Every day brings delightful coincidences in the network. Here are two great moves from today’s messages to be celebrated.

Cards of change

Layoffs are ugly. They are uniquely ugly for those who have been laid off who must then reprofile themselves, find new opportunity, make new beginnings.

For a few, it is a time of reinvention, rediscovery, and renewal, and may even include the experience of surprise, delight, and satisfaction that comes from a new place, a new identity, a new capability in roles not imagined before because of the clutter and mess of the daily routine in the old job.

Cards of Change is a great concept – business cards from the old job edited to represent the newer, more exciting, more optimistic move. Let me know if you upload yours, or have a similar story of the pleasure of finding otherwise undiscovered opportunity.

Cardsofchange is a place where the glass is always half-full. A destination where all the bad news of the day takes a back seat to stories of individual success.

Workstage

Layoffs are ugly. They are uniquely ugly for those who care, but have the task of delivering the bad news.

If you’ve ever been in a Workstage building, I expect you’ve had a great experience. Developed by a subsidiary of Steelcase, Workstage provided sustainable design and building integration and development in a very unique, and very nicely designed model.

Even though it was an great example for a new way of financing, developing and building, in a time of financial downturn and real estate oversupply it was not supportable.

Kurt Nahikian (gosh, I hope he doesn’t mind my doing this!) sent out a sad, but truly generous announcement of the closure of the company. I am not familiar with any other more caring layoff gestures like this, are you? And if you can help, do!

It was a great run…

Almost exactly 10 years after its visionary inception, Workstage closed its doors. A very sad and difficult day for the forty-plus families impacted by this change.

This was a truly amazing team delivering first-in-the-world innovation.

If you are interested in what kind of talent is now available in west Michigan – do not hesitate to contact me – I have stories to tell about each and every one of them.

A number of self referential links this week –

I reflected on the demolition of a brand new development in California because the bank couldn’t sell the houses and didn’t want to pay for their completion. (I proposed a tool from health care regulation as a proposal to help avoid similar events in the future.) The picture accompanying the article and the videos posted elsewhere on the event certainly did not look like this – “Deconstructing in Cleveland” – was taking place. (via GLUE) Other impacts – safety and health – of financial industry supported excess and interruption also were reported.

Then this appeared – “15 Housing Projects from Hell” – apparently a good argument for demolishing a number of major built projects.

Along the vein of making do with what used to be there, and in confirmation of other thoughts and considerations on new moves in shrinking cities, there seemed to be a number of references to the “mistake on the lake” in my recent posts. Now, however, it seems that Cleveland is leading the nation. Fast Company magazine named it on of its “fast cities” recognizing its initiatives in urban agriculture. Separately, Fast Company also expressed a bit of the wonder we all have when thinking about this place we thought of as a joke, celebrating Ohio as the state with the “boldest architecture.” Back home, the Detroit-Berlin connection is developing this very interesting urban agricultural initiative, BEES.

I had expressed a concern earlier about the reduction in density in cities and the impacts on the retail ground floors of buildings. I was worried a bit about temporary and superficial decorative projects and looked for something more permanent and impactful. It looks like England has found the theme provocative as “artists come to high street” in London.

Then there was this rant, and the realization that I am not, apparently, one of those who left thought of “the dumb fist” behind in 1990.

And finally, Allison Areiff returns to an earlier theme – designing through a depression – about design in tough times that I addressed earlier this year.

Image, from the New York Times, is a limited edition print by Matt Jones to benefit Creative Commons (20×200.com).

This is the place where bad times get sent to make them belong to somebody else, thus, it seems easy to agree about Detroit because the city embodies everything the rest of the country wants to get over.

(link)

It is odd, to have had in my career in this area, some projects in which we asked the question, “How big is too big?” Now, of course, we are all interested in whether the now small is too small or, more hopefully, if there is a critical mass that can be found to achieve stability and catalyze growth.

Just a small note* to this speculation by Ryan Avent in The Bellows (found by way of CEO’s for Cities)—I propose that in Detroit it may take just one: A leader who can articulate an unselfish set of principles—whether civic or corporate—and provide a vision that will rally, unite and motivate the very many still here who have cared but have been unable to break through a wall of self-centered power.

*Not intended as a pun, but I understand this whole conversation of Ryan’s began over a Twitter tweet, evolving to this challenge: how many people have to move to Detroit before growth becomes self-sustaining?

Earlier:

• Detroit Wildlife
• After the crisis—Macomb interventions
• Utopian visions

Today, a top GM executive and the head of the United Auto Workers defended GM’s management this morning, saying that the near collapse of the company can’t be blamed on chairman and chief executive G. Richard Wagoner, Jr., and that his departure should not be made a condition of federal assistance.

Singling out Wagoner “is like blaming the mayor of a city hit by an earthquake,” GM vice chairman Robert A. Lutz said in an interview on business cable network CNBC this morning. Noting the global collapse of demand for new cars and the slowdown in the U.S. and other major economies, Lutz said that calls for Wagoner’s resignation was “in the category of some sort of sacrifice to the gods . . . If we punish some of the innocents things will get better.”

In a separate interview on the cable channel, UAW president Ron Gettelfinger also came to Wagoner’s defense, saying of the industry’s immediate crisis, “I don’t know how you can blame that on the management . . . I am not sure removing an executive is going to clear up the problem.”

The subject of effective leadership at auto companies, and at other product design and marketing companies, comes again to the fore. There is much evidence of the benefit of having a “product guy” at the top of an organization when innovation is the agenda. GM is blamed for having, a generation ago, passed the reigns of leadership to “finance guys,” and beginning a practice of killing design initiatives and longer-term product investments for short-term profits, and using financial tools like cash incentives to move metal where customer desire wouldn’t.

I am not sure who in the pipeline for leadership could provide the shift in thinking that would generate the innovation that has been missing at GM and that now seems to be at the center of the demand from Congress. They want a payback for the taxpayers, and rightly seem to be judging that customers will not be effectively moved unless the product portfolio has something they want.

Ironically, the strongest car guy in the company, Bob Lutz, while long saying that GM has to design and build products that people want, has been the guy who has also said that global warming is bull—a comment frequently resurrected as Congress, and the market, seek greener products and companies. He is, in any case, now too old for next generation leadership, both in age as well as in thinking.

Fritz Henderson has a lot of support. His background is also finance, and most of the success stories in his resume are not about product but about cost-cutting, labor negotiations, and brand strategy. Will he turn to design as a key strategy for success in the next generation? Who will he turn to to rely on for the design and product innovation leadership, passion, power, and influence, necessary for survival and sustainability as a new kind of business?