EVERETT — The as-yet unnamed organization that will be an advocate for business in Snohomish County is making progress and should have a business plan ready by summer.
That was the report Wednesday from Troy McClelland, chief executive and president of the organization that will combine the chambers of commerce in Everett and South Snohomish County with the county’s Economic Development Council.
McClelland talked to a group of business leaders, saying he has several candidates for a name for the organization and expects to announce one within a few weeks.
He said a number of business groups have been working in the past five weeks since he was hired on deciding which activities from the three founding groups should be continued and on which issues to focus in the near term.
He promised the organization will use “continuous improvement” as its mantra, strengthen its partnerships and create new ones to pursue its goals and seek continuous feedback to measure its success. “We want to do the right things, at the right time with the right resources,” he said.
Before McClelland’s talk, retired Boeing Co. executive Carolyn Corvi talked about the importance of change. Corvi, now chairman at Virginia Mason Health System, is responsible for developing Boeing’s first moving assembly line for the 737, an idea that has been adopted from the Renton plant to the company’s Everett plant.
Corvi noted that the moving assembly line for airplanes was a difficult idea to enact but one that has paid dividends for the company, including lower production costs for the 767, a move that helped it win a $30 billion contract last week from the Air Force to build the new refueling tanker.
“When we say we would build airplanes in a moving production line, people thought it would be like a Charlie Chaplin movie,” Corvi said. “But things need to change because the world doesn’t stand still.”
Corvi called the new business group a bold step forward.
“Not too many organizations are willing to try to embrace the future like you are,” she said.
She encouraged business leaders to focus on customers.
“Once you recognize who the customer really is, you can start to make a change that is really meaningful,” she said.
She noted that the moving production line was a big change at Boeing because the company was asking people who had built careers on what they knew to start doing things differently.
She said people don’t resist change, they resist being changed.
And she noted that the new organization will have to ask itself repeatedly why it is making changes, who its customers are and how it can serve them better.
“There are three things to think about as it relates to yourself,” she said. “You can be a change initiater, a change implementor, a change adopter, or you can opt out. If you’re got going to play, you really need to go somewhere else.”
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