wisdom. It reminded me of Thomas Boswell’s great book title, ‘How Life Imitates the World Series.’ Procter’s writing skills allowed him to go bold and create a book that motivates like ‘Think and Grow Rich’ while entertaining like ‘Catch-22.’”

The book is a ‘how-to’ manual for how we can all get beyond the stale ‘hate-your-neighbor’ red-blue, right-left narratives. What do we want? The love of family and friends, enough to eat, a home, health care, and a loving community where we belong. We can create these things for ourselves.

I didn’t make anything up. Everything in the book happened somewhere in the world. I just put it together in a new way.