NATCHEZ — Stakeholders in the Natchez tourism industry want to see a more directed path for the community’s future, and they began walking toward that path Thursday.

Tourism officials and volunteers had a getting-to-know-you meeting with an outside expert, Phil Hardwick, who led the way.

Hardwick is the coordinator of capacity development at the John C. Stennis Institute of Government at Mississippi State University, where he works with communities on strategic planning and leadership development.

Representatives from the City of Natchez, Natchez, Inc., the Natchez-Adams Chamber of Commerce, Convention and Visitor’s Bureau, National Park Service, Natchez Pilgrimage Tours and others participated in the discussion.

With so many groups focused on the same central goal — promoting Natchez — it’s key to work together, Hardwick said.

“One of the most important things communities can do is build relationships,” Hardwick said. “You have to care about the other person first before you can care about their organization.”

Hardwick said before a group is able to make progress for change, the type of people working for change have to be identified.

Some people are practical, reliable and perfectly positioned, no matter how long it takes, Hardwick said.

Others are willing to take more risks, and still others are project- and goal-oriented and less concerned about people, Hardwick said.

The group of approximately 30 said one of the problems in Natchez is that people are moving at all different paces.

Hardwick summed up the group’s feelings by saying “some people are on the entrance ramp, some are on the exit ramp, some are in the opposite lanes going the opposite direction.”

Jennifer Ogden-Combs said the issue she sees in Natchez is the lack of a central hub. With her background in film production, Combs said there were central people who did not do every job, but made sure the jobs were done. She said that was lacking in Natchez.

“If there is not a clearly defined hub, we are going to keep doing what we are and scrambling and having everyone do their own thing,” Combs said.

John Holyoak, general manager of Dunleith Plantation and chairman of the Community Alliance, said it isn’t enough to have a hub, but that hub has to have power.

“Someone has to be the head knocker,” he said. “Someone has to be accountable in the end, and that person has to make sure organizations are reaching the goal.”

Hardwick said there is no one right way to set up that hub; it depends on how the city and organizations want it to operate.

“What I’m hearing, is there needs to be a clearing house of some sort,” he said.

Hardwick said that hub can be set up through city government, such as the mayor; through an alliance of business people who financially back the hub or through a council of organization heads that meet voluntarily to create unity.

Hardwick said results are directly tied to structure, but no structure is more right or more wrong than the other.

“You’re perfectly structured for the results you are getting,” Hardwick said.

Discussion during a portion of the meeting centered on the need of creating a clear and direct Internet presence that addresses tourism, economic development and city government.

Other discussions included creating trust among organizations to work toward the same goals without doing the same thing.

Regina Charboneau, who hosted the meeting at Twin Oaks, said it is sometimes difficult to let go of control, but that is what is needed.

“I have to trust that (the organization) has done their research and their plan is good,” Charboneau said. “I have to trust that they will execute that plan, as well.”