Chamber 2020

Our Guides for the Future

First I’d like to say thank you to those who took the time to visit our blog after we announced on Monday that we had launched it.   It’s very rewarding to me to see that our Members are engaged and wanting to participate in this important discussion.   

I wanted to take a moment and introduce our four strategic initiatives that our Board has developed for our Chamber 2020 plan. They are:   

My New Year's Resolution

In the event that any of you reading served on the Board of Directors of the Chamber or are practicing for chamber jeopardy you know that tomorrow, June 30th, brings a close the Chamber’s fiscal year. Since it’s about to be our “New Year’s Eve,” I thought I’d write on a resolution for FY 2007-8.

Some of you might have read my column in the Naperville Sun in May  in which I quoted Newt Gringrich about his leadership maxim, “real change  requires real change.” Not that I’m a Newt-o-phile, but I think his maxim fits  what your board of directors and the Chamber are trying to do with our strategic plan.

If we are going to change the effectiveness of our Chamber to impact where are in 2020, we need to change what we do on a daily basis. In a world where you can be an active participant in a committee meeting from your laptop while you sit and have a frappuccino, we’d be doing a disservice to you, our Members, and to our community if we expected a different outcome by just on our laurels.

We’re looking at everything we (myself, the staff and your Board) do on a daily and annual basis, trying to figure out if what we do can be better aligned. The better we are structured, the more the Chamber can accomplish on your behalf.

So this year I will resolve to be open to changing everything. I’ll close by asking you a question (you can answer by clicking the comments section below): What’s the single biggest change you think our Chamber needs to make?

A New Discussion...

Well we at the Chamber have finally done it, we’ve taken the plunge and attempted to enter the world of “blogging.”  I can think of no better reason for starting a Chamber blog than to enter a discussion about the future of our Chamber.  I asked my staff to help me set this up and we're not experts in blogging so if you have any suggestions, please send them here and let us know your thoughts.