A reporter recently asked Phil Power why he was devoting his time, energy and fortune to what he calls his “think and do tank,” the Center for Michigan. Phil barked, “I’ll be damned if I’ll sit around with my hands in my pockets while my state goes to hell.”You have to admire that. Incidentally, Phil Power’s decision in 2004 to sell his newspaper chain and start his nonprofit Center for Michigan was a bad thing for me personally.

At the time I was vice president of his editorial operations, and had no desire to work for the company to which he sold his newspapers. But I am glad he did. Michigan is in a lot of systematic, long-term trouble. Most people understand that the state has economic problems, but they don’t know exactly what is going on, or why.

That’s what the Center for Michigan is all about. Power has assembled some of the brightest minds and most accomplished people in the state to try and figure out how to get beyond where we are stuck.

These include moderate Republicans and Democrats. Leaders like Paul Hillegonds, the former legislative leader and now energy executive, Mark Murray, now the president of the Meijer stores; former Gov. William Milliken and former Congressman Joe Schwarz.

It would be relatively easy to get these people together and write a series of sensible, even brilliant position papers on what the state’s politicians should be doing and where our economy should be going.

But papers like that are written all the time, and they end up gathering dust. The Cherry Commission wrote one on education. Many center members helped write one on Michigan’s economic crisis for the governor last winter. But few people read them.

What Phil Power is trying to do is much harder. He wants to get a large cross-section of people involved. He wants them not to just buy into his ideas, but come up with their own. Ideas about how to move the state away from our dying, brawn-over-brains manufacturing economy.

Most of all, he wants to develop a vision for what the Michigan of the future might be and should be, and move us towards it.

The Center for Michigan will support virtually any vision that is in line with its three key principles. They are 1) a talented, globally competitive work force 2) a vibrant and great quality of life, and 3) an efficient, effective and accountable government.

You’d think those ought to be something just about anybody could buy into regardless of politics. The key is getting people engaged, getting them to think they can make a difference.

Phil Power happened to be on the steps of the University of Michigan’s student union on an October morning long ago, when a candidate named John F. Kennedy presented a new idea called the Peace Corps. “Every man can make a difference,” Kennedy was fond of saying. “And everyone should try.”

That’s what the Center for Michigan is doing, and we should be too.