Focus Forward
Business leaders need to laser in on the task at hand: Innovation and growth in spite of political outcomes.
The sun was shining brightly as Nov. 7 dawned on Kansas City, but it’s a fairly safe bet that a majority of Ingram’s readers showed up at work early that morning under a cloud—the vote tally in this year’s presidential race probably wasn’t to most business executives’ liking.
And yet, the sun did come up. Every time it does, it brings with it the promise of new opportunities. I think that’s the take-away from the 2012 elections. For years, we’ve been reading about corporations with trillions in cash sitting on the sideline, awaiting clarity and a sense of certainty from policy-makers.
You want clarity? For an important perspective on it, ask any executive in banking, health care or insurance if regulatory uncertainty was something that first appeared in January 2009. The fact is, the ripples of federal policy, along with state and local regulations, have been with us all of our careers. They aren’t going away. The question before us is: What are we going to do in response?
This issue of Ingram’s, in many ways, addresses that fundamental question. As an example, just look at the five companies profiled in our cover story on small business successes. In some of the most challenged business sectors you can think of, these go-getters have made huge strides to advance the causes of their organizations—MedTrak Services in health-care administration, EPR Properties in real estate investment, James Engle Custom Homes in residential construction.
Those sectors have been hammered, folks, but these companies have demonstrated strong, consistent growth for years. Consider this: Even as American incomes have been falling for nearly half a decade, putting a squeeze on disposable income, the crew at travel agency Acendas drove their revenues up nearly 62 percent between the past two presidential elections. And Proximity Wireless endured start-up struggles for several years before breaking into its high-growth track in 2009, a year the rest of the nation’s economy was mired in recession.
Read their stories and see what those owners and executives brought to the processes: Commitment. Integrity. Perseverance. Sacrifice. Determination. They know that cost-cutting, while needed, is not in itself a business plan; leaders of these companies made customer service their absolute priority, they focused on making sure they had the right people in the right roles, they articulated a vision and executed it, then measured progress toward it, and they increased their market share. In nearly all cases, dramatically.
While they were achieving stellar growth, something else was going on in Kansas City, as you’ll also read in Ingram’s 2012 Transportation and Distribution Industry Outlook Report. Executives from some of the region’s leading organizations in transportation, transit and distribution say Kansas City is repositioned itself for what could be spectacular achievements within the logistics sector. Not just because of glittering new assets such as the CenterPoint and BNSF intermodal systems coming on-line, but potentially as a global source of logistics intellect.
We’ve taken the big knock against the Heart of America—that it’s the middle of nowhere—and turned it into a powerful competitive advantage because we’re actually closer to more cities in America, and with better access to markets in Canada and Mexico, than virtually any other metropolitan area.
You’ll also find in this issue advisory pieces on opportunities for investing and for improving business operations. In short, consider this month’s Ingram’s a tool to help evaluate your own business interests and if your organization is strategically focused on growth, hiring and investment for the future.
We at Ingram’s like to think of ourselves as students of business. We study, live and breathe business success, and we see over and over what it takes for companies to grow. At the same time, like many small businesses and larger corporations alike, we’re working harder, often times for less revenue and profit, than we have in previous years. We know the depth, breadth and scope of the challenge.
That, however, is no reason to pull in the horns. It’s imperative that every organization look at strategies for growth, plans for hiring, investments in equipment and in people. There’s never been a more critical need for businesses to demonstrate the ingenuity, nimbleness and dexterity that made the U.S. economy the envy of the world. The real innovators—the ones who drive our economic growth and job creation—need to roll up the sleeves and get busy building their enterprises, which in turn, brings the U.S. economy roaring back.
America, and the Kansas City region, have a lot riding on business leaders to snap out of a depression so many were sucked into and to become laser-focused on a successful future.
Joe Sweeney
Editor-In-Chief & Publisher
JSweeney@IngramsOnLine.com