“The Ten Commandments of Community Leadership”
October 17, 2008
“The Ten Commandments of Community Leadership”
Maury Forman and Michelle Harvey
This is the latest in a series of economic development primers by Maury Forman. In a profession that sorely needs more training, more clarity, and a better sense of humor, Maury provides a service not available anywhere else. Following a format that typically includes the cartoon artwork of David Horsey (a well-known figure in the Seattle print media), Maury sums up volumes of work with a series of pithy admonitions. Leadership – at the community level – begins with vision and ends with a commitment to develop future leaders. While we may quibble about what was left out, or what was redundant, the fact remains that we have precious little to draw upon when we want to educate our politicians and our agency heads about the importance of leadership.
It is no surprise to anyone in economic development that leadership is the sticking point of most plans and most initiatives. When you have it, things work. When you don’t have it, things fall apart. A primer on leadership is a reminder that planning alone is not enough, even when it meets budget and management tests, garners community support, and selects worthwhile goals. The ability to drive the process forward, that’s leadership.
Hats off to Maury for another well-executed guidebook.
“The Ten Commandments of Community Leadership is available through the State of Washington Department of Community, Trade, and Economic Development or the Association of Washington Cities.
ZoomProspector is invaluable in business site location
October 17, 2008
ZoomProspector.com has pulled off a coup. The world of economic development has badly needed a single Web tool that was user-friendly, accessed current data, and had a sufficient level of detail. First and foremost, this is an application for growing businesses. Plagued with overly-aggressive brokers, out-of-date information, and the near-impossibility of finding good national data, smaller businesses were hard-pressed to make rational decisions about where to locate. What ZoomProspector does is simplify the site search, allowing quick and easy access to the demographic, business and location characteristics of every community as well as thousands of sites and buildings across the U.S.
This tool gains its real value in making transparent what has long been the private domain of dozens of fragmented, smaller sites. We badly need accurate information about workforce, transportation, and infrastructure. Businesses can no longer fly by the seat of their pants. Volatile fuel prices and a tightening labor market have put many companies in a precarious situation. In this context, ZoomProspector is also invaluable for economic development organizations and site selectors. To know what makes a place competitive is absolutely essential. The website accomplishes this through a number of innovative features, including a community ranking wizard, demographics of every city in the US, in-depth property info, and a Google Maps interface – with the useful Street View option and access to the local map layers of data you can’t even find on the regular version of Google Maps. Having this much data on one application makes it immensely easier to benchmark progress, identify weaknesses, and to think strategically about one’s community.
ZoomProspector’s challenge will be to take this cutting-edge tool and keep it that way. If it pulls that off, it will help revolutionize the industry.
