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By Dennis Boone
The Kansas City business community is experiencing a sea of change in leadership as the Baby Boom generation moves into retirement and hundreds of longtime civic leaders step out of corporate roles.
At the same time, America is seeing a significant shift in its assessment of capitalism itself; last month alone, 200 prominent CEOs from the Business Roundtable signed a declaration that shareholder value should no longer be their main objective. Instead, they say, a commitment to a Greater Good should be driving businesses today.
That has sparked a national discussion over how capitalism should evolve—and even the purest disciple of Milton Friedman would have to admit that it has evolved over the centuries in ways that don’t always support a shareholder-first commitment.
Against that backdrop, Ingram’s sat down with Terry Dunn, nearly five years into his retirement as longtime CEO of JE Dunn Construction and a driver of KC Common Good, a new organization marshalling various sectors and institutions to address social ills in Kansas City. In a candid 30-minute interview, he explored some of the risks that current trends pose—but more important, some of the opportunities he believes must be seized now to create a more equitable economy, with more widespread benefits of the blessings afforded by that capitalism.
Q: In your view, how are changes at the executive level and the corporate social-responsibility movement influencing one another?
A: These are important questions, and they really need to be teed up in virtually every board room as far as social engagement, what we’re doing for others. We just aren’t in the business any more, and our employees don’t expect us to be in the business any more, of simply trying to make money. I think it’s much broader than that. For capitalism to survive, we must engage Americans at a level where we bring more than the relevance of the bottom line.
Q: How can that be done?
A: We have to get engaged. There are too many people that have addictions, that have mental illness or are coming from the wrong ZIP codes or they are coming out of prison, and there is a very loud call at the moment that we have to engage ourselves, and with our employees, at much higher levels.
Q: What’s driving that call for change?
A: Over the last five years, there’s been a unique change in the governance of public companies. That is a call to become environmentally engaged as a corporation that understands its carbon footprint, doing its share to reduce that carbon footprint. You have shareholders today raising questions about how companies are doing in the areas of safety, environmentalism, and candidly, the question they are asking, the one that public company boards have to figure out, is “What is your social engagement commitment to others?” You’re supposed to tell what the bottom line is, where you’re going as a company, but we really want to know, are you a corporate citizen in today’s world working for Americans to become better, more productive as citizens, and are you trying to resolve issues in your communities that you work in and live in that are meaningful to those not seeing the benefits of this great economy. Questions are out there, and those are the right questions. There is a clarion call that is taking place that business will either engage with their communities and have relevance to one another, or they are not going to survive.
Q: Is that clarion sounding as loudly in Kansas City as it is nationally?
A: It’s in the early stages. But Kansas City is somewhat unique. Our tradition is, as Midwesterners with those values, yes, but we haven’t engaged the entire community at the level we need to. We have too many people—look at where homicides, suicide, domestic violence are today. We have three groupings of people who need assistance. Those groups are those who are coming out of the criminal-justice system; what have we done to prepare them to become productive citizens in society? We have to be non-judgmental and have to realize the fact that we have hundreds of thousands coming out of prison systems every year. If we are not able to address that situation, they will be failures and they’ll commit crimes and really be a burden to society, vs. having hope for a better future.
Q: And the others?
A: The next group is our military. We’re well aware of post-traumatic stress disorder; I knew individuals through the Vietnam era who took their lives. But he level of suicide among people coming out of the military is very high. We need to make sure each one of those who served our country are treated right, with dignity and the opportunity to become productive citizens. The third group, people coming out of the poorer ZIP codes, some are people of color, but we need to recognize that if we do not provide a pathway for them to enjoy success, there will be problems.
Q: Some logical solutions, then?
A: This is where proactive corporate citizens must look at how to get involved in work-force development with those in need, and work with the education system to prepare those people, or how to have mentorships or other assistance so they can be competitive and prepared for a more productive life, to enjoy the hopes and visions of our society, which up until now they have not. That’s the burden at our feet, but it is a calling to all of us to come to action.
Q: It sounds like you’re describing a spiritual aspect to leadership.
A: You would know it through biblical terms as you look at, for instance, the book of creation, Genesis, and you look at the fact that on the tree of Abraham, there are four major religions—Jewish, Muslim, Christian and I would put Catholic as slightly different. All have their view of Adam who created the original sin of man, as self-centered, looked at himself as being a god, almost being a secular person looking at self and isolating self from others. And there’s a belief in each faith of a New Adam out there, a person who in Christian/Catholic terms would be saintly, a person like Christ. All four have something similar that they all view, for those who are in a hopeless situation or needing help, there’s a call for empathy, and empathy is a call to action, where you look at all members of society as your brothers and sisters.
Q: So how does that play out here?
A: If you can think about what if we have a community of 2.1 million people and you could basically see that transform this community where we can get a majority of those people, or a movement of people, saying we have a call to help others. Socially, we have worked in some silos; perhaps as we come together as a community and look at what is the common good, maybe we can work together and find the answers and the commitment to solve the problems we’ve failed to solve over the last 75 years. I think we have a unique opportunity and think engagement and leadership are going to be extremely important to change the trajectory of our country.
Q: What’s the impact of the siloing you refer to?
A: We have a lot of young people and adults who are feeling isolated. Look at the statistics on suicide; the act of suicide is an act of hopelessness. They have given up on life as they see it. If you look at how we’ve structured our society, I would say since the Great Society’s founding in 1965, we had what I call a criminal-justice system that has been very siloed, a health-care system that is very soloed in and of itself. We have the education system in another silo, and then you have the business community, which to date has been isolated. Then you
have the foundations, and you have politicians and other groups.
Q: What will it take to bring those together?
A: What if you were able to break down all those silos and say they all intersect in this area of common good, and there is a calling for engagement at a different level? What if you developed strategies, first with vision and mission, but if you have common culture and values, which we talked about from the book of creation, this call to empathy, the call of developing trust, integrity, relationship of love, whatever you want to a call it. Go through the basics, what you find is there is a coming together that has to take place. Nobody has all the answers.
Q: To the extent the business com-
munity can drive that change, are struc-tures in place to allow for that?
A: Candidly, we all must recognize the fact that none of us have all the answers. To obtain this common good of breaking down silos, we need to engage each other at different level and have the best and brightest from a new generation of business leadership come forward with the right ideas. We need to be able to measure outcomes, and we need to, like any business enterprise, if we have failures or find we’re going in the wrong direction, redirect and see what else we can measure to do it. The aspiration of being that city on the hill, where we can see measurable outcomes, but more important, can develop the integrity and that trust that currently is totally broken in our community. We have people who have issues out there in a hopeless state, and we need to figure out how to provide hope and pathways to success. If we can do this, we will have the value and culture system that is quite different than any place in the country. If we do that, the tie to economic prosperity in Kansas City will be tremendous.
Q: You sound as though this is a bit personal to you.
A: It’s very bad out there, but it can get worse, and we need to take it upon ourselves to fix it, the people who are in leadership and eventually 2.1 million who can be leaders. If we don’t, we won’t change. That risks are great, but the opportunity is tremendous. I saw the race riots of 1968; I was over at Rockhurst playing four years of college ball, and was playing summer ball at the time, having practice, and I could see the fires rising up in those neighborhoods, and could see the old people with shotguns out on their laps. I was about 18 years old and could smell the fear. I could see the hopelessness and the anger that was out there. I don’t want to go there again.
