For our 28th episode, President & Chief Strategy Officer Ethan Whitehill chats with Sly James and Joni Wickham of Wickam James who make the case for sponsorship over mentorship, the importance of active listening, and why there are no limitations to doing good.
Ethan Whitehill: Hi everyone. I’m Ethan Whitehill, president and Chief Strategy Officer of Crux, the “un-agency.” Welcome to episode number 28 of “To the Point”. We Produce this monthly podcast to bring you thought provoking conversations that get to the crux of it and help entrepreneurial brands fuel growth. Today’s guests are Sly James and Joni Wickham. Joni Wickham arrived in Kansas City almost 15 years ago after leading initiatives within the state and federal government, as well as advocacy organizations. In her eight years with the Mayor’s office, the majority of them spent as Chief of staff for Mayor Sly James Joni proved herself as an accomplished political strategist, communications expert, and organizational leader, an artful negotiator. Joni helped steer Sly’s major development projects in Kansas City while raising the city’s profile at the national and international levels. Prior to her time at City Hall, Joni worked with the American Federation of Teachers, the Missouri Department of Transportation in the Office of Missouri Secretary of State, Robin Carnahan, an accomplished alum of the University of Missouri, where she earned her Master of Arts in political science.
Joni was the recipient of the 2019 University of Missouri Truman School of Public Affairs, Mel Carnahan Public Service Award. She was also named one of the 50 most powerful people in Kansas City and is a member of the Kansas City Business Journal’s prestigious class of 2023 Women Who Mean Business. Sly James has worn many hats over the years. Lead singer in a band, military police officer in the Marines, successful trial attorney, award-winning author, and a dynamic mayor who oversaw Kansas City Missouri’s renaissance, which leads me to an impressive list of accomplishments: gaining public approval to build a new airport terminal, moving the needle on universal pre-K, the construction and expansion of a transformative modern streetcar line in the overwhelming passage of an $800 million infrastructure package to create the first smart city initiative in North America. As president of the Kansas City Metropolitan Bar Association in 2003, Sly organized the managing partners of the largest firms in the city to form the KCMBA diversity initiative designed to increase diversity in the bar. This initiative won the American Bar Association Diversity Award in its second year of operation. Sly and Joni, thank you both for joining us on the podcast. I want to start here. You two have a storied history here in Kansas City. How were you first introduced and what ultimately drew you into business together?
Sly James: Obviously, we came at it from different directions. I was simply trying to put things together after the election in 2011, and good friends who had worked on the campaign and were smarter than me about things were trying to put a staff together for me while we were working on our plan. And they said, well, there’s this one woman that you probably ought to meet. And I said, okay, cool. For what? And it was communications. Alright, fine. Set it up–and you can take it from there.
Joni Wickham: Yeah. So, this dear friend of mine called me. I was working at the state capitol in Jefferson City at that time and asked if I wanted to come and meet the new mayor of Kansas City. And I was like, okay, yeah, I’ll come meet him. I wasn’t sold on the idea of doing this because I didn’t know a whole lot at that time about local politics in Kansas City and I had already worked in the US Senate, and I had worked in state capital.
Sly James: She obviously didn’t know who I was.
Joni Wickham: Well, we’ll get there, we’ll get there, we’ll get there.
Ethan Whitehill: So, the reputation didn’t proceed you.
Joni Wickham: So, two very hyper-partisan and hyper-political environments. And at that point I was like, “do I want to keep operating in this space and having this be my lifestyle?” And when I came to Kansas City and met him within five minutes, I thought, “huh, I think I’m buying what he’s selling. Whatever he wants to do, I’m game.” So, we worked together for eight years. I was his chief of staff for almost six, which is why I have gray hair wrinkles, high blood pressure. No, seriously I wouldn’t have missed it for the world. There was a moment after the airport election, November 7th, 2017, where we kind of looked at each other, I think it was a couple of days after that election and thought, oh my God, we did it like year before the airport election, we were polling at 22%–only 22% of likely Kansas City voters in that election wanted the airport terminal.
And within a year we managed to–come hell or high water–figure out a way to galvanize the community around that concept. And one with 76% of the vote. Unheard of. And we had so many people tell us that there was no way in hell we were going to do it. And we did. Yeah. So a couple of days after that election, I remember we were sitting in his office and we’re just kind of looking and we’re like, gosh, we make a good team <laugh>, we should figure out how to keep doing this. So rest is history. Here we are there.
Ethan Whitehill: That’s amazing. And so you kept doing it through your term at the mayor’s office. And then you’re continuing to do that as Wickham James. So tell folks what Wickham James is and what services you provide to your clients.
Sly James: Well, I think what we do is kind of in the title of Wickham James Strategies and Solutions. What we do is we try to find solutions to various issues, communications issues, conflict issues, leadership issues, and organizational type issues. And so that gives us a broad breadth of things that we do. You know, I, I do a lot of mediations, and she’s a wizard of communications. And so, we bring different skill sets together and although we’re very different people, we’re also very compatible. And we get along and we think in ways that make sense to each other. So, we try to help people with whatever their problems are within reason, obviously.
Joni Wickham: We tend to do a lot of work. Sly’s a very accomplished mediator so he can translate those skills into different facilitation projects, conflict resolution, that type of thing. We do a lot of strategic communications, crisis communications if people want to interact in the public policy process, we can help them figure that out. But I also love that we have clients sometimes that call us and, and this has happened on this word for word “Joni, Sly, this is a weird one. I don’t know if you can help us with this, but here’s our problem. Is this something you can help us with?” And it’s like, huh. Yeah. That could be fun. Yeah. yeah. And then we do a little bit of political consulting. It is not our main focus, but we do some
Ethan Whitehill: You’re not afraid of a challenge it sounds like. No.
Sly James: Well, you know, in, in the mayor’s office every day was different. You know, I mean, we had an agenda that we could revert back to when crises popped up and were resolved, but every single day was different. And when I thought about what would happen after those eight years and thought about going back to the practice of law, it was one of those rare times when I thought that I’d stop off at a gun shop in case I needed to kill myself after day two of practicing law again. And, because I don’t like guns that much, I didn’t do that, thank God. But the variety of what we get to do is really very interesting. But the main thing is, is that it also allows us to continue to do things from a policy standpoint that we want to do. She was instrumental in Medicaid expansion and Proposition A. Both are things that were we in office we would’ve supported anyhow. So, we kind of get to have the best of both worlds knowing how the system works and knowing some of the things that were in the system and can be in the system. We can apply that across a lot of different scenarios and areas. But also knowing the processes of how to get things done helps us as well.
Ethan Whitehill: So, you have that inside and outside perspective you bring.
Sly James: Without the press and 480,000 clients, all of which think we ought to be working on their case right now.
Ethan Whitehill: We’ve got a microphone in front of your face right now, but I’m sure you don’t miss having microphone shoved in front of your
Sly James: Face. It’s not the microphone so much as who’s holding it that bothers me.
Ethan Whitehill: Well said. Which actually that, that’s a good lead up to my next question. So the political climate has escalated quite a bit in recent years, which is probably an understatement as soon as I said that I, I realized. How has that shifted political strategy in the Midwest and how do you help clients navigate that?
Joni Wickham: I think it’s important in times such as these for clients or organizations, individuals, whomever, to be very clear on what success looks like. And be willing to be patient in getting down that successful road. I also think when it comes to success, if you will, success in the political sphere that individuals, organizations, ballot measure clients, candidates–what have you–understand what their core is and whether or not they are willing to move away from that core in what direction, that sort of thing. What would you add?
Sly James: Well, the one thing that I think is most critical is trying to get people who are engaged in something that has political overtones or reach, or is going to be a political topic. It’s to understand the bigger the project, the more time you need in the runup to condition the ground, so to speak. You don’t just walk out on a parking lot and start throwing seeds out there and then expect them to grow into plants in the next six weeks. You have to take all the stuff out and take care of the ground. And that takes some work in advance. And I don’t think people, particularly business people think government ought to work like a business. I say, “really? Tell me a business that does what government does and then let’s find out whether or not what you say makes sense.”
But business people have a different track for how they get things done. When you’re trying to convince the public that we need your land for this or we need your money for that, you can’t just walk up and say, “give it to me.” You’ve got to be able to show them the reasons why. And you’ve got to spend enough time with them to make sure that even though a lot of them are always going to oppose it, at least they felt like they had a chance to say why they opposed it and their thoughts were taken into consideration. That takes time. When developers will come to us and say, “well, we want to drop a 20-story apartment complex over here.” Well, that’s right in the “blank” neighborhood. Have you talked to the people in the neighborhood to find out what their opposition or what their issues are?
“No, not yet.” Well, you probably ought to do that before you start spending a whole lot of money, because I’ll guarantee you, at some point in time they’re going to force you or convince you to change the design, lower the height, do something about the density, do something about the parking problem that you might not have accounted for. So, take the time to do your work in advance in politics now people are so fractured as to how they get information and news that you can’t assume that just because it’s common knowledge to you that it’s common knowledge to everybody–It’s not. If you want people to do something, you have to tell them why. And you have to build a model. And most importantly, you have to be able to show them why it’s good for you. Because we’re no longer a “we” country. We’re a “me” country. So everything ends with what’s in it for me,
Joni Wickham: And this is all at the same time where we can’t even agree on facts. So it’s complicated.
Ethan Whitehill: Well, you know, and that, that reminds me, Sly, I heard you talking a while back and somebody was, I think they were talking about issues that were coming to your office on a daily basis and you said you solved 99% of those conversations or those issues with just one question. And it was, who are you already working with? Yeah. And so it’s kind of that spirit of communication and collaboration that you were just talking about that is kind of missing in the world today. It feels like.
Sly James: Well, you know, one of our, our agenda was four Es. One of the Es was efficiency for governmental efficiency. And there’s no one, well, I can’t say no one. I’ll say this. If we could have helped every single person with every single problem by some allocation of money that we could actually do, that would’ve been cool and groovy. But the bottom line is a lot of people came to us for money that we didn’t have. And even if we could find it, why would we just give it to you when you don’t even know whether or not there’s other opportunities out there to collaborate and make it a bigger deal? Think in terms of systems as opposed to your own separate little area. And if you can collaborate and make a small thing bigger in that way, now you’ve got some leverage to get money, and you can show a track record that’s more efficient. But a lot of the organizations, when we brought them together, like the mentor groups, we sat in this room with all these mentor groups and representatives of mentor groups and none of them knew each other. I mean, I was absolutely amazed. Yeah, you’re all doing the same thing. You’re all wanting the same money. You’re all after the same people and you don’t know each other? Come back when you’re working together, come up with a plan, now we can help.
Ethan Whitehill: I love that perspective. And that actually speaks to, you know, what you both have dedicated a good bit of your lives to, which is public service. And kind of thinking with that mindset, what inspired you into this line of work and what would you say is the most impactful initiative that you championed while in office?
Sly James: I’m a native Kansas Citian. I came to Kansas City, Missouri when I was nine, just to go to Catholic schools, which my parents thought were the best options at that time. And I just like being part of organizations and things that feel good and feel good about themselves. And for as long as I lived in Kansas City, we always had, “why can’t we be St. Louis? Why can’t we be Minneapolis or Denver someplace?” And it’s really tiring and, and when ideas came up, the first response was, we can’t do that because … Or no. And I just thought that if we could get past some of that nonsense, we could actually be something pretty cool. So I remember I was playing music with the Amelia Ahart Memorial Flying Band down at Volker Park in 1969 in the, somebody from the Kansas City Star comes up and says what do you want to do when you’re 30?
Which was like, what do you want to do when you’re retired? To me at that time, well when I’m retired at the age of 30–how’s that working out?–I didn’t say how many multiples of 30. And said, what do you want me to do? And I said, I’d like to be mayor of Kansas City. So, I started thinking about it, but never actually did anything. But then as we started getting older and older and I came back and I’d been other places and seen other places and just thought, why can’t we do some of the things that I’ve seen that make sense for people in other places? You kind of get interested in it and then you wait for the right time. Right time was Mayor Funkhouser sinking a second term. You go for it, and you win and then you see if all the things you thought were actually doable.
Joni Wickham: So, I grew up in a tiny town in rural North Carolina. My mom was practically a baby when she had me. She was teen mom–single mom. And I really thought that I wanted to go into political journalism. And my freshman year of college, I went to my advisor and informed her of this, and she helped me get a internship at my teeny tiny hometown newspaper. So ironically, considering what I did for a chunk of my life my first assignment and that internship was to go to the City Council Finance Committee meeting. I walk in and saw the seven older white guys who were on the city council because that’s what power and influence looked like in that day and time. So these older white gentlemen faced a big quandary. They had an $800,000 budget gap, which in that time–we’re talking 25 years ago–and in that place, a tiny little rural town in Eastern North Carolina, that was a huge budget gap. And they came up with a tremendously awesome idea in their view, which was to cut out a program and they decided to cut out this particular program because none of them knew what it was. They had never heard of it before. And it was what they called the WIC program. And I’m looking through this budget book and I’m like, the WIC program, what are they talking about? It was WIC–Women, infant and Children. And they cut the program because they didn’t know what it was. So, think about that. They didn’t know what the Women Infant Children Program was because they didn’t need it because it wasn’t a program that they interacted with. So, they just zeroed out that program. And so, I went back to my editor and was telling him about this really crappy decision that the city council made in my view.
And he’s like, yeah, it sounds like a crappy decision, but your role in the system is to go write about these decisions after they’re made. So? You’re on deadline. Go do it girl. And I thought that is not going to sit well with my results-oriented, action-oriented personality. So, I changed my major a little bit, still stayed in public policy and politics, but did more political communication on the political and policy front rather than being a political journalist. All of that to be said, the things that I am most proud of during our administration are things that help women and children. I love that airport so much. There were days I thought it was going to kill me and kill him. I love that streetcar. I love the fact that it’s creating all this vibrancy downtown. I love the Lowes Hotel more than I should, but there is something about Turn the Page KC, the Women’s Empowerment Blueprint that we created, The Urban Youth Academy over on 18th and Vine. Those types of programs, they, I just will always have a real soft spot in my heart.
Ethan Whitehill: Yeah, I was just thinking about turn the page with America’s report card that just came out. And we still have, we have some work to do on reading.
Sly James: We have some more to do across the entire educational board. Yeah. And we refuse to recognize that we’re never going to reach that success until we change the way that we start thinking about kids. Everything in the educational world seems to want to start at kindergarten. That’s kind of like, you know, it would be better if you could start your vacations halfway there, but you can’t. You have to start at the beginning and work your way through it. We don’t do enough from zero to five. We don’t do enough particularly for kids in poverty from zero to five. And that includes rural kids, black kids, brown kids. It includes kids, period. We somehow expect that we can come in after the fact and start STEM and steam programs in high school and somehow that’s going to change their trajectory of kids who could not read proficiently at third grade.
It will, for the kids who’ve had the benefit of having the type of education that allows them to do that, which creates the same class structure that we have now. But for the kids who have systems that don’t have any structures for that, they’re going to be in the same place. So, we continue to do the same stupid stuff and somehow expect it to be better. It’s not going to get better. Plus, when you consider that class is just as much of a barrier and an issue of discrimination now as race is, we’re creating yet another reason to hate somebody. Because not everybody has the same opportunity to succeed from the beginning until we change that we’re always going to have this competition and this zero-sum game mindset. And that just creates hate and discontent and that’s really, really bad for this country.
Ethan Whitehill: Workforce development’s a hot topic and I think as an employer I understand workforce development doesn’t start in high school. To your point, it starts way back in the beginning.
Sly James: Why do we need workforce development? I mean really when you think about it, workforce development is a bandaid to the illness of people who did not have skills to find their own work and find an area they could work in and now need to be redeveloped in some way to match the terms. We don’t teach kids to think, we teach them to test and to memorize, but critical thinking is going to be necessary when you’re dealing with technology in an AI dominated world. People skills are going to be there. How do you teach people skills when they only want people skills we know come in the form of a text or TikTok or Instagram?
Ethan Whitehill: So, you have such great perspective coming from the public sector and public office and moving into the private sector. What advice do you have for, you know, business leaders then who want to get involved and make a difference in some way? Where do they start?
Joni Wickham: I would encourage folks to be bold because I think that’s what our region and our country needs. We need people who are unafraid to be bold thinkers and bold doers. Often, we do a lot of thinking and strategizing and not enough action and doing. So I also would encourage people to think about that next step. Like it’s great to do studies and study something for 20 years, but at some point, we have to actually do big things.
Sly James: I think it’s easiest to start by just knowing yourself and what’s important to you. Every CEO or C-level person or every person that works in any business has something that’s important to them. They care about their kids, they care about the homeless, they care about poverty, they care about traffic, they care about something. Find something that somebody in control cares about, work on that and build that up. And now you’ve got a connection between not only what you’re doing that’s good, but what you really care about. If everybody tried to take care of some of the things that they really care about and not just leave it to somebody else to do a lot more stuff will get done. That’s one way of doing it. The other way of doing it is to find something that aligns with a business purpose. If you’re out making tennis shoes, then maybe you want to take care of poor athletes that don’t have shoes.
Who knows? Find a way to help. It’s not that hard if you want to, the problem is not everybody wants to, but a lot of people do, and they just don’t know how to start. Start close to home. Survey your employees, what’s important to them. Hey, if we had “X” number of dollars and we wanted to do something good, what would you suggest that we do that would have an impact? Ask your employees to help figure it out. That gets them in the game and helps you with them. That helps with relationships all the way around. And it still does some good, there’s all sorts of ways to do it. You just have to do it. There’s no limitations on how you do good.
Ethan Whitehill: And I think that’s great leadership advice. And you two both know quite a bit about leadership. Would you say that there are essential qualities to a leader? Are there any that you would identify?
Joni Wickham: A few. Active listening skills. I think sometimes people equate leadership with talking a lot and there was a lot of talking in leadership. But I think when people actually listen, that’s when the leadership magic actually happens. So active listening. Empathy, my goodness, we could use a lot more empathy in the world. And Creativity, looking outside the box on ways that we can solve problems, whether it be within a company, a nonprofit, an organization or city.
Sly James: I think another thing that’s important is the ability to recognize the needs or priorities of the people you’re seeking to lead. And find a way to address that as you’re accomplishing whatever the primary mission is. It was always curious to me at the beginning I didn’t understand it. I did understand it after a while, but when I was in bootcamp and in infantry training in the Marine Corps and I was in a leadership billet, I had to go into the chow hall last to eat, but I also had to be out of the chow hall before everybody else was finished. And then they had to be out there when I got there. So that was to teach me they need to be fed first. You come last and you still need to be better than them, so you need to be out there first. Those types of little things get ingrained in you. And I think if you get in tune with the people that you’re supposed to lead, they’ll be happier. You’ll be happier and I think you’ll be more effective. It builds a loyalty and an understanding that just top down, “this is the way it’s going to be” type nonsense just doesn’t do.
Ethan Whitehill: I think leadership goes hand-in-hand with mentorship. And I’m curious, what role has mentorship played in your journeys and in terms of just paying it forward, what do you try to give your mentees? What does that look like?
Sly James: I’ve had a lot of mentors. I’ve had fewer sponsors, and I think sponsorship is where it’s at, but I don’t know of any time that we can get anywhere without somebody helping us. And hopefully they help us on more than one occasion, and you form a relationship and you trust them so you ask them for advice on what’s the next move. So, mentorship I think is absolutely vital to anybody who wants to be successful.
Joni Wickham: Yeah, I know without a doubt, if not for mentorship and sponsorship, I would not be here. I don’t know where in the world I would be, but I wouldn’t be here. I don’t have anyone in my family that has a professional background. I wasn’t raised seeing women in business suits. The first time I got a quote-unquote “real job” in an office, I had to depend on the women in that office to literally give me advice on how to dress because I didn’t even know where to start. So mentorship and sponsorship’s key. This guy, I mean over the years there were so many times that he really was a case study in sponsorship because he used his power and his voice and his privilege to make sure that everyone who would listen understood that when I spoke I was speaking on his behalf. And if people gave a shit about what he thought, then they needed to listen to me too. And that’s really, really powerful.
Ethan Whitehill: I’m sure there was some back and forth on the mentorship going on too in your relationship.
Sly James: I mean, I think of us in a very simple way, I’m an engine, she’s brakes.
Joni Wickham: That’s the truth.
Sly James: There are so many times I’ve gotten right up to the cliff, it’s, oh, you need to get on back here. I mean it’s one of the things that makes us, I think, not just good partners but really, really good friends. Yeah. I have a great deal of respect for her intellect and her weird sense of humor, and the fact that she does so many things well that I don’t think about until she doesn’t does this. I need to do more of that. Being able to have that relationship where we can fill in each other’s gaps and is mentorship in and of itself, it’s an ongoing type of a thing because every time we do it, we learn.
Ethan Whitehill: That’s a great model for partnership. And just what you described. It’s interesting because I, I think of you together as a, as a great brand of yin-yang and then I see you individually as you know, building your own personal brands. And a lot of our listeners, you know, come to Crux originally just to work on their brand to help them with their brand. Whether that’s a business identity or sometimes it’s a little bit of a personal identity. And I would love your advice to hear kind of how you think about building a personal brand.
Joni Wickham: Yeah, I think the first step in building your personal brand has to be knowing who you are. Because if you don’t define that for other people, then they will define it for you. And that I’ve, I’ve never really seen that go well. I mentioned earlier it’s always important to be clear on what success looks like at the end of your branding journey or whatever experience that you’re marching towards.
Sly James: I pretty much agree with you. Authenticity, I think, is absolutely critical. But another part of it, too, I’d say is consistency. Take Austin for example, you know, their whole motto was “Keep Austin Weird.” Well it was authentic. And when I go there, I want to see some weird stuff. You know, I mean seriously, right? I mean if you’re going to be weird, then let’s be weird.
Ethan Whitehill: That’s the expectation. Yeah.
Sly James: That’s their brand. Right. And I think that’s exactly what happens if you are true to yourself, you are authentic, you know yourself and you do that consistently, that becomes a brand.
Ethan Whitehill: Well, you know, now we’re up to my mystery question. And usually, I ask this to loosen people up, but I don’t think I’ve got that problem with you guys. And you’ve been so authentic. So ,we’re just going to keep on the authentic role. I’ve got a 20-sided die and it’s a random question, whatever I roll here. Okay, well this kind of goes with maybe your Austin weird question. I’ll ask two different questions. This, this one’s for Sly because You mentioned weird. What’s the weirdest food combination? You swear by
Sly James: The weirdest food combination I swear by?
Joni Wickham: There are so many as someone who eats with you a lot. Yeah. And refuses to make a reservation somewhere because he’s such a foodie.
Sly James: Well it’s the combination part that’s throwing me and I’m not sure what other people might think is weird, but I love escargot.
Ethan Whitehill: Ketchup and eggs.
Sly James: Oh hell no. Yeah. Well, I’d say pretty much anything with ketchup on. I don’t do ketchup. Occasionally I’ll dip a French fry, but I prefer mayo. Oh, and the only thing, see–
Joni Wickham: That’s weird. I think that’s weird. Mayo with fries.
Sly James: The only thing I do mayo on is French fries.
Ethan Whitehill: You mean the aioli?
Sly James: That’s the only time I ever used mayo.
Ethan Whitehill: I rolled a 20 for you Joni. And it’s, if you had to rename yourself, what name would you choose?
Sly James: Ooh, I can help!
Joni Wickham: Please. Please. Good question. I’ve never liked my given name so you would think I wouldn’t, so
Ethan Whitehill: Now’s your chance.
Joni Wickham: Put some thought into this. Maybe like something that sounds like royalty. Isn’t that fitting? Don’t you think that’s fitting?
Sly James: Lady Cruella?
Joni Wickham: Oh gosh. No, that’s not. But yeah, I would, I would say something a little more like royal.
Ethan Whitehill: Something Regal. Yes.
Joni Wickham: Yeah. Okay.
Sly James: Well that it’s not a name, that’s a description.
Joni Wickham: A category. I don’t have a specific name.
Ethan Whitehill: So, we could just throw, we could just throw a title in front of your name. You could be just, you know, Madam Joni or Lady Joni.
Joni Wickham: I love that. All right,
Ethan Whitehill: We’ll do that. Well on that note, how can listeners connect with you and learn more about Wickham James?
Joni Wickham: Our website is a great way. We are wickhamjames.com.
Ethan Whitehill: Thank you both for joining us. This was fantastic.
Sly James: Thank you. Oh, thank you. Great to see you. Fun to do it.
