by ROBERT PITTMAN
The view from the porch since our last Janus Reporter has been spectacular. The Northeast Georgia and Western North Carolina mountains were resplendent with Fall colors, followed by a white crown of snow early in December. Sitting by the fire, we have assessed and collated the results from the 2013 Janus Forum held here last August, but this year there is little downtime as we shift into planning our first Janus Forum away from home – at the Watercolor Resort on the Gulf in Santa Rosa Beach, Florida, February 16-19, 2014.
For the August 2013 Forum in Rabun County, we tweaked the format a bit and brought in some outside guests and subject experts to enhance the peer learning experience. Site consultants Buzz Canup and Will Hearn joined the Forum for Tuesday afternoon activities with the attendees, and then Wednesday morning participated in an interactive session on site selection and how to win more projects. Alan Price, Chief Pilot for Delta Airlines during the 9/11 crisis, led a leadership section in discussions on how lessons learned during that unprecedented event can be applied to community and economic development.
Just after the attacks when information was limited, Delta was debating whether to immediately ground all aircraft and incur a huge financial penalty or continue to operate and await more information. The decision to immediately shutdown – which turned out to be the right choice – was guided by company values related to passenger and employee safety, which continued to guide Delta’s management in the aftermath of the incident.
Google’s strategy and business model is also guided by a set of value statements:
• Focus on the user and all else will follow.
• It’s best to do one thing really, really well.
• Fast is better than slow.
• Great just isn’t good enough.
These are powerful motivators and no doubt guide thousands of Google employee decisions on daily basis.
Communities and economic development organizations should also develop value statements as part of visioning and strategic planning exercises to guide their future direction. Jack Vincent, facilitator extraordinaire for the first two Forums, includes the following in his list of key community and economic development values and beliefs (with a little editing by me):
• All people have a right to participate in community decisions that affect them and to strive to create an environment they desire.
• Creating a community dialogue and interaction among citizens will motivate them to support economic development strategic plans and help the community move forward.
To these could be added (depending on what the community wants) other values and beliefs such as:
• Strengthening and diversifying the local economy will improve the standard of living for all citizens and deserves full community support.
• All cities in our county (region) benefit from economic development no matter in which jurisdiction it occurs and should support cooperative economic development efforts.
These may sound obvious to professional economic developers, but they are not obvious to many citizens, some of whom may be key decision makers. For example, how many times have we seen the “Friday Night Football Factor” disrupt regional marketing efforts? Seemingly obvious values and beliefs such as passenger and crew safety come first helped Delta make a gut-wrenching decision that proved to be absolutely correct.
Well-communicated values and beliefs are but one key factor that contributes to good leadership in a company, organization or community. Captain Price’s insights with discussion and comments from participating economic developers are summarized in Volume I, Edition 1 (another way of saying the first one!) of our Janus Forum Journal, created by our new partner Conway Data. The Journal will report some of the amazing idea exchanges and insights that occur at the Forum so that others may benefit. After all, a mission of the Janus Institute (parent organization of the Forum) is “to contribute to the body of knowledge in economic development and advance its practice.”
You can view the first Janus Forum Journal by clicking on the link below. You will also find summaries and key takeaways from the other two sessions on the Aerospace Industry (facilitated by retired aerospace top executive Randy Simpson) and Social Media (facilitated by consultants Amanda Sutt and Jessica Hayslett). We thank Conway Data and its talented staff for creating an attractive, user-friendly format for the Journal. This is the first of many more to come as our Forums grow across the country and abroad. We hope to see you at one soon.
Leadership in communities and how it affects economic development has been a primary topic in all past Forums. Alan Price led our discussions on leadership which was one of our three topic breakout sessions. Alan was Chief Pilot for Delta Airlines during the 9/11 and a key member of the emergency response team. His insights into leadership at Delta under such extraordinary circumstances and discussions on how they apply to community and economic development made for most interesting sessions. Also participating in the 2013 Janus Forum were site consultants Will Hearn with CH2MHILL and Buzz Canup with Canup & Associates. The Wednesday morning closing session was devoted to interactive discussions with Will and Buzz on business location trends and their perspective on Forum discussion topics. Summaries of all the 2013 Janus Forum discussion sessions will soon be available.
People ask me these days how we are going to replicate the Janus Forum experience – the getaway, small group and hospitality nature of it – at a different location. I believe Watercolor offers a great venus
The question I get a lot these days is can the Janus Forum be successfully replicated in other locations. I believe the answer
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