Business group taking another step today
David Czurak

Business Leaders for Michigan is adding a sixth step to its three-year old, five-step Michigan Turnaround Plan at a meeting being held today at the Ford Motor Co.’s Research and Innovation Center in Dearborn.

The business roundtable, a statewide coalition of 80 top executives, hopes the sixth step will focus the state’s job-creation efforts across six Michigan industries that it feels offer the most potential to enhance the labor force and improve the personal income levels of employees.

The six industries BLM wants business associations and state and local government officials to pay special attention to are engineering, logistics that make the state the gateway to the Midwest, higher education, natural resources, a more sustainable and mobile automotive sector and life sciences.

BLM President and CEO Doug Rothwell, who headed the MEDC under former Gov. John Engler, said the state could gain from 238,000 to 504,000 new jobs over a decade if everyone gets onboard with the plan. Doing so he felt would make Michigan a top-10 state for growth in jobs and income. And now is the time to start to take the next step.

“We are beginning to see real, measurable evidence that Michigan is on its way to an economic recovery,” he said. “Now that our foundation is more solid, it’s time to look to the future.”

BLM Vice President Kelly Chesney said the sixth step was developed by 60 of the state’s chief executives at a six-hour retreat in August. “They brainstormed on how we could use our best assets,” she said.

“They all have a big stake in Michigan,” added Rothwell.

At the retreat, the business leaders identified the state’s assets, competitive strengths and growth opportunities that offer the greatest potential for new jobs and for growth in the state’s GDP. In fashioning the sixth step, BLM worked with global management firm McKinney and Co. to come up with the state’s most promising assets that offer the best shot for long-term economic gains, which the group believes would change Michigan in meaningful and lasting ways.

“We’ve identified growth opportunities that we are confident will have the highest potential over the next 10 years to accelerate growth and create thousands of good-paying jobs. These are real objectives, grounded with research and with prospects, to dramatically reshape and strengthen Michigan’s economic future,” said Rothwell.

“I would say that portion of the turnaround plan jives with the governor’s view,” said Chesney.

“We want people to steal our ideas and make those their own,” said Rothwell.

Rothwell told the Business Journal that there isn’t a “silver bullet” that will put Michigan on top of the economic-growth list, and it will take a lot of work by a lot of people in the private and public sectors to pull it off. “We see our job as raising awareness and excitement about this. We see our role as pulling this thing together and tracking it,” he said.

Rothwell said good progress has been made on the turnaround plan’s first five steps that range from managing public finances properly to accelerating the economic growth of metropolitan areas, which he said were largely in the realm of the state’s public sector. “Using our turnaround plan as a checklist, we can see how much has been done to strengthen our state,” he said.

But Rothwell added that local governments shouldn’t focus their efforts on all six targeted industries. Instead, he said cities, townships and counties should choose a few and concentrate on those. “Political leadership should do the topic and local governments and residents should define what they want for their area. They don’t have to go after all six. Two or three would be fine,” he said.

The question Rothwell said community leaders should ask is, “What can we be really great at? Leverage the jobs in your area and grow that sector.” Rothwell also said an area’s business leaders need to help elect candidates that support the plan and then support them when they enact laws and ordinances that advance the plan.

“It is having their backs,” he said. “We are business leaders for Michigan, not for business. And we feel what’s good for Michigan is good for the country.”