GET UPSTREAM

 

 

Vulcan, West Virginia isn’t really a town – it’s too small.

It was built in the coal-mining boom of the 1950s, but by the 1970s it was a shell of itself, just 20 families lived there.

Vulcan is next to the Tug river. One side of the river is West Virginia, the other side is Kentucky.

The children had to cross the river to get to school. But the bridge was so old and rotten it had collapsed, so the children had to climb over a railroad fence and then scramble across a railway bridge, under freight cars, to get to school.

When one child lost part of his leg doing this, Vulcan’s inhabitants elected John Robinette as ‘mayor’ to speak for them.

He asked the officials of Mingo county if they’d build a bridge. They said they had bigger problems.

So he asked the state officials of Kentucky if they’d build a bridge. They said they had bigger problems.

So he asked the state officials of West Virginia if they’d build a bridge. They said they had bigger problems.

So he asked the government in Washington DC if they’d build a bridge. They said they had bigger problems.

It became clear to Mayor Robinette what his competition was: it was these bigger problems. He had to elevate his bridge up the list of their problems somehow.

In 1977 just about the only problem anyone in America cared about was Russia, this was the height of the Cold War, each side was looking for any propaganda advantage over the other.

Mayor Robinette realised there was no point complaining to the people at the bottom of government, they just kept ignoring him, he needed to get upstream.

So he wrote to the Russian embassy in Washington DC. He told them the story about the poverty-like conditions of the people of Vulcan, West Virginia, he told them America couldn’t even afford to build them a bridge.

He said he knew that Russia had a foreign aid budget for impoverished countries, he asked if the Russian foreign aid budget could help build a bridge in his small town where America couldn’t afford to.

The Russians knew this would be a major propaganda coup, they immediately allocated a reporter, Iona Andronov, to visit Vulcan.  Andronov would write the story about how the US couldn’t help its own people, how the poor people of America were crying out to Russia for help.

But first the Russian embassy had to apply for permission from the US State Department, to get a visa before making the trip.

When they applied, the US government wanted to know why a Russian reporter was going to the middle of nowhere in America.

That’s when they heard about Vulcan’s bridge and they knew it would be a massive propaganda coup for Russia that would embarrass the US worldwide.

So the US government told the state to fix it, NOW.

The state told the county to fix it, NOW.

And, within a few hours, Mayor Robinette was notified that $1.3m ($5.2m today) was magically approved to build a new bridge for Vulcan.

Suddenly all those bigger problems just went away.

Because Mayor Robinette had found a way to elevate his little problem above all the other, bigger problems.

Which is what a creative person does, that’s our job.

We don’t keep competing inside a competitive set where we can’t win. We change the competitive set, change the perspective.

We stop trying to solve a problem we can’t solve, we get creative.

We get upstream of the problem and change the problem to something we can solve.

Then, in solving the upstream problem, the downstream problem solves itself.