Comment
Coping with success
Kevin Gale is right. The business of economic development in Prince Edward County is being tossed about senselessly, mostly by folks with no experience, and seemingly little understanding of marketing.
Worse, some of the folks howling loudest for reform in the way we promote the local economy have no skin in the game. They get a cheque each month whether the economy works well or it doesn’t.
So what’s this all about? Why do we get so animated by a municipal department that consumes about one per cent of the County’s annual expenditures? Why will a good portion of our summer and letters page be chewed up by yet another divisive debate about economic development?
As far as I can tell there is no single answer. Some simply want their County staff to be more obedient and compliant than the former ED officer. Dan Taylor simply went about his business, delivered results, built relationships with those who could be instrumental in driving growth and helped build the Prince Edward County brand. He didn’t defer to council. He didn’t ask them what his job was. He knew what needed to be done and did it. Some resented him for it.
Others simply don’t like what the County has become.They imagine the place as Eden before the horde of retirees, entrepreneurs and investors from the city descended upon the place—attracted by the brand and marketing of the Economic Development Office. All they see are opportunities they believe to be their birthright, seized upon by folks who were born elsewhere. It is blind and ignorant prejudice in its darkest form—yet it passes for debate around the council table and beyond.
Some cling to the naive ambition that a change in the sales pitch is all that is needed to persuade large-scale manufacturers to overlook the County’s utter lack of competitive advantages and choose to build a factory here that will employ folks at $25 an hour.
A variation on this fantasy is the notion of “green manufacturing jobs.” But of course green manufacturing jobs are the creation of governments— as fragile as their hold on power or the whim of the next minister. Hardly career building stuff.
Moreover governments have a terrible track record when they venture into business. Many readers will remember the millions of taxpayer dollars tossed away to prop up an entrepreneur hoping to grow cucumbers commercially in Newfoundland. Or the Bricklin, a space-age car with gull-wing doors built in New Brunswick.
Worse, government’s pattern of paying for jobs has simply created a new category of corporate welfare cases—companies who auction their manufacturing capacity and attendant jobs to the highest bidder. The government, or preferably mix of governments that offers the richest bag of loot wins the jobs—until the money runs out—and so do the jobs.
It is a dead-end path and one that we were right to avoid.
At the root of our hand wringing about economic development is success.
Many, many successful organizations go through this.The product engineers at Apple believe they are the pivot on which that company turns. Investors say it was their foresight that made it happen. The software guys, the design folks and customer service all believe it is their contribution that moves the product.
In every successful company the debate inevitably arises: why do we spend so much on sales and marketing? Our products sell themselves. Customers would still buy our products without spending money on marketing and sales.
Yet the corporate landscape is littered with the carcasses of companies that made this error.
The folks howling for measures of achievement are being disingenuous at best.The success of the County’s economic development efforts over the last decade are all around us. Entire new categories of industry have arisen here and thrived. In traditional areas such as tourism, the product range has expanded immensely and employs more people at higher wages. Folks are being attracted here to live and are investing their savings and resources in this community like few other places in Ontario.
For many other regions of this province, and indeed the country, what Prince Edward County has achieved is the goal. The County is the measure of success and achievement that other communities strive for in terms of developing their local rural economy.
The County brand has become a powerful and distinctive marketing force that will propel this economy forward for a time. Quantified the County brand is likely valued in the hundreds of millions of dollars. There can be no denying we’ve earned a very strong return on our investment in economic development over the past decade.
Yet we sit around telling ourselves these opportunities were coming our way in any event. It is nonsense mouthed by folks who should know better.
It is time we created a distinct agency for economic development in this County. No longer should it be the plaything of council—or those who want to be on council—manipulated by those without expertise or a stake in the game.
We have real problems to solve.
rick@wellingtontimes.ca
Kevin Gale makes a point when he says that Economic Development is being tossed about senselessly, mostly by folks with no experience, and seemingly little understanding of marketing. The Editor of the Wellington Times agrees. Guess what? I disagree. Both of you, and pretty much all of Council, have a built-in determination to go directly to “process”… and to reinforce the partisans, without discussing “Purpose”.
The real problem is that there is no agreement on what the Purpose of Government ought to be… at all levels of government. Until such time as we all agree on the purpose of government not much will change. More importantly, a lot of opportunities will be missed. You write about Apple’s success. You talk about the different groups within Apple (engineers, sales, marketing, etc) all believing it is their contribution that has moved their products. Guess what? Apple’s success is based on “Purpose”. It’s not based on what Apple sells. It’s what they stand for. They want to make a difference.
So what is Purpose? Why is it important? Simply put, it’s a definitive statement about the difference that you are trying to make in the world. If you have a purpose and can articulate it with clarity and passion, everything makes sense, everything flows. You feel good about what you’re doing and clear about how to get there. If you don’t have a clear and easy way to articulate core purpose for the work that you do, everything probably feels a bit chaotic, disjointed and maybe even meaningless. That’s why both articles make for nice reading but really don’t offer up much.
What we need, first, is a discussion of why we have a government in the first place … what the essential purpose of government is. Only then get we move from Purpose to Process to Measurement. Only when that purpose is understood and agreed to is it useful to discuss the process – for the process must be structured to ensure that the purpose can be achieved.
With the purpose understood, that will then allow a discussion of what departments are required to allow the government to serve that purpose . Only then can we decide on Economic Development. Only then can an Economic Development office be established . And when it delivers on Purpose it will have made a difference to all of us living here.
I suggest that the approach of The Wellington Times, Council and its champions and critics are far too heavily locked into some beliefs about the role of Economic Development that’s not derived from any commonly accepted understanding of why we have a municipal government in the first place and what the role of Council is. Dan Taylor understood this and simply decided on his own what the “purpose’ of his job was going to be. Good on him for carrying on and earning his salary.
Now Council wants to have an outside facilitator, and probably well paid one, direct a planning session with the remaining economic planning staff within the next 90 days. Unless, Council (and voters) provide a “purpose” don’t expect much from such a session. More opportunities will be missed. Why? Because Council hasn’t gone back far enough into the basic questions about government or into a consideration of essential purpose that government must serve, or the principles that underpin it .. the founding principles .. the core principles. Everyone, including voters, allow a presumption that most politicians have good motives to lead them to conclude that most politicians are trying to spend time doing the job that we need government to do. Why do we presume that the institutions in which our elected politicians and bureaucrats operate are intrinsically sound?
Most MPs, MPPs and Councillors, despite having held office, and despite having dealt with some constituent problems with government, don’t have a clue about the essential role of the offices that they fill or the institutions within which those offices reside. Most got there just by playing the party game .. because it was the only game in town .. and they bring with them presumptions that favour parts of a system that any rational discussion from first principles .. or from gut feeling .. tells us has gone far off track. Most bureaucrats do bureaucratic things .. and those often have little to do with professionalism or with an understanding of what their job is .. within the overall purpose of government.
Any meaningful discussion about Economic Development in Prince Edward County must go back to more basic essentials. There can be no ingoing presumption that our Mayor or Council are a necessary part of the process.
One even sees that tendency among “journalists”. If discussions about government are to be constructive, the media can’t start with a presumption about political parties and those running for local councils. They can’t constructively start even with a debate about policies … for policies inevitably bring out the partisan preferences. The Times reports a discussion between Mayor Mertens and Councillor Marisett “Clearly we are not on the same page” said Mertens to Marisett. “The sooner we get on the same page the more productive we will all be.” The Times fails to ask for more details about what is meant by “same page”? Constructive discussions can only start with a discussion about the core purpose of government.
So, until the core purpose is understood, discussions about Economic Development and policies and institutions must be kept off the table. Those are “process” related.
Here’s the first exercise that Councillors and our Mayor need to do. They need to get together and independently each write one or two brief sentences about the “purpose” of Council. They need to share what each has written. I will wager that very few will write the same purpose statements. However, as a collective group they need to agree on “purpose” before tackling “process”.
P.S. I’m pretty sure that Apple’s purpose is to put a personal computer into the hands of everyone. It’s that simple.