So, this is an “off year” election right? Isn’t that what most people call it because our national offices are not on the ballot? Maybe we should call it a “local year” or a “talent pool” year instead because there are a lot of important things on our ballots. You can and should vote for your school board representatives, and at least in Minnesota, your school district referendums – is there anything more important in your local community than the schools? What about the city council? Sometimes people joke that that job is all about stop signs and speed bumps but not in the suburbs where I live – they make important decisions about my taxes that impact transit/traffic, development, and public safety. Any interest in those things?

Even if you say you don’t care about some of these local issues or if you’re too busy to get involved or learn about the issues and the candidates, there’s another reason to vote local. In the corporate world, leadership and human resources talk a lot about the talent pipeline. Who’s the next person that’s ready for a leadership role? If you look at the demographics, the baby boomers are retiring – god bless them – they worked hard, they have experience, but it’s time for them to open the next chapter of their lives. So, you ask yourself two questions – who’s going to take their place and are they ready? In my experience in the corporate world, this is where an impact is being made on diversity. You can count how many women and people of color are in the C-Suite, and we should be doing that. But, another very important measure is about the pipeline. Do we have a diverse candidate pool for key jobs? Are we bringing diverse candidates into the company now and spending time and energy developing them so they are ready to lead?

So, how do you define diversity? There are lots of ways to do it by things like gender and ethnicity but what about experience and thoughtfulness? There’s something to be said for the need for experience both in life and in solving important problems and in managing people – that sets you up to be better at it than people with no experience right? So, why don’t we think about our local elections as the way we build a talent pool for our elected officials? What if we look at our presidential candidates? Are we happy with that talent pool? I’m not. There are people who have served in an elected or appointed capacity but there is no way that they deserve to be president of this great country. There are also people who have never been elected to anything or served anyone and there is no way that they deserve to be president either but they actually start to look pretty good when compared to the other group.

So, let’s vote local this week and build the pipeline for the future. Maybe our kids will actually have national elections where they have to choose between great candidates who are thoughtful, diverse, and experienced? Maybe our kids and their friends will be those leaders? Wouldn’t that be something?