Rural Communities… Tear Down These Silos.
As a verb, silo means to isolate from others. A silo mentality is a reluctance to share information with employees of different divisions in the same company. This attitude is seen as reducing the organization’s efficiency and, at worst, contributing to a damaged corporate culture. The same can apply to organizations, governments, and communities.

For some time now, and especially since the 2008 housing crisis, it has been no secret that Rural has its own, very personal, share of problems. Our demographics are aging. Our innovative minds are leaving for what’s thought to be greener pastures. Much of rural is still disconnected with little to no digital connectivity.
My family moved back to Rural Texas about 3 years ago. We left behind a steady paycheck, predictable business, routine vacations, and an ecosystem of support to a world of unknowns, because we wanted to move back home.
Home is where our kids’ can be close to their grandparents and family. It’s a place where we know a large majority of the people, and are welcomed with open-arms.
We thought we would be stepping into a supportive ecosystem where, as entrepreneurs, we could identify a need, build a business, and provide real value to our community. We quickly ran into the many bureaucratic barriers that had been established to keep the new “ideas” out.

Soon after moving home, Hurricane Harvey came and stayed awhile. Hours after Hurricane Harvey hit our community, we, like the rest of the community, went to work doing whatever and whenever for the community. Since moving back it was the first time we felt we had a role. We all felt like we had a role. As one of our mentors, a leader in national disaster recovery research and implementation, says, “there is no greater way to unite a community than a natural disaster.” We saw it on a national level on 9/12/2001(albeit not a natural disaster, but a disaster nonetheless) We saw it locally after Harvey.

We spent many hours cleaning up homes, helping at our local Second Chance, organizing donations and raising the little money we could. We knew we could help more, we were networked with over 60,000 Texas A&M students through our previous work.
We reached out to our local community development leaders through an introduction from a local church. This was our first experience of a silo. We had built a network of students ready and willing to come help our little town. The response we got broke our heart and lit a fire. It’s one of those things that we will never forget. My wife and I had the phone on speaker when the words from the leader of our hometown community development spoke through, “We are in disaster mode, we are a strong community, we don’t need any outside help.” And click.
The weeks following Harvey, an area disaster recovery non-profit was started. We showed up to volunteer training sessions. We discussed our resources and ways we could help through logistics, fundraising, and marketing. We discussed how we could help beyond picking up debris and shoveling muck. The response, “unless you can shovel muck, we don’t need your help.” Our second experience of these silos. We thought, what was going on? We continued to help how we could, but the responses we received from leaders in the community, continued to plague us [and still do].
As time went on we began to get involved in local organizations. Organizations that aligned with our passions of community and economic development. We also started our own initiative to help our local youth learn skills like teamwork, collaboration, creativity, empathy and other life skills that are often overlooked in the traditional school systems.
Then another complication from a silo erupted our community — our rural hospital. Within days after the hospital announcement of a proposed tax, I set an appointment with family friends, and leaders of the local hospital foundation to whom I personally knew had helped volunteer for our hospital. I wanted to know how my family and our resources could be of service, outside of just voting for a tax increase.

By this time, we had spent years networking and collaborating with rural leaders across the nation and globally, who have both faced and overcome similar situations in their communities. We thought some collaboration would be very beneficial for our community.
We left most of these meetings feeling hopeful. We continued to meet with some of the amazing local healthcare talent. Each of them bringing their own ideas and solutions to the issue at hand. However, to this day, we still have seen none of these ideas being utilized or even discussed in a community setting. The leadership continues to isolate the problems, instead of working with the talent in the community to identify a long-term solution.
Our experience with these silos became no longer a one-off, but a trend. A trend that wasn’t unique to our area. It was a trend of Rural communities. The good-ole-boy network is real. Our rural community’s leaders are not actually working with the community. But Why? And better yet, how do we correct this?

When doing research and listening to others trying to breakdown silos in their own areas, we started to notice something. The areas that have obtained sustained growth identified themselves, not as cities, but as a County, or a region. They have figured out that by working with other cities and organizations, they were able to lift the tide for all. Rather than a top-down approach, these regional areas were taking a bottom-up approach.
Locally, we applaud our local County Judge for taking a first step to establish a unified committee, that can collaboratively address key economic drivers like our hospital, housing, and help our community recover and re-develop after disasters.
Further, when studying these innovative locations, we noticed the strategies in place for economic development were much different than the ones typical of a rural city. In the past, a successful result of economic development was finding a large manufacturing company to move into a city to supply 50 jobs.
According to Charles Marohn with Strong Towns: A Bottom-Up Revolution to Rebuild American Prosperity, we have all the infrastructure we need. Economic Development strategies must start with what we currently have. This means:
- Helping 50 companies each hire one more person.
- Promoting local businesses, organizations, education and recreation to attract new families and retirees.
- Creating incentive packages that make it easier for entrepreneurs and investors to support local business ventures. This helps to avoid the vacant buildings many rural areas experience in their downtown.
- Attract people rather than attract industry.
Our local community has unique resources, talent, and experiences; however, our situation is not unique to the issues rural faces at a national scale. We must see community for what it is, bigger than any one silo. We must be more inclusive, work with the local residents, and the surrounding towns.

We must eliminate the the silos that hold us back, and the discouraging verbiage. Instead of saying, “that’s just the way it’s always been done,” we must start asking, “is there a better way to do it?”