If your economic development group is not intentional with its plan or its time, you are probably being reactive to the environment around you.  How can you be proactive?  It's all about the strategic plan.

Rob Cleveland, CEO of Benton Harbor, Michigan, Cornerstone Alliance is back to share his organization's case study on strategic planning.

Some of the highlights include:

-Internal vs external facilitation

-Meeting the expectations of 300 investors

-Utilizing the finished planning document

-Creating a dashboard to track results

You will also hear a bit more about Rob's background before he entered the economic development profession.

Cornerstone Alliance

Rob Cleveland

Rovercovering from disaster. Overcoming poverty. Embracing diversity and inclusion. There have been no shortage of challenges in the City of New Orleans, but the New Orleans Business Alliance has been on its game creating innovative programs to advance community goals.

In this episode, Dennis interviews Quentin Messer Jr., President and CEO of the New Orleans Business Alliance (NOLABA).  NOLABA is an Accredited Economic Development Organization and is a public-private partnership designed to provide leadership on economic security initiatives for the New Orleans area.

This show is packed with all kinds of ideas that your community can borrow.

More About the New Orleans Business Alliance

More About Quentin Messer, Jr.

Board members are always eager to help, but what happens when they become too helpful?  A board of directors needs to have enough information to provide proper governance, but providing too much detail could lead to micromanagement.

Andy Davis, Director of Education from BoardSource is here to provide some guidance for excellent board/executive/staff relationships.

In this episode, Dennis asks Andy about the relationship between the board chair and the chief executive.  Hint: the relationship should be built upon regular and consistent communication.

You will also learn more about:

-The balance between board and staff interaction

-Making a commitment to no surprises

-The value of a formal evaluation of the CEO at least annually

-Creating a responsibility document for board members

BoardSource is a 501c3 organization designed to empower and inspire non-profit boards.

More About Andy Davis

About BoardSource

Many communities host welcome programs, but few do it like Benton Harbor, Michigan.  Not only do they host 350 - 700 tours per year, but some companies include the tours as a requirement in the hiring/interview process.

In this episode, Dennis interviews Rob Cleveland,  President and Chief Executive Officer of the Benton Harbor, Michigan Cornerstone Alliance on what they call the First Choice Program.

They discuss the cost of the program, the most common questions received, and why they ban the term 'trailing spouse'.  

More About Rob Cleveland

Cornerstone Alliance

More About the First Choice Program

Are you operating at less than 100% of your full potential?  Even highly successful individuals can feel as though they are only giving 30-50% at the office.

Energy, productivity, time, and stress relief.  Working with a high performance coach over a period of four to six months can help with each of these things.

In this episode, Dennis brings Katy Trost back one last time to provide an outline of what it is like to work with a coach including the number of sessions and the cost of a typical engagement.

Find out why Katy says that even the highest performing people do not believe they are worthy of their success and suffer from imposter syndrome.

Like what you are hearing?  You can check out the other episodes with Katy inlcuding #112 and #118.

More about Katy Trost

In this business of economic and community development, we often talk about the value of placemaking and strong communities.  While this sense of 'community' is important within our service territories, it is just as important in our hometown.

Have we repaid our hometowns for the education, the values, and the memories provided to us?

In this episode, Dennis and Jason share some suggestions for repaying the community in which you were raised.

Improving your leadership skills is a life-long journey.  Dan McCarthy is an executive coach and expert in all things leadership.  He runs a blog called Great Leadership.

Do you fail to delegate?  Dan says failure to delegate could be a result of your need for control.  The skill of delegation is easy.  It is the mindset of letting go that can be most difficult.

In this episode, Dennis throws a number of topics at Dan including:

Leading Change
Conflict Management
Being Present
Leadership v Management

You will also learn why your entrance and exit into a room, meeting or speech is important.

More About Dan McCarthy

Great Leadership Blog

With full employment, we all know the challenges in filling open positions.  Should your community consider military recruiting?

There are three military bases in the Beaufort County, South Carolina area, and the local economic development group has launched some interesting strategies to keep members of the armed forces and their dependents in the community as they exit service.  It doesn't hurt that they have an undisputed great quality of life.

In this episode, Dennis interviews John O'Toole, CEcD, executive director of the Beaufort County Economic Development Corporation  on the value proposition for recruiting and retaining military members and veterans in the community.

Beaufort County Economic Development Corporation

Being busy should not be the goal.  Productivity is a much better target.

Activity flows to fill the available time.  It is important to schedule your day, protect your calendar, and work hard to condense the time available to complete a given task.

In this episode, Dennis brings productivity expert Katy Trost back for part two of our three part series to explore ways in which we can better utilize our time.

One tip (and this could be very painful) is to consider logging each hour of your time for two weeks.  Then analyze your log.  Should you be delegating more?  Are you spending too much time micro-managing?

More about Katy Trost

Read the article on Forbes

There is no shortage of workforce programming initiatives, but are any of them actually moving the needle?  To our stakeholder groups, many of the various programs sound very similar, and it can be difficult to discern the differences between initiatives.

Maybe we should consider using an illustration to better show the link between PreK - Adult initiatives.

In this episode, Dennis and Jason discuss the power behind a strong visual image.  One example is to imagine a robust talent pipeline with many entry and exit points.

Example of a Workforce Pipeline Illustration