Economic Development, Strategy and Sovereignty at Cherokee Nation Businesses: A conversation with Andy McMillan, CeCD

(upbeat music) - All right, welcome back to the Partner Toss of Podcast, where we explore the people, ideas, and partnerships shaping Toss' economic future. I'm your host, Jonathan Sanders. Today's conversation is one I've really been looking forward to. We have a very special guest for you all, my friend Andy McMillan from Cherokee Nation Businesses, a leader who is widely respected across Oklahoma for his experience, credibility, and big picture approach to economic development. Andy has spent decades working at the intersection of business, community, and strategy. And today, we'll zoom out to talk about how economic development works at scale. From regional collaboration and long-term investment strategy to the unique role tribal enterprises play in shaping opportunity for entire communities. So today we have Andy McMillan, who is a senior leader at the Cherokee Nation Businesses, which is the economic engine for the Cherokee Nation. CNB operates across multiple industries and geographies, reinvesting earnings back into the nation to support jobs, services, and long-term community prosperity. Andy brings extensive experience in economic development and business strategy with a career focused on building durable partnerships, thinking long-term and aligning economic growth with mission-driven outcomes. His work has made him a trusted voice across the state and a key partner in regional economic development efforts. Andy, welcome to the Partner Toss of Podcast. It's great to have you. - Thank you so much. I am thrilled to be here. I have enjoyed listening to the podcast. I'm thrilled to be part of the podcast and get a chance to spend some time with you. - Absolutely. So how are you doing? How are you feeling? - It's great. This is the most wonderful time of the year. So for some reason, project activity always picks up that last couple of weeks of the year and is lined up with everybody needing everything before December the 31st. That's all right. We expected at this point, but it's fun to juggle all that stuff and still sort of sprint to the finish line of 2025. - You got to love it, right? It's like when you think that you might be able to ease out of the year and you know, kind of just, you know, prep for Christmas and spending time with families like, no, no, no, no. We need you to respond to these RFPs. We need you to be as engaged. Maybe more engaged than you might have been leading up into this point. So great to have you. Okay. First question. So when you look back at your career and economic development, you know, what's been the through line that connects all the roles you've taken on? In other words, what philosophy or mental model has shaped how you approach economic opportunity? - Glad you asked through line question. It's been an interesting process to think through why it is that this work matters. What, why am I attracted to this work? You're familiar with the idea of alpha in investing. So when you're trying to pick stocks, you know, pick investments, people go out and they'll talk about alpha. It's just a measure of how a stock does versus a benchmark. versus an index, right? Is it doing better? You, there's whole websites and books built around this alpha concept. And if you take that idea and you put that into economic development, think about economic development, alpha, right? What is the baseline that a community is going to experience? It's gonna rise and fall on macroeconomics. The local talent that's there, things that are gonna have in flow. If you're able to make a difference, if you're able to put some extra talent in place, make an extra move, some informational advantage, something that you can add to it, then maybe it outperforms what the index would otherwise say. It's supposed to be. I'm not qualified in any way to sit there and tell you how to pick stocks. But thinking about what we do, can we put something extra on top of the way that our local economy or regional economy would operate and get a slightly better or maybe a vastly better outcome? Can we do something that changes it? So does the work that we do matter? I think it does, and that's the reason to keep doing it. I love the way that you put that. Was that the thought process that you had going into it or around what point in time in your career did you kind of have that thought? Like this is why our work matters are kind of what we can do to help be beneficial within the community. You know, like a lot of people, I didn't set out to be in economic development. I didn't know that was a thing. My interest academically was in political science and business. I liked that intersection of government and business and I didn't really know that there was a career path that would make some sense to be able to do those things. And I look back now and realize that I have navigated to be in exactly the spot that merges those two things. But I had no idea that was a possibility. I started working in just regular business, working for telecommunications companies straight out of college. I liked project management, process management, improvement, how do we make things better? And I still had that pull for some kind of service component to go along with it. And over time, that evolved into a role with with Cherokee Nation businesses. And I think at early on there, I really kind of understood that there's an opportunity to do things that make a difference. It's not about being known or being important or making another buck. It's what can you do that has some sort of positive impact? So economic development wound up being a perfect spot. I just didn't know it when it started. I love that. I just always love to kind of just go deeper into the why. Do you feel like for you this work is a purpose-driven mission focus, kind of lean a little bit more into that for us? Yeah, I do think it is purpose driven. I think mission matters. Like I said, at the beginning, does the work that we do matter? Yeah, I believe it does. I think communities can outperform the benchmark if people of good intent are doing hard work and having heart conversations and putting in the time and effort to get a better outcome. And I think that that's a slow process. I think it takes the right kind of people who are willing to let that play out over time. But that work has purpose, that work has rewards. The groundbreaking in the ribbon cutting and such are tangible. The ability to drive down a street or a neighborhood and say this building or that business is a result of some work that we did small part or big part of something. I think if you are able to collect enough of those moments over a career, you look back at that and go, you know, we actually did some good here. And it's an excellent reminder to both give yourself the time to accumulate those things and to take a second and look back and realize that there is a reason for spending those-- that time two weeks before Christmas on RFPs. It makes it worth it, right? Right. That leads into our next question. So you've worked across different sectors, different organizations. What is it about Cherokee Nation businesses, whether that be purpose, structure, values that have made you feel that this was the right place for you to spend your tenure? Yeah, it's been a long time at CNB. And I think the thing that was attractive to me, that is still attractive to me, is that mission alignment as a competitive advantage for the business. It is a place that is fundamentally different from a lot of purely shareholder value-driven businesses in that it does a lot of things that a typical corporation might not do. But it does them for a shareholder that has needs and goals and purposes that are beyond just a profit motive. So that's been-- to me, a profit with a purpose for the businesses, I think it means that we attract slightly different talent. I think it means that we make some different choices. And I think that we tolerate different timelines than a different kind of business would tolerate, because the mission is the reason to exist. Absolutely. And a lot of us have heard of Cherokee Nation, of course, especially where Tulsa is placed as a city, right on Cherokee Nation land. But for those that are less familiar, really tell us the magnitude of Cherokee Nation, kind of the budget under which you operate under, and kind of just how big of an organization a Cherokee Nation is. Sure. So the Cherokee Nation is the largest Native American tribe. There are 400. And I'll get the number wrong, because it increases something like 470,000 Cherokee citizens that are living inside the reservation, which is most of 14 counties in Northeastern Oklahoma that are scattered throughout the rest of Oklahoma. And then around the United States and around the world, you'd find Cherokee citizens everywhere. The Cherokee Nation businesses is wholly owned by Cherokee Nation. So as you mentioned at the beginning, the holding company, the economic engine for Cherokee Nation, there's about $4,400 employees and about a $3 billion economic impact on Northeast Oklahoma annually from having Cherokee Nation here. So that's a fully operating healthcare system supports for infrastructure, education, nutrition, housing, things that you would expect a large government to do and to work on behalf of its citizens, add on to that in a business enterprise that operates in gaming, hospitality, federal contracting, investments, real estate, other avenues that generate returns, provide employment, and my favorite part of this is never leaving. This is not a business that's subject to relocation for a better tax incentive deal someplace else. - Right, that's substantial. And I know the city of Tulsa is thankful for that partnership very much so. This is also something that really makes Cherokee Nation unique is sovereignty. Many people understand tribal sovereignty legally, but not economically. From a macro perspective, how does sovereignty allow a tribal nation-like Cherokee Nation to think differently about investment, growth, and long-term planning? - Yeah, I'm thankful that you asked about that in terms of economic sovereignty, because far smarter people than me would be required to talk about sort of the legal concepts of sovereignty and what that means in our operating environment. For economic sovereignty, I think it means the ability to optimize for different outcomes or to choose what those outcomes are, that you're optimizing for. To not have that be set somewhere else or decided somewhere else, we're gonna choose to build a business, we're gonna choose to build our components of an economy based around outcomes that we are seeking. So that to me is that self-determination, that choice of outcomes that you're seeking. I think that means the ability to go build a foundation for the future. And again, as I mentioned earlier, I think tolerate different timelines. - Yeah. - Right, as a result of trying to build sustainability to build for outcomes that are far down the road, you hear people speaking about the Cherokee Nation and throughout our business as well, thinking about generational investments, thinking about long-term kind of outcomes. I think economic sovereignty is the ability to determine how you achieve those outcomes and do something about it. For our businesses, what we, the profits that we return go to the Cherokee Nation to do with as they see fit, the government has an opportunity to have its annual budget process and lay out where those funds are gonna go and the businesses reinvest to keep that dividend growing. I think the idea that you have some independence and some ability to choose how you want those funds to be used rather than told what they have to be used for. I think that's economic sovereignty to go along with the political sovereignty that, as again, is out of my realm of expertise. - You're clearly important. - I just dabble and being able to understand it. - You know, this is really good. And this is a bit of a two-part question that kind of piggyback off of that. So I'm curious, what is a initiative that you might be especially proud of that Cherokee Nation does and how might that differentiate from other tribal nations? - I'm not sure I can speak to how it differentiates from other tribal nations. One of the things that you learn early on in working for an organization like Cherokee Nation businesses and working on behalf of the Cherokee Nation. If you've worked with one tribe, you've worked with one tribe, so we don't make any assumptions about how our friends and colleagues in the Muscogee Creek Nation, the Osage Nation, thinking about those tribes that intersect here in Tulsa, about how they choose to implement their own programming. I think for Cherokee Nation, the things that I see that are, I think the level of understanding in building out systems that support communities and make it a place where you can continue to live and work where you can do business is, it's deeply impressive the level of focus and the level of resources that are poured into things that sustain community. We talk a lot in our business about incentives and about hard infrastructure and is the water capacity right at this side? Or is it, and those things all matter? Those are top of mind when we're dealing with projects, but it also is important to say, well, if I'm gonna live in this community, is there a hospital? Is there some place where I can get basic healthcare? Is there a place for my child to go and receive safe quality and affordable childcare while I'm working? Can I get down the road from place A to place B where my job is being able to think big about things like a tribal healthcare system are critical? When we bring, we recently brought some guests to visit alongside our good friends and partners down the road at Mid-American Industrial Park and we're able to show them a childcare facility that is on site in the industrial park. I would be thrilled if my kids had had an opportunity to go there, they're too old for that. The healthcare facility that is just outside of that facility, of that industrial park, I think is brand new. State of the art, a really, a place you'd be proud to take a family member to receive care, proud to go get, to get care yourself. So those things are enablers for businesses to sort of look around and say, yeah, this part of the world, it makes sense for us to be here because it's a functioning place. And I think without the intervention of Cherokee Nation, O Sage Nation, the Muscogee Nation, in their communities to make sure that these are places that are sustainable and thriving and vibrant communities, I think we're in real trouble in economic development without that. - Yes. - It's not just sites, it's not just buildings, it's not just tax credits and incentives, it's the things that make it a place where people actually want to live and work, try to build a life. - Absolutely, because these businesses are made up of people, right? - Right. - And so they need to have that quality of life, it's instrumental. You know, we're in an interesting time right now, when we think about the economy, competing in, you know, shifting markets, as we see these major shifts in technology, workforce mobility, global supply chains, what do you think uniquely positions CMB to remain competitive and agile, compared to maybe a more traditional economic development organization? - That's a great question and you're right, there's a lot of just rapidly shifting circumstances around us. We've experienced that in the business and in working in the nation. I think that institutional memory that we talked about before the sort of long-term thinking, we have a lot of people who've been with the organization for a long time and they've seen it grow from a bunch of disparate businesses into a more unified, focused, mature organization. So I think that institutional memory matters, 'cause a lot of our team have been through it. They've been through the startup phase and the growth phases and they understand what that look like and how it was put together. So they just have a lot of memory that's built into that. I think, again, I keep hitting this theme about being able to play the long game. - Right. We know that there will be ebbs and flows. We know technology will change and business circumstances will change. So again, thinking about what are the systems that we can put in place that are resilient or that are still relevant as the actual details, the little tactical details shift. I think our business is built to do that by the nature of its core philosophy, by the nature of the cultural impact of having, the Cherokee Nation, we use the term time memorial and talking about the Cherokee Nation, seven centuries, longer of Cherokee culture that is the ownership group for this. So long view is baked right into how Cherokee Nation businesses thinks about what it does. I think Cherokee Nation businesses is uniquely positioned, there's economic activity around reshoring. We see several different drivers for that. Obviously national level politics. - Right. - And just business realities that change that. I think we're still dealing with the after effects of the COVID pandemic, disruption to supply chains and such. So we've had several shocks to the system that say reshoring makes some sense. - Yeah, absolutely. - And I think Cherokee Nation, Cherokee Nation businesses and our tribal nations in Oklahoma are positioned to be a part of that trend, to be part of reshoring. You know, as I mentioned, they're invested in place. They're deeply invested in place and not subject to leaving that place. So I think those are things that bowed well for tribal engagement, for tribal participation in economic development, economic activity, business opportunities over the next several years. And you know, we'll see. The tide will roll in or out, circumstances will change. I think the intent is that these businesses are here to stay and will adapt. So we just have to stay adaptable. And I'm excited to see what that Cherokee looks like. - Me too. (laughs) - So a whole lot of effort. that's been put into play. So I'm very optimistic. So kind of within that trend of legacy, let's build on that about lessons learned. So you've seen a lot, you know, maybe a couple things over the years. But within that experience, what do communities consistently from your perspective get right about economic development and what do they consistently get wrong? And these communities don't have to be Tulsa, it could be anywhere from where from, you know, what you've been able to kind of gauge. I think at some of this is on our profession, right? I think we put a lot of emphasis on attraction. And we do less work around retention. Then probably is really necessary or wise for the health of our communities and the benefit that that retention focus would really have for us. It's easier to staff for business attraction. It takes less staff and you need, you have defined targets. Right? There's an opportunity out there. I filled out that RFP. I spoke with the site selection or the professional or the company itself and I understand I've either been down selected and ultimately won a project or I haven't. There's clear measurables. How many did you send out? How many did you talk to? How many site visits did you have? We can measure these things. I think our attention obviously has gone to that because it's easier to measure and because it's sexy, right? Ribbon cuttings, new announcement, that's sexy. That's good stuff. It is much harder for us to dig in and work with businesses that are already in our community because they're busy doing the thing. Those folks are in their business. They're operating their business and so we have to make a point of remembering that they're the reason why we have a functioning economy in the first place. They're out doing the thing and we don't want to trip over them. We don't want to get in the way. We don't want to cause them pain. We need to be figuring out how we can make things work better for them. What are their pain points? If that's the difference between attraction and retention focus, I think there's another choice that we make that's possibly a choice between inclusion and growth. We've divided out community development, economic development activities. We think that those are separate things. They're not necessarily separate activities and I think partner Tulsa's an organization that's built to do both in a unified way. I think the Cherokee Nation's an entity that's built to do both. To me, inclusive development is more sustainable than any other pathway and it's not there's a moral reason why we should care about that and a set of reasons why a focus on equitable development, inclusive development matters. But there's also just a hard numbers reason. If we're not doing inclusive development, if we're not doing equitable development, we are leaving capacity on the table. There's capacity that we're struggling with whether it's sites building workforce patterns. If it's the labor participation rate, whatever those things are, that's capacity that we're not optimizing to get a return in our community. So there's a moral argument. There's an economic argument to say that sustainable development, real inclusive development is actually the smart way to move the needle forward. I feel like we get lost sometimes in a conversation about, well, we'll accept something lesser because as in terms of economic terms, because it achieves some inclusivity goals, I don't think that's the right choice. I think we have to do inclusive development to get that capacity unlocked and plugged in to optimize what we have available to us. I wholeheartedly agree. That's really what excites me about the work that we do. You know, between CMB, partner Tulsa is that comprehensive holistic approach. Like really looking at the whole picture, the whole pie and trying to solve for all those different components that help us get to a yes or help a company be successful when they come on line and, you know, over time. What are those things that create those legacy businesses that are in the community for decades, right? That's the kind of thinking that lets us explore a little bit and lets us play around with where we can convene, where are we leading, what are the things that we're good at, where are their partners in our community that are excellent at those things and to give us a chance to work together not to try to own everything and own every initiative, but to really do meaningful partnership-based economic and community development as a unified strategy to grow. That kind of goes into the optimism that I was talking about before is that being in Tulsa, we have a real opportunity to create what we want to see. The groundwork has been laid, but there is a whole lot of upside as to what we can accomplish and achieve. And there's a network of partners, there's an ecosystem of economic developers. I like to say Tulsa's full of economic developers that believe similar things about this is what success looks like. Tulsa is an interesting place. This is also a big commercial, by the way. Understood. I'm here for it. This is home for me for 25 years and I am thrilled when Tulsa succeeds in grows. It has lasting benefit for my kids too. That's what we do it for. Absolutely. Those next generations. Collaboration happens to be one of my favorite words. Funny, we're talking about it. So collaboration actually works. It can be an idea, it could be something that we pursue, but collaboration actually works. So you've partnered with cities, states, federal agencies, tribes, private sector. Lots of different entities. What separates partnerships that truly work from those that just look good on paper? Yeah, I think partnership is a word that gets thrown around in a lot of different contexts without a lot of definition. So to me, partnership is about mutuality, not adjacency. We're not partners just because we're sitting across the table from each other having this conversation. We can be partners if we are both mutually working on something together. I think that's not just coordinated press releases. That means that we both have some kind of shared risk, something, some asset that we've put at risk, capital that we have to play with, whatever that is, and that we will share in the benefits. Every organization has been approached with a partnership opportunity that is, hey, you put up all the money and then we'll share the benefit or maybe the benefit for you is that we'll just talk nicely about you. I think it really comes down to defining those terms and saying that if we are to be partners, we ought to be able to define what that means. I do this, you do that, we share in this together and it's more than just a feel good exercise. It actually has to have some meaning to it for it to work. It doesn't mean that we don't get along with lots of people, we enjoy the company of lots of, we like working alongside, but mutuality is not the same as adjacency. That right there. That's profound. That mutual vested interest. Yeah, and if you think about how your organization makes decisions, and I think about how the decision makers in my organization make decisions and the factors that influence them, I think for a partnership to really work, I have to take the time. If we're going to be partners, something really defined that we're both going to put at risk and we're both going to benefit from, I have to take the time and do the service of understanding how you and your organization will look at decision making. I can't expect you to operate under my frame, you can't expect me to make decisions the same way. You do, we have to understand the levers that happen for each other's organizations to really work. I think it takes deep connection and it takes relationships and trust to have actual partnerships, something beyond name only, the press release kind of partnership. We have to have respect for how each other's organizations will view decisions. That's really good. I have to just take some time to think about that because we've all entered into partnerships that may or may not have been productive or beneficial, right? Sure. And it just takes having been in a partnership, whether it be from an organizational standpoint, entrepreneurial, either or to really realize that, okay, if this is going to work, there has to be that common ground, there has to be the understanding and there has to be that skin in the game. I think a lot of good partnerships with those complementary relationships, right, as to where we can make sure that we are not only representing the other one in the best way, but able to arrive at that goal in a supportive fashion. I think that's really good. What strategic priorities have emerged over time and what do those shifts tell us about where the organization has headed? That's a great question and I'm going to stretch it a little more than a decade if you don't mind. Please do. I am rounding home on my 18th year in that organization. So it's been a fantastic place to see an evolution of a business in real time. Yes. I think it in short has changed from what can we do to what should we do? So as the business has grown and matured, I think it's slowed down in some ways in terms of just having to respond to rapid growth and adding new people and new processes, sort of bolting things together to sustain that growth to a much more deliberative business now. And I don't mean that it's lost agility or that it's become calcified. I think that there's a lot more discipline in the business. And that's been really interesting to see. That discipline decision making, discipline deployment of capital, there's a higher standard of rigor that the business has grown into. It's been really kind of fun to watch. There's some parts of me that miss the sort of freewheeling, "Hey, we've got stuff to, we've got to get it done. We just got to get it done." From 18 years ago. But I think it's a much better outcome for the business and for our shareholders or the Cherokee Nation that that discipline has really grown. I think maturity has meant more selectivity in what we choose to focus on. We've gotten a lot better at giving a gentle know for being able to say these are projects that are outside of our scope right now. Maybe it's not no forever, but right now we have to focus on this thing that we have a strategic reason to choose or that we have a goal that we want to achieve for our shareholder. Like we had a harder time and a lot of businesses do earlier in their life cycle. Everything's exciting, everything's new and it's a lot harder to say no and stay focused on what, and these are the three things that we care about. That selectivity leads you to make better choices about alignment with what those values are, what the values of the company and in our case the values of our shareholder. It's really good to hear that because I feel like Tulsa is in the midst of an evolution as well, right? And I think that revolves around a lot of around identity. Because you've spent time in the company and been able to grow with the company, how did you all arrive there? I know time helps, but would you say that's been a shift in leadership or what things have happened along the way that have helped shape that identity? I think it's a number of factors. So one, you have to make some mistakes. Yep. Of course. You're going to make some mistakes along the way. You're going to trip over your own feet a few times. So I would certainly acknowledge that like every organization we've tripped over a few things from time to time. The key is whether or not you can learn from those. And I do think that we've managed to learn lessons along the way and realize, well, we tried that. That didn't work. Let's not do that again. I think that ties into the institutional memory that I mentioned earlier that we have a lot of long serving folks who can say, you know, we tried that back a few years ago. And that didn't go so well. So here's the lesson we learned from that. Not having it always be novel to have experienced a problem before. Oh, we've seen something like that before. Big believer in scenario planning, right? So we've borrowed some of those ideas from other companies. I think Shell may be sort of the original scenario planners where you've thought through a problem before. And so you've got that scenario in the drawer to say, well, it's not the first time we've encountered this kind of a challenge. We have an expectation of regular leadership transition at Cherokee Nation that happens in an orderly way. There's an election for chief and deputy chief and members of the council. So our shareholder has this built-in transition, term limits apply, such. So it's not like that's a surprise when it happens. I think it helps to be somewhat predictable. You know that there's a certain cycle that these things follow. What are those term limits? The chief and deputy chief can each serve two, four-year terms. And the tribal council is elected to four-year terms and then I think they've got a maximum service of, I believe it's 12 total. And maybe overstating that because thankfully I'm not serving on the tribal council at the moment. That turnover from our shareholder means that there's going to be new voices and new priorities that come along, but they aren't typically just vast shifts in direction for what the shareholder is asking for. Those are long term needs and so long term approaches. For the businesses, then we've brought in a management team. We have a lot of consistency across that and a good process for elevating talent from within. So as I said, people tend to stick around for a long time. A lot of our leadership team has been there a long time because they started at other places in the company and have that experience. I think that gives us both resilience and an ability to continue to learn. That's really good. Another one of my favorite words is legacy. When you think about Cherokee Nation businesses scale from the jobs, diversification, long term, reinvestment, what does that legacy look like? And you've been doing a good job of just keeping that theme going and it's even definitely touched on some of these elements. But what does it mean to you? What indicators would tell you that the organization has truly done this work the right way? You can establish in that legacy. If you think about economic development as it means to an end, the reason that we do this is not just so that we get to keep doing it, although it is fun. And I enjoy the relationships and the partners and such. It's a means to an end, right? We're trying to get a better outcome, establish a better environment, education, healthcare, cultural continuity. In the case of our tribal nations, there are real questions about cultural continuity, whether that's language, art, historical practices, you name it, right? There's elements that take active management. So we're trying to enable those outcomes. I don't think legacy is a dollar figure. I don't think it's an amount of money that we've put behind some sort of a lock box to say, look, we left you an endowment. That matters. That's an enabler for other things. Yeah, I think it's intergenerational wealth, right? I think that we're talking about creating value for people now and for their children and their children's children. We want to set up systems that tie back into that sovereignty conversation that we had somewhat earlier that where you have self-determination, you have the ability to choose which outcomes you're seeking. We have to set up people with the ability to pay for those things, set them up with the ability to utilize those tools and to adapt to whatever that world looks like that we haven't envisioned yet. But I think legacy is system building. I don't think it's a building. I don't think it's a monument. It's whether or not we've established a system that works great without us. That resonates deeply. This might feed into that systems building concept. When we think about taking a non-political systems level view, this is more Oklahoma big pictures zooming out, what do you think Oklahoma may need to prioritize over the next decade, let's say, to stay competitive economically and where do tribal enterprises like CMB fit into that future? When you said the non-political take will save the political take for the partner Tulsa after dark partners. Right, that's a offline conversation. For Oklahoma in particular, I think the low-hanging fruit for me to sit here and say is to reimagine that engagement with tribal nations. Oklahoma has a unique differentiator in 39 federally recognized tribes located in the state, no place else that has that concentration of tribal culture and this wealth of knowledge and different perspectives on how life and family and business, it's just a rich, rich area for us to explore and imagine what it looks like for the state of Oklahoma and these tribal nations to really, to our earlier conversation about partnership, to really invest in each other. Make up and say we are in this together. There's no separation between the two. We are in this together. And like all families, right, you're going to have some squabbles about what that looks like. Of course. But starting and reimagining that tribal partnership is vital for the health and longevity of Oklahoma as an entity. And I think there's things that tribal nations are really excellent at doing that can augment what Oklahoma needs. So if you want to do small business work and see small business development happen, you can't do that in Southeast Oklahoma without engaging with our friends at Choctaw Nation, Gro Choctaw. They do an excellent job of working with small businesses. If they weren't doing that work, there's precious few people who would be doing that work in Southeast Oklahoma. So it's a multiplier for the state to have these these tribal relationships. Again, recognizing that there's going to be points of disagreement and pain points that have to be worked out. But if you start from a perspective to say, we will work these things out because we have to because we need each other. Then I think that changes the dynamic of it goes away from being zero sum thinking, I win you lose. For Oklahoma, I think Oklahoma has to make meaningful investment in education and meaningful investment in infrastructure. Absolutely. So we've had a lot of conversation and there's a lot of ongoing conversation about education. I think it is a must that we adequately, I don't even want to say adequately, I think we need to drastically think about how we fund education and what we expect of ourselves. Why are we accepting less than excellence for our kids? And it's not just a funding conversation, but it is largely a funding conversation too. When it comes to equity in who can access that excellent education, that conversation we had earlier about why equitable growth unlocks capacity. I think excellence in education done equitably unlocks capacity for Oklahoma that we are not tapping into at the moment. I think we have to address that. Our infrastructure and infrastructure is a problem coast to coast. People are using different solutions to try to solve for aging water systems or needing more road or more wastewater sewer, net gas, you name it, people are using different solutions for different infrastructure challenges. Oklahoma needs to continue to invest in core infrastructure. for citizens and for business, because it's table stakes, right? It's the price of admission to the conversation about economic development. It's whether or not I can actually do the thing here, whether that's business or some unit of government or education or whatever, the lights have to be on, the water needs to run, the road needs to be in good condition and we need to think about how those things work together. So generational investment in infrastructure and generational investment in education and then we're gonna have to have a hard conversation but I would pay for those things. For tribal businesses, I think tribal businesses are, as I mentioned earlier, uniquely positioned to help with things like reshoring, right? As we expand and grow and think more about how to do strategic investments, I think they're positioned for what is a likely trend in the economy in the medium term, short to medium term and then longer term just remaining adaptable. I think we're gonna have to be able to flow with, the idea of having a legacy industry that has a tail on it, we're in a hundred years time, it's gonna look the same as those days are way behind us. - This is why we wanted you on the podcast. (laughing) I 100% agree with all of that. I think it's extremely important. People like yourself working around the matter, I really think that we'll be able to make some leaps here as we move forward. So I think Tulsa and Oklahoma itself is an amazing place to live, work, play, you know, and it's just a matter of kind of those last couple of things that just push us over the edge. With education, you know, we have the conversation about how much easier our job would be if we just went all in on education. - Right. - From an attraction standpoint, from a retention standpoint, we have people coming from far and wide that are interested in Oklahoma and they have kids, you know, and they have interest in making sure that their family will be taken care of here and that product to go along with it, right? With it being an infrastructure. It's absolutely necessary. What's one belief that you hold about economic development, leadership, community, that you think more people should adopt, but very few actually do. - I love this question. I'm a big believer that we need to be sort of multi-disciplinary in our approach, right? Because if all we're talking about is economic development, we're missing out on some other things that we should be absorbing and best ideas from somewhere else. So I'll leave you two things. One, it Jim Collins, the author that wrote, that wrote "Good to Great", right? This is a perennial favorite business book of a lot of people. He wrote an article back in the late '90s called "The Learning Executive". And I came across that some years ago, love what he had to say in there that was about creating a learning list. So instead of operating your life on exclusively on a to-do list, I gotta get this done, I gotta get that done, I gotta get this other thing done. The suggestion is to add in a learning list. I need to learn fill in the blank. I need to learn X so that I can Y, whatever the outcome is. I need to learn this new skill so that I can do this new thing, or I need to get better at this thing so I can, right? It's thinking about how you organize your own learning into sort of a way from certainty and into I still have things to learn. If we show up on the scene, if you and I roll into that next meeting and we say, "You know what, we are the experts." We are-- - We know everything. - We've really missed the mark on what it means to do the work that we do. I think we have to roll in with questions and be willing to listen to answers. Yeah, one of the sort of deep thoughts that I encountered around this was like, have the humility to be taught by the place that you are trying to serve. Ooh, okay. - We repeat that for us. - Have the humility to be taught by the place that you are trying to serve. I don't know everything. It would be a mistake to walk into a community and assume that I know everything about that community. Here, I'm here to help. I've got all the answers. So we have to be humble enough to keep saying, I need to be better at whatever this thing is. And if you approach your professional practice like that, if you approach life like that, and it's just a constant journey of discovery. There's something new, there's something interesting. You'll wind up with more hobbies than you know what to do with. Because you're just interested in what's going on around you. John Gardner, who was-- he founded Common Cause. He's referenced in that Collins article. I think he served as like a cabinet secretary under President Johnson, way back. It's not a new idea, but great quote. He said, don't set out in life to be an interesting person. Set out to be an interesting person. Like how much more fun is that? If you're just asked questions, find, learn something new. So I think the first thing that I would say is we've got to be learning people. We have to be learning list keepers. And then the second part, another book. If you're feeling like reading a book, I would suggest this one. So there's a guy named Dr. Frank Barrett. He wrote, yes to the mess. Jazz as leadership, right? Jazz is leadership. Jazz as kind of a template for understanding and exploring leadership. And he's a PhD professor of, I think, organizational leadership. But he's also an accomplished jazz musician. And so jazz, the American art form, the most quintessentially American art form, has some standard structures and then a lot of exploration. The concept that he explores and that I really embrace is kind of this yes to the mess. You have a through line. You have a steady beat of something that is keeping you going. But then you allow improvisation to happen. You allow exploration to happen. You allow other partners to step forward and take the lead. Right? That spotlight shines on a different, on a different part of the organization or in the case of jazz musicians, a different instrument that steps forward to play a lead while everybody kind of keeps the beat, while everybody keeps things moving in the background. And that exploration happens. And then we all agree, all right, let's bring it back together and we're going to keep the sort of jam session idea of how we do organizational leadership and how we do partnership and collaboration. I love those two concepts, right? That improvisation and exploration and that learning list, I think if we stay hungry to know more, we're going to have much better outcomes and a whole lot of fun doing this work along the way. - That's excellent. This adds to my optimism. I think Tulsa is a better place with leaders like yourself. And so with that, Andy, thank you very much for sharing your perspective and giving us such a thoughtful look at economic development through a long term, big picture lens. So for our listeners, you could learn more about the work of Cherokee Nation businesses at CherokeeNationBusiness.com. And as always, if you've enjoyed this conversation, subscribe to the partner Tulsa podcast and share it with your network. With that, I'm your host, John with The Sanders. Thank you all and see you next time. (upbeat music) - Thank you for tuning in to the partner Tulsa podcast. Please remember that the information shared in this podcast is intended for general informational purposes only and should not be considered as professional advice. While we strive to provide accurate and up-to-date information, the landscape of economic development and housing is constantly evolving. For specific guidance related to investments, financial planning, real estate transactions or any legal matters, we strongly advise you to consult with qualified professionals. Partner Tulsa and its affiliates are not responsible for any actions taken based on the information presented here. This podcast may contain forward-looking statements that involve risks and uncertainty. Actual results may differ materially from those expressed or implied by such statement. 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