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CEOs OF NEW CORPORATE ERA BRING NEW CIVIC THINKING: LOOSELY ORGANIZED ITASCA GROUP MEETS PRIVATELY TO DEFINE - AND ACT ON - CRUCIAL ISSUES FOR THE TWIN CITIES REGION
22 February 2004, by Rochelle Olson, Star-Tribune
For the second half of the last century, a core of homegrown civic leaders, most notably the Dayton brothers, led family-owned businesses to prosperity while building the Twin Cities into a center known for a collective civic spirit and commitment to innovation.
The work and vision of the Daytons laid the foundation in the 1950s for Southdale, still a commercial cornerstone today. They either led or helped drive the construction of Nicollet Mall, Orchestra Hall, the Metrodome, the Guthrie, the Minneapolis Institute of Arts and the IDS Center.
The death of Ken Dayton last summer underscored the end of a corporate era when brothers and friends built a community on the prairie.
Today's Twin Cities corporate leaders are working through the Itasca Group, a 21st-century way to fill a void left by previous leaders who have stepped out of the public arena.
About 40 members gather monthly in the Mississippi riverfront headquarters of the McKnight Foundation.
Jim Campbell, retired Wells Fargo Bank Minnesota chairman, was the consensus choice as chairman. The group meets privately, and its goals are broadly defined for now.
But what has been revealed is that the Itasca Group has targeted three areas for action now and others for the longer term. The immediate focus: support efforts to retain and grow major employers, create and generate support for a comprehensive regional transportation plan, and help the University of Minnesota engage fully in regional development efforts.
Jon Campbell, who is regional president of Wells Fargo and is Jim Campbell's brother, is leading the corporate retention effort, and W. James McNerney Jr. of 3M is tackling the university piece. Transportation has yet to be assigned.
The longer-term goals of the group - named for the Itasca Project, a group of leaders who once met annually at the northern Minnesota state park - include coordinating efforts to grow small companies, addressing racial economic disparities and improving access to early-childhood education.
"The bottom line to me: There really hasn't been a forum of CEOs here for a long time to address the competitiveness of the Twin Cities," Jim Campbell said. "The question was, 'Where is the leadership?' "
That was once an easy question to answer. The Twin Cities were built by an identifiable core of business leaders. Their passion, camaraderie and vision were what one leader calls an esprit de civitas: a sense of pulling together for the greater good.
But the corporate culture here has shifted, as it has across the country. Most CEOs from out of town are more responsible to their shareholders than to the community. A cohesiveness and unified vision once came naturally. Today, it takes concerted effort.
As Michael Gorman sees it, "Our quality of life is not a birthright; we have to earn it."
Gorman, managing general partner of St. Paul Venture Capital, is in the core handful of Itasca participants who have spent the past year, with the aid of consultants McKinsey & Co., exploring the terrain for the effort. Independent consultant Candace Campbell, not related to the Campbell brothers, spent months studying past and current leadership efforts. The firm interviewed scores of current CEOs.
McKnight President Rip Rapson said the interviews revealed that corporate leaders are expressing "a sense of drifting away from the highest standards of excellence."
The working group expanded to the larger Itasca Group, whose attendees include many of the biggest CEOs in town: Marilyn Carlson Nelson of Carlson Companies Inc., Janet Dolan of Tennant Co., Richard Anderson of Northwest Airlines, Wells Fargo's Jon Campbell and 3M's McNerney.
Gov. Tim Pawlenty has attended, as have Minneapolis Mayor R.T. Rybak, St. Paul Mayor Randy Kelly and University of Minnesota President Robert Bruininks and Vice President Sandra Gardebring.
"The outcome that we're aiming for is that we move to a knowledge- based economy very successfully," Dolan said. "We don't want to wake up in 10 or 15 years and say, 'Boy, were we asleep at the switch.' "
Last month, the larger group adopted essential issues that need attention and established subgroups to focus on them. The group doesn't plan to expand or spend time focusing on bylaws or rules. The idea is not to create a permanent organization, but to make progress and dissolve in, at most, a couple of years.
Because modern CEOs face many demands on time and money, the group is trying to focus and concentrate. What the group has learned, however, is that there are many business groups working on similar issues - duplicating efforts and looking at fragments of issues and not the big picture.
Research showed nine business organizations working on economic development with a combined staff of at least 84 workers and budgets totaling at least $16 million.
Bruininks said Itasca is thinking longer-term than most existing organizations that tend to concentrate on smaller steps.
For example, organizations or institutions often go to the Legislature with specific agenda items, such as workers' compensation changes or tax-free zones.
"They don't typically step back and say, 'What are we like now and what do we want to be like in 10 to 12 years?' " Bruininks said. "This is an attempt to step back and take a look not just at the membership but the needs of the state."
After four meetings of the Itasca Group, optimism is high.
Gardebring said of the group's members: "They know how to get things done. They're not in it to admire the problem."
Said Dolan: "This is one of the best things business can do for the state, ensuring we have a strong economy. This is a 'We're all in this together kind of opportunity.' "
Power breakfasts
Decades ago, the Twin Cities' biggest business leaders didn't need formal monthly meetings to come together and discuss economic vision and action. Generally, longtime friends bumped into each other, often at the Minneapolis Club.
Ken Dayton had a regular table there. He, along with his brothers, ran the family department store business, and his family name became synonymous with unparalleled civic leadership and philanthropy.
In a frequently told tale of how things were done, the Daytons would eat breakfast amid the polished wood and stained-glass windows at the club with leaders from the hometown banks and Star Tribune Publisher John Cowles Jr. They would discuss the challenges of the growing community.
As the story is told, they might agree on a project before they finished their eggs, pledge their millions, then rally influential friends.
Cowles, who was there, chuckled at the notion: "That's somebody's pipe dream. Things aren't quite that easy and fast and simple."
But camaraderie did come easily to the group and helped get things done quickly. The Daytons and the Cowles shared lifelong ties and common backgrounds that created easy conversation. Ken Dayton courted Cowles' older sister; Bruce Dayton hunted with John Cowles Sr. and his son, John Jr.
The surviving men, though retired, remain engaged and share an uncommon grace and charm. Cowles Jr. politely insists on hearing about your life before he starts answering questions about his. News stories are posted on the walls of his downtown Minneapolis office about topics from troop movements in Iraq to the Minneapolis City Council and women's softball.
Bruce Dayton and Cowles don't care for detailed reminiscence. "I assumed it was part of the job when you owned the newspaper in town; you're responsible for the town," Cowles said.
Dayton said of himself and his brothers: "We soon realized that what happened outside our store was as important as what happened inside."
A change in priorities
In the mid-1980s, the movers and shakers were gathered at the Spring Hill Center in Orono to receive one of 10 regional awards from a representative of the respected Committee for Economic Development, based in Washington, D.C.
As former Metropolitan Council Chairman Curt Johnson recalled, someone in the audience asked whether there was anything that stood out about the Twin Cities compared with the nine other winning regions. Without hesitation, he said: "Every other place that got an award, we could point to some point in time where they came to a common vision. We couldn't find evidence of that here."
A woman in the audience responded, "We don't need that here; we know what fits."
Carlson Nelson describes the past era as a sort of Camelot with a distinct group of visionary leaders. "We're more of a repertory company now than a star system," Carlson said.
"We take turns at playing the lead and support because our companies have to compete globally. That means margins are thin and corporations are less able to offer loaned executives to play leadership roles."
CEOs answer to boards and stockholders; they don't have the power of the purse strings that the leaders of family-owned businesses once did. Corporate donations tend to be driven not by personal interest, but by marketing tie-ins.
Professional managers run the major companies, which are predominantly public, not private. Unlike the Daytons or Cowleses, the managers can't commit the resources of the company. "They have professionalized what they're doing, whereas we were doing what suited us," Bruce Dayton said.
Many corporate leaders don't have the hometown roots of the old guard. Some don't stay long, and some commute from homes in other states.
And McKnight's Rapson expressed surprise at how many of them didn't know each other before the Itasca meetings.
Where the Daytons remain revered public figures, Robert Ulrich, CEO of what is now called Target Corp., refused to be interviewed for this story and so far has not participated in the Itasca Group.
As recent executive director of the Minnesota Business Partnership, Duane Benson noticed more transience at the top of the state's largest businesses. He also said he got less face time with top leaders.
"The average life span of a CEO is three years. I'm finishing my eighth year, and I will outlive most of them," said Benson, who has since left the partnership, which includes 100 CEOs from the state's largest companies and focuses on reducing the tax burden on business and education.
Some hometown headquarters are gone: Honeywell left town, Pillsbury is part of General Mills and Norwest Bank was swallowed by California-based Wells Fargo. Businesses have broader perspectives - even the homegrown ones that remain. Most corporations compete globally, not just locally. Target once looked to expand in the suburbs, and now it has more than 1,000 stores throughout the country and sells goods on the Internet.
Look to Chicago?
"We don't have an overt crisis," said McKnight's Rapson. But there is evidence that other regions are making more progress than the Twin Cities.
Candace Campbell said her research showed that other regions are already looking into competitiveness. "If some of these other communities are engaged in discussion, they will be better off. It's time for us to have that thoughtful, engaged discussion," Campbell said.
Chicago brought together key community and business leaders and in 1996 formed Chicago Metropolis 2020. The results are tangible. The idea was to get five metro counties working together on issues, including sprawl; concentration of poor minorities; the spatial mismatch between jobs, affordable housing and transportation; and the disparate access to quality education.
Major corporate players take on one issue and donate 50 percent of their workweek to the cause, for no salary.
George Ranney, senior counsel to the oldest law firm in Chicago, Mayer, Brown, Rowe & Maw, is president and CEO of Chicago Metropolis.
The goals, he said, are straightforward: We can spend less time in traffic; we can live nearer to our jobs; we can protect more open space and environmentally sensitive areas; we can build communities that are friendly to walkers and bicylists; and we can make economic opportunity available to more of our region's residents.
The business group was successful at the Illinois General Assembly, winning increased spending on early-childhood education, prison reform and an initial study on an overhaul of local governments.
Ranney often speaks to Minnesota groups and warns them to get it together: "I tell them the business community first needs to figure out what to do. The key, we think, is transportation and housing."
Finding momentum
Twin Cities leaders have made recent trips, organized by the Greater Minneapolis Chamber of Commerce, to Denver and Seattle to study those communities' unique approaches to transit, roads, the arts and ballparks. The leaders were fired up and impressed with the all-for-one attitudes. But nothing much came of it.
"There's no lack of good ideas, but there's a lack of a mechanism for translating these moments into both public and private policy," said Jay Cowles, son of John Cowles Jr., who is involved in business and civic projects in St. Paul and Minneapolis.
Star Tribune President and Publisher J. Keith Moyer, who attends Itasca Group meetings, said the CEOs could weigh in heavily for a transportation plan based on the argument that congestion is bad for business.
"Probably for the region, it's millions of dollars a year in lost productivity because we don't move people well," he said. "For better or worse, politicians do listen to business leaders."
Bruininks agreed: "The real impact is when people stand up and say, 'This is not just important to the university, this is important to 3M.' "
Potential tangible outcomes aside, there's also a sense that it's good to have the CEOs in a room talking.
Yet the Itasca Group effort is anything but academic.
Though the meetings are behind closed doors for now, eventually, the group anticipates going public with a lobbying effort.
"The business community clearly has to get its act together, but ultimately you have to engage the broader community," Rapson said. "If this group can't create a set of ideas that are winning to others, it doesn't matter how powerful they are."
Rochelle Olson is at raolson@startribune.com.
A new era: The Itasca Group
Twin Cities corporate leaders have formed the Itasca Group, which includes about 40 members who meet privately once a month to define issues that need attention in the metro area.
Some of the attendees include:
Chairman Jim Campbell: retired Wells Fargo Bank Minnesota chairman
Marilyn Carlson Nelson: Carlson Companies
Janet Dolan: Tennant Co.
Richard Anderson: Northwest Airlines
Jon Campbell: Wells Fargo regional chairman
W. James McNerney Jr.: 3M.
Gov. Tim Pawlenty
Minneapolis Mayor R.T. Rybak
St. Paul Mayor Randy Kelly
Robert Bruininks: University of Minnesota president
Sandra Gardebring: University of Minnesota vice president
Copyright (c) 2004 Bell & Howell Information and Learning Company. All rights reserved.
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