Setting a Course for the Future

By J.Ed. Marston

The Chamber’s board of directors recently approved a new strategic plan designed to position the Chamber to continue its critical role in improving and diversifying Chattanooga’s regional economy. The new plan builds on previous strategic plans that were formed at the beginning and middle of the decade.

During the 1990s, the city achieved national recognition for downtown revitalization and made tremendous progress in establishing an enviable quality of life, but as the 2000s began, the community had yet to translate those successes into sustained job creation across its business sectors.

In response, the Chattanooga Chamber board established a new strategic plan and hired Tom Edd Wilson to lead the Chamber in 2002. Recognizing that the new plan required a complete restructuring of the Chamber’s operations and funding mechanisms, Wilson led the Chamber in forging a $9 million public/private partnership called Tell the World! to sustain Chattanooga’s first-ever comprehensive job creation strategy for four years.

Through Tell the World! and the succeeding Chattanooga CAN DO campaign, the Chamber transformed Chattanooga’s reputation in economic development circles from non-entity to national leader. In addition to major recruitment victories like Volkswagen and Alstom, the Chamber has earned national recognition and awards for existing industry support, business incubation, member services, workforce development and marketing.

According to Wilson, the strategic planning process was designed to build on the success of existing initiatives while making adjustments to account for the very real challenge of facilitating job creation in the post-downturn economic environment. “Businesses have undergone a lasting paradigm shift,” Wilson said. “Companies are going to continue to do as much as they can with as few employees as possible for the foreseeable future.”

In July of 2009, the Chamber began collecting feedback from a wide crosssection of Chamber members and other stakeholders. That input identified several priorities including

1) workforce development;

2) greater support for job creation by local companies, especially small businesses;

3) building on recruitment successes while identifying new industries to target to keep the local industrial sectors diverse;

4) proactively planning to ensure smart, sustainable growth.

Working from these priorities, the Chamber staff and volunteer leadership framed the new strategic plan in six initiatives:

1. Start and Grow Local Companies: The goal of this initiative is to restructure and integrate the Chamber’s small business programming, incubator, and existing industry efforts into a seamless continuum of support for local businesses. The Chamber is leveraging the $5 million renovation of the Business Development Center to broaden its program of support to include small businesses throughout the community. In addition, the Chamber will establish and advocate for a “Small Business Public Policy” agenda each year.

2. Recruitment: The thrust of this initiative is to leverage Volkswagen and Alstom to attract additional companies in the automotive and power generation industries while aggressively seeking new recruitment targets and placing a stronger emphasis on attracting entrepreneurs who will re-locate their existing companies to our area.

3. Workforce: While continuing the Chamber’s award-winning school-to-work programs, the new strategic plan calls for additional methods of forging relationships and partnerships between businesspeople and educators. An example of this approach is the Principals Leadership Academy, which the Chamber, Public Education Foundation, UTC, and Hamilton County Schools are launching this summer. The year-long Principals Leadership Academy is pioneering a new way to prepare assistant principals to lead schools through a curriculum that combines business topics with training in educational leadership.

4. Membership: Enhancing our value proposition for all Chamber members remains a top priority. The Chamber is continuously searching for innovative ways to deliver value. In addition, the staff is implementing a more rigorous feedback process for listening to members and adjusting programs more quickly.

5. Strategic Growth Planning: The Chamber will work with appropriate partners in the public and private sectors to establish a process for developing a long-term strategic growth plan. The process should include a comprehensive growth planning process as well as modeling of how different approaches will impact traffic congestion, the need for education facilities, infrastructure maintenance and development, taxation, etc. The Chamber will also work to build regional relationships and provide ongoing support for dialogue and cooperation among regional leaders.

6. Organizational Excellence: The Chamber continues to emphasize the professionalism of the staff, and the quality of their work. Under the new strategic plan, the Chamber will evaluate how the implementation of our new tactics matches up with the skill sets of our existing staff. As we identify gaps, we will provide professional development. We will also build on our efforts to continuously improve our efforts as an organization.

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