There is, fortunately, only one book required to become a master at both strategy and conflict. The History of the Peloponnesian War is simply the sum of all human knowledge as it regards alliance, outcome, and shared intent in the complexity of modern human experience.
The good news for more current strategic practitioners is that the value of the Peloponnesian experience lies well beyond the stout wooden walls of classical Athenian society.
In fact, the very word rostrum derives from a Roman approach to decorating public speaking places with captured naval shields called rostra. In short, it was a Roman way of highlighting action in public speaking.
As we turn to Sound Strategy for our region today, it was indeed a good sign to see our region’s elected officials gather around the proverbial rostrum recently in Barco last month at a forum sponsored by the Currituck Chamber of Commerce.
Shared regional priorities – shared among state Senate members, state House members, and both local commission and staff members – suggests an elected commonality of focus on things like housing, infrastructure, and a collaborative cohesion to represent the entire region both in Raleigh and among our local governments.
As the Peloponnesian War teaches, population begets political power in many cases and when population becomes centralized – as it is in our state right now around the interstate highway corridors – the democratic equilibrium requires strong alliances and shared interests to make sure that the right outcomes occur for the most citizens. In short, our elected leaders echoed a similar awareness in Currituck and I am thankful for it.
Housing, of course, continues to be a consistent priority at the regional level. In assessing demographics, over the next ten years, it would make sense to suggest that populations in Dare County and the Currituck Outer Banks will decline, as a function partly of housing affordability, and population growth in areas with greater affordability – like Camden and Pasquotank – would in turn grow (Bill Ward, the newly elected state house representative from Pasquotank, to his credit attended the session).
To properly tackle this challenge with an entrepreneurial vision, we’ll have to work together to make sure that our regional officials don’t make too much of the political and county boundaries that many of our businesses and much of our commerce simply ignores.
We will need, as with the Athenians, common cause if we are to advance our interests.
Three cheers for consensus, three cheers for an outcome, and three cheers to our elected officials for showing up together, on the same stage, and sharing collectively as a region.
That kind of action, I suspect, was worthy of the rostrum.
“Sound Strategy”, a weekly commentary from our publisher Clark Twiddy, features issues, ideas and information focused on our mission statement of “Covering the Business News of the Greater Outer Banks”.
Previous columns:
- Sound Strategy: Further incentives can help address the region’s essential housing issue
- Sound Strategy: Five important questions for greater Outer Banks region’s economy in 2023
- Sound Strategy: If history repeats itself in real estate market, Outer Banks will be ready
- Sound Strategy: Consider “three C’s of context” when looking ahead to 2023’s visitor economy
- Sound Strategy: End of year reflections
- Sound Strategy: “The past is a foreign country; they do things differently there.” – L.P. Hartley
- Sound Strategy: Sound preparation for bad weather is good strategy
- Sound Strategy: Linking our state’s visitor economy to our own