Day 78: Common Goals

Day 78:  Common goals.  Okay, several of my ramblings have been about this topic.  But I pull from real life situations every day when I write these, and I had one recently that is a great example.  A local economic development person has developed key contacts with some data center companies over the years.  Through these connections they get a visit.  They have a couple of sites that will work.  The company likes what they see.  But the company decides they probably should open up a search in the entire metro area.  But they have scheduled a second visit with the community.  The community also has a county economic group.  The community ED calls the county person knowing that they will see the search request.  The community person asks the county ED to not contact the land owners that the local had already contacted because that could confuse them or make them think there are two different projects, so the land prices go up.  They all have a common goal to land a project.  The local is obviously the lead here because of the relationship they have developed.  But, the county person will most likely be brought in at some time.  But as long as everyone works on the common goal to land the project and not worry about turf and credit, they will succeed.  As I have written twenty times, economic development is a team sport and requires heavy lifting, so everyone needs to be involved at some point.  As long as you stay focused on the goal and not on the credit, you will land more projects than you will lose.  Next:  Why does everyone chase a data center?

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