Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, July 4, 1993 TAG: 9307040072
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: A1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: DANIEL HOWES STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
\ Ever wonder where all this talk about community "vision" started or why the Roanoke Valley Business Council chose to spearhead an effort to craft an economic plan for the region?
It just happened, insiders say.
It happened because Carilion Health System President Thomas Robertson, chairman of the Business Council, has personal friends in Atlanta and Hampton Roads who were talking about such visioning efforts in their communities.
It happened because Robertson and Virginia Tech President James McComas got to talking during last year's fund-raising campaign for Hotel Roanoke. Robertson learned that McComas was eager to see Tech "make a difference" in its community, an aide says.
It happened because Norfolk Southern Corp. Chairman David Goode, a longtime Roanoker, exhorted the Roanoke Regional Chamber of Commerce in January to look beyond the mountains and seek the region's niche in the global economy.
And it happened because the lexicon of "vision" is infusing the American workplace - from Carilion and Norfolk Southern to the Atlantic Mutual Cos. and the Roanoke Times & World-News.
Robertson recalls talks last winter with, among others, McComas and James Arend, chairman of the Roanoke chamber and senior vice president at Atlantic Mutual. There was cocktail-party chatter and there were serious discussions at business breakfasts.
At the same time: Bad news. Hundreds of manufacturing jobs in the region were being lost; a North Carolina megabank, First Union Corp., was taking over hometown Dominion Bankshares Corp.; defense cutbacks were reverberating at the Radford Army Ammunition Plant.
"I think it was something where a few of us had the same idea and just needed to put our heads together," Robertson says. "I don't want to appear to be taking credit for this. I may well have heard it from someone else. It's not rocket science."
Robertson now says he sensed a growing uneasiness among business leaders about the economic viability of the valleys. He also detected an urge among his peers to become more involved in setting the agenda for the communities they call home.
Enter the Roanoke Valley Business Council. Founded several years ago by then-Dominion Chairman Warner Dalhouse and patterned after the Virginia Business Council, the local group was intended to be a quarterly forum for chief executive officers of the valley's 50 largest employers.
Membership dues are $200 per year, members say. Provisions exist to extend membership to influential business leaders whose companies are not among the 50 largest in terms of employees. Generally, the group aims to be apolitical, except for its embrace three years ago of a study supporting government consolidation that later was discredited.
Business councils - that is, exclusive groups of chief executive officers headquartered in a specific area - exist across the country, according to a recent Frey Foundation report titled "Taking Care of Civic Business."
The groups often are exclusively male and exclusively white, reflecting the comparative lack of diversity in executive suites across America. In many cases, the groups also "tend to cloak their civic purpose, making them difficult to locate and difficult to define," according to an introduction to the report by Frey Foundation James M. Richmond.
By all accounts, Robertson and planners at Tech intend the visioning process to be open and inclusive. They take every opportunity to reassert that intention, despite the effort's birth as a child of the Business Council.
At its January breakfast meeting, Robertson hinted at what he had in mind, telling his fellow chief executives he would detail the idea and seek input at their April meeting.
Meanwhile, the incoming chairman talked some more, individually briefing Bvusiness Council leaders on his plan for the group to lead a visioning process for the Roanoke and New River valleys, including Tech.
At the April meeting, Robertson introduced a self-described futurist from Redmond, Wash., who sketched the successes and failures of visioning efforts in other cities, including Atlanta and Spokane, Wash.
"It's nothing revolutionary here. We're doing what a lot of communities are doing," Robertson says, calling the process of establishing common community goals "a common sense approach" and "a very important first step."
McComas considered the incipient effort a perfect match for advancing his Tech agenda to make a difference.
"A simple way of putting it is, `How can we matter?' " says Darrell Martin, a special assistant to McComas who has been charged with overseeing Tech's role in the process. "Look at the term, `It's academic,' meaning something is irrelevant. This university is determined not to be irrelevant."
McComas is overseas and could not be reached for comment.
If the priorities of university presidents do, in fact, partially define their universities, then McComas sees Tech's priorities - beyond the classroom walls - as impact, outreach and "making a difference, whether it be in Russia or Roanoke," Martin says.
"He does want to be on the leading edge of issues that matter. This [Business Council initiative] does fit that paradigm."
Already, the effort is gathering steam. Last week, representatives from nine chambers of commerce in the Roanoke and New River valleys met with Robertson to map a strategy for the summer.
Committees were chosen, assignments distributed. One group will seek a name for the effort to "capture the scope of the project and the region"; the group may also consider whether Bedford County's chamber, initially passed over because of the project's focus on Tech and points west and south, should be asked to participate.
A second committee will study logistical concerns with holding a community-wide retreat at Mountain Lake in September; a third will select a consultant - or consultants - to study the region and "facilitate" the visioning process.
Some participants remain skeptical.
"I think that's healthy," Robertson says. "I don't want people to think this is a silver bullet. You can do all this planning, but if there's no action you're just dreaming."
by CNB