Culture Matters

Getting anything done within an organization or the civic sector starts with culture.

This quarter, I will complete a 16-year run as president of University Circle Inc. (UCI). I will leave with the belief that any success we’ve had in University Circle traces back to our team and a culture of confidence at our workplace. My wife, Natalie Ronayne, who served for a decade as CEO of the Cleveland Botanical Garden and is now chief advancement officer for the Cleveland Metroparks, often says, “Culture eats strategy for lunch.” I believe it. To get anything done, your organizational culture has to be ready to tackle it.

Coming off of a term at Cleveland City Hall before joining UCI in 2005, there was a natural continuum of civic work. The RTA HealthLine was scheduled for completion in 2008, and we realized at UCI that we could harness that momentum to advance a local plan in University Circle. We launched the Bring Back Euclid Avenue Campaign in 2007, along with six other campaigns that became our Seven Campaigns for 2007. These campaigns all had three things in common: a shared vision, deliberate collaboration and consistent communication. From there, we were able to build a culture of confidence.

Nearly 15 years after the campaigns were launched, we met the goals we set out to achieve, with 2,500 homes built or renovated on the Euclid Corridor, more than $4 billion in investment along the HealthLine and full commercial and residential occupancy in University Circle.

A culture of confidence isn’t just important at local organizations, it’s also important in the civic sector. Businesses depend on a culture of confidence in the public sector because the civic tone either attracts or repels market investment. Businesses need the basics from government. Governments must be reliable, transparent, efficient and effective. If the basics aren’t in place to build partnerships, malaise can creep in that erodes market confidence and a willingness to conduct business.

We’ve been dangerously close to that point in the public sector in Cuyahoga County, but fortunately, the strength of local organizations and local communities have carried us forward.

In times where there’s been a culture of confidence in the public sector, we have seen results.

In the mid-1970s a strong board of county commissioners helped bring forth a regional transit system we know today as the Greater Cleveland Regional Transit Authority. In the 1980s, a new mayoral team at Cleveland City Hall brought local area knowledge in the private and nonprofit sectors to spark new operational efficiencies at City Hall under the Voinovich administration, which in turn, sparked a new era of civic progress that won the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame for Cleveland.

In the succeeding administration of Mayor Michael R. White, White was the most literal about his narrative of confidence with his slogan “Cleveland Competes.” Looking back to the late 1970s when there were just a handful of residential building permits issued in a city enduring a mass exodus of population, White built off of a renewed

civic confidence and invested in Cleveland neighborhoods with an unparalleled housing strategy using local community development corporations to find market investors. It all started with the culture of confidence restored by Voinovich and distilled by White to set the tone for civic reinvestment.

A vision that transcended the Voinovich and White administrations was the seminal planning work called Civic Vision 2000. A related Downtown Plan was also launched to set the table for collaboration between the city of Cleveland and Cuyahoga County and the development of the Gateway Complex of Jacobs Field and Gund Arena. At his retirement party, County Commissioner Tim Hagan called out his collaboration with Mayor Michael White as one of his single greatest moves in public life.

Into the 2000s, a vision to connect Cleveland to its lakefront led Mayor Jane Campbell and her administration to collaborate with multiple public agencies to reimagine our region’s relationship, with Lake Erie at its front door. I’m biased on this one, as I was the planning director that led this planning effort, along with project director Debbie Berry and the staff at Cleveland City Planning. We strove for communication and public input and achieved it — taking in and logging more than 5,000 public comments. That iterative communication emboldened our culture of confidence. We knew where we were going.

Vision, collaboration and communication build a culture of confidence. With that culture in place, we’ll get things done again. It’s time that we do. 

Chris Ronayne is president of University Circle Inc. and chairman of the Canalway Partners board of directors. He is the former Cleveland planning director.

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