Robert Pittman, Executive Director and Founder, Janus Institute
Countless barrels of ink have been spilled over leadership and leadership development. Several months ago, I actually heard a comedian say “if all else fails, I could be a leadership consultant.” All joking aside, leadership is a recurring topic in one way or another at every Janus Forum. People sometimes ask me why some communities build stronger economies and move forward while others languish.” My standard non-response used to be “it depends” but now my answer is straightforward: if a community has good leadership and some knowledge of how the economic development process works, it has a much higher chance of success. Some Forum attendees praise the cooperation and support they get from local leaders while others wish they had more, but everyone agrees that good leadership is critical for community success.
At the August 2012 Janus Forum in Rabun County, Alan Price discussed leadership from a crisis management perspective based on his experience as Chief Pilot of Delta Airlines during the 9/11 terrorist attack. Executive management teams at all the airlines were forced to make critical decisions with enormous implications in an unprecedented situation. According to Captain Price company core values including the safety of passengers and employees helped guide Delta, and the airline was one of the first to ground all airplanes on the morning of 9/11 even before the Federal Aviation Administration ceased all commercial aviation operations. I believe core values and guiding principles regarding economic development could help many communities in a crisis or non-crisis situation, and we will explore this topic further in future Forums and related publications.
Speaking of, our next Forum will be held February 28-March 3 at the Amelia Island, Florida Omni Hotel complex. Our host sponsor will again be Enterprise Florida, who helped make the Forum held last year at Watercolor in Santa Rosa Beach a great success. We will continue to include active participation by site consultants and corporate real estate executives in the program, but we will never forget what has made the Forum such as success – strong peer learning and economic “best practice” opportunities for all participants. Undoubtedly, the upcoming Forum at Amelia Island will again provide participants and sponsors with ideas and contacts to help make them even more successful. The program schedule with invited guests will be announced soon.
To conclude, I would like to add to our on-going discussion of leadership and say simply that being a good community leader or economic development professional often involves having the courage and conviction to “stick to your guns” and continue to advocate and support economic development programs that will help the community achieve its goals whether they are popular or not. Sometimes leadership is just telling the truth.

By Ron Starner

Executive Editor of the Janus Reporter

If you don’t rigorously measure your organization’s economic development efforts every day, you might as well close up shop.

That was the not-so-subtle message of a standing-room-only workshop at the International Economic Development Council’s annual conference last week in Fort Worth, Texas.

Organized in response to a National Public Radio program that three years ago compared professional economic developers to “job fairies,” the workshop pulled no punches. If economic developers want to be respected for the work they do, the IEDC panelists said, they’d better start measuring their performance and transparently reporting it to every stakeholder in the community.

Otherwise, you end up being called a “job fairy” or worse by reporters who don’t know better, said Ben Wright, founder and CEO of Denver-based Atlas Advertising and the moderator of the panel.

Indeed, the packed room was silent as Wright played a clip of the radio broadcast that openly made fun of hard-working economic developers who were attending an IEDC conference in 2011.

The entire piece struck a tone that said — if you choose to do economic development for a living, you are basically a shameless huckster.

While IEDC President Jeff Finkle wrote a scathing rebuke of NPR – a rebuttal so strong that it prompted NPR management to issue an apology for the controversial piece – the damage had been done.

How damaging was the piece? Here’s one take on it:

“The thrust of the radio report was that local and economic developers across the country actually do little to create jobs for the nation as a whole; that they largely ‘steal’ jobs from one another; that they are ‘lying’ or at least ‘spinning’ in selling their communities; that even their local impact is negligible; and that their real interest may be to protect their own jobs.”

Jeff Finkle didn’t write that; the NPR ombudsman did.

Economic developers had been lambasted; and on October 21 in Texas, Wright and the IEDC panel members acknowledged that without objective measurement and transparent reporting, their work should be questioned.

“The media refer to winners of incentives as ‘corporate tax dodgers,’” Wright said. “The question is – how do we change the dialogue?” It changes, he noted, when economic developers become transparent in tracking and reporting their own performance metrics.

“Performance tracking is a moving target, but it can be done,” said Wright. “More deals are happening today, and the investor-stakeholder mindset is changing. But one thing that will never change is that elected officials are always going to count jobs.”

Susan Davenport, vice president of economic development for the Gainesville (Fla.) Area Chamber of Commerce and Council for Economic Research, said that “metrics are front and center in anything we do. Our metrics are bold and bolder, and the corporate community has embraced what we are doing.”

Kenny McDonald, chief economic officer for Columbus2020 in Ohio, said, “We are transparent and accountable, and all of our metrics are driven by extensive McKinsey analysis. Our goals are a 30 percent increase in per capita income, $10 billion in capital investment, and the creation of 150,000 new jobs. Through August of this year, we are at 98,000 net new jobs and $4.5 billion in capital investment.”

McDonald explained that “you are going to have some ups and downs. The key is to remain consistent in how you measure your progress and in how transparent you are in reporting it to your community.”

Chris Camacho, vice president of business development for the Greater Phoenix Economic Council, said that “we are really passionate about metrics. Our advice is to have them and share them. It helps to have a healthy paranoia. Also, have a reputation plan. Preemptive preparation is the key.”

Davenport added, “Be transparent and be an educator. Manage the dialogue to ensure a positive outcome for your organization.”

McDonald added, “Understand that this is hard work. Invest in a ton of training and then accept that you won’t see the fruits of your efforts until three or four years later. But if you stick to following your master plan and pursuing your goals, it makes decision-making much easier.”

Robert Pittman
Founder and Executive Director, Janus Institute

Sitting on the Janus Forum porch in Rabun County this time of year means enjoying the colors of early Fall beginning to emerge on the Georgia and North Carolina mountains surrounding Lake Rabun. I’ve always lamented that fact that the best TV sports season (for me at least) occurs during the time of year when conditions are prime for enjoying outdoor recreation activities in the Southern Appalachian Mountains – including just rocking on the porch with your favorite beverage.

While for countless students Fall means returning to the classroom, for us at the Janus Institute and Conway Data it means planning our Janus Forum schedule and meetings for the next calendar year. Following the success of the Forum at Watercolor last February, Enterprise Florida has graciously agreed to serve as host for a second consecutive Janus Forum, this time at the Omni Resort at Amelia Island, just north of Jacksonville. That event will take place February 28-March 3. The dates for the annual Janus Forum in Rabun County (on the porch) are August 16-19, 2015. A third 2015 Janus Forum will be held in the Fall in Woodlands, Texas. Please contact Amanda Lilla alilla@janusinstitute.org if you are interested in attending and would like more information on any of our scheduled 2015 Forums. You can also visit our website at janusinstitute.org.

We also are making plans to improve this electronic newsletter and provide our Janus Forum alums and the profession at large with even more useful information and insights into the key issues that affect the field and profession of economic development. Following this edition, the Reporter will be published on a bi-monthly basis and it will be structured to provide more of an on-going platform for discussion and follow-up to the important topics identified at the Janus Forum. True to the spirit of the Forum, the new Reporter will not just be a place for staff or invited authors to provide information on a one-way basis, as useful as we hope that has been for you. We will be reaching out to Forum alums and, importantly, our special consultant and corporate executive friends and attendees to provide further information and updates on key Forum topics of debate and discussion.

So we hope to see you at one of our Janus Forums in 2015 and hope that you will consider participating in our new Janus Reporter discussions. There is a lot to be learned without having to leave the comfort of your own rocking chair on your own porch.

 

by RON STARNER

What’s the quickest way to improve the economic fortunes of any community in America? Get the people in that community moving more quickly and efficiently from Point A to Point B, says former US Department of Transportation official Beth Osborne.

Now a vice president with the Washington-based advocacy group Transportation for America, Osborne told Janus Forum attendees at Lake Rabun recently that without continued investment into America’s roads and highways – and other forms of transportation – the US will continue to fall further behind in the race for global competitiveness.

“Our concept of mobility has completely changed,” says Osborne, whose organization is an alliance of elected, business and civic leaders seeking to ensure that states and the federal government invest more into smarter, locally driven transportation solutions. “Studies show that homes in walkable areas have 12 percent higher value. Areas with more transportation choices have higher economic mobility. And livable communities generate 10 times more tax revenue than traditional suburbs.”

The problem, she says, is that America is not moving – literally. “In Atlanta, the average trip now takes 42 minutes without traffic,” she notes. “With traffic, it takes 56 minutes. Fifty percent of all new housing demand today is for transit-access communities, but transit-access development represents only 5 percent of all new housing supply.”

Osborne adds that “traffic speed reductions in neighborhoods of 5 to 10 miles per hour result in economic growth of 10 to 20 percent.” For good examples of communities that have implemented livable neighborhoods seamlessly, Osborne says, look to Salt Lake City and Denver.

“Envision Utah looked at everything before adopting a plan to create more livable communities,” she says. “It is now working very well there, and it can work virtually anywhere.”

With the Federal Highway Trust Fund down to about $1 billion, Osborne says that America has reached the crisis point in its transportation infrastructure. “The shoe drops this fall, and we have got to act now,” she notes.

“The burden is on the states to do something. If the states don’t fix this problem, the Feds are not coming to the rescue,” she adds. “We know from our studies that new highways do not have a very good return on investment. Road repair work, meanwhile, has a 16 percent ROI.”

The 18.4-cents-per-gallon federal gas tax provides about $38 billion a year in revenue for the Highway Trust Fund, says Osborne, “but the problem today is that people are not driving as much. People are driving less because studies show that they have a commute threshold of 35 to 45 minutes. Anything past that, and they simply won’t drive. As a result, the money the federal government has taken in from gas taxes has remained flat since 2005.”

No one wants to see the program go broke, she notes, “but what we need are more creative solutions from the state and local level. That’s one of the things we advocate.”

 

Local and statewide partnerships lead to more than 36,000 total jobs and $2.785 billion in capital investment

SARASOTA, FL (August 07, 2014) – Today, Enterprise Florida, Inc. (EFI) held its third Board of Directors meeting of 2014, the first of fiscal year 2014-15. The meeting focused on continuous improvement and recapped the most successful fiscal year yet for economic development in Florida. During the meeting, Secretary of Commerce and president & CEO of EFI, Gray Swoope, recapped EFI’s fiscal year 2013-14 results.

Secretary Swoope said, “Teamwork and relationship building are critical to being successful in economic development. Thanks to our partners at the local and state levels, we saw record numbers across the board last year. Since the 2010-11 fiscal year, total established jobs are up 84 percent and capital investments are up 150 percent. I’m proud of the work we’ve done and look forward to more success in the coming year.”

By working with its community partners, EFI’s activities have championed Florida as a premier destination for business expansion, location and relocation, and have created renewed interest in the state both nationally and internationally. EFI and its partners produced the following results in fiscal year 2013-14:

• 36,207 total established jobs, a 44 percent increase over fiscal year 2012-13
• $2.785 billion in capital investment, a 41 percent increase over FY12-13
• Projected export sales of $820.4 million, a 13 percent increase over FY12-13
• The Florida Sports Foundation created $627 million in economic impact through sporting events and awarded 116 sports grants totaling $3.2 million.
• The Florida Defense Support Task Force awarded $2.6 million in local defense communities to protect Florida’s military installations and missions.
• EFI assisted 30 small businesses with financing, and administered $12.6 million in loan guarantees and $9.7 million in loan participations.

Building on Florida’s success in winning competitive projects, Richard Broome, Executive Vice President of Corporate Affairs and Communications for The Hertz Corporation, spoke about the company’s experience since announcing their headquarters relocation. Hertz has already hired 325 employees at their temporary location in Southwest Florida. “The economic development process in Florida is working very well, underpinned by a great business climate, strong workforce and effective education system. Now is the time to recruit more businesses to the state.”

The meeting also featured breakout sessions focusing on key strategies to continue improving economic development efforts in the state. EFI’s stakeholders participated in a retreat on Wednesday to cover the same strategies. Input from the sessions will be critical in enhancing Florida’s ability to compete for and win more economic development projects.

EFI Board of Directors Vice-Chair, Brett Couch, shared his thoughts on the work done in FY12-13. “I’m very proud of the accomplishments made by EFI and its partners in the last fiscal year. Enterprise Florida is a model for economic development organizations around the nation and it’s a pleasure to serve on a board that oversees what this organization does for the state.”

The board meeting was open to the public with provision for public comment, and was broadcast live on The Florida Channel. In addition, theBoard of Directors section of EFI’s newsroom includes agendas, committee meeting materials, fact sheets and other resources.

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Enterprise Florida, Inc. (EFI) is a partnership between Florida’s businesses and government leaders and is the principal economic development organization for the state of Florida. EFI facilitates job growth for Florida businesses through recruitment and retention, international trade and exporting, promotion of sporting events, and capital funding programs to assist small and minority businesses.