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Batter up: Wilder scores points with CEOs
Wilder scores points
with CEOs
by
Robert Powell
Virginia Business
April
2005
When Mayor L. Douglas Wilder met with
the Richmond Braves in late February to discuss plans
for a new stadium, he was carrying a bat given to him
hours before by the Virginia Council of CEOs.
The CEOs didn’t intend to give
the scrappy politician a symbolic weapon to use in negotiations
with the baseball team. The Richmond-based business
group, made up of about 80 executives of small to mid-size
companies, traditionally gives a bat to its guest speakers.
Wilder spoke at the end of the council’s two-day
retreat at the Kingsmill Resort and Spa in Williamsburg
before hustling back to Richmond for his meeting with
the Braves at city hall to discuss the team’s
proposal to build a new baseball stadium in Shockoe
Bottom.
The bat, nonetheless, fit perfectly
with the message Wilder had for the CEOs. He outlined
a tough-minded, businesslike approach to city government.
“You have to raise the bar,” he said, to
avoid settling for “the same old tried and tested
mediocrity.” When at the end of his speech he
laughingly struck a batter’s pose with his gift,
he appeared to be ready to take a swing at the entrenched
city bureaucracy he had just described.
Wilder told the CEOs that, in talking
with city agencies, he doesn’t ask, “What
do you do?” but instead poses the question “What
do you produce?”
The mayor talked of redundant departments
that need to be consolidated, such as separate printing
services for the city council and the school board.
He emphasized his desire to change the culture of city
government to a mindset focused on efficiency and cost
effectiveness. To city employees who tell him, “We
have always done it that way,” Wilder says his
reply is, “This is not as it is going to be.”
Wilder also talked about getting businesses
involved in government, as participants in public-private
partnerships or advisers to city officials. In talking
about possible opportunities for business, Wilder appeared
to score points with his audience in describing the
lonely quest of entrepreneurs. While many in the audience
chuckled and nodded, the mayor speculated that many
of them had pursued their dreams against the advice
of relatives and friends. Wilder could have easily been
talking about himself in his crusade to change the city.
“You have to plow new ground or watch the weeds
grow,” he said.
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