Avoiding the Lobster Trap
Retaining graduating talent is the key to a robust local economy
By Dan Bolen, Johnson County LIVING WELL Magazine
I received a call from a very bright and recent KU graduate returning to Kansas City.
Since he had just started his new Kansas City employment, I told him to stop by after work. I marked the appointment book, but made a mental note not to hold my breath.
For good or bad, I’ve found appointments scheduled by recent graduates often are no shows. As every college coach or military leader will tell you, if you base your life assuming teenagers and 20 year olds will always do what is expected – you will find yourself frequently frustrated. Perhaps this is why so many college coaches are prematurely grey.
To my pleasant surprise the young man was most prompt. Clearly this is someone going to be successful.
As he sat down in front of my banker’s desk, I told him how pleased I was he was now careering in Kansas City. I knew he had opportunities in much larger cities such as Chicago, Dallas, Washington DC and New York. Nevertheless, I saw him having the biggest impact here.
While talking I realized he was in sharp contrast to many Kansas City area graduates leaving en masse to start careering in Chicago and New York. I understand their innate desire to “get away for awhile and experience a different metropolitan area.” Most Kansas City area graduates leave with the anticipation they will return, permanently settle and continue their careers in Kansas City so as to be near to their folks and families once they finally decide to have children.”
Unfortunately, this “get away for a while” impulse is generally pursued without forethought or contemplation as to long-term consequences or probabilities. Many find themselves permanently living in distant lobster traps.
Let me explain. A lobster trap is easily entered. However, as the lobster crawls forward, it moves ever further into a narrowing funnel. Eventually the lobster becomes entrapped. Too late, the lobster realizes it is unable to maneuver enough to turn around.
Leaving Kansas City after graduation to start a Chicago or New York career often proves a similar “lobster trap like” one-way experience. Young graduates leave intending to be gone “just a couple of years” before returning home.
Frequently these young professionals are encouraged by their Kansas City parents who envision a couple of years visiting and shopping with their children in exciting new metropolises. Once away, our graduates meet people, start dating, get involved with work and suddenly realize returning home and continuing their careers in Kansas City proves problematic. Often East and West Coast industries, professional practices and salary structures are not easily transferred back to Kansas City.
Those parents who encouraged their graduates to start their careers elsewhere frequently find their holidays spent traveling across the country to see their grandchildren. (Perhaps web cameras will someday substitute for regular grandparent hugs – but I doubt it.)
My point is not to suggest starting a Chicago or New York career as necessarily a bad thing. Nor is it an inevitable mistake for graduates to want to leave Kansas City and permanently make their careers elsewhere.
Rather, my observation is that far too often graduates find it fashionable “just to get away for awhile because a new city might be fun.” They do not consider whether they really want to leave Kansas City permanently. They awake in 10 years and realize returning is simply not economically or socially feasible.
Today, our business leaders do not significantly encourage graduates to stay and career in Kansas City. The importance of retaining local graduating talent is rarely discussed in business circles or universities. When have you heard the chamber of commerce president or university chancellor discuss keeping our graduating talent in Kansas City? More often they boast about attracting professionals from out of state or placing their top graduates on Wall Street. Likewise in many circles it is far more debonair to smugly encourage graduates to “get away for awhile.”
In constantly suggesting our brightest graduates “go away to start your career” we decapitate our community’s intellectual base. We must continually attract and retain the best and brightest of our young graduates if our economy is to remain robust.
Telling young graduates we want them to career in Kansas City might not immediately resonate. Nevertheless, like recruiting a nationally ranked local prep basketball player to stay and play for KU, Mizzou or KSU, telling our graduates we really want them to make their careers in our community should be consistently encouraged.
If nothing else, such encouragement should correctly stimulate our graduates’ ultimate career and relocation contemplations. Without such contemplations, many will become inadvertently and permanently entangled in the “bright lights and glitter” of distant skyscraper laden lobster traps.
Dan Bolen is chairman of the Bank of Prairie Village located at 3515West 75th St., Prairie Village, Kansas. 913-707-3369.
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