Compared to What? Measuring Success
By Joe Raso, GFMEDC President & CEO
Generally, in life we find ourselves comparing what we are doing to either someone else, to ourselves over time, or to goals we’ve established. For example, there seems to be “a thing” happening in the social media universe comparing today to the 1990’s. Comparisons on music, fashion, cinema, food, etc.
I thought, heck, since the GFMEDC has been around for 80+ years, I wonder how our work today compares to the 1990’s, so did a little research, and here are a few nuggets of interest:
- Over a six-year stretch in the 1990s, the GFMEDC reported supporting 92 projects, with about 15% being recruitment of new industry to the region. From about 2019-2025, the GFMEDC supported 162 projects, with around 20% being recruitment of new companies. We certainly have a more active and diverse regional economy today, and this data supports that, but it also shows that no matter what decade we are in, the bulk of our work is supporting our existing companies in their growth.
- The biggest focus of our time in the 1990s was supporting the workforce development needs of our companies. Staff positions were created focused on workforce development in the late 1990s, and the organization even announced that it wanted to limit business attraction to just a couple companies a year as not to stress our existing companies’ workforce needs. Today’s GFMEDC is still very focused on workforce recruitment and has developed and implemented targeted programming to support workforce attraction and regional branding. We, however, are not limiting business attraction efforts because we know that company diversity benefits attraction and retention of the workforce our companies need. Nearly 40% of our pipeline projects today are recruitment of new companies.
In fact, I’d say that given we are the 11th most diverse economy in the country today, we need to continue to focus on company diversity because it benefits our workforce efforts.
- In the 1990s, leaders were concerned with issues of housing, flood protection and access to water, childcare, and the alignment of our workforce system, just to name a few. Well, it looks like today we are checking off the box on our water situation, which is foundational to our livability and economic opportunity. Compared to almost everywhere in the country, we are all still working to address housing, childcare and workforce alignment. I hope these aren’t unattainable issues for us to address, but 30+ years can certainly make one wonder.
- In the 1990s, the GFMEDC was not focused on entrepreneurship as a mechanism to support the growth of the regional economy. This changed in 2012 when the organization began supporting a new entity focused on entrepreneurship and creating the spaces and events that would bring people together for innovation and community vitality – Emerging Prairie. Today the GFMEDC works closely with Emerging Prairie, Grand Farm, Folkways, higher education, and many others to support what is now one of the nation’s most robust and connected entrepreneurial eco-systems. The vision of the region’s leaders to support these efforts has paid off in so many ways, and I would contend, has helped to define an authentic and powerful brand about our region – The Midwest’s Entrepreneurial Leader.
As often happens in life, when you start to compare yourself, you find you’re better off than perhaps you had thought, and yet still have work to do, which can be exciting and help to focus your attention. Now, if I can just take the wisdom and experience of today and combine that with darker hair and fewer wrinkles of the 1990s, I might be my best me. I know – wishful thinking.
