Imagine this. You’ve just been offered your “dream” job. You know, the one you and your spouse have been talking about for well over a decade, the job that’s guaranteed to launch you to the top of your profession.
The satisfaction you feel is overwhelming. Finally, the job is yours, and you’re walking on Cloud Nine … or at least for the first year, anyway. That’s when it suddenly occurs to you that your community – your board, the Chamber, the local politicos, whatever – really aren’t willing to provide you with the resources and support you need to do the job you were initially hired to do.
Surely, everyone reading this knows someone who has gone through this, and I’ll bet a high percentage of you has actually experienced it personally.
What do you do?
| Many communities figure that business attraction and retention will happen anyway, and that any programs or deals that you (as the ED professional) might come up with are simply “give-aways” or, worse, corporate welfare. |
Without making this sound like a take-off on the “You might be a redneck” jokes, there are several key indicators that will tell you if your resources are at odds with your expectations.
Is your political leadership willing to go to bat for you to land a prospect? Are they willing to make those last minute, personal calls? Are they willing to go out of their way to make the prospect feel wanted, or do they make them feel like they don’t care one way or the other if that company comes to your town?
Do you have any money to market your community? It doesn’t matter how good your community’s story is if nobody knows about it. For some reason, many economic developers have convinced themselves that marketing doesn’t work, despite the fact that U.S. companies spend billions and billions of dollars each year marketing themselves and their products. If your marketing effort is limited to placing articles in your local paper, you’re destined to be the Maytag repairman of economic development — nobody calls.
Are your community leaders interested in visiting your competition? Do they even know (or care) who that competition is? Business attraction and business retention is all about comparisons – which location has the best business climate, the lowest taxes, the best infrastructure, the best work force, etc. If your community is consistently “in the hunt” with the same metros, are you winning or losing? Do you know why? It’s important not only that you visit the competition and see firsthand what they are doing well, or doing poorly, but that your board members do likewise.
Do you have the support of the local business community? Are they actively interested in pursuing new companies, or are they concerned about bringing in competition? If your board is heavily represented by people who aren’t excited about expanding and diversifying your local economy, that should be a major red flag that you’re wasting your time.
Do you have an adequate travel budget? Do you decide where to travel, or was your travel schedule developed in the budget process several years ago? Do you visit trade shows, call on site consultants, make prospect calls to [name your big city], attend professional conferences to mingle with your peers (i.e., your competition)?
Are your board members willing to accompany you on trips to visit prospect company execs? Remember, you’re the professional staff member. The really persuasive “sell” comes from having the local business and political leadership show that they care enough to take time from their busy schedules to help you sell your community.
Do you frequently hear things like, “We’ve always done it that way,” or “It’s worked in the past,” or “Let’s wait and see how the economy develops before we decide how to proceed?” If so, your box is already drawn in indelible ink and you really aren’t running the ED effort — your predecessors (or their memories) are.
Do you have a research university in your community and, if so, are you actively working to develop a life sciences industry cluster? That’s a no-brainer. If your community is not smart enough to take advantage of such a precious asset, you’re in danger of irreversibly losing massive amounts of brain cells the longer you stay in that job.
Does your community have an active incubator program? How about one to spur entrepreneurship? The engine of the American economy is the small business, and what can be smaller than one person with a great idea? The lion’s share of the businesses in your metro began that way, and anything you can do to improve an entrepreneur’s chances of success is a win-win for everyone.
Is your board regularly reinvigorating itself with new members, or has it remained static for the past five years? If you’ve been going to board meetings for several years and see the same faces year after year -- unless those faces belong to Bill Gates or Steve Jobs -- your program is in a rut.
Finally, are you constantly complaining (to yourself, your friends, your co-workers, your board) that you don’t have enough resources to do the job?
Remember, looks can be deceiving. You may think you’re in a great job, but if all you’re doing is treading water while you collect your salary, eventually you need to face up to reality.
Sure, as Americans we are instinctively optimistic and we hate to be thought of as “whiners” but, after a while, even the obvious becomes obvious. As strange as it sounds, some communities with economic development organizations aren’t really interested in pursuing an aggressive ED program.
Many communities figure that business attraction and retention will happen anyway, and that any programs or deals that you (as the ED professional) might come up with are simply “give-aways” or, worse, corporate welfare.
If you find yourself in one of those communities, you might want to consider dusting off your resume and renewing your acquaintance with some of the headhunters. Don’t figure that you can ride it out until retirement. If you can figure out that you’re not doing anything, it’s a pretty safe bet that, sooner or later, your board will figure it out, too.
It really doesn’t matter if it’s their fault. Some situations just won’t get any better, no matter how hard you ignore them.
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