What does it take to turn a community around? Is it a question of better leadership or is it something else?

Chiefs football is one of the highlights of these past dozen years in St. Joseph. The training camp each summer on the MWSU campus draws thousands, especially in the Andy Reid championship era.

In other ways, those same years have been tough on old St. Joe. The population tumbled, public schools stumbled, car thefts and gun shots rumbled, roadways crumbled, and taxpayers grumbled. Mostly, when pressed for answers, leaders mumbled.

Why? Let’s consider a football analogy: there are cheerleaders, spectators, and players following the game in any community. All three categories come from the larger group of citizens.

Most citizens care about the community and may engage in civic discussions and activities when they coincide (or interfere) with their own interests or passions. Their care is genuine, although in my analogy most do not follow football games at a serious level.

Now, cheerleaders do follow and make a joyful noise; they encourage action on the field and stir enthusiasm among spectators. They are superfans, cheering the best and ignoring the worst. A gorgeous long pass turns into a devastating interception … the same joyful cadence jumps from offense to defense. No change in that high energy enthusiasm at all.

Spectators mostly watch. They care about the game’s outcome mostly because they care about the players. Among spectators, there are supporters, critics (most are supporters and critics!), and people who just love the excitement of game-day.

But the players, well, truthfully, these are the folks on the field. They kick, throw, catch, block, tackle, run - and the game’s ultimate outcome is directly in their hands. Positive energy from cheerleaders and spectators helps a bit, but games are won or lost by players.

Shifting now to my main point. In economic terms, entrepreneurs are a community’s players. It is not enough to have a clever idea, ideas are everywhere, and very cheap. What is rare and necessary is an ability to take a promising idea and build it into a powerhouse company. You know, with products, customers, and employees.

For St. Joseph, think about Hillyard Chemical Company or Gray Manufacturing Company or the economic engines of yesteryear – the stockyards, Dugdale, Wire Rope, or Wyeth Company.

This is easy to understand. When a company prospers, everyone around it prospers, too. That chain of prosperity includes managers and employees who work there, vendors who sell raw materials or supplies, customers who use the products, stores that feed and clothe employee families. And, of course, the company owners or shareholders who created this broad economic magic.

Population and tax revenues go up, crime and despair go down. Vitality is contagious. Communities thrive when successful entrepreneurs begin building a prosperity chain. Communities do not thrive merely because cheerleaders and spectators want them to.

In Kansas City, think about the thousands of people who shared in the early success of Sprint or Cerner – or Lamar Hunt and the Chiefs. In smaller places like Salina, Kansas, or Springfield, Missouri, think about Tony’s pizza or Bass Pro Shops or O’Reilly Auto Parts.

Bless their hearts, but politicians and chambers of commerce are not really football players, either. At best, they are cheerleaders or spectators. Even in their formal roles as “economic developers,” they are merely distributing taxpayer funds or implementing ideas for actual players. At worst, they are desperately throwing money at lost causes or fanciful ideas.

Look around St. Joseph and you will see the legacy of familiar football players from years-gone-by:

Bartlett, Bode, Corby, Goetz, Hillyard, Hyde, Krug, Patee, Wyeth

The key to success is to welcome new people, new ideas, new customers to our community. The same old way of doing things brings the same old results. Do you want this community (or any community) to thrive? Look to ambitious people who can create links for a new prosperity chain. Players.

And - in the case of St. Joseph, Missouri, this analogy explains a lot. We have enthusiastic cheerleaders, engaged spectators, and a growing (I hope) group of players. The long-run key to community prosperity must rise from success on the field. The proof is in the entrepreneurial legacy all around us.