Executive Voices: An Op-Ed Column
Reinvention
At Commerce, we're changing how we do our job but not our mission
By Jim Fain
In
his inaugural address, Gov. Mike Easley laid out his vision for One
North Carolina. He described a state where every community matters and
where every individual counts. It is the goal of the N.C. Department
of Commerce to ensure that North Carolinians have equal access to
economic prosperity wherever they live.
As our economy moves away
from a focus on agriculture and traditional manufacturing toward
enterprises driven by capital, technology and entrepreneurship, our
challenge is to successfully guide the state in that transition. In
view of that goal and the governor’s vision, I’m often asked to
describe the role of Commerce.
People know us primarily as
recruiters. As North Carolina’s lead economic-development agency, we
work to recruit and retain new, quality enterprises and promote the
state globally through public relations, marketing, overseas
business-development missions, web sites and other activities. We’re
able to present all 100 counties to relocation clients, ensuring they
can find the best fit available for their needs. But we also offer a
broader range of services that I’ll describe below.
First, however, let me
outline how we go about our work at Commerce, which may be as
important as what we do. We’ve done a lot of self-assessment in
recent months to evaluate our effectiveness and efficiency, comparing
our work with similar agencies in neighboring states. That healthy
process has led to the reorganization, reengineering or reinventing of
most of our operations.
Like most businesses, we
began that process by identifying our customers — the citizens,
companies and communities of our state. In serving these customers,
we’re guided by our mission statement: to enhance the economic
well-being and quality of life of all North Carolinians, which fits
nicely with Gov. Easley’s vision. To that end, everything matters
– good roads, cultural amenities, schools, sites, everything. Often,
then, our job is to bring together other state agencies, local and
regional economic-development organizations and private-sector allies
to serve our customers.
Our self-assessment also led
us to adopt key values to drive how we carry out our mission. We
believe everything we do should be characterized by three adjectives:
proactive, knowledge-driven and targeted. We know that “passive”
doesn’t cut it in a competitive world. As recruiters, we must target
the kinds of companies we want to bring to North Carolina and go knock
on their doors. Similarly, our new 21st Century Communities initiative
is an example of packaging all of our services and proactively taking
them to challenged counties.
Knowledge-driven speaks for
itself. We value experience and assume hard work, but to be
successful, we’ve got to be smarter than our competition. So we’re
building a research and analysis unit
to develop information and ideas to drive our sales and service
efforts.
Finally, targeting scarce
resources can ensure that at the margin we’re using every dollar and
every minute to get the best return. That’s why we’ve been
shifting resources to high-return activities. For example, we
consolidated three offices in Europe and the Middle East into one –
without a loss of effectiveness – to free budget dollars for other
programs.
At Commerce, we also have
embraced what we call the “3 Cs” – change, collaboration and
communication. Change ensures continuous improvement and relevance in
rapidly changing times. Collaboration with our partners in both the
public and private sectors is the only way we can accomplish our
mission. And if this collaboration is to be truly effective, we
absolutely must be good at communication, both internally and
externally.
Now, back to our customers.
Obviously, everything we do ultimately must serve the citizens of our
state. We serve them most directly, however, by operating the
Commission on Workforce Development and related training programs for
our workers, funded by the federal Workforce Investment Act.
For communities, we provide
tools to municipalities, counties and local community groups. These
include the Main Street Program, which assists small and medium-sized
cities in redeveloping downtowns; community development block grant
programs targeted by Commerce to neighborhood and housing development
efforts; and planning, technical assistance and consulting services
from the seven regional offices of our Division of Community
Assistance.
In addition to recruiting
assistance, we provide support to companies through our Existing
Industry and International Trade divisions. We also operate targeted
programs promoting the travel, film and sports industries in our
state.
As Gov. Easley has said, all
the incentives in the world won’t attract a company unless we have
quality workers and good places to live. Recruiting may be our most
visible activity, but a good workforce-development delivery system and
programs to build the infrastructure of our counties are equally
important. That’s why a principal outcome of self-assessment was to
commit equal resources to all three customer groups.
Let me conclude by
mentioning a strategically important change. The Easley administration
last year proposed and the General Assembly approved transfer of the
state Board of Science and Technology to Commerce from the Department
of Administration. This step will more closely align policymaking by
this important board of business and campus leaders with the economic
development policy and activities of our state. The board’s thinking
about how we invest in science and technology, how we transfer
technology from campuses to the marketplace, and how we use our
knowledge assets to recruit knowledge-driven enterprises will be
essential to how we build our 21st Century economy.
Jim Fain of Raleigh is secretary of the N.C. Department of
Commerce. Before joining the department in 1999 he served for 25 years
as an executive with First Union National Bank.
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