The Janus Institute

Economic & Community Development

by Leave a Comment

New Book Serves as Guide to Help Communities Build Prosperity

Lawrenceville, GA — Elected officials, community and economic development professionals, and others interested in creating a more prosperous future have a new tool at hand. Rebooting Local Economies: How to Build Prosperous Communities is a practical guide written by leading community and economic development practitioners and educators to help communities reach their goals for prosperity. 

Rebooting Local Economies is the follow-up to co-authors Robert H. Pittman and Rhonda Phillips’s previous book, An Introduction to Community Development. In recent years, the two received numerous requests to write a book for support team members such as elected officials, board members, stakeholders, and citizens who want to improve the place they live, work, and play. The impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on local communities served as a catalyst for the authors to create a guide to help communities move forward—whether rebounding from a setback or just improving their communities. 

“From working with hundreds of towns, cities, and regions across the country we have seen that community prosperity is not due to random luck, but to commitment and hard work. The more that elected officials, stakeholders, and all citizens know about community and economic development, the more likely the community will prosper with a strong local economy and a high quality of life,” Pittman said. “We wanted to share with others what we have learned about how to build an even better place to live – and any community regardless of its current circumstances can do so!”

Amanda Sutt, Creative Director and CEO of Rock Paper Scissors, a branding and marketing firm based in Metro Atlanta, joined Pittman and Phillips as a co-author for this endeavor. The trio pulled from their years of experience helping communities and regions across the country and around the world create their roadmaps to prosperity with better jobs, improved public services, and enhanced amenities.

Together, they have created a guide that is engaging and thought-provoking. In addition to the book, an online toolbox is available to help readers begin building community prosperity with interactive resources that will help them put the principles of the book into practice as they work toward building more vibrant economies and improving the quality of life for all.  

”Not only did we want to create the book that everyone asked for, but also to give community leaders easy-to-use resources that they could download immediately and get to work. This is more than a book; it is a hands-on resource to give leaders what they need to get buy-in and make the change they want to see,” said Sutt.

In addition to this book, Pittman and the Janus Institute partnered with Sutt and her team at Rock Paper Scissors to develop ProsperousPlaces.org. The site is an extension of the book, providing worksheets and additional tools to help communities create their own roadmaps to prosperity.  

Rebooting Local Economies is published by Business Expert Press and available for purchase on Amazon.com in digital and paperback versions and through booksellers worldwide.  

Media Contacts:

Amanda Sutt
Creative Director & CEO 
Rock Paper Scissors
678-442-1825
amanda@123shoot.com

Robert H. Pittman
Executive Director and Founder
Janus Institute
404-431-1255
rpittman@janusinstitute.org

###

About the Janus Institute: The Janus Institute was founded by Robert H. Pittman. Its mission is to help economic development professionals and the communities they serve advance through unique peer learning and educational opportunities including the Janus Forum. The Institute is based on the belief that economic development is an applied discipline and that much can be learned from the experience of communities and practitioners. Learn more at www.janusinstitute.org. 

About Rock Paper Scissors: Rock Paper Scissors (RPS) is a branding and marketing firm located in Lawrenceville, Georgia. The firm serves as a creative growth partner for its clients in order to brand with a purpose and market with a plan. This is achieved by building co-creative partnerships, because collaboration is the key element of a successful brand and growth strategy. With decades of experience under the firm’s belt, the RPS team’s work is heavily focused in community and economic development branding and marketing. Learn more at www.123shoot.com.

by

Tribal or Primal?  Commander or Servant?

WHAT’S YOUR LEADERSHIP STYLE?

Are certain leadership traits uniquely important to community and economic development?

Leadership has been a recurring topic at the forefront of many discussions at past Janus Forums.  Why is this such an important factor in moving communities forward?  At what level do you most frequently encounter problems or experience opportunities for leadership growth – personally, within your economic development organization or its Board, among elected community officials, or in a younger or multigenerational workforce?

Countless books and leadership training opportunities abound.  Leadership styles range from autocratic to democratic, commander to servant, tribal to primal, transactional to transformative and the list goes on.  What’s your style?

We’ve chosen a few resources you may like to explore whether you have 5 minutes or 5 hours.  Explore the MindTools Leadership Toolkit.  Check out a Simon Sinek TED Talk, How Great Leaders Inspire Action.  Perhaps you will connect with the ideas in Harry Kramer’s book From Values to Action: The Four Principles of Values-Based Leadership.

What are some characteristics of the best leaders you know in community and economic development?

by

On the Porch

By Robert H. Pittman, Founder and Executive Director

As I look out my window this week in Lakemont, Ga., at the cold, windswept porch surrounded by ice and snow, it is hard to imagine that six months ago we were enjoying 85-degree weather and great conversations with colleagues. Even if the weather were good, there would not be much time for sitting on the porch this week, as the Janus Forum at Amelia Island begins next Sunday, March 1. Actually, on Saturday, February 28, invited representatives from state-level economic development organizations will arrive at Amelia. Following the success of our first state-level directors’ Forum last summer, we will continue this program at Amelia Island.

We have a great group of economic developers coming to Amelia, and we like to mix it along the lines of urban vs. rural, gender, etc. to help all attendees. As always, we will not know the topics for the sessions until we make that collective decision at the Forum. In addition and per usual, we look forward to welcoming our panels of site consultants and corporate executives to our Janus Family at the Amelia Forum. On the consulting side will be Don Schjeldahl, Steve Weitzner and Courtney Dunbar (returning for her second visit). On the corporate side will be Alan Parsley of Saft America and Robert Cottam III of Piedmont Risk Management and United Furniture Industries. There are still a couple of seats left at this late date, so please contact us if you would like to attend – and if, like most of us in the country, you are ready for some warmer Florida weather. If you can’t make the Amelia Island Forum, perhaps we’ll see you in August in Rabun County where the ice and snow will be just a memory and the howling wind will be a gentle cooling breeze.

by

On the Porch – December 2014

by ROBERT PITTMAN, Executive Director and Founder, Janus Institute

The New Year’s holiday is a time when people tend to reflect on recent successes and failures as well as evaluate paths and options going forward. This practice is epitomized by the image of the Roman God Janus on ancient coins looking backwards and forwards simultaneously. To me that symbolizes a key aspect of economic development – communities should embrace change and strive to improve themselves (looking forward) but at the same time understand and preserve many of the unique characteristics and strengths that got them to the dance to begin with.

The Janus Institute and Forum are named for this Roman God because we believe in the philosophy of communities (and economic development professionals) embracing progress and change while remaining true to fundamental strengths. We’ve been doing a bit of this double-sided assessment ourselves as we contemplate a future that will undoubtedly be one replete with change (hopefully for the better) as the Institute (in conjunction with Conway Data) expands the Forum in both scope and geography. We have learned so much since we began with a dozen or so economic developers “on the porch” in Rabun County Georgia identifying and dissecting key issues facing the attendees and their communities. The rest, as they say, is history. Our format proved to be unique and extremely popular and we grew to the point where we needed different venues across the country to give more economic developers a chance to participate in a Forum, yet stay true to our heritage by limiting attendance at each Forum to promote the best possible peer learning and networking.

As we grew we began to invite a few site consultants and corporate real estate executives to each Forum because we knew the benefits from the interchange of knowledge would become even stronger by looking at the whole “value chain” of corporate investment and job creation – from the companies who begin the process to the consultants who often manage it, then through to the economic developers and community officials who work to win the projects for their communities. The widening of our scope to look at this larger value chain has been a resounding success because we did just as we advise in this column – we embraced (and created) change, yet remained true to our core strengths and our primary mission of providing a “safe” haven in which economic developers feel comfortable sharing their expertise in a great peer-networking setting.

For Janus Institute and Conway Data personnel, this holiday season will be even more than unwrapping presents (and taking back shirts that don’t fit), spending time with family and loved ones, and overindulging. We are busy planning our next Janus Forum starting February 28th at Amelia Island, Florida. We are grateful to all our sponsors, including Enterprise Florida for being our host sponsor for the second year in a row. The Janus Forum at Amelia Island promises to be another great event with guest consultants and corporate executives, but most of all with our invited roster of leading economic developers. Our state directors Forum that runs in conjunction with the regular Forum is also shaping up nicely, and the interaction among them and the other attendees is always interesting and informative. Please review our program information elsewhere in this Reporter and contact us to inquire about attending. Thanks, and happy holidays to you!

by Leave a Comment

Is it Broke Yet? – On the Porch November, 2014

by ROBERT PITTMAN, Executive Director and Founder, Janus Institute

“If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” is a colorful phrase often used to describe spending time and money on matters that don’t really need attention. It might be an effective rallying cry for stakeholders in the public and private sectors opposed to certain initiatives, but it can also discourage strategic thinking and planning. Ask a manager from most any organization with a successful track record if it is good business practice to just continue riding on current successes and not invest in research and development for the future. Products and services have limited life spans in the marketplace, and developing new offerings often takes considerable time and investment. Smart companies try to spot trends and anticipate future consumer needs – they assume that eventually their products and/or services will be “broke.”

I believe communities are like companies in many ways – both sell their products in a competitive and dynamic marketplace. In the case of communities, the consumers are companies and investors making location decisions and the product is the attractiveness of the community as a good location. In addition, both communities and companies should invest in R&D to enhance the competitiveness of current and future products. In some cases, planning for the future and investing in R&D may be hard to justify because current products are doing just fine, thank you. However, no product lasts forever and communities, like companies, must prepare for the day when their current “product” is obsolete (e.g. labor force skills out of date, telecom infrastructure and service inadequate, etc.).

So in my opinion “if it ain’t broke don’t fix it” should be changed to “if it ain’t broke now, it will be, so you’d better start figuring out how you’re going to fix it.” This is where the Janus Forum can come in very handy. New trends and issues in the site selection and economic development industry are the focus of the Janus Forum. Economic developers attending learn from each other through in-depth discussions where they identify issues that could have the most impact on the industry. For each Forum, we invite two to three each, site consultants, corporate executives and community leaders for probing “across the fence” discussions dealing with the entire “value chain” of facility investment projects. The information exchange and networking over the course of three days really can help communities, regions and states stay more competitive in attracting jobs and investments. For the upcoming Janus Forum at Amelia Island, Florida February 28-March 4, 2015, noted site consultant Don Schjeldahl will join us. Other consultants and corporate executives will be announced as they commit. The state economic development directors’ forum that will take place in conjunction with the Janus Forum at Amelia Island will add yet another level of learning and networking for attendees. Come join us at Amelia and leave thinking more strategically about the business location and economic development industry. That way, when it breaks, you’re more than ready to fix it.