Continuity: Creating Long Term Success

CONTINUITY CREATING LONG TERM SUCCESS

Pass a National Budget Now!

“DOING NOTHING, WHICH CONGRESS HAS BECOME PRETTY GOOD AT, will bring about the end of sequestration which will cut spending for defense and non-defense.” - Joe Lieberman “There’s NEVER BEEN MORE AT STAKE.” - John Cornyn “The challenge of reducing our deficit may appear daunting, I DON’T BELIEVE IT IS IMPOSSIBLE if Washington takes to heart the message.”

- Kay R. Hagan

“Washington needs to have A BROAD AND SERIOUS CONVERSATION about our nation’s debt.” - Michael Bennet

CALLING ALL COMPROMISERS WITH COMMON SENSE - PG. 34

CONSIGLI CONSTRUCTION

Generations of Success

10 STEPS Becoming a More Effective Philanthropist

INSPIRING THE NEXT GENERATION OF TRANSPORTATION WORKERS Roads, Rails, and Race Cars After-School Program

D

Modern and Contemporary Art Conservation

En E ga N gi VE ng R Co M m E m T un R ity O , S VO ch L oo U l a NT nd E Bu ER sin S es s

“Many of my colleagues have been working to FIND A WAY FORWARD on our budget issues.” - Mike Johanns

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TABLE OF CONTENTS | VOLUME 4 ISSUE 3

T

he celebrated Denver Art Museum has embraced the next stage in the evolution of contemporary conservation. The variable media program benefits from the enlightened goals of Kate Moomaw, assistant conservator for modern and contemporary art at the Denver Art Museum.

In creating a program to preserve media such as film, audio and in general art using technology takes collaboration between artists, conservators and museums. The physical fragility of film, the technology challenge and the transforming experience of the Internet are taken into consideration by art collectors and curators in how, if at all, to maintain variable media. Within modern and contemporary conservation, accounting for electronic elements has proven to be much more complex than the more established traditional methods. And so, a look behind the scenes at the Denver Art Museum with Moomaw is both formative and exciting.

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LETTER FROM THE EDITOR

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LETTER FROM THE PUBLISHER

12

INSPIRATIONS

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ADVISORY BOARD

Modern and Contemporary Art Conservation THE DENVER ART MUSEUM

Men who look upon themselves born to reign, and others to obey, soon grow insolent. Selected from the rest of mankind, their minds are early poisoned by importance."

- T h o m a s Pa i n e (Page 34)

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OPINION

22

BOOK REVIEW

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COLLABORATION CLOSE UP

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THANK YOU 2

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ICOSA: What prompted the creation of the variable media program?

MOOMAW: The Denver Art Museum (DAM) has rather organically collected a number of variable media artworks in the past few decades, and at the same time, awareness of the complex preservation needs of works like these has grown within the art conservation community. There are now specialists in‌ CONTINUED ON PAGE 80

74 THE MORE THINGS CHANGE

Continuity and Change in the Fire Service

LEADING EDGE ADVISORS

TABLE OF CONTENTS | VOLUME 4 ISSUE 3

46

62

Integrating Renewables on the Grid

How One Family Owned Business Carries on a Passion for Building

Creating Sustainable Continuity of America’s Transmission Lines

BUSINESS

50

Energizing the West with a Cooperative Spirit for 60 Years Tri-State Generation and Transmission Association ACADEMIA

26

Back to School

Generations of Success

66

A Culture of Care Shinise in Practice

68

dovetail solutions™ Stability in Motion

54

Faegre Baker Daniels LLP Two Firms Come Together to Ensure Success Over Time

Metro Volunteers Engages Community, School and Business Volunteers

GOVERNMENT

28

70

Energy Efficiency Business Coalition Colorado’s State of the State

What Do Success and Continuity Taste Like?

30

ICOSA Talks to Stranahan’s Colorado Whiskey to Find Out

Inspiring the Next Generation of Transportation Workers Roads, Rails, and Race Cars After-School Program

COMMUNITY

56

The World is a Dangerous Place

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The More Things Change Continuity and Change in the Fire Service

Protecting Your Most Important Assets

58

Small Businesses Surviving Challenging Times An Interview with Twinkle Baby’s Lara Pebbles

34

Pass a National Budget Now! Calling All Compromisers with Common Sense 4

VOLUME 4 ISSUE 3

60

Listening and Adapting to Change for Long-Term Success

78

10 Steps to Becoming a More Effective Philanthropist

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An Approach To Variable Media: Modern and Contemporary Art Conservation The Denver Art Museum

You’ll leaders You’llfind find tomorrow’s tomorrow’s leaders ininour ourclassrooms classrooms today today Just walk Colorado’sMonfort MonfortCollege Collegeof ofBusiness Business you’ll Just walkthrough throughthe thehalls hallsofofthe theUniversity University of of Northern Northern Colorado’s andand you’ll seesee them ——a new They’rechallenged challengedbybyourouraward-winning award-winning faculty. them a newgeneration generationofofbright, bright, motivated motivated students. students. They’re faculty.

They each internshiptotoget getreal-world real-worldexperience experience before graduation.

They eachparticipate participateininaaprofessional professional experience experience internship before graduation. studentshave haveplaced placedininthe thetop top 4–10 4–10 percent on testtest measuring OurOur students on aa nationally nationallyadministered administeredstandardized standardized measuring core businessknowledge—for knowledge—forthe thepast past nine nine years! It’s to earn thethe core business It’s also alsothe thefirst firstand andonly onlybusiness businessprogram program to earn coveted MalcolmBaldrige BaldrigeNational National Quality Quality Award Award from thethe United States. coveted Malcolm fromthe theOffice Officeofofthe thePresident Presidentof of United States.

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LETTER FROM THE EDITOR

Out of the Mouths of Babes

BY JAN MAZOTTI

M

y nine-year-old daughter is trying to figure out who to vote for (not that she can vote yet).

She was talking with her friends at school the other day about her choice for president. “I vote for Mrs. Obama because she likes kids, she reads to them, she exercises a lot, and she even invites them to the White House. I saw her talk on Nickelodeon. I don’t know if that other lady will do that,” she declared.

A listening boy next to her said, “I hate you. You are stupid.”

She asked why he hated her. He said, “My dad says no one should vote for Obama. I hate you!”

Over dinner that night she asked why this boy hated her. “We are voting for a president. I don’t understand,” she said. I told her, “He doesn’t hate you. He is saying what his dad believes, or says to others. Don’t take it personally honey–vote

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for what you believe in. Everyone has a difference of opinion, and that’s what makes America great!”

The issue of continuity is upon us, especially as we are forced to endure a vulgar and sordid election season that is rife with inaccurate accusations, hatred and mean-spiritedness. Candidates are so busy pointing fingers at their opponents that the issues most important to America’s continuity are lost in the rhetoric. Interestingly however, is that the foundation of democratic politics was rooted in the belief that elected officials representing different constituent groups worked together using the political process to move America in a positive direction.

History has shown us that there can be no continuity without some compromise. We have seen it in every major historical era of this country–the Civil War, the Great Depression, Vietnam and the

list goes on and on. As Colin Powell so eloquently said, “… just as they did in Philadelphia when they were writing the Constitution, sooner or later, you've got to compromise. You've got to start making the compromises that arrive at a consensus and move the country forward.”

While no one can be right every time, in my opinion we must embrace a civically-engaged, thoughtful and formidable discussion on the issues, and realize that while others may disagree, they are not necessarily wrong–they just don’t see things the way you do.

If the conversations of fourth graders are any indication as to what the temperature is in this country, we should reflect on our actions and words as adults.

This country was founded by gritty pioneers who risked it all for freedoms that we enjoy to this day–speech, the right to bear arms, and the right to vote for those whose beliefs and policies align most with ours. And, it will require compromise to make this change.

Can we find a way to be kind, to be accepting, to be involved, and to ultimately be amazing?

What do you think–can we compromise for the sake of our children and grandchildren? Can we withhold our hatred, and realize that conversations should be about policy–not a personal affront to our neighbors? Isn’t that the foundation that this country was founded on? And, shouldn’t we commend those leaders who are willing to work side-by-side on policy, to get the work done instead of practicing the rhetoric and the politics?

You decide by getting involved!

All the best, Jan

Cultivate fresh ideas and help them take root.

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LETTER FROM THE PUBLISHER

Change is Inevitable

BY GAYLE DENDINGER WITH AN NETTE PER EZ

In order for an organization to build wisely for the future, it must first reflect on what it already has established. Smart organizations build on established infrastructure, resources and vision from the past as the basis for the next round. The snail reminds us not only to master other skills-building interconnections, gathering resources, creating vision and transforming theory to practice but continually improving these processes gradually, day by day.

START-UPS FAILING

“Never give in. Never, never, never, never–in nothing, great or small, large or petty–never give in, except to convictions of honor and good sense.

Never yield to force. Never yield to the apparently overwhelming might of the enemy.” – Winston Churchill

M

erriam-Webster defines the word continuity as an, “uninterrupted connection, succession, or union.” We at ICOSA define the word continuity as allowing projects to build on one another instead of starting over each time. By reusing and rebuilding infrastructure and resource

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management systems, collaborative organizations have a vantage point, and can ascend faster to higher levels of productivity. With endless possibilities of how to grow, expand and transform, this collaborative cycle could tap into the infinite. We also look at continuity as preserving best practices that bring strong results in a changing world.

LESSONS OF THE SNAIL

The snail is a symbol for evolving strategies, tactics and solutions for sustainable improvement. Its spiral growth symbolizes that with each passing we should get stronger. The spiral shape of the snail’s shell helps us remember that adaptation is a continually cycling process.

Unfortunately the sad reality is that many start-ups will fail. Shikhar Ghosh, senior lecturer at Harvard Business School, remarks on the failure of companies by saying, “If failure means liquidating all assets, with investors losing most or all the money they put into the company, then the failure rate for start-ups is 30 to 40 percent. If failure refers to failing to see the projected return on investment, then the failure rate is 70 to 80 percent.

If failure is defined as declaring a projection and then falling short of meeting it, then the failure rate is a whopping 90 to 95 percent.”

Considering this, if a company is effective, but not efficient, its focus should be on implementation of continuous efficiency improvement measures. But how can a company really measure continuity?

There are several ways. First, measure what matters–industry, size, geography, complexity, standards and those that are best-in-class. Or link qualitative and quantitative measurements with strategic profitable goals throughout the organization; or by linking incremental, measurable goals that are associated with tasks and events; or by plotting the historical lagging indicators as well as forward-leading indicators.

Jim Collins proposes that we face continuous uncertainty and that we cannot control, or accurately predict, significant aspects of the world around us. Furthermore, what he calls the “doom loop” is really a “vicious circle that unsuccessful companies fall into, rushing first in one direction, then another, in the hope of creating a sudden, sharp break with the past that will propel them to success. Some attempt to do this through acquisitions, others through bringing in a new leader who decides to change direction completely, sometimes in a direction incompatible with the company. The results are never successful. The difference between the two approaches is characterized by the slow, steady, methodical preparation inherent in the flywheel, as compared to the abrupt, radical, and often revolutionary, rather than evolutionary changes within the company.” Most good things take time to develop and emerge properly.

If you try to speed up the birth of a baby bird, or help the butterfly hatch from the chrysalis, you will generally cripple them and the process.

COMPANIES FAILING AFTER 10 YEARS

If an organization wants to reach the top, and stay there, it will require constant improvement of every system. Organizations have to consistently move forward, creating something new, something bigger and something better to keep its stakeholders interested.

W. Edward Deming believed in 14 points, two of which are continuity driven. The first is to “create constancy of purpose toward improvement of product and service, with the aim to become competitive and to stay in business, and to provide jobs.” Deming also purports that companies can “improve constantly and forever the system of production and service, to improve quality and productivity, and thus constantly decrease cost.”

In 1981, Ford Motor Company incurred $3 billion in losses while sales were rapidly declining. Deming was recruited by Division Quality Manager John Manaoogian to kick-start a quality undertaking. Deming questioned the company's

culture, and the technique its managers used. To Ford's surprise, Deming talked not about quality, but about management. He reported that management actions were responsible for 85 percent of all problems in developing better cars at Ford. In 1986, Ford came out with a profitable line of cars, the Taurus-Sable line, thus making it the most profitable American auto company and for the first time since the 1920s surpassing General Motors. Ford’s Chair Donald Peterson told Autoweek, “We are moving toward building a quality culture at Ford, and the many changes that have been taking place here have their roots directly in Deming’s teachings.”

Nothing is constant. Change is inevitable.

Many managers are more comfortable building a new organizational structure

of processes in manufacturing, engineering and business management. The Kaizen strategy calls for never-ending efforts at improvement involving everyone in the organization–managers and workers alike. Great leaders inspire people around them to become better. And people want to do their best because of their leadership.

The best businesses–the ones that continue to survive, even when massive market shifts affect their industry–are ruthless about improvement. They find new ways to educate their customers, employees and partners. They look at their processes, policies and systems and ask themselves: “How can we make this more efficient? What don’t we need anymore? What do we need now?” And they don’t fall into the “We’ve always

By reusing and rebuilding infrastructure and resource management systems, collaborative organizations have a vantage point, and can ascend faster to higher levels of productivity. than deciding when the old ones must go, and it is the function of company leadership to develop solutions that continually work for the common good.

done it this way,” trap, which causes companies to struggle and fall.

CONTINUITY OF STRONG COMPANIES

Continuity is the key to creating an appreciation of value. “Nothing fails like success,” claims Richard Pascale, which means that what was strength yesterday becomes the root of weakness today.

In 1990, Richard Pascale wrote that relentless change requires businesses to continuously reinvent themselves. While the creature characteristics, which have been discussed in previous ICOSA issues, are sure to aid an organization’s efforts, they are not what truly drive growth.

Downward trends, due to inevitable diminishing market demands, are certain, unless they have a plan for continual growth and development.

Kaizen is a Japanese word that focuses upon continuous improvement

NOTHING FAILS LIKE SUCCESS

Whether we like it or not, our world has reached a frantic pace of consumption; that which is first innovative and exciting, quickly becomes outdated and obsolete. With each new generation comes new perspectives, new standards of service and higher demands. Without the ability to expand and update products or services, the natural tendency of an organization is to spiral downward. To stay in

VOLUME 4 ISSUE 3

9

LETTER FROM THE PUBLISHER

Founder and Publisher Gayle Dendinger President & Editor-In-Chief Jan Mazotti Vice President and Editor-At-Large Kim DeCoste Managing Editor Annette Perez

Nothing is constant. Change is inevitable.

Many managers are more comfortable building a new organizational structure than deciding when the old ones must go. demand, an organization must constantly innovate, infiltrate and regenerate.

People problems become more time consuming; technology problems become more complex; management becomes more difficult. Circulation strategies require ever-widening resources and thinking; facilities are ever-expanding and more expensive; markets are elusive and ever-changing and products require an endless battle against margin creep and staleness. Oftentimes, companies lose sight of what exactly it was they set out to do.

Guidelines for successful continuity include: • Never stop growing; always stretch yourself.

• Work on areas of weakness that don’t come naturally.

• Learn discipline by practicing sound fundamentals, over and over again until you can act naturally.

• Sustain a consistent effort over an extended period of time.

• Although there are interruptions and delays, never lose sight of your goals.

• Don’t live in a shell (even though snails do).

• Unless you try to do something beyond what you have mastered, you

will never grow.

• Be a gracious loser and a perpetual student.

• Remember the power of process, the power of repetition, and the power of endorsement.

CONCLUSION

Continuity is hard work. “Almost nothing works the first time it’s attempted. Just because what you’re doing does not seem to be working, doesn’t mean it won’t work. It just means that it might not work the way you’re doing it. If it was easy, everyone would be doing it, and you wouldn’t have an opportunity,” declares Bob Parsons, executive chair and founder of GoDaddy.com.

Time and the acceleration of change can work for or against us. The repetitive animation of a twisting spiral is a reality check that reminds us that successive growth becomes successively more difficult and can cause a downward spiral in an organization. It is one thing to reach the top: it is quite another to stay there. And the most difficult and most neglected is continuity ensuring relevancy and longevity.

Sincerely, Gayle

Contributing Writers Gary Black, Keenan Brug, Bruce DeBoskey, Kelly de la Torre, Gail Frances, Dr. Stephan Hittmann, Diane Irvin, Rebecca Kersting, Valerie Lefler, Helen Novak, Candace Ruiz, Rebecca Saltman, Brandon Shaffer, Judy Taylor, Eric Van Orden, Darryl Watson, Jennifer Watson Staff Writers Maria E. Luna, Emily Haggstrom Advertising Inquires Please contact Jan Mazotti at janm@icosamag.com Art Director Nick Heckman Photography and Design Andrew Thompson Videography Tim Bungum, Blake Rubenstein, Tammy Schmidt Social Media Maria E. Luna, Annette Perez, Tammy Schmidt Copy Editors Maria E. Luna, Melissa Root ICOSA® welcomes editorial submissions from its readers. Whenever possible, submissions should be sent in electronic format. All unsolicited materials should be submitted to the publisher at the address below. Items not sent electronically will not be returned. The publisher reserves the right to decline use of materials at their discretion and assumes no liability for unsolicited materials.

ICOSA® (ISSN1938-2081) is published four times a year.

No part of ICOSA® may be reproduced without written permission from the publisher. ©2012 ICOSA Corporate Headquarters 4100 Jackson Street / Denver, CO 80216 Office 303.333.3688 Fax 303.333.4832 Email janm@icosamag.com Website www.icosamag.com All third class postage paid at Denver, Colorado To view an electronic copy of ICOSA® (ISSN1938209X) or to get your free subscription, go to www. icosamag.com.

Check the ICOSA Channel on YouTube www.youtube.com/user/ICOSAmagazine Friend us at ICOSA Magazine on Facebook www.facebook.com/ICOSAMAGAZINE

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VOLUME 4 ISSUE 3

LETTER FROM THE PUBLISHER

Founder and Publisher Gayle Dendinger President & Editor-In-Chief Jan Mazotti Vice President and Editor-At-Large Kim DeCoste Managing Editor Annette Perez

Nothing is constant. Change is inevitable.

Many managers are more comfortable building a new organizational structure than deciding when the old ones must go. demand, an organization must constantly innovate, infiltrate and regenerate.

People problems become more time consuming; technology problems become more complex; management becomes more difficult. Circulation strategies require ever-widening resources and thinking; facilities are ever-expanding and more expensive; markets are elusive and ever-changing and products require an endless battle against margin creep and staleness. Oftentimes, companies lose sight of what exactly it was they set out to do.

Guidelines for successful continuity include: • Never stop growing; always stretch yourself.

• Work on areas of weakness that don’t come naturally.

• Learn discipline by practicing sound fundamentals, over and over again until you can act naturally.

• Sustain a consistent effort over an extended period of time.

• Although there are interruptions and delays, never lose sight of your goals.

• Don’t live in a shell (even though snails do).

• Unless you try to do something beyond what you have mastered, you

will never grow.

• Be a gracious loser and a perpetual student.

• Remember the power of process, the power of repetition, and the power of endorsement.

CONCLUSION

Continuity is hard work. “Almost nothing works the first time it’s attempted. Just because what you’re doing does not seem to be working, doesn’t mean it won’t work. It just means that it might not work the way you’re doing it. If it was easy, everyone would be doing it, and you wouldn’t have an opportunity,” declares Bob Parsons, executive chair and founder of GoDaddy.com.

Time and the acceleration of change can work for or against us. The repetitive animation of a twisting spiral is a reality check that reminds us that successive growth becomes successively more difficult and can cause a downward spiral in an organization. It is one thing to reach the top: it is quite another to stay there. And the most difficult and most neglected is continuity ensuring relevancy and longevity.

Sincerely, Gayle

Contributing Writers Gary Black, Keenan Brug, Bruce DeBoskey, Kelly de la Torre, Gail Frances, Dr. Stephan Hittmann, Diane Irvin, Rebecca Kersting, Valerie Lefler, Helen Novak, Candace Ruiz, Rebecca Saltman, Brandon Shaffer, Judy Taylor, Eric Van Orden, Darryl Watson, Jennifer Watson Staff Writers Maria E. Luna, Emily Haggstrom Advertising Inquires Please contact Jan Mazotti at janm@icosamag.com Art Director Nick Heckman Photography and Design Andrew Thompson Videography Tim Bungum, Blake Rubenstein, Tammy Schmidt Social Media Maria E. Luna, Annette Perez, Tammy Schmidt Copy Editors Maria E. Luna, Melissa Root ICOSA® welcomes editorial submissions from its readers. Whenever possible, submissions should be sent in electronic format. All unsolicited materials should be submitted to the publisher at the address below. Items not sent electronically will not be returned. The publisher reserves the right to decline use of materials at their discretion and assumes no liability for unsolicited materials.

ICOSA® (ISSN1938-2081) is published four times a year.

No part of ICOSA® may be reproduced without written permission from the publisher. ©2012 ICOSA Corporate Headquarters 4100 Jackson Street / Denver, CO 80216 Office 303.333.3688 Fax 303.333.4832 Email janm@icosamag.com Website www.icosamag.com All third class postage paid at Denver, Colorado To view an electronic copy of ICOSA® (ISSN1938209X) or to get your free subscription, go to www.icosamag.com.

Check the ICOSA Channel on YouTube www.youtube.com/user/ICOSAmagazine Friend us at ICOSA Magazine on Facebook www.facebook.com/ICOSAMAGAZINE COVER ART: Abandoned Dwellings © Vladimir Kush.

All rights reserved.

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INSPIRATIONS

Continuity and Growth Potential

BY REBECCA KERSTING

Other small organisms such as crustaceans and even some bugs use other means when regenerating. Some of them shed their entire exoskeleton and then grow a new one. This leaves them weak and vulnerable while the new exoskeleton forms. Snails, even when they do not inhabit the older portion of their shell, must carry around their obsolete body parts. While this may seem like a hindrance, they are, on the whole, much safer than their crustacean counterparts. Although unaware, snails serve as a fantastic metaphor for the importance of continuity. Their slow, methodical movements allow for infinite growth potential. Through their history in the form of striations, we can see where they have been and how they were affected by their surroundings. Their expansive growth is persistent throughout their life. Even if they move slowly, theirs is always a forward motion, carrying with them all knowledge of where they’ve been.

S

nails are part of the lineage of mollusks known as gastropods, which literally means belly-footed animals. There are as many as 50,000 species of snails living all over the world in seas and oceans, fresh bodies of water and even terrestrially, adjacent to water. They are peculiar-looking animals known for their singular foot, slow movement and beautiful and intricate shells.

The primary function of the snail’s shell is protection. It shields the small gastropods from predators and helps to prevent desiccation. The spiral shells form gradually, extending from the opening.

Shell growth is a continuous, two-part process–first a very thin, transparent

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outer layer called the periostracum is formed; second, the mantle of the snail secretes calcium-rich inner layers, reinforcing the new growth.

Snails’ shells are steadily growing and regenerating. They develop for the entire length of the snail’s life with new growth appearing atop the current infrastructure. Every time a new layer is added, small vertical lines appear on the shell. The width and regularity of this transverse stria, as they are called, depends greatly on the age, species and environmental conditions during a snail’s life. The stria of the snail is like the rings of a tree–they can tell you volumes about the snail’s past.

The spiral shape of the snail’s shell helps us remember that adaptation is a continually cycling process. Collaboration works by building upon other people’s strengths. Each experience of an individual or organization increases their knowledge. These experiences can also create continuity by acting as stepping stones to new projects.

Continuity allows projects to build on one another instead of starting over each time. By reusing and rebuilding infrastructure, resource management systems and resources, collaborative organizations have a vantage point and can ascend faster to higher levels of productivity. With endless possibilities of how to grow, expand and transform, this collaboration cycle could tap into the infinite.

Help Our Kids’ Dreams Take Flight Through the Metro Volunteers School Service Program, volunteers are teaching theater, staffing school libraries, coaching kids on sports and academics and more. Each program is customized to the needs of local children and the passions of volunteers.

Help expand the School Service Program into more schools. Become a corporate sponsor or a volunteer today. For more information, call Metro Volunteers at 303.282.1234 or visit us at www.metrovolunteers.org.

ADVISORY BOARD

BRUCE DeBOSKEY, J.D.

F

or more than 30 years, Bruce DeBoskey has been dedicated to community building and social justice through his professional and volunteer work. It is with that mission and commitment in mind that he founded The DeBoskey Group, a Colorado-based philanthropic advisory consulting practice helping individuals, families, businesses and foundations organize, strategize and maximize the impact of their philanthropic initiatives.

The DeBoskey Group guides clients through a customized assessment of their current giving, a refinement of their vision and values, research to identify optimal nonprofit partners, development of a philanthropic strategy, implementation of a giving plan and evaluation of outcomes achieved both for the donor and the recipients.

With businesses, plans may involve community investment, corporate social responsibility, social innovation and employee giving and volunteerism. With families, philanthropy issues may include the establishment of family charitable values and goals, multigenerational engagement, legacy planning and governance. The DeBoskey Group serves as the “Fourth Leg of the Table,” working alongside tax, legal and wealth advisers to help clients achieve their philanthropic goals.

Bruce writes a regular monthly column "On Philanthropy" in the business section of the Sunday Denver Post. His topics include corporate social responsibility and alternative approaches to business volunteerism and giving, creating a philanthropic legacy, multigenerational giving challenges, women’s philanthropy, children as philanthropists, how to be an effective philanthropist and many others.

All of his columns may be read at www. deboskeygroup.com/media.

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Bruce previously served as the regional director of the Anti-Defamation League's (ADL) Mountain States Region, directing the regional civil/ human rights initiatives of this nearly 100-year-old national nonprofit organization. As director, he led an 11 person staff, a 100-plus member board of directors, and its 20-plus working committees and he learned about the best and worst practices in the nonprofit sector. This experience helps him research, select and work with nonprofit partners on behalf of donors.

Prior to joining ADL in 2002, Bruce was a shareholder in Silver & DeBoskey, P.C., a 30-person Denver law firm specializing in dispute resolution of complex civil matters. His areas of trial practice included discrimination, civil rights, professional liability, environmental torts, personal injury, employment disputes and business litigation. Among his achievements during his distinguished 25-year legal career, he won groundbreaking cases on behalf of workers at the Rocky Flats Nuclear Weapons Plant.

Bruce holds an A.B. from Indiana University in political science and environmental studies and received his J.D. from the Georgetown University Law Center, where he served as an editor of the Law Review. Following law school, Bruce clerked for the Honorable Richard Matsch, U.S. District Judge for the District of Colorado, and settled in Denver, where he’s lived for 35 years.

He currently serves as a member of the board of directors of the Colorado Philanthropic Advisors Network (CPAN), the advisory board of the Philanthropic Center of the Women's College at the University of Denver, the Rose Medical Center Advisory Board, and the Corporate Community Investment Network.

BRUCE DEBOSKEY, J.D. THE DEBOSKEY GROUP 2255 E. 18th Ave. Denver, CO 80206 t: 303.953.3772 w: www.deboskeygroup.com

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ADVISORY BOARD

ERIC H. DRUMMOND

E

ric Drummond has practiced administrative law and complex administrative litigation for two decades, focusing his practice in alternative energy issues, electric utility and telecommunications law. Before joining Patton Boggs, Mr. Drummond served as chair of the Alternative Energy and CleanTech practice for a regional, Denver-based firm, where he represented electric transmission developers, Smart Grid, solar, biofuel, wind and energy efficiency companies, as well as major financial institutions.

While serving as the mayor of Manitou Springs, Colorado, Mr. Drummond participated in large-scale initiatives developed by the Colorado Governor’s Energy Office to implement sustainable energy strategies. As part of an effort to measure the City of Manitou Springs’s carbon footprint, Mr. Drummond actively supported a greenhouse gas emission reduction program and played a key role in ICLEI-Local Governments for Sustainability and Cities for Climate Protection campaigns. Leveraging his roles as chair of the Economic Development Council and mayor, Mr. Drummond successfully promoted an environment of economic development that led to a record amount of private investment in Manitou Springs.

Mr. Drummond’s electric utility experience includes the representation of one of the nation’s largest investor-owned electric utility holding companies, which involved multistate and multijurisdictional transactions and regulatory proceedings as well as representing the largest electric transmission and distribution utility in Texas. He has also represented cities, other governmental entities and private land owners in major electric utility rate cases and electric transmission siting cases.

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Mr. Drummond is familiar with the issues facing commercial and investment bankers in evaluating the financing of various alternative energy and cleantech projects.

In this regard, Mr. Drummond has substantial experience with solar development, having represented the Department of Energy in the development of the largest utility scale High Concentrating Solar Photovoltaic generation plant globally as well as representing commercial scale distributive solar projects.

Experienced in telecommunications law, Mr. Drummond has been involved in interconnection agreements and wireless communication issues, and has participated in the relocation of microwave operators from electromagnetic spectrum allocated to CMRS providers. In addition, he has worked closely with the Antitrust Division of the U.S. Department of Justice on state and federal matters related to Section 271 Relief under the Telecommunications Act of 1996.

Drummond has also represented leading Smart Grid, distributive energy services, solar and biofuel-related companies and assisted various start-up cleantech enterprises, including those involved with electric drive vehicles, solar and alternative energy parks and waste-to-energy projects, as well as companies seeking to market the commercially viable use of hydrogen technology. Furthermore, he has represented the U.S. subsidiaries of a global 15 bank in evaluating the financing of renewable energy and cleantech projects; the federal government in developing the world’s largest concentrating solar photovoltaic project and the first-of-its-kind municipal solid waste to fuel ethanol project; waste-toenergy projects, including an electric cooperative providing power to 17 Colorado cities involving a 3 MW landfill methane gas recovery system; and the first-of-its-kind abandoned coal mine

ERIC H. DRUMMOND, PARTNER PATTON BOGGS LLP Practice Areas: Energy and Natural Resources, Energy-Related Public Policy, Clean Technology Denver, CO 303.894.6131 e: edrummond@pattonboggs.com w: www.pattonboggs.com methane gas recovery system and carbon offset verification program. Representation included the drafting of power purchase and interconnection agreements, utility-scale hydroelectric projects, wind developers and landowners in largescale wind generation projects, and he has represented the largest U.S. wireless company as one of five regional outside members of counsel.

He serves on several boards, has published countless papers and has served as an expert lecturer.

ADVISORY BOARD

STEVE McMILLAN

F

or the past 15 years, Steve McMillan has worked as a journalist at The Denver Post, Colorado’s largest multi-platform media company. Currently serving as the paper’s editor of public policy, McMillan is responsible for a team of reporters covering education, immigration and transportation, as well as handling certain online projects and developing eBook content. He appears as one of four news anchors on DPTV, The Post’s online, noon newscast.

As Business Editor at The Post from July 2007 until December 2011, McMillan oversaw a print and online section that provided fast, accurate, must-read information and analysis. He spearheaded business news coverage of the Democratic National Convention in Denver in 2008, the buyout of Qwest Communications and the local impact of the subprime mortgage crisis and the 2008 market meltdown. His staff won Society of American Business Editor and Writer awards for real estate, features, projects and enterprise reporting competing against the largest news organizations in the country. He launched features such as The Denver Post Business Person of the Year and an annual, data-driven analysis of the compensation of top executives of Colorado’s publicly traded companies.

Recently, he has worked with ICOSA magazine editor Jan Mazotti, co-hosting radio and Web/TV programs on the foreclosure crisis, food-borne illness and the Center for the New Energy Economy at Colorado State University.

Born in Philadelphia, McMillan attended St. Joseph’s University for two years before taking a year-long sabbatical to work on farms in Biggsville, Ill., and Mediapolis, Iowa.

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“I learned how to chisel plow corn and soybean fields and take care of hogs as big as baby elephants,” he said. “It was like risking death slopping around in the pens carrying a feed bucket for those voracious pigs.”

McMillan enrolled at the University of Iowa, where he worked for the student newspaper The Daily Iowan, and graduated with a bachelor of arts degree in journalism and sociology. He moved to Colorado, eventually locating in the heart of oil shale country to cover the boomtowns of Rifle, Parachute and Battlement Mesa for the Grand Junction Daily Sentinel. Although fishing in the Flattops Wilderness Area on “Black Sunday,” the day the industry collapsed, he recovered quickly and spent the next year writing about the demise of oil shale and the energy industry in Colorado.

In 1994, McMillan became the business editor at the Albuquerque Journal, where he spent the next three years directing business coverage for New Mexico’s largest news operation. While in the “Land of Enchantment,” he volunteered as a member of the National Ski Patrol and spent time exploring the culturally diverse environment, including its many Native American Indian pueblos and rich Hispanic heritage so engagingly illustrated in works such as The Milagro Beanfield War, by Taos, N.M., writer John Nichols and Willa Cather’s Death Comes for the Archbishop.

“Journalists record the first draft of history, and I love being part of that,” said McMillan. “Then there are great authors like Nichols and Cather who add the literary magic that brings history, culture and the people who populate our communities and world to life.”

McMillan lives with his wife, Anne, in Centennial, Colo. He has three sons, Matt,

STEVE MCMILLAN THE DENVER POST Editor, Public Policy e: smcmillan@denverpost.com w: www.denverpost.com Marc and Mike. He served for five years on the board of Swallow Hill Music Association in Denver, including a year as president. His garage band Six Degrees lasted for two years, specializing in classic rock and blues. While his guitar playing is sporadic at this point, we all know that “Rust Never Sleeps,” to pan a Neil Young album.

McMillan’s most recently read book:

Steve Jobs’s biography.

What’s on his iPod: Bob Marley, Junior Kimbrough,

Railroad Earth, Bob Dylan and Tom Morello.

Interests: Avid skier and outdoorsman.

Books: Co-author of a visitor guide to

the Colorado National Monument, which is available at the iTunes store.

Other: Serves as the professional adviser

for the University of Colorado at Denver student newspaper the Advocate.

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Jack Nicklaus

OPINION

How Do You Eat an Elephant?

ONE BITE AT A TIME

BY BRANDON SHAFFER

Just like paying off personal credit card debt, the first thing we need to do is stop the bleeding–stop racking up more bills on credit, and eliminate our annual deficit.

In the current fiscal year (2012-2013) the United States will spend more than $1.3 trillion more than we bring in from tax revenue. The only way to make progress toward paying down the national debt of $15.7 trillion is to first get our arms around the annual deficit.

STEP #2: ALL-OF-THE-ABOVE STRATEGY

Republicans say, “We have a spending problem, not a revenue problem.” Democrats say, “We need a fair tax code so everyone pays their fair share.”

I

get frustrated watching today’s Congress bicker over budget balancing proposals, while our country continues to rack up debt that will burden our children and grandchildren. Nobody wants to acknowledge the obvious; we can’t solve our budget problems overnight. Instead of eliminating the national debt in one year, we need a long-term plan that will allow us to get back on the road to fiscal responsibility, and it starts right now.

Here’s a simple three-step approach that will eliminate the national deficit and the national debt, without making brutal cuts to things such as military spending, Social Security or Medicare.

STEP #1: STOP THE BLEEDING

I was at lunch the other day with a longtime friend. He’d been out of work for

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a while, but had just gotten a new job and was starting to get back on his feet.

Over lunch he confided in me that he survived his months of unemployment by racking up huge credit card debt. Yet, when the bill came for lunch, he tried to pay with his card.

The truth is, they’re both right. We must eliminate wasteful spending, AND we must come up with a fair tax structure.

When I was an officer in the United States Navy, I was taught that, “You get what you inspect, not what you expect.”

We need a top-to-bottom review of federal spending to assess the effectiveness of every dollar spent. Just like the Navy's Preventative Maintenance System, we Of course, I picked up the tab, but I asked need a method by which prohim if he had a plan for paying grams can be graded based on off his debt. He chuckled and WE MUST criteria measuring the said, “Sure, I play the lottery ELIMINATE objective effectiveness of the program. on a regular basis.”

WASTEFUL This will allow us to grade govprograms that are That’s not a plan!

SPENDING, ernment spending our tax dollars. Where a program is not making the Unfortunately, that’s what it AND WE feels like our representatives MUST COME grade, it should be eliminated. in Congress are doing with Similarly, we need a tax code their budget-balancing pro- UP WITH works for us, not the posals. They’re looking for a A FAIR TAX that other way around. We “silver bullet” instead of comSTRUCTURE. need to stop giving tax ing up with a reasonable plan.

breaks to corporations that send American jobs to other countries. Equally important, we need to reinvest American tax dollars in America, not in foreign countries.

These concepts seem almost too simple, but they’re not. By aligning our priorities in the right way, we can eliminate the national deficit and start to pay down the national debt.

Following the stock market crash of 2008, Colorado’s public employee pension system (Public Employee Retirement Association, “PERA”) took a $10 billon hit. With annual state tax revenues of about $7.5 billion per year, it was clear that PERA was in big trouble.

THE KEY TO INJECTING FUEL INTO OUR LAGGING ECONOMY IS CREATING STABILITY AND PREDICTABILITY.

The days of budgeting year-to-year must end. Any successful businessperson will tell you that planning for the future is necessary to run a profitable business.

We need a long-range strategic plan for our country’s economy. Just like any good business, we must constantly be looking over the horizon for new possibilities and opportunities to keep us on the cutting edge of the global economy.

The Colorado legislature endeavored to address this problem in 2010. Instead of trying to come up with a “silver bullet” to erase the problem in a single year, the PERA deficit was amortized over a 30-year period, and an annual payment plan was devised to allow Colorado to eliminate the shortfall over time. Ultimately, the pension plan was saved by this action, and it was the first step toward economic stability and recovery in our beautiful state.

As we work to pay down the national debt, we must likewise think in terms of longterm solutions. That's the approach I took in Colorado to address the shortfall in its public employee pension system.

The same approach can be taken in paying down the national debt. Our current $15.7 trillion national debt will not be eliminated in one fell swoop. However, if we amortize it out over time, then

STEP #3: LONG-TERM PLANNING

dedicate ourselves to making the annual payment each year (prioritize it first, and make this payment before, we spend anything else out of our nation’s annual budget) we can eliminate the national debt.

This will have enormous positive ramifications for our economy. Businesses crave stability and predictability. One of the most detrimental forces acting on our economy today is the lack of certainty for future investments. The size of our national debt contributes directly to this instability. When lenders don’t lend money because of high volatility in the markets, businesses don’t have the capital to build, hire, manufacture, invest, research, develop, train, expand, grow, etc., etc., etc.

The key to injecting fuel into our lagging economy is creating stability and predictability. We do that by devising a plan for balancing our country’s budget and eliminating our national debt.

CONCLUSION

Getting our arms around the federal deficit and national debt will not be easy. The numbers are enormous, and it’s not something that can be tackled overnight. However, we must get our federal budget under control to get our economy back on track. I believe good governance relies on practical solutions, not ideology. We have a sincere desire to balance our nation’s budget, so let’s stop playing politics and eliminate our national debt to get America back on the right track.

Brandon Shaffer is the current president of the Colorado State Senate and is running for Congress in the Fourth Congressional District against Cory Gardner.

The Fourth Congressional District incorporates Douglas County, Longmont, Weld County and the Eastern plains from Holyoke all the way down to Trinidad.

VOLUME 4 ISSUE 3

21

BOOK REVIEW | SMALL TOWN RULES AND THE PUMPKIN PLAN

BE A GO-GIVER AN INTERVIEW WITH BEST-SELLING AUTHORS MIKE MICHALOWICZ AND BARRY MOLTZ

BY R EBECCA SALTMAN

H

ave you had the opportunity to meet published authors, whose books are well-known or even best-sellers? Often you are compelled to acknowledge, regardless of the material or subject matter, that you are dealing with a critical thinker who has chosen to broadcast intellectual property to the public through an unforgiving medium. In short, you are dealing with a power plant–all you need do is plug in.

If you’re reading this article, then your daily imperatives most likely revolve around ways to improve your organization’s product, service or collaboration. That in turn means you are practiced at seeking out informative resources, with authors being chief among those resources. This past year I have had the good fortune to meet several fantastic authors, as well as great collaborators in my work.

When you spend time researching the next big idea, you inevitably start populating your daydreams with “what if…” scenarios. I wonder, “What if I could pick Michael Gerber’s brain over lunch? What could I learn from Guy Kawasaki while he doubles as a workout partner for me? Where could I take my business?

Or who could help capture my vision after a walk in the park with Seth Godin?”

Recently, I worked an event with two of my most favorite authors, Mike Michalowicz and Barry Moltz, and I have to say I felt like I was hanging with the cool kids–the rock stars in the entrepreneurial firmament. And I wondered, how did I get so lucky?

Mike Michalowicz is the CEO of Provendus Group, a consulting firm that specializes in igniting growth in companies that have plateaued.

He is a small-business columnist for The Wall Street Journal, a frequent television guest and keynote speaker regarding the do’s and don’ts of entrepreneurship, and the author of the cult classic book The Toilet Paper Entrepreneur. His most recent effort, The Pumpkin Plan, demonstrates a laughably straightforward business analogy and uses it to create an unstoppable action plan for your business–your business should be like a pumpkin farmer whose sole focus is growing a massive hernia special for the county fair, rather than season after season of pleasing jack-o-lantern enthusiasts.

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So, who is Michalowicz? He has launched three multimillion-dollar companies, all before his 35th birthday. He was awarded the Small Business Administration’s Young Entrepreneur of the Year when he was 26. He sold his first company to private investors; his second to a Fortune 500 company; and currently manages his third company, Obsidian Launch, which provides behavioral marketing services.

In his new book, Small Town Rules, Barry Moltz and co-author Becky McCray show how the business world is like a global small town, and how even the largest companies must compete for customers as if they were small, local businesses. By revealing the seven “rural-style” solutions that have proven invaluable to organizations of all colors and creeds, Barry illustrates how even the largest companies, most dominant brands and most cosmopolitan businesses have been forced to adjust to recent economic realities. The philosophy of thinking “small” is like the new “black.”

So, who is Moltz? He worked for one of the largest companies in the world and has started three businesses. He has hired hundreds of people and unfortunately, had to fire some of them. He has been fired more than once. And he sold his last business, but also went out of business and was kicked out of his business, but luckily, not in that order.

ICOSA: We believe that collaboration could save the world. Describe how collaboration and entrepreneurship could be the answer businesses are looking for when it comes to continuous success over time?

"FREEFLOWING MONEY COVERS UP OUR PROBLEMS, BUT WHEN THINGS SLOW DOWN, OUR PROBLEMS BECOME VERY APPARENT."

- MIKE MICHALOWICZ

MICHALOWICZ: The pendulum of how entrepreneurship works has started to swing in the other direction. The turning point, I believe, was the "greed is good" mentality of the late ‘80s. It started the implosion that stars go through ... gobbling up everything in sight, and in some degree has caused our current economy.

But there is a clear shift toward collaboration now. The concept in entrepreneurship is that two companies can join forces and exploit their unique talents.

For collaboration to work, a few things must come in to play. First, it works best with small businesses. Small businesses have the luxury at being masters at one thing; alternatively, however, big juggernaut companies need to feed the beast, and try to gobble up everything.

Second, it requires that there are strong communications.

The rule is to "keep talking."

Just like any work where multiple people–or in this case companies–are involved, misunderstandings often happen and then can spiral into conflict. Frequent communications between collaborators is the lubricant to successful collaboration.

Third is to start small. Just like any other skill that entrepreneurs need to build, collaborating is a critical skill. If you dive in without experience, you may run into roadblocks that turn you off to it permanently. That would be a mistake. Start with smaller collaborative projects and build up.

The result of successful collaboration is long-term success. It allows you to run with thinner overhead and focus on just what you do best. You get

more work since you are collaborating with partners who are turning you on to new work and vice versa.

MOLTZ: The famous quote that “no man is an island” is really true in small business.

If you are alone or have no collaborators, then you don't have a company–you just have a job. With people working remotely based on their varied skills all over the world, learning how to collaborate is a basic requirement for success these days in business. Years ago, people worked for one company until they retired.

Then, they worked for three to five years before changing jobs.

Now, most people will actually have multiple lines of income.

Co-workers are actually teams that are made up of a loose confederation of collaborators that come together for a short time for a single project. Over time, these teams re-form, and the collaboration begins all over again.

Probably one of the most important skills that needs to be learned is how to effectively collaborate with many different types of people, and effective communication skills will be one of the most valued assets going forward.

ICOSA: From your perspective, what are some successful examples of continuity in the entrepreneurial and small-business world?

MOLTZ: I love the word “continuity” instead of “longevity.”

These days, years in business is not really a milestone.

Rather, companies have to be able to continually reinvent themselves to be relevant to the customer–Apple went from being a computer company to a media and consumer products company.

One of the qualities we now value the most is sustainability. Many people can build a company in the short term and make a financial profit.

However, it takes real skill to build and rebuild a company.

Companies such as Nintendo originally sold playing cards, and Nokia originally sold rubber tires and boots–but they are two companies that have had to evolve.

MICHALOWICZ: I want to lead with a big-business example since it is something we can all identify with. I love what IBM did to maintain continuity–they reinvented themselves from computer makers to technology consultants. They noticed that something that was once big for them had started to decline–it was their imploding star. Instead of trying to fix the inevitable, they used the life left in it to springboard a whole new version of themselves. That is what I call continuity.

The buzz word now is "pivot."

It used to be "transition." And the concept is simple. Everything has a life cycle, including businesses and the products and services we deliver.

When something is growing, you feed it; when something is clearly dying, that is when you start something new.

I see small business do this all the time. They have the luxury of, literally overnight, shifting what they do. For example, a local book store in Philadelphia recognized they couldn't compete with Amazon, so they built direct relations with publishing houses to ship large orders. At the beginning the store was doing $500,000 annually in book sales; today it does $1.5 million in sales, all by transitioning their approach.

There is one major risk, VOLUME 4 ISSUE 3

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BOOK REVIEW | SMALL TOWN RULES AND THE PUMPKIN PLAN

though, with small businesses that shift; many shift too often.

They pursue the flavor of the month and never make it. The key to continuity in business is transitioning the growing parts of your business, without losing your core purpose–the "why" your business does what it does. If you can retain your purpose and simply change the vehicle for delivering on the purpose, you can have long ongoing success.

ICOSA: What kind of impact has the recession had on the continuity of entrepreneurship and small business?

MICHALOWICZ: It opens people’s eyes to what is not working. When the economy recedes, and I hate to say this, but likely gets even worse, the problems in our businesses become very apparent. Free-flowing money covers up our problems, but when things slow down, our problems become very apparent. It truly is like a wildfire tearing through the forest of business. All the dead wood gets burned up, some or even many healthy trees die, but some survive.

Most importantly, the trees that drop seeds deep in the soil prior to the wildfire have the offspring surge to life after the fire tears through.

I think small businesses need to do two things in this economy; become healthy fast and “plant some seeds.” Small businesses need to cut out the dead wood and do only what they do best, then collaborate with others to do the rest. Secondly, by testing small opportunities with minimal costs, businesses can plant seeds and

see what takes root. I wouldn't push these aggressively yet, but just want to have it ready for the better times. I would push aggressively on what I do best.

Third, multiply your lines of income, but build one opportunity at a time. Do not be dependent on only one line of income or one customer.

Spread your risk.

MOLTZ: It forces businesses to continually adapt and re-invent themselves to stay relevant and profitable as the economics of consumer demand change. Recessions are a valuable part of the business cycle. It forces every company to re-examine customer solutions and how they can do it profitably. For example, one of my customers had been in business for 100 years with a 32 percent gross margin.

When the recession hit and sales dropped, they were forced to examine their gross margin for the first time to keep net profitability steady. It was only through this exercise did they increase their margin to 35 percent. When sales finally did go up, they were a more profitable company than ever before!

Four, treat customers like community. Now that every customer can talk to every other customer, it's like living in a small town where your reputation means everything.

ICOSA: What are some of the core strategies you employ for continuous success?

MOLTZ: There are five things I do. One, I plan for zero. I question assumptions. Every business has seasons and cycles. Invest in your success in the long term. Be like the farmer who only expects one great crop every five years.

Two, spend creative brainpower before your money.

Too much money makes you stupid. Don't throw money at a problem. Solve it with as few resources as possible, before trying to buy your way out of it.

And five, build local connections to your community.

Local is the new black! People would much rather buy locally than at the end of a 10,000mile supply chain. Take advantage of that!

MICHALOWICZ: The biggest thing I have done, and we all should do, is pick the "giant seed." This is actually a method that farmers use to grow gigantic pumpkins. They don't use ordinary seeds; they use seeds with colossal genes.

In entrepreneurship, the colossal seed is where our passion overlaps with customer demand and with scalability.

If we have a passion for what we do, complemented by customers who want it and have a system so that it can grow without our direct involvement, we have a business with huge, long-term success potential.

be everything to everybody, not only will they struggle mastering any one thing, they will repel collaborative opportunities because they will automatically see all these other vendors as competition.

MOLTZ: The key is understanding your strengths and weaknesses and then finding others to collaborate with that complement you. No one can scale a business alone. Find other people that share your common vision. Collaboration is the key ingredient in building a business that can leverage your skills and bring long-term profitability.

The keys to successful collaboration are to go in focused on being the world's best at one thing. Then, you must seek other complementary vendors who are the world’s best at their thing. Then, working together, you start with small collaborative experiences with these other vendors. Like any other long-term relationship, you want to build a level of trust and comfort before you go "all in."

ICOSA: What are the key elements for small businesses to successfully use the collaboration growth model?

You must lead the relationship by being a "go-giver”–someone who makes the collaborative effort not just about servicing the end client extremely well, but also servicing your collaborative partner extremely well. This sets the foundation for a relationship that will flourish.

MICHALOWICZ: Entrepreneurs need to go into business with the "I will be the master of one thing" mentality. If an entrepreneur goes into business trying to

If you are interested in continued success over time, I highly recommend you RUN–don’t walk–and get both of these books. They have words of wisdom for business and life!

Learn more about Mike Michalowicz (pronounced mi-CAL-o-witz), at www.MikeMichalowicz.com. Learn more about Barry Moltz, at www.barrymoltz.com.. Rebecca Saltman is a social entrepreneur and the president and founder of an independent collaboration building firm designed to bridge business, government, nonprofits and academia. Learn more at www.foot-in-door.com.

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ACADEMIA

METRO VOLUNTEERS

BACK TO SCHOOL METRO VOLUNTEERS ENGAGES COMMUNITY, SCHOOL AND BUSINESS VOLUNTEERS B Y J E N N I F E R WAT S O N , A P R

T

he bulletin boards at Whittier K-8 School in Denver are empty, and the halls are silent except for the faint sound of adult voices in an upstairs office. It’s the start of summer, and almost everyone has retreated from the heat to rest after a full school year.

Upstairs in Principal Jai Palmer’s office, however, a few adults have gathered to talk about a new effort to involve more volunteers in the school. Called the Metro Volunteers School Service Program, the initiative has more than quadrupled the number of community members volunteering in the school in support of academic and extracurricular programs. Whittier became one of the test sites for the program for the 2011-2012 school year, and the team behind the project is gathering information to assess how it can be improved and expanded for the coming year.

So far the results have been encouraging, and future plans include engaging more volunteers to serve as reading and math tutors, music and theater instructors, part-time school librarians and more. Similar initiatives are now under way at Skinner Middle School and Teller Elementary, with more schools scheduled to join the program soon.

“You have to think innovatively when budgets are tight,” noted Principal Palmer. “That’s the challenge– it’s also the opportunity.”

A SMART APPROACH TO SOLVING RESOURCE SHORTAGES

Like most school districts across Colorado and the United States, Denver Public Schools has watched budgets shrink in the past few years. At the same time, the desire to improve students’ reading, math and science skills has increased.

With the focus firmly on academics, funding for physical education, visual and performing arts and after-school programming has dipped. Some school libraries stand empty, with no librarians to assist students with finding and checking out books.

While the emphasis on academics has helped schools like Whittier achieve gains in reading and other subjects, students also want a well-rounded education that includes the arts, sports and other activities to help broaden their horizons and connect academics to 26

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» Photos courtesy of The Real Roxanne Photography.

other interests. Engaging more volunteers in the school has allowed Whittier to make that happen, Palmer said. Whittier has been able to recruit retired educators and community members with real-life experiences they want to share. “The interaction brings something fresh and new to our students,” he said. “They get to meet someone who actually has drama experience or who has practiced science in the field.”

Volunteers have brought something else of equal importance to Whittier students, noted Karen Mortimer, president of the Whittier Parent-Teacher Association. “The more positive, encouraging adults our students have around them, the better,” she said. “Some lovely relationships come out of these interactions.”

A SUSTAINABLE STRATEGY

The Metro Volunteers School Service Program began in 2007, with funding from the HandsOn Network, The Home Depot and Qwest. Known at the time as HandsOn Schools, the program brought volunteers into the school to make needed physical improvements, such as installing a new playground, planting trees or painting walls. And while the projects transformed the physical environment, they didn’t help schools meet their long-term goals, said Cheryl Clark, neighboring specialist and director of school service programming at Metro Volunteers.

“Although we got input from the community about what they wanted done, we didn’t involve the community deeply in the work to create momentum for it to continue after the initial project was completed,” she said.

Metro Volunteers, therefore, decided to change the focus from organizing one-time volunteer projects to creating sustainable, school- and community-led volunteer initiatives that could meet more ambitious goals. To do that, Clark said, Metro Volunteers reached out to a broad array of experienced educators, administrators, parents, business professionals and others to form the Metro Volunteers School Service Program Operations Team.

That team retooled the program to establish a framework for developing customized, sustainable volunteer programs at individual schools. The new framework engages a broad array of school and community

stakeholders in developing their own volunteer program. The schools involved in the Metro Volunteers School Service Program are now among the most diverse in Denver Public Schools. They also serve student populations in which more than 90 percent qualify for free or reduced lunches.

The operations team begins each new initiative by conducting a comprehensive assessment of the school’s needs and attitudes about working with volunteers.

This assessment is given to a wide range of stakeholders, and a summary report is given to school administrators to consider before further work is done.

If the school decides to proceed, the operations team will work with school adminis-

It’s been a conduit for more nonprofits and community members to get involved.

They see us as a school that welcomes collaboration, so they approach us with offers to help. - Karen Mortimer

”

trators to assemble a Volunteer Leadership Team. This team is composed of representatives from all the major stakeholder groups at the school. The team reviews the assessment report and the school’s educational plan to identify the top goals for the new volunteer program.

Within the Volunteer Leadership Team is a group called the PAVES team, which stands for Parent and Volunteer Engagement Specialists. The PAVES team implements the school’s volunteer engagement plan with the help of Metro Volunteers.

This team of four to five members helps recruit, train and manage volunteers, and it completes an evaluation at the end of the year to drive future improvements. Metro Volunteers also provides training to educators and school employees about working with a diverse volunteer workforce.

A GROWING DESIRE FOR EXPANSION

Each school identifies its own priorities for volunteer recruitment and engagement, but some common themes have emerged.

“So far, the consistent need that schools have is structure,” said Lynne Montague-Clouse, who co-leads the operations team with Clark. “Principals report

that they have parents calling them to volunteer, but they don’t have the staff resources to screen, place and manage those volunteers.”

Thanks to the Metro Volunteers School Service Program, Whittier K-8 School now has a volunteer infrastructure in place, and can engage more volunteers for the next school year. The current plan calls for recruiting volunteers to assist with literacy efforts–and to provide additional after-school programming.

Whittier has seen another unexpected benefit from its volunteer initiatives as well, Mortimer said. “It’s been a conduit for more nonprofits and community members to get involved. They see us as a school that welcomes collaboration, so they approach us with offers to help.”

So far Whittier has had some great organizations reach out to them–the local YMCA has offered a basketball clinic to Whittier students; Deltak, a company focused on online higher education, has sponsored a reading day at the school; and a Leadership Denver class painted Whittier’s walls to add color and school spirit to the plain white interior. Other companies have approached Whittier as well to explore how they can get involved.

Given these early signs of success, Metro Volunteers hopes to replicate what has been done at Whittier and expand the program to 20 or 30 more schools in the Denver metro area.

Clark hopes that more volunteers and businesses will step forward to support the program as they learn about its benefits.

“Our program develops a sustainable plan that alleviates burnout in the schools and reflects community values by asking community members what they want volunteers to help achieve in their schools,” she said. “Volunteers really can help elevate our schools, if we continue to connect the dots properly.”

Metro Volunteers is actively seeking more volunteers for its School Service Program team. For more information about volunteering or sponsoring a school with the Metro Volunteers School Service Program, contact Cheryl Clark at Metro Volunteers at Cheryl@metrovolunteers. org or 303.282.1234, x308 Jennifer Watson, APR, is a communications consultant in Denver and a volunteer with Metro Volunteers.

VOLUME 4 ISSUE 3

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GOVERNMENT

| ENERGY EFFICIENCY BUSINESS COALITION

Energy Efficiency Business Coalition COLORADO’S STATE OF THE STATE B Y E R I C VA N O R D E N

S

ince 2007, the energy efficiency industry in Colorado has overcome genuine challenges and undergone tremendous growth in jobs, energy savings and economic development. This development can largely be attributed to state-level policy, federal program support, and collaborative efforts between local industry, utilities and government. A recent Energy Efficiency Business Coalition (EEBC) “State of the State” report identifies these interactions, lessons learned and opportunities for the future.

In the recent past, energy efficiency businesses have transformed the market through innovative product development and improved installation standards. Energy 28

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efficiency speaks to how much energy is actually being used as intended. Explained a different way, energy efficiency means doing the most with a limited amount of supply, and wasting the least amount of energy in the process.

Industry stakeholders focus on energy efficiency in the final, end-user stage in the built environment. These energy saving solutions are provided for home, commercial and industrial energy users.

The energy efficiency industry is a multifaceted, interdisciplinary industry, made up of various segments of other, “traditional” industries. While it includes newer professions, such as energy auditors and modeling and control technologists, it also includes HVAC, window and insulation contractors installing high efficiency products. Moreover, the supply chain bringing those high-efficiency goods to market includes manufacturers, distributors and sales representatives. Finally, those organizations and parties responsible for administrating and managing energy efficiency programs, so-called demand side management and demand response implementers, are also included.

The first major development for energy efficiency was the implementation of an Energy Efficiency Resource Standard (EERS) for investor-owned utilities. Enacted in 2007, House Bill 07-1037 mandated demand side management programs for the two electric and six natural gas investor-owned utilities in Colorado. Over the years, utilities such as Xcel Energy and Black Hills Energy have learned to benefit from the shareholder incentives that were approved by the Public Utilities Commission (PUC). Xcel Energy’s and Black Hills Energy’s electricity demand side management programs have saved 814 gigawatt hours, with a peak reduction of 209.9 megawatts, yielding a net economic benefit of $646 million (compiled by Xcel Energy, 2012). The regulated natural gas utilities include Xcel Energy, Black Hills Energy, SourceGas, Atmos Energy, Colorado Natural Gas Corporation and Eastern Colorado Utilities.

The efforts of energy efficiency businesses and utilities were given a boost of support from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA). In particular, the Better Buildings Neighborhood Programs trained contractors on installation practices and educated

consumers about energy efficiency through energy audits. These programs have led to more than $10.7 million of investments in energy efficiency projects by home and business owners. Different program models, including financing solutions and concierge services, were launched in Boulder, Denver, Garfield, Eagle, Pitkin and Gunnison counties.

Based on the lessons learned related to the interaction of the private market with policy and programs, EEBC’s “State of the State” report identifies opportunities for continued collaboration among industry stakeholders. These stakeholders should continue the growing market transformation by promoting consumer demand and quality services. Program sustainability– removing a patchwork of standards and aligning benefits for all stakeholders–has been identified as a path to move the industry forward in the near term.

The proposed initiatives aim to make business easier while supporting and growing strong energy efficiency programs for businesses; upholding excellent standards for safety, quality and professionalism; and facilitating collaboration between actors in the energy efficiency industry.

CREATE LONG-TERM COST EFFECTIVE INITIATIVES

I

t is inevitable that the boom of direct government funding for the energy efficiency industry will subside. But the momentum built and lessons learned will help to continue the growth of the industry through continued cost effective initiatives, driven by the private and public sectors. All actors will need to plan to adapt to the following principles to keep programs and products cost-effective.

Cost-effective programs can continue– by understanding the regional markets to utilizing existing networks for industry-wide communication and quality management. Furthermore, major actors in supporting energy saving and job creating programs, including utilities and counties, can work together to coordinate marketing efforts and contractor engagement.

Additionally, increased participation in energy efficiency programs by municipal and cooperative utilities in Colorado would help the industry scale and become efficient in their own business processes.

About the Energy Efficiency Business Coalition

adopt new and innovative products. To help build more confidence for consumers to invest in energy The EEBC was formed in efficiency solutions, the 2007 to provide organized value must be established support for the numerous through a better underbusinesses that are standing of energy costs, IMPLEMENT STATEWIDE involved in the manuacknowledgement of real esSTANDARDS facturing, distribution, tate prices, and overcoming installation, sales and barriers related to building t is clear that the segmented marketing of energy ownership and occupancy. nature of the building efficiency technologies With proper transparency sector including policies, and services. The EEBC is and valuation for energy building types and consumer the only organization in efficiency measures, both motivations provide a chalthe nation whose primary the building occupants and lenge to rapidly scaling the infocus is to increase the owners will drive demand. dustry. National programs may business potential of the But, in the near term, buildprovide an outline, but do not energy efficiency industry ing owners should be taught provide an enforced standard at the local level. The about the benefits of energy for installation, technology or member-funded coalition efficiency, including the business practices. To reach works with utilities expenses of replacing equipcritical mass, the actors must and municipalities to ment rather than performincrease the size of programs develop effective energy ing preventative mainteand common standards beefficiency policies and nance for energy efficiency yond local jurisdictions. This programs that support and system efficacy. growth can happen by making the business objectives Specifically, providing the economic case for energy of our members and the transparency of energy data efficiency, linking building degrowth of the industry. would be a market-driven partments and implementing EEBC’s “State of the State” solution to increase the quality assurance for retrofits. report aims to identify the adoption of energy effiThis, again, goes back to current state and past five ciency. Energy bills are the need for cross-sector years of successes of the confusing and ineffective collaboration between busienergy efficiency industry in increasing consumer nesses, utilities and governin Colorado, and then knowledge. Energy costs ments, but also speaks to outline tangible action are most often commusetting standards to define items for the industry to nicated to consumers the services and products continue to succeed. monthly, after the energy provided by the innovative has been consumed. Someindustry providers. An actimes, often in businesses, cepted standard for qualthe energy user is not paying the bill, ity will help to create consistency for and there is little awareness of actual enconsumers to trust the products, while ergy costs. Real-time energy consumpa quality assurance process will help tion data and comparisons across similar energy efficiency businesses adopt stanbuilding types should be provided to dards. That said, when considering best building occupants. Additionally, energy practices for quality assurance, the cost usage data need to be readily accessible, to the business for licensing and other in a standard format for energy effiquality assurance measures should be ciency professionals to quickly identify considered as the industry continues to energy concerns. offer energy efficiency solutions.

With clear goals for the next several years, EEBC will continue to drive adoption of quality and sustainable energy efficiency ESTABLISH THE VALUE IN ENERGY efforts in Colorado. We welcome poliEFFICIENCY cy-makers and utilities to join us in efforts to leverage EEBC’s unique place in the marn the current risk-averse economic climate many business leaders and ket and broad knowledge of demand side private individuals are hesitant to management to help realize these goals.

EEBC’s “Leaders and Laggards” scorecard identifies the segmented and varied investments by utilities and counties across the state.

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GOVERNMENT

| TRANSPORTATION WORKFORCE

Inspiring the Next Generation of Transportation Workers ROADS, RAILS, AND RACE CARS AFTER-SCHOOL PROGRAM B Y VA L E R I E L E F L E R

in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) to fill the jobs required for the transportation workforce of the future. The challenge is to develop innovative new programs to inspire more students to pursue STEM subject expertise, and specifically to encourage them to consider transportation careers.

In Nebraska, Dr. Laurence Rilett, professor and director of the Mid-America Transportation Center (MATC), and Dr. Gina Kunz, associate research professor at the Nebraska Center for Research on Children, Youth, Families and Schools, have joined forces to develop and implement the MATC Summer Institute. Since 2006, this professional development program has brought together 79 K-12 STEM educators and 10 University of Nebraska–Lincoln (UNL) faculty members to collaborate on lesson plans for relevant and dynamic math and science activities for the classroom. These lesson plans have been taught to more than 3,500 K-12 students.

Mary Herrington, a 20-year veteran science teacher and Summer Institute participant, witnessed the powerful response of Lincoln Public Schools’ students to the lesson plans developed to foster an appreciation for STEM fields, and suggested that the Summer Institute program could be expanded into an engineering-based after-school program, which would build connections among students, teachers, mentors, industry professionals and community leaders. At Culler Middle School, where she teaches, 82 percent of the students are enrolled in the free or reduced-cost lunch program. As Herrington explained, “I could not remove every obstacle some of these children are forced to confront: poverty, language barriers, disrupted home lives. However, I could work to do whatever possible to open doors for them during their time at school.”

THE SOLUTION: A UNIQUE AFTERSCHOOL PROGRAM

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strong multi-modal transportation system is critical for a nation’s economy. In the United States, however, our world-class transportation system is threatened by aging infrastructure, increasing demand and tighter budgets. There is a critical need to come up with innovative solutions–solutions that will be provided by a technically savvy workforce.

Unfortunately, we are not producing enough students who are proficient

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I

n 2010, with funding from the U.S. Department of Transportation and the support of the Nebraska Department of Education, the after-school club Roads, Rails, and Race Cars was piloted at Culler Middle School in Lincoln, Nebraska. Organized using hands-on, inquiry-based activities, the program connects students to a whole world of possibilities by introducing

them to industry professionals and undergraduate and graduate engineering student mentors. After only two years, the Roads, Rails, and Race Cars after-school club already has inspired 236 students across five Lincoln area schools.

Program activities allow students to cultivate natural curiosity and develop problem-solving skills with minimal teacher guidance. Lessons are based on transportation engineering concepts and require only the most basic supplies. Activities–such as constructing a roadway out of pudding that must withstand a flood of milk–are fun and creative ways to demonstrate to middle school students the complexity of creating infrastructure.

THE STUDENT PARTICIPANTS

T The program connects students to a whole world of possibilities by introducing them to industry professionals and undergraduate and graduate engineering student mentors.

he Roads, Rails, and Race Cars club has been especially successful in encouraging girls and under-represented minorities to consider STEM fields. According to the National Science Foundation, only 18 percent of bachelor’s degrees awarded in engineering in 2010 were earned by women; only 12 percent were earned by blacks, Hispanics, and Native Americans combined, though these groups represent nearly 28 percent of the U.S. population. As students transition from elementary to high school, the number of members from these under-represented groups enrolled in STEM courses usually declines dramatically, a serious concern that the Roads, Rails, and Race Cars clubs help to address.

Roads, Rails, and Race Cars focuses on attracting a more diverse population of students, which aligns with the mission of the U.S. Department of Transportation Garret A. Morgan grant that provides the majority of the program’s funding. In Lincoln Public Schools, the sites with the existing framework for an after-school club also have the highest number of minorities and students qualifying for free and reduced-price lunch. In the program’s most recent quarter, minorities represented 53 percent of the club members; female members represented 45 percent, a significantly higher percentage than the 13 percent of engineers who are female.

Cynthia Baker, a specialist in educational psychology and the coordinator for Roads, Rails, and Race Cars, explains that middle school students are at a critical juncture in their academic careers.

Middle school students’ decisions and attitudes concerning school can funnel them into limited career pathways later in life, often excluding STEM professions as an option. Baker describes the club as an opportunity to expose and open up students to opportunities that they might not have considered otherwise.

THE ROLE OF MENTORS

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ndergraduate and graduate engineering students serve as club mentors, interacting one-on-one with students and assisting teachers in leading the activities. The relationship with a mentor allows each club participant to identify with a positive role model. Participant surveys from every quarter consistently have named the mentors as a favorite element of the club. Students have described their mentors as “fun,” “kind” and “creative,” again and again. The mentors’ words and actions carry remarkable weight among the students–they can and do inspire hope and motivation.

Quinton Rodgers, UNL civil engineering graduate student, reports that he felt honored by his responsibility as a mentor because he was supporting an industry he has a passion for, as well as affecting the futures of young people. “As a representative of a minority group, I feel a personal responsibility to educate all minorities to the opportunities that engineering and transportation can provide for their futures,” Rodgers said. “The program has altered my outlook in many ways. I not only have adopted a new approach on group projects, but I also have a different outlook now on how important it is to expose young minds to math and science at early ages.” That exposure may begin with the after-school program, but also may require more than the teachers and mentors can offer to truly illustrate the possibilities, which is where outside partners enter the picture.

THE ROLE OF COMMUNITY PARTNERS

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arry Johnson, president of the Nebraska Trucking Association and one of the program’s strongest advocates, explained, “Linking industry to the Roads, Rails and Race Cars after-school club stimulates students to consider new directions in a manner that is not possible during the traditional school day. It is a new concept that is vital in creating career pathways students feel are accessible and can envision for their future.”

While the program has a strong foundation in engineering, it also highlights transportation careers across the spectrum that the growing pool of professionals will demand–from logisticians and public policy-makers to skilled equipment operators and truck drivers. Children need to develop greater awareness as they interact with infrastructure; for example, as students cross a bridge, they do not realize that a structural engineer designed the bridge, that an urban planner determined its location, or that equipment operators physically constructed it.

Visits from a wide variety of industry leaders personify real career options that require a strong STEM education. Johnson himself has organized club activities, such as arranging for a semi-trailer truck to visit schools. Guest presenters have included the president of Flatbed Express, VOLUME 4 ISSUE 3

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GOVERNMENT

In the program’s first two years, involvement has grown to include 236 students, 14 engineering student mentors and eight teachers.

| TRANSPORTATION WORKFORCE

Inc., a representative from Lincoln Community Learning Centers, an engineer from the Nebraska Department of Roads, as well as other representatives of the program’s partners from industry and the public sector. These interactions just might be the beginning of some of these students’ careers in transportation fields.

between his STEM classes and his dream occupation as a mechanical engineer, a dream not often found among middle school students at this point in their education journey.

THE IMPACT

THE FUTURE

I

n the program’s first two years, involvement has grown to include 236 students, 14 engineering student mentors and eight teachers. These numbers reflect the number of students directly affected by club participation. In addition, as teachers return to their regular classes, they supplement traditional curriculum with lesson plans from the program, expanding the number of students exposed to club activities by more than 900 students each year. The after-school club provides teachers with opportunities to explore new teaching methods and to take advantage of state-of-the-art technology from UNL. The teachers then bring the most successful methods back to their regular classrooms.

Beyond the numbers, personal success stories show the real achievements of the program. For example, student Josh Gerdes has been an active member of Roads, Rails and Race Cars since its inception at Culler Middle School. As his father explained, Josh’s early interest in math and science has been enhanced by the after-school club: “This program certainly propelled him forth in his aspirations to take advanced classes in these areas in high school and in college.” Josh’s story exemplifies the goals of the club–helping students like his recognize the connection

Mentors’ words and actions carry remarkable weight among the students–they can and do inspire hope and motivation.

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W

hile the founders of Roads, Rails, and Race Cars are elated by the success thus far, more work awaits. Rilett and Kunz–on behalf of UNL’s College of Engineering and UNL’s College of Education and Human Sciences–are committed to expanding the program and to seeking additional funding. One long-term goal is to create a scholarship fund so that the number of students participating can be increased.

Dr. Rilett states, “The Roads, Rails, and Race Car After-School Program is one of the most rewarding activities our students, staff and I are involved in. And like all successful programs, this is a true partnership. In our case, the cooperation among the dedicated teachers in the Lincoln Public Schools; the Nebraska Department of Education; the many private sector partners who provide their time and expertise; the UNL faculty, the parents; and of course, the students makes the Roads, Rails, and Race Cars club the success it is today, and I am delighted that we will be able to expand the program to schools in Iowa and Wisconsin next year.”

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GOVERNMENT

| PASS A NATIONAL BUDGET NOW

Pass a National Budget Now! CALLING ALL COMPROMISERS WITH COMMON SENSE

BY JAN MAZOTTI & KIM DeCOSTE

Never can true reconcilement grow where wounds of deadly hate have pierced so deep.” ~ M ilto n

H

ow is it that the great thinkers of the past can really frame a situation wisely? Whether in 55 B.C., the 1600s, the 1700s, the 1940s, the 1960s or even 2000, there is much to learn about how the United States managed to fulfill its destiny and rise to the top of so-called leader board in terms of jobs, money and happiness.

Unlike the times of our forefathers, common sense seems to be lacking in the American political engine today. As a nation, and as a people, America seems to have lost the ability to listen and compromise. By staunchly standing on either side of the political aisle, this approach has truly divided the nation and whole communities, and it appears that we are no longer willing to work with the other side to create solutions–but instead want to point fingers at different beliefs and ideologies.

For years, our elected officials have strived to pass a budget for the United States; however, it regularly is vetoed by one party or another. In 2011, 64 senators signed a letter to President Obama urging the passing of a balanced budget–to no avail. In 2012, at least seven budget plans were submitted for consideration–again, not one passed. After spending millions of dollars on plan after plan, and as we head into 2013, we still have no concrete budget scenario for this country.

While citizens stand their ground this political season, it appears that they are ignoring some of the most critical issues of our generation and the next generation–the budget.

While every American maintains his or her beliefs on what should happen to Medicaid, Social Security, defense, education, trade, transportation and infrastructure, gun control or legitimate rape, what seems to get lost in the discussion is that none of these issues can be addressed without a thoughtful, well-devised conversation around fiscal policy devoid of the political rhetoric.

Maybe there is something to learn from our forefathers, who were not in agreement over every detail of governance, but who found common ground when arguing and 34

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fighting for freedom and independence– something we just might lose if we can’t pull it together quickly. It is an uncomfortable time for our country’s leadership and citizens; our nation must quickly rally to address major issues such as war, freedom and potential bankruptcy to ensure the enduring success of the American way. Yet it seems as if the current politicos are stuck in the mud, forgetting that the American way is critical to our collective success going forward.

In case you don’t know, we are in a crisis–a budget crisis. It is a crisis of what’s owed to us, as well as a crisis of identity. We must look at the trigger points immediately if we are to even begin to tackle the issues surrounding the deeper issues. The root causes of the budget crisis are many and varied. However, one of the fundamental underlying factors lies in our sense of entitlement from the government in this country. And because of our sense of entitlement, we are well on our way to running a million miles an hour into a brick wall. Even as early as 55

B.C., Cicero remarked on politics and entitlement, saying, "The budget should be balanced, the Treasury should be refilled, public debt should be reduced, the arrogance of officialdom should be tempered and controlled, and the assistance to foreign lands should be curtailed, lest Rome become bankrupt. People must again learn to work instead of living on public assistance." Evidently, we've learned nothing in the past 2,067 years.

Many only know what we hear from the snippets of news from traditional news outlets, who some say are only there to show us what we should think. When you delve deeper into the budgetary issues faced by this country, the outlook appears bleak. It is not a 30-second problem, and it cannot be solved by a sound bite. Americans need to understand what a critically important matter this is. It is complicated, and there is no perfect solution. Without some hard-core, ball-busting, call-it-likeit-is leadership–which will cause some pain–nothing will change or get done.

So in this article, whether you agree or not, we are going to try to decouple the problem from the solution. We believe that unilateral power–similar to that of the base closing commission in the 1990s–will be key as politicians and citizens “learn” this delicate dance.

What’s more, it is important to remember that the story of our country– and that of the budget crisis–at its most base level is a political problem from which the politics must be removed.

Our greatest risk is to do nothing!

Men who look upon themselves born to reign, and others to obey, soon grow insolent.

Selected from the rest of mankind, their minds are early poisoned by importance." ~ Th o m a s Pa i n e

OUR FOREFATHERS THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION “These are the times that try men’s souls.” ~Thomas Paine

T

here is much to learn from our forefathers. Thomas Paine, the author of Common Sense, in 1776 profoundly summarized the establishment of America and its plight in gaining independence from Britain. At the time, colonial soldiers were just beginning a long and arduous process that would culminate as the American Revolution– where the American colonies challenged VOLUME 4 ISSUE 3

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GOVERNMENT

| PASS A NATIONAL BUDGET NOW

the monarchy of Britain to establish a country of freedom and principle, focused on the strength of the government and the happiness of the governed.

Paine describes the British monarchy: “King, say they, is one, the people another; the Peers are a house in behalf of the King, the commons in behalf of the people; but this hath all the distinctions of a house divided against itself … Men who look upon themselves born to reign, and others to obey, soon grow insolent. Selected from the rest of mankind, their minds are early poisoned by importance; and the world they act in differs so materially from the world at large, that they have but little opportunity of knowing its true interests, and when they succeed in the government are frequently the most ignorant and unfit of any throughout the dominions.” The government suggested

by Paine and that America so vehemently fought for during the American Revolution is still the government we need today. "Our elected officials, especially the extremes of both parties, might indeed be exactly what he foresaw–just 236 years later and perhaps more poisoned by importance and insolence.

Surprisingly, Paine’s words regarding longevity and sustainability of the country for future generations to enjoy also ring true. Paine says, “As parents, we can have no joy, knowing that this government is not sufficiently lasting to ensure anything which we may bequeath to posterity: And by a plain method of argument, as we are running the next generation into debt, we ought to do the work of it, otherwise we use them meanly and pitifully.” Listening to both national and local politicians, it is clear that a rift exists between parties, more so than in recent memory. The discussion, or lack thereof, on the budget and deficit issues is contentious at best. With the list of issues–economic fairness, the deficit, America’s free enterprise system, spending and tax issues, unemployment, and the dilemmas facing the middle class–all are encompassed in this policy area.

Republicans typically embrace the economic belief that government interventions stifle free market systems, yet Democrats often feel that government has an obligation to support small businesses in their journey toward success. And while both parties embrace deficit reduction, tax reform and deregulation differently–both can and will only provide a bit of detail on how to accomplish a balanced budget and their approach to the big issues complete with indicators of success. And with little hope of a “truce” on the horizon, and in an election year where little else but campaigning will get accomplished, citizens can at best hope for colorful rhetoric this year.

“A government which cannot preserve the peace is no government at all,” said Paine.

Surprisingly, the message echoes today–divided “houses,” wasted money, patched up connections and potential downfall as we know it. And it seems that if voters do not demand some solutions, the national debt and the programs we hold true will continue to spiral out of control, spending habits will not be changed, and the taxpayer– people like each of us–will pay the ultimate price.

As parents, we can have no joy, knowing that this government is not sufficiently lasting to ensure anything which we may bequeath to posterity: And by a plain method of argument, as we are running the next generation into debt, we ought to do the work of it, otherwise we use them meanly and pitifully." ~ Tho m a s Pa i ne 36

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THE GREATEST GENERATION AND THE NEW DEAL

F

ast-forward 157 years to another time of crisis for this county–America was deep in a depression with more than 25 percent of citizens facing unemployment. What’s more, totalitarian and dictatorial regimes were sprouting up globally–Hitler, Mussolini and Japanese Prime Minister Hideki.

In fact, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt established the New Deal–a set of economic programs that focused on relief, recovery and reform–to address the growing societal grief and global unrest. The New Deal established many complex social programs, including the FDIC, FHA, the TVA, the SEC and the Social Security System–all programs that worked at the time. In the 1930s these programs drew division between Democrats and Republicans, just as today, but for different reasons. At FDR’s inauguration on March 4, 1933, national unemployment was at 25 percent and the Great Depression was in full swing. FDR’s programs, while debatable, nationalized unemployment relief and helped get citizens back to work. Note that “back to work” was the goal. In order to gather a benefit, the recipients had to perform jobs that benefited to communities in which they did them. So it was a necessary win-win.

We question today how many millions of people seem averse to working if they can just “get their check.” We have heard people say, “I don’t want to work. I make

more at home.” Certainly not every recipient of public aid feels this way, but some do.

FDR’s programs succeeded on several levels as they financed national infrastructure projects that included more than 650,000 miles of roads, 125,000 public buildings, as well as bridges, parks and reservoirs. The outcome of many of these projects remains today, with little or no money to reinvest in them–American gems such as the Lincoln Tunnel, the RFK Bridge, LaGuardia Airport and the Bay Bridge.

After a surprise attack by the Japanese, the United States declared war with a battered, but not beaten, U.S. military.

FDR vehemently declared, "Yesterday, December 7, 1941–a date which will live in infamy–the United States of America was suddenly and deliberately attacked by naval and air forces of the Empire of Japan." After a brief and forceful speech, he asked Congress to approve a resolution recognizing the state of war between the United States and Japan.

The Senate voted for war against Japan in an 82 to zero vote, and the House of Representatives approved the resolution by a 388 to 1 vote. Three days later, Germany and Italy declared war against the United States, and the United States was thrust into World War II. Marked by patriotism, conservation and teamwork, the people of this time, called the Greatest Generation, grew up in ever-changing times–affluence and poverty, war and peace, ruralism and urbanism, and the foundational shift in human rights in this country. During World War II, America sent 12-16 million people into battle and for the first time pleaded for all types of people to pitch in for the war effort– married women, seniors, the unskilled and even racial minorities (who also fought bravely overseas). Also during this time, the GI Bill was born, ensuring that returning veterans received housing, education and unemployment benefits upon return from war.

And while everyone did not agree on the methods to create national stability, the majority stepped up to help create solutions to the problems facing our country. “At the end of February [1933] we were a congeries of disorderly panic-stricken mobs and factions. In the hundred days from March to June we became again an organized nation confident of our power to provide for our own security and to control our own destiny,” said prominent writer and political commentator Walter Lippmann regarding the first 100 days of FDR’s administration. And while some would argue that FDR’s attempts to sooth and align the country were nothing more than socialistic leadership at its finest, these policies guided the country into its next round of greatness.

SO WHAT SHOULD WE DO? WHAT DO THE PLANS SUGGEST?

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very year the president must submit an annual budget to Congress. However, it has been since the Clinton era that the United States was even close to having a balanced budget in place. Since then, deficits

AROUND THE VIRTUAL WATER COOLER ™ What do you see as the single biggest threat to America today?

“I’d say the increasing consolidation of wealth and power in fewer and fewer hands, and the growing tendency to use that power and influence to homogenize and sterilize our culture and to marginalize and punish decent people.

No great entity persists in this way … and all empires are wont to crumble for it …”

- Lar Romero “I [think it is] lack of quality, equally accessible, well-funded education. While I usually feel we live in a very entitled country … everyone should have access to education. How do we expect to have self-respecting, productive and motivated future generations if we give them nothing upon which to base their lives? They then have nothing to strive for, and if we place no value on their futures, why should they?

In addition, how can we expect them to succeed when we tell them they must have a four-year degree … [and then] ready, set, go. Start the journey $100,000 in debt. Solid education builds responsible, well-informed citizens who demand greatness and accountability from their leaders and thus are able to better society rather than impede it.”

- Dr. Creagh Boulger

have soared and spending has remained unchecked, which is rather disturbing given the current economic environment.

Today, national unemployment hovers near 8 percent in a stagnant economy (and that does not account for the millions of people who have fallen off the charts due to extended unemployment).

The housing and banking markets have collapsed and are trying to rebound.

There are more people participating in national support programs than at any time in recent history. The tax reform discussion is immobilized in rhetoric. Health care is the elephant in the room that no one wants to recognize.

Medicare–which touches one in four American households–is currently on an unsustainable trajectory. K-12 education is wallowing in the muck, while U.S. students globally ranked 31st–with Uzbekistan outperforming U.S. students in international tests. The situation is really a mess.

What’s more, several budget plans have been submitted over the past 24-36 months to Congress for consideration, yet not one has received the support it needs to move to a larger discussion by elected officials. Some of the budget proposals have been led by committees appointed by the president and/or congressional leadership, including the well-publicized 2010 Simpson-Bowles Committee and the 2011 Supercommittee, and their suggestions have served as the foundation for many of the plans that have come since. It is important to note that all of these committees or individual plans have failed when it came time to vote. No one–and we mean literally no one in Washington–can drive consensus on a budget and deficit reduction plan that is meaningful in the near to intermediate term. If Congress cannot reconcile with the president around Bush-era tax cuts, citizens will be facing a tax nightmare described by Ben S. Bernanke, the Federal Reserve chair, as “a massive fiscal cliff ” as of January 1, 2013.

President Obama has issued his 2013 budget, and the House Republicans also introduced a budget blueprint that addresses key fiscal issues, but each takes a very different approach about how to avoid the “fiscal cliff ” for which we are headed.

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DEMOCRATS VERSUS REPUBLICANS

THE COST OF TAX EXPENDITURES

DISCRETIONARY SPENDING

Child tax credit

D

Home mortgage interest reduction $484.10 billion

iscretionary spending is the portion of the federal budget that can be changed on an annual basis through budget directives or changes in tax code. This type of spending works two ways–expansionary policy typically increases spending or decreases taxes and can often lead to a budget deficit while contractionary policy decreases spending and increases taxes, often slowing economic growth. Important to note, raising taxes or eliminating tax credits alone wwill not get us out of the predicament we are in as a nation. Everything that is not mandated by law to be provided as federal government benefits is included in the discretionary budget–things like military spending, homeland security, the State Department, the Department of Education, health and human services, HUD and the justice department.

Currently, the government annually spends approximately 19 percent or $700 billion on defense, $545 billion or 16 percent on safety net programs (food stamps, etc) and 18 percent or $646 billion on “other” programs. The FY2013 budget has set forth a discretionary spending budget of $1.264 trillion, with most federal department budgets being cut or remaining the same. As of mid-September, the House passed a spending bill in a 329-91 vote, demonstrating some form of bipartisan agreement at the Capitol. While the bill will extend 2012 spending levels for the first six months of FY2013 at an annualized rate of $1.04 trillion, sequestration cuts to defense and domestic spending still linger, and an overall satisfactory outcome has yet to be negotiated.

TAX REFORM

I

n its current state, most would argue that the American tax code is archaic, confusing, complicated and essentially broken, and it must be addressed quickly if America is to remain globally competitive. And both parties have diametrically opposing views to the issue.

Democrats: The Democratic Party is arguing that cutting taxes for families that make less than $250,000 per year is the first step to better tax policy. The party argues that this plan puts “more money in the pockets of Americans” and asks corporations and wealthy citizens to pay an increased percentage of taxes. Democrats believe that bringing taxes back to similar levels as we had in the late 1990s could help families prosper, and replicate a time when wealthy citizens “thrived without special treatment.”

Republicans: In the near to intermediate term, Republicans are calling for Bush-era tax rates to be extended through FY2013, creating individual tax rates into two brackets, with the top rate capped at 25 percent or less and repealing the Alternative Minimum Tax (AMT began as a way to ensure that taxpayers pay at least a minimum amount of tax). These proposals also require the ending of popular tax deductions, such as those for home mortgages and other costs, which many average Americans bear. Furthermore,

FEDERAL REVENUES BY SOURCE (Percentage of total revenue, 2010) Individual: 41.6% ($898.5 Billion)

» Source: Congressional Budget Office.

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Payroll Taxes: 40.0% ($864.8 billion)

Corporate: 8.9% ($191.4 billion) Customs Duties, Misc.: 5.6% ($121.2 billion) Excise: 3.1% ($66.9 billion) Estate and Gift: 0.9% ($18.9 billion)

$121.90 billion

Pension contributors

$515.40 billion

Earned income credit

$268.80 billion

State income tax deduction

$237.30 billion

Capital gains tax

$194.10 billion

Charitable constructions

$187.50 billion

Medicare benefits Part A and b

$300.30 billion

Property taxes

$120.90 billion

Social Security and retirement benefits

$173.00 billion

Total

$2.603 trillion

» Source: JCT "Estimates of Federal Tax Expenditures For Fiscal Years 2010-2014"

the Republican plans call for cutting corporate tax rates to 25 percent from 38 percent, which in their estimations will keep taxpayer revenues around 18-19 percent of the overall budget and stimulate businesses bottom-line, providing an extra boost to the economy.

HEALTH CARE

O

f all of the budget and budget-related plans that have been presented over the last few years, health care is arguably one of the most divisive issues across the country. In 2010 when the Simpson-Bowles plan was presented, the team of legislators identified that federal health care spending represented the “single largest fiscal challenge over the long run.” Today, health care costs represent approximately 21 percent of the overall U.S. budget–or $755 billion annually. They noted that overall health care costs continue to grow faster than the economy, causing federal health spending to balloon. In fact, Simpson-Bowles estimated that under its extended-baseline scenario, federal health care spending for Medicare, Medicaid, the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP), and the health insurance exchange subsidies will grow from nearly 6 percent of GDP in 2010 to about 10 percent in 2035, and continue to grow thereafter. Generally these projections appear to be correct.

AROUND THE VIRTUAL WATER COOLER ™

WHERE GOVERNMENT SPENDS Net Interest: 6% ($227 billion) Other: 18% ($646 billion) Health Care (Medicare, Medicaid and CHIP): 21% ($755 billion)

Safety Net Programs (UI, Food Stamps): 16% ($545 billion) Defence: 19% ($700 billion) Social Security: 20% ($725 billion)

» Source: Congressional Budget Office.

What do you see as the single biggest threat to America today?

“The single biggest threat to America isn’t illegal immigration; it isn’t health care; it isn’t global warming, gay marriage, race, politics, access to guns or Lady Gaga. It is the continuing failure to establish a federal budget that is within our means, which will kill our nation. And the fault is collectively ours for allowing this impending man-made disaster to manifest.”

- Darryl Watson

Democrats: It seems that Democrats, especially those most interested in seeing President Obama get re-elected, strongly support the universal health care plan put into place which is generally referred to as “Obamacare.” Democrats assert that universal health care is a basic right in a country “as affluent” as the United States of America. The plan does, however, make some important concessions to previous plans, allowing, for example, for parents to keep adult children on their insurance longer. There are also important changes to rules concerning pre-existing conditions no longer being considered as a reason to be declined when applying for health benefits.

Republicans: Republicans stand firmly against President Obama’s health care reform law and have attempted to repeal it more than 30 times. Congressman Paul Ryan’s health care plan, which is aligned similarly to Simpson-Bowles around the topic of health care, asserts that health care pricing is out of control. Ryan argues, “The rising cost of health care in the United States is the fastest-growing burden on families, businesses, governments, and the economy. In 2007, the U.S. spent an estimated $2.1 trillion to provide, administer, and finance health care–nearly twice the amount per capita spent by any other industrialized nation in the world. Moreover, the rapid growth of health care costs–about 7 percent per year–is eroding paychecks for millions of Americans; and skyrocketing insurance costs are overburdening businesses across the U.S.” In fact, the Congressional Budget Office reports that the federal government devotes 21.7 percent of its budget to the two major health programs, Medicare and Medicaid, which is more than national defense at 17.8 percent, including war costs. Currently, overall health care costs are absorbing 15.2 percent of national GDP, and if the status quo continues, health care costs will consume 20 percent of GDP by 2016.

Medicare and Medicaid are highly contentious topics in this area, and people have divisive views on how the problem with cost should be handled. The Democrats vehemently oppose any effort to privatize the programs; however, the Republicans see privatization as a way to better inefficiencies and slow the unsustainable financial burdens to the states. According to Michael Lind, policy director of New America’s Economic Growth Program, “Medicare is not a government problem. It is a medical industry problem–it’s a pricing problem.”

SOCIAL SECURITY

W

hen Franklin Roosevelt signed Social Security into law, the average life expectancy was 64 and the earliest retirement age for Social Security was 65. The program was supposed to kick in relatively late in life– when people worked until they could collect it and then did not live much longer.

Today, approximately one in four households in the United States receives Social Security benefits, and those benefits represent nearly $725 billion annually, or 20 percent of the overall federal budget. Today, average Americans live 14 years longer, retire three years earlier, and spend 20 years in retirement. In 1950, there were 16 workers per beneficiary; in 1960, there were 5 workers per beneficiary. Today, the ratio is 3:1 – and by 2025, there will be just 2.3 workers “paying in” per beneficiary. And from a planning standpoint, current American workers need to plan that they may live as much as one-third of their lives in retirement.

For those who envision a retirement full of golf and travel that means tremendous personal savings are needed. And for those who do not plan for retirement, they are counting on the fact the federal government will have funds for them for a much longer period of time than was originally expected.

The debate between Democrats and Republican regarding Social Security is essentially about privatization and is another wedge issue between the parties.

Democrats: “Stand united to protect and strengthen Social Security today and for future generations and we will fight any

In the hundred days from March to June we became again an organized nation confident of our power to provide for our own security and to control our own destiny." ~ Wa l ter Li ppm a n n

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Republican efforts to privatize Social Security,” is the argument from the Democrats on this issue. Although Republicans have proposed “retooling” Social Security in the name of deficit reduction, the facts are clear–the Social Security program is relatively healthy. Since its inception, Social Security has paid for itself without adding a single dime to our national deficit. In fact, today, Social Security has a $2.7 trillion surplus and is currently solvent.

Republicans: Republicans contend that “Younger Americans have lost all faith in the Social Security system, which is understandable when they read the nonpartisan actuary’s reports about its future funding status. Born in an old industrial era beyond the memory of most Americans, it is long overdue for major change, not just another legislative stopgap that postpones a day of reckoning. To restore public trust in the system, Republicans are committed to setting it on a sound fiscal basis that will give workers control over, and a sound return on, their investments. The sooner we act, the sooner those close to retirement can be reassured of their benefits and younger workers can take responsibility for planning their own retirement decades from now,” according to www.gop.com.

Unless we act, upcoming and enormous demographic changes will bring the Social Security program to its knees. Without action, the benefits currently pledged under Social Security are a promise we cannot keep. Today, the program is spending more on beneficiaries than it is collecting in revenue. Although the system’s revenues and expenditures are expected to return to balance temporarily in 2012, it will begin running deficits again in 2015 if interest from the trust fund is excluded and in 2025 including interest payments. After that point, the system’s trust fund will be drawn down until it is fully exhausted in 2037.

OTHER AREAS OF CONCERN EDUCATION

B

esides all of the aforementioned areas of concern, the U.S. education system is also facing a crisis. There are myriad issues around funding, qualified teachers and student loans. What’s more, according to the recent U.S. Education Reform and National Security report issued by the Council on Foreign Relations, educational failure and overall lack of preparedness of students poses threats on five national security fronts: economic growth and competitiveness, physical safety, intellectual property, U.S. global awareness and U.S. unity and cohesion. They assert that too many young people are not employable in an increasingly

Everything that is not mandated by law to be provided as federal government benefits is included in the discretionary budget–things like military spending, homeland security, the State Department, the Department of Education, health and human services, HUD and the justice department.

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Medicare is not a government problem. It is a medical industry problem–it’s a pricing problem." ~ M i ch a el Li n d

high-skilled and global economy, and too many are not qualified to join the military because they are not physically fit enough, have criminal records or have an inadequate level of education. These are specific and legitimate concerns.

Democrats: While budget issues are an everyday worry, the Democrats have coalesced around the notion that the United States must maintain strong funding for schools and access to first-rate education.

The president is committed to overhauling the “No Child Left Behind” program while providing educators more professional support and resources, yet holding them accountable for the success of students.

Democrats are also committed to sustaining federal student loan programs, including Pell grants, helping low- and mid-income students afford ever-escalating college tuitions. (It is worth noting that many labor unions stand firmly against tying teacher compensation to student performance, citing systematic challenges to the “fairness” of such an approach.)

Republicans: Republicans have taken a different stance on education, arguing that responsibility should be held at the local and state level–not the federal level. Presidential candidate Mitt Romney said in a February 2012 debate, “We need the federal government out of education.” The party emphasizes school choice, “English First” and teacher accountability as the hallmarks of their plan, and they believe that pumping more money into schools will not change academic achievement. It is worth noting, ironically, that it was President Reagan who created the Cabinet position for a Secretary of Education, effectively bringing the federal government into public education regulation. Today Republicans also tout support STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering & Math) emphasis and the proper implementation of technology in the classroom.

"Human capital will determine power in the current century, and the failure to produce that capital will undermine America's security," the report says. "Large, undereducated swaths of the population damage the ability of the United States to physically defend itself, protect its secure information, conduct diplomacy, and grow its economy." In fact, Education Week says, “In a category related to K-12 education, the U.S. is ranked 31st, owing to low rankings in education expenditures. The U.S. pupil-to-teacher ratio in secondary education, at 13.8:1, is ranked 61st. In higher education, the U.S. ranks second in enrollment, but 74th in students graduating with science and engineering degrees. Elsewhere, the U.S. ranks #1 in the amount of students taking the GMATs, the entry exam for business school, but 53rd on GMAT mean score.” Without a thorough reshaping of educational content and consistency, the United States risks losing and/or falling even farther behind as an “educational, economic, military, and diplomatic global leader,” argues the Council on Foreign Relations.

AROUND THE VIRTUAL WATER COOLER ™ What do you see as the single biggest threat to America today?

“The unwillingness of leadership and the general populace to confront financial realities, i.e., debt, deficit and the lack of resistance when those who do confront them are marginalized in the national discussion.”

- Mike Hanbery “The biggest threat today is social inequality–democracy itself, which is premised on political equality, is unsustainable when there is so much wealth inequality. We are going to see much more social unrest in the near future. When people can’t feed their families, historically that is a huge threat.”

- Ricardo Ruiz

IMMIGRATION

T

here is a growing divide among people regarding immigration, considering that all but the Native Americans are immigrants of some sort. This issue has become so heated it is of national interest on both sides of the aisle, and it is apparent that comprehensive immigration reform is needed.

Democrats: Most Democrats support strong yet thoughtful immigration reform. In sharp contrast to the Republican Party, the Democrats support reform that brings the undocumented out of hiding, with the requirement that they learn English and begin to pay taxes.

Furthermore, Democrats want to legally pursue only those individuals who endanger communities or break U.S. laws, while leaving those who pose no threat alone. Border security is considered a high priority, with significant resources focused on prevention of terrorists entering the country and illegal activities associated principally with human and drug trafficking. President Obama supports the DREAM Act, which provides conditional permanent residency to certain undocumented residents of good moral character who graduate from U.S. high schools, arrived in the United States as minors, and lived in the country continuously for at least five years prior to the bill's enactment. If these residents were to complete two years in the military or two years at a four-year institution of higher learning, they would obtain temporary residency for a six-year period.

Republicans: The majority of the Republican Party has called for a mass expulsion of nearly 11 million immigrants or some measure of reform that would deny all access to citizenship

and full border lockdowns within the next few years, demonstrating their strong opposition to any form of amnesty to undocumented immigrants and by discouraging illegal immigration activities. And while much of the Republican leadership supports “extreme” reform, many individual conservatives have made it clear that they do not feel as strongly by endorsing humane immigration measures and by helping to find a fair stance on immigrant workers throughout the heartland. Republicans recognize that America will need more than 200,000 science and technology workers for high-skill jobs over the next four to six years; therefore, the party supports the granting of more H1B visas as well as allowing students who graduate with advanced STEM degrees be granted permanent residency in the U.S. Open questions remain on the issue of seasonal workers who can be allowed into the country for work in industries such as agriculture and who could pay taxes legally and then return to their native countries after a specific period of time. The challenge, of course, is that many would not go home and would remain if there were any hope of more work.

FOREIGN POLICY

A

fter a decade of war and upheaval in the greater Middle East, the threat of nuclear armament by our foes, border issues to our south and political uprisings around the world, the United States has declared its commitment toward global democratic reform. With that, the military is expected to come home, and a new and broader approach to foreign policy and military might are expected in the near to intermediate term. The way we get there, however, is once again the major sticking point and one that does not necessarily embrace the notion that foreign policy is neither a Democratic nor a Republican issue, but one that is embraced nationally and reflects the whole country to the rest of the world.

Democrats: A major focus of the Democratic Party is that the “most urgent threats to the security of America and the world” is nuclear proliferation in the hands of “terrorists who respond to alienation or perceived injustice with murderous nihilism. They come from rogue states allied to terrorists and from rising powers that could challenge VOLUME 4 ISSUE 3

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both America and the international foundation of liberal democracy,” as reported in an article written by Barack Obama in Foreign Affairs. Furthermore, Democrats have said that they will work to negotiate arms-reduction treaties with Russia, draw down troops globally, and use the funding that was allocated to fight wars to “do some nation-building right here at home.”

Republicans: Bound by a core set of values, the Republican Party will aim to make clear America’s stand on prosecution of foreign aggressors and the countries that harbor them, promote open markets with representative governments, exercise hard and soft power on governments before internal conflicts begin, and exercise her leadership in multilateral organizations. This strategy requires immense funding to the Department of Defense for everything from shipbuilding to cyber-protection. Additional resources will be allocated for additional diplomatic assistance to the greater Middle East, while advancing economic opportunities in Latin America, according to Romney’s website.

BLEEDERS OR MONSTERS? YOU PICK …

L

LET’S QUANTIFY A “TRILLION” It would take a military jet flying at the speed of sound, reeling out a roll of dollar bills behind it, 14 years before it reeled out one trillion dollar bills.

The current salary of NBA star LeBron James is north of $42 million per year. He would need to play for 23,809 seasons to earn $1 trillion.

The Big Bang Theory is estimated to have occurred 13 billion 600 million years ago.

That’s one-third (1/3) of one trillion. We have debt that is quantifiably much bigger than the age of the universe.

ittle else defines the current generation of politicians except partisanship and bickering sound bites. As we witnessed in the recent Republican and Democratic National Conventions, the air was filled with animosity, anger and backstabbing. It was an “us versus them” mentality–focused squarely on that which divides rather than that which unites.

What’s more, there has been a massive shift in voters over the last 100 years, with the deep beliefs of the Millennials and the overwhelming growth in racial and ethnic minority populations, namely Asian-American and Latino adults. In a June 2012 opinion piece featured in The New York Times, it was demonstrated that the Republicans have become “the party of white America” and that Democrats really have become the party of everyone else. It seems that independent and nonpartisan voters are swinging the pendulum of “what’s expected” and that most minority groups just feel like they do not belong in either party. Don’t be mistaken, these groups of voters are not only political but are reachable,

DISCRETIONARY SPENDING CUTS ALONE ARE NOT AN ADEQUATE SUBSTITUTE FOR ENTITLEMENT REFORM Annual spending on entitlement programs is massive compared to other federal spending priorities. Cutting discretionary spending is a necessary step, but cuts to foreign aid alone or pulling out of Afghanistan will not close the deficit.

Entitlement spending must be reigned in.

Entitlements (Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security and other mandatory programs)

$2.4 trillion

Global War on Terrorism $159.3 billion Foreign Aid $28.6 billion

NASA $19.5 billion Corporation for Public Broadcasting $516 million

» Notes: Figure for entitlement includes net interest. Without net interest, the total is $2.2 trillion. Figure for Corporation for Public Broadcasting reflects the annualized level provided by the continuing resolution (P.L. 111-242). » Source: White House Office of Management and Budget

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and once engaged, these people can and will wield strong opinions, potentially turning the red and blue arguments into ones that embrace all shades of purple.

These demographically diverse groups have never really experienced war, poverty or hard times where everyone worked together for the greater good. This demographic has never really known how to bleed. “We, as a country, have not had a unifying event for the new generation. We have not had a World War I or a World War II to unite our generation. Sadly, we have not ever really gotten behind the notion of Iraq and Afghanistan as a ‘unifying’ war.

We have, by and large, been given everything we have by parents and a government that wanted it to be easier for us than it was

Large, undereducated swaths of the population damage the ability of the United States to physically defend itself, protect its secure information, conduct diplomacy, and grow its economy."

~ U.S. Edu ca ti o n R efo rm and N a ti o n a l S ecu ri t y rep o r t

for them. That is, of course, a noble goal.

However, what it seems to have done is to create an unmotivated generation who wants to be given a lot but who is unwilling to do much to earn it. We have never bled for this country or for ourselves. We don’t know what it feels like to be part of a collective of people all with shoulders to the wheel and noses to the grindstone,” said 30-year-old Kevin Kersting, president of CAP Logistics. “You are parents. You understand. If you raise your children by giving them everything they want and everything they ask for you won’t create good responsible people, but rather you will create monsters. I believe we have created a country with a generation full of monsters.

The madness has to stop,” he said.

AROUND THE VIRTUAL WATER COOLER ™

INTEREST ON RISING DEBT WILL DWARF OTHER SPENDING - 2022 Projection 1,500

“For me, government FOR the people and BY the people has to be based on consensus. If not, we are no different from the USSR back in the day (and once again) or the Taliban (the current conversation regarding ‘legitimate rape’ and ‘some punishment’ and coverage of birth control).

For me, it’s what makes us different … and, I think, better–the ability to see past our personal opinions and find common ground that works for the majority.

No decision will ever reach 100 percent consensus– we’re human beings and pretty darn stubborn–but I think we can do better.”

- Suzanne Hammer

22 20

18 20

14 20

10 20

06 20

02 20

98 19

94 19

90 19

86 19

82 19

78 19

74 19

19

300

$133 billion

$744 billion

Defence

600

$700 on avg. of 5.7%

Transportation

900

NetInterest $604 on avg. of 2.5%

“The loss of moral and political credibility, the loss of economic leadership, low educational standards, religious extremism.”

- Andreas Traxler

2020 projection $25.9 trillion 20,022 20,000 Current $15.4 trillion 18,000 The federal government 16,000 now borrows 42¢ of 2000 $5.6 trillion every dollar spent.

14,000 12,000 1990 $2.9 trillion 10,000 8,000 1980 $829 billion 6,000 4,000 2,000 1970 $380 billion PROJECTED 0

70

Billions

$1,064 billion

1,200

NATIONAL DEPT 1970-2022

» Source: Office of Management and Budget

$1.304 trillion

Midicare

What do you see as the single biggest threat to America today?

Billions

Whether Democrat, Republican, Independent, Socialist or Libertarian–we must find civility within us and learn to see some form of compromise as a victory. We must stand up and use our voices to say we’ve had enough! And if we do not begin to see timely action, fighting over hypotheticals that will not even begin to take effect until 12 years in the future, for example, will be moot. Certainly what we see now does not look like strong leadership. It looks more like posturing.

In the final analysis, whether you are oriented to the right, the left or if you sit squarely in the middle, most people we’ve talked to are just disgusted with the state of things. The economy is precarious. The health care debate is confusing and irritating. The employment market is bleak at best. The planet appears to be too hot, and nothing really feels like it is going all that well. We are in a malaise of mediocrity that has become so pervasive, it’s like a debilitating disease to the American spirit.

We have an illness of will for which there is no cure. We have an absence of enthusiasm that has pulled our individual focuses so far inward that we seem not to be able to see the forest for the trees. We have people screaming from the far sides while everyone else–which amounts by some counts to 80 percent of the people in the country–seem to be standing with their proverbial fingers in their ears, deaf to the din of negativity.

The choices we have to make are not easy ones. But at least we have choices. We must look at the situation in which we find ourselves, and each of us must make tough decisions. This involves ranking problems. This involves giving priority to some things over other things that are no less important. This involves deciding where we stand–issue by issue–and then sticking to our guns (so to speak) and having the will and fortitude to let our political leaders know where we stand and where we refuse to compromise. Perhaps if we re-create a culture of true accountability, we will figure out how to motivate one another and ourselves through these tough times. One thing that is certainly true is that if we do nothing, we know what the future looks like because we are living it now–and it will get worse.

The chart below lends some sobering reference to the fiscal issues that are facing us in the near to intermediate-term.

0 » Source: Congressional Budget Office – March 2012 baseline, Wall Street Journal, "The deficit is Worse Than We Think," June 28, 2011

WHAT ARE WE TO DO?

F

or more than three years the president has worked with bipartisan legislative commissions and very smart individuals to craft a budget that is reasonable yet appropriate in the economic predicament the United States faces. And whether citizens like it or not, without a budget, we continue to fall deeper into debt, and continue to amass more dollars toward our $16 trillion dollar deficit. What’s more, $0.42 of every dollar spent by the federal government is borrowed and that number will continue to grow exponentially between now and 2022. Right now, the Congressional Budget Office estimates that nearly 6 percent or $227 billion of the overall U.S. budget is spent on net interest alone. If we continue spending at such an unreasonable rate, we will foster hatred and ill-will among the citizens of the country and supporters abroad, but what’s potentially more harmful–we will we risk the very foundation of this country.

Here’s what we think … It isn’t about the rhetoric that has blown through the recent conventions or national news stories. It isn’t about the color of your skin, your religion or your gender. It isn’t about whether you believe that you are entitled to what has been built before you or not.

It is about is the ability to work together–to fulfill our patriotic duty to make America better for our children and grandchildren. It is about getting things VOLUME 4 ISSUE 3

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done instead of constantly bickering–which is driven by political pollsters. It is about all of us exercising our rights as Americans to urge–perhaps force– our legislators to actually do their jobs.

“We cannot grow our way out of this problem; eliminating earmarks will not solve the problem; wiping out fraud, waste, and abuse will not solve the problem; ending the war or cutting way back on defense will not solve the problem; restraining discretionary spending will not solve the problem; and letting the tax cuts expire will not solve this problem,” said former Comptroller General David M. Walker in his testimony to the House Budget Committee.

We think the guiding principles of the Simpson-Bowles Committee is spot on in terms of the challenges we face and the vehement denial of politicians to politely, yet aggressively, engage in policymaking: “Americans are counting on us to pull together, not pull apart, to put politics aside and do the right thing for future generations. Our country’s economic and national security depends on us putting our fiscal house in order.

There are many plans that have been created over the last two years that address our nation’s efforts at creating and living by a national budget in order to create a lasting tomorrow. The American people are counting on us to put politics aside, pull together not pull apart, and agree on a plan to live within our means and make America strong for the long haul.”

While budget issues are certainly not the sexiest of news stories–like immigration, or foreign policy, education or Social Security, there are some legislators who agree that Washington must lead. They recognize that there will be no special earmarks on the table–the solutions will be painful for some because the problems are real! The U.S. Government is currently in debt $16 trillion, and estimates of unfunded entitlement program spending going forward over the next 10-50 years is between $32 trillion - $114 trillion. “The Chinese government doesn’t need nuclear weapons to take out the U.S. – they can just call-in our debt notes and watch global economic chaos ensue,” said Elliott Smith, executive director of the Iowa Business Council. We must meet the trifecta of a lifetime head-on by addressing the issues now–balanced budget, debt reduction and fiscal strength; otherwise we risk ending up like Greece–or worse.

LET’S QUANTIFY A “TRILLION” 1 million seconds = 11.5 days; 1 billion = 32 years; 1 trillion = 32,000 yrs.

If you spent $1 every second it would take you almost 12 days to spend $1 million.

• I t would take 32 years to spend $1 billion.

• B ut it would take you 32,000 years to spend $1 trillion.

One trillion $ bills stacked on top of each other reaches 68,000 miles high.

• T he average center-to-center distance from the Earth to the Moon is 238,857 miles.

• A stack of 10 trillion $1 bills would be 680,000 miles high—or 2.85 trips between the Earth and the Moon.

• I f you laid one dollar bills end-to-end, you could make a chain that stretches from the Earth to the Moon and back 200 times.

• O ne trillion dollar bills would stretch nearly from the earth to the sun.

165.4%

SOVEREIGN DEBT - Debt to GDP ratios

120.1% 100% Intrgovernmental Debt

68.2%

U.S.A

Spain

Italy

Greece

» Interest expense on debt outstanding was $454.4 billion in FY2011. So far in FY2012, it's at $272 billion (October 1 thru May).

Source U.S. Treasury » Source (graph): CIA World Fact Book

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We have never bled for this country or for ourselves. We don’t know what it feels like to be part of a collective of people all with shoulders to the wheel and noses to the grindstone." ~ Kevi n Kersti n g

At ICOSA we create a platform for readers to engage in discourse–but we would argue that it needs to be a civil discourse with a focus on telling the truth– not always the good news. Whether you are a posy-sniffing Liberal or just to the right of Attila the Hun, or anywhere in between, we challenge you to use your voice and your capacity to get a balanced budget and debt reduction plan passed as soon as possible.

And while we know that life seems so much easier without the facts, the only way that we can truly find solutions is by looking at the facts. We have arrived at a moment of truth, and neither political party is without blame. America cannot be great if we go broke! Isn’t there a way to check the politics at the door and focus on policy? Don’t we realize that the “wedge” issues mean nothing if there is no funding to take care of the issues?

How do we change the belief that compromise equals loss?

We would argue it is by getting engaged, calling your legislators and voicing your opinion on this issue, voting and joining ICOSA in Washington, D.C., to urge our leadership to do their jobs!

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton perhaps said it best at the bestowing of the Congressional Gold Medal to political activist and parliament member Aung San Suu Kyi: “It is well for us to remember people fight and die for the right to exercise politics.” We must remember we are the most blessed population on this planet. Let’s act like it and work together to solve our biggest problem–the budget!

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GOVERNMENT

| POWER MARKETING ADMINISTRATION

Creating Sustainable Continuity of America’s Transmission Lines INTEGRATING RENEWABLES ON THE GRID

BY K ELLY DE L A TOR R E A ND EMILY HAGGSTROM

A

ccess to affordable energy is what has linked developed nations to economic prosperity and continued innovative advancements over the last 50 years. Largely, Americans are more connected than ever before to devices that allow them to go anywhere and do anything, with more energy being consumed than ever before.

With power stations located intermittently across the country, ensuring cost-effective power to consumers has been a topic of discussion between government officials and organizations since the early 1900s.

Unlike areas on the East Coast that are very densely populated, the western United States is defined by vast land expanses and exceptional geographic diversity, with the Mojave Desert at one end of the spectrum and the Rocky Mountains at the other.

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Because the population distribution within these vast land expanses is so spread apart, there is a big role for the Power Marketing Administration (PMA) to define how to electrify the West.

In the 1930s, it was common for urban and more densely populated areas to be fully electrified while the adjacent rural communities were without power because the private utilities did not consider investment in these areas feasible.

Recognizing the value of electrification, President Franklin Roosevelt and others promoted rural electrification and envisioned that power could be provided to these customers at a cost that was comparable to the urban areas. To make these investments feasible, federal support was necessary. Today, access to affordable energy in the United States is due essentially in part to the nation’s largest and most complex machine ever built, the United States’s electric grid.

The grid, mostly built out before the 1970s, is a vast interconnected transmission system principally maintained by four federally owned PMAs under the Department of Energy, who deliver and market power in 34 states through linked government hydro facilities and power stations to power purchasers and eventually to consumers. Under the law, preference is given to consumer-owned utilities that provide power to more than 60 million Americans in the 34-state system, according to the Western Area Power Administration (WAPA), one of the four PMAs who sell federal power at cost-based rates.

Consequently, as the need for electricity has increased, not just in load centers but rural areas as well, there have been concerns about the grid’s ability to distribute

There have been legitimate concerns raised from both sides on how to allocate costs of infrastructure expansion and upgrades.

power across lines economically as intermittent renewables are slowly integrated onto transmission lines after new policies were enacted requiring electricity producers to supply a minimum amount of electricity from renewable resources each year.

This dated infrastructure is also in desperate need of upgrades, efficiency improvements through transmission construction and increased capacity. So while serious reliability issues have yet to surface, the North American Electric Reliability Corporation (NERC) would like to see build-out started before issues begin to occur. “Tens of thousands of miles of new transmission is needed,” they say.

Equally important is the need for increased capacity as new energy sources are added, drawing debate from all sides of the energy spectrum on how to efficiently use and integrate all forms of energy available onto the grid. In an effort to “build a more secure and sustainable electric sector,” Department of Energy (DOE), Secretary, Steven Chu, issued a memo to the PMA in March asking them to, “Help lead the 21st century transformation of our nation’s electricity sector to better protect our economic and national security.”

The memo called for transmission upgrades in an effort to “increase connectivity” to more Americans while integrating cleaner technologies that “take(s) advantage of our indigenous and inexhaustible resources.” Sharp criticism quickly came after the memo’s release, as members of the House and Senate worried how consumers and ratepayers would be adversely affected by the up-front and long-term costs of such upgrades and accelerated renewable additions beyond state renewable portfolio standard allocations.

A letter to Chu was quickly drafted by the Committee on Natural Resources to testify at an oversight hearing in regards to their concerns over various possible cost implications and to answer questions. After denying the committee’s request, Chu was issued two more bi-partisan letters from 166 congressional leaders and Senators saying, “While we have been told by your staff that the Memorandum should serve as a ‘vision statement,’ the undeniable fact is that this document issues directives to PMAs.” It went on to say, “We strongly believe that no actions with respect to this Memorandum should move forward until the Department can demonstrate that it has worked within a robust, transparent, public process with stakeholders, including members of Congress and ratepayers.”

At the behest of its intermittent and wholesale power customers, the WAPA along with the DOE held a joint stakeholder workshop in late July, followed by a public comment period through August 28th. So far, there have been legitimate concerns raised from both sides on how to allocate costs of infrastructure expansion and upgrades, namely as it pertains to, “Who pays for what, at what cost and at who’s benefit,” asked Tri-State’s senior manager of public affairs, Lee Boughey?

Concurrently, the American Wind Energy Association (AWEA) felt that the public’s assets already being used by the PMAs should “play a greater role in advancing our nation’s broader energy interests, including the deployment of renewable energy.”

One thing is sure, power customers and consumers are going to have to consciously implement and support existing legislation and work together towards making improvements to the grid that will positively impact all stakeholders involved in the build out of this intricate, yet dated system.

THE IMPORTANCE OF INTEGRATING RENEWABLES

I

n addition to an abundance of newly discovered, technically recoverable, domestic fossil fuels the United States boasts the second highest production of intermittent renewables in the world after China. While the U.S. produces roughly 13 percent of its utility-grade power from renewables according to the EIA, renewable generation is expected to grow.

Despite low gas prices, many analysts and energy insiders believe that after 10 years on the transmission system, wind energy is nearing grid parity, providing a competitive advantage for the resource, which is valuable in assisting power producers to meet imbalances and account for enhanced operational planning.

While there has never really been an enforced policy to build out generation sources, there is now a push by the Obama administration to move forward with transmission construction and renewable integration for America to be more globally competitive and to increase energy security.

“Co-ops will have to face that everyone will need to build out their portion of the grid eventually,” said Patton Boggs, Energy and Natural Resources Partner, Eric Drummond, “ERCOT (Electric Reliability Council of Texas) has already had to face concerns over costs when the state began to integrate wind into their portfolio at the same time they were anticipating bringing up over $5 billion in transmission. However, it was reflected in a May 2010 study that the Texas system as a whole received approximately $30 billion in system benefits–hedging fuel costs and bringing up wind and transmission infrastructure that helped to offset costs.”

Like Texas, many ratepayers in the West are willing to pay a small premium to get non-carbon power. Texas was successful because it brought the right parties to the table. The state also worked with the rural ranchers and farmers to establish monthly and annual lease payments beneficial to rural economies. “There is of course, the likelihood of short-term costs for ratepayers, but nobody really knows what that cost increase would be,” said Drummond.

“The greatest threat to WAPA’s preference customers is not having access to affordable and reliable power in the VOLUME 4 ISSUE 3

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| POWER MARKETING ADMINISTRATION

future–due to WAPA’s failure to make sensible investments, such as proposed grid reforms,” stated AWEA in a public comment.

According to the DOE, the United States risks more serious consequences if we continue to rely on outdated and inflexible infrastructure. Blackouts and brownouts in 2011 were the result of transmission failures due to improper and unreliable planning.

While human error seems to be a large part of grid inefficiency, the longer the grid takes to be updated, customers and consumers alike look to face bigger and more expensive challenges in system upgrades. The integration of renewables onto the grid will have to happen sooner rather than later. And while some say the timing of upgrading the system is a detriment to energy customers and consumers, there never seems to be a right time. Establishing distribution of renewables is not only important to diversifying our energy portfolio, but it will assist in attaining greater energy independence in the years to come.

STAYING TRUE TO THE MISSION OF LOW-COST, AFFORDABLE ENERGY

T

he mission of the PMA consumer-owned utilities is to provide affordable and reliable electricity to the consumers in their territories. In the west, Tri-State Generation and Transmission Association, Inc. is a not-for-profit wholesale electric cooperative based in Colorado. Its mission is to provide reliable, cost-based wholesale electricity to its 44 non-for-profit member systems (electric cooperatives and public power districts) while maintaining high environmental standards.

Tri-State testified during a recent hearing on “Increased Electricity Costs for American Families and Small Business: The Potential Impacts of the Chu Memorandum” that “hydropower purchased from WAPA accounts for approximately 12 percent of our generation needs.” The ability for Tri-State to provide reliable, affordable power is further complicated by the fact that on average, their member systems service five consumers per mile compared to 37 consumers per mile served by investor owned utilities, and some systems support the poorest local economies in the country.

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For the rural electric cooperatives, Secretary Chu’s memo appears at odds with the history of the role of federal hydropower. “Historically, one of the keys to providing affordable electricity by cooperatives across the country has been access to electricity produced at federal dams and marketed by the four Power Marketing Administrations,” according to testimony of the Honorable Glenn English, CEO of the National Rural Electric Cooperative Association before the U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Natural Resources on April 26, 2012. The system is further complicated by the nature of transmission in the west. In the simplest of terms, electrical power transmission in the west is based on two guiding principles: (1) beneficiary pays and (2) bi-lateral contracts.

A primary concern of the American Public Power Association (APPA), a nonprofit service organization for the nation’s more than 2,000 community-owned electric utilities, is that the changes proposed under the Chu Memo would impact the “beneficiary pays” principle that has governed the PMAs operations. For these utilities, “the rates that they pay for the PMA-marketed hydropower cover all of the costs of generating and transmitting power, interest on the federal investment in the project, and ongoing operation and maintenance,” testified Mark Crisson, president and CEO of APPA. Under this system, “the power customers who receive the benefits of these upgrades repay the government for them.” This principle that the beneficiary pays, underpins PMAs operations. The concern is that through this DOE mandate, the PMA customers would be required to take on upgrades that would benefit the system as a whole.

Furthermore, there is concern that rural consumers may be required to shoulder costs for the benefit of for-profit utilities as a result of the Chu Memorandum. TriState testified that their members have shouldered the cost of developing a significant renewable energy portfolio and have complemented this portfolio by developing distributed generation projects.

“If the Chu Memorandum were to be implemented,” testified Joel Bladow, senior vice president of transmission, “Tri-State members would be required to pay the costs for other utilities’ renewable

integration costs. For example, in Colorado the majority of the electricity demand is in the Denver Metropolitan Area. However, the utility providing electricity to this region has almost no interstate transmission connections which would reward this utility by allowing it to use WAPA’s interstate transmission system without compensating Tri-State and WAPA’s other customers that paid for the construction and continue to pay for the maintenance of the system through their rates.”

Establishing distribution of renewables is not only important to diversifying our energy portfolio, but it will assist in attaining greater energy independence in the years to come.

Another major concern of the Chu Memorandum is a potential shift in jurisdiction from state and local authorities to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC). In the Western Interconnection, utilities either generate power from resources that they own or purchase power through competitively negotiated bilateral contracts for power. Any additional mechanism to manage transmission in the west is generally viewed to run afoul of the vertically integrated, costbased model that keeps electricity costs to consumers low. The additional mechanism discussed in the Chu Memorandum is implementation of a regional energy imbalance market (EIM).

The EIM is the concept that imbalances in one area could be smoothed out if that area were coordinated with multiple other areas within the Western Interconnection. Commissioner Marks explains it this way in his testimony in the Oversight Hearing on the Chu Memorandum.

“Today in the Western Interconnection, we have 37 separate balancing authorities (Bas). Each works continuously to keep electric generation in balance with fluctuating loads . . . The imbalances that

must be addressed within each BA can be either too much or too little electric supply relative to the real-time demand. By summing real-time demand and supply across multiple BAs, we can expect that a portion of the deviations will wash-out on their own, reducing the need for active dispatch by the EIM operator.” According to Marks, the savings would come from decreased fuel costs, less wear and tear on generators due to less cycling, and use of existing but underused lines.

In contrast, Crisson argues that an EIM for the West would be costly and unnecessary and that implementation and operation could, in some scenarios, outweigh the estimated benefits. In addition, Crisson argued that, “critical details of the EIM such as governance, the market operator, market monitoring, and mitigation have not yet been determined by either the stakeholders who have proposed it or DOE.” An additional concern is that an EIM is the first step towards evolution to a Regional Transmission Organization (RTO). In the West, the RTO structure is considered a mechanism that will “adversely affect the consumers they serve.” According to Crisson, a multitude of problems, including burdensome administrative costs and complicated and unresponsive governance structures can impact the existing system for transmission in the West.

Simply put, the answer to addressing electricity in the West is not simple. President Roosevelt recognized the benefits that delivery of reliable and affordable electricity to rural areas brings to our country.

“The business relationship between electric cooperatives and PMAs represents a longstanding partnership between electric cooperatives and the federal government,” testified the Honorable Glenn English.

“It is also a good deal for taxpayers, as it provides a mechanism through which federal investment is continually repaid by users of the federal power system.” When listening to the public power entities, it is clear that the framework under which the PMAs operate is continuing to evolve, however, it is equally clear that there is a fear that Secretary Chu is seeking to undertake significant new programs without input from PMA customers or Congress, and that this movement will detrimentally impact the mission of the PMAs to provide reliable and affordable power–power that drives our economy.

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BUSINESS | TRI-STATE GENERATION & TRANSMISSION ASSOCIATION

Energizing the West with a Cooperative Spirit for 60 Years Tri-State Generation and Transmission Association B Y K E L LY D E L A T O R R E

T

ri-State Generation and Transmission Association is a Denver-based, wholesale power provider to 44 electric cooperatives and public power districts that serve more than 1.5 million people and businesses throughout rural Colorado, Wyoming, New Mexico and Nebraska.

With 1,475 employees stationed at a variety of facilities throughout its four-state service territory, assets totaling $4.2 billion and annual operating revenue topping $1.2 billion, some people say Tri-State is one of the largest and most successful–yet lesser-known–corporations in the region.

“One reason for that might be that Tri-State strictly sells our commodity–electricity–on a wholesale level, meaning we do not make any retail sales to end-use consumers,” explained Ken Anderson, Tri-State’s executive vice president and general manager.

“Another reason might be that we are a not-for-profit cooperative, as opposed to a publicly traded, investor-owned utility such as Xcel Energy or Public Service Company of New Mexico,” he said.

Established in 1952, Tri-State boasts an impressive six-decade résumé featuring growth and stability. It has stuck to its core mission of providing affordable and reliable electricity by relying on a combination of owned baseload and peaking power plants that use coal and natural gas as their primary fuels, supplemented by purchased power, federal hydroelectricity allocations and a variety of other renewable resource technologies.

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The shared success that Tri-State and its member co-ops have experienced over the past 60 years is firmly rooted in the cooperative business model, which was founded on seven cooperative principles–guidelines by which cooperatives put their values into practice.

In 2012, designated as the “International Year of Cooperatives” by the United Nations, Tri-State has joined with co-ops across the country and around the world to celebrate the cooperative mission, cooperative unity and the cooperative spirit.

Cooperative Principle #1: Voluntary and Open Membership Tri-State and its member cooperatives are owned and operated by the member-consumers who benefit from the electricity that energizes their lives, businesses and communities.

Besides defined service territories, there are no boundaries as to who can receive power and other services from an electric co-op and also participate as a member-owner. In fact, today, approximately 42 million Americans in 47 states are members of electric co-ops.

“Years ago, rural residents joined together to form electric cooperatives because the large power companies wouldn’t serve them due to lack of profitability,” Anderson explained. “In turn,

» Colowyo Mine

eventually the co-ops combined resources to create their own power suppliers–generation and transmission associations like Tri-State–creating a value chain uniquely suited to deliver a reliable and affordable supply of power to rural communities.”

strategic planning process. “As such,” Gordon explained, “the board continually crafts and refines its strategic goals and initiatives aimed at best serving the membership as a whole and effectively delivering on our mission of providing affordable, reliable and responsible power to our member co-ops.”

Cooperative Principle #2: Democratic Member Control Cooperative Principle #3: Member Economic Participation Tri-State and its member cooperatives are democratic organizations governed by their member-owners, who actively participate in developing policies and strategies.

There are Wall Street boards, and there are Main Street boards.

Directors on co-op boards are local residents who oftentimes have deep roots in their communities with financial and emotional investments to match.

Current Tri-State board president Rick Gordon, who represents Limon, Colorado-based co-op Mountain View Electric Association, said, “The cooperative business model’s democratic structure provides for self-regulation and governance by and for its members. Serving as the governing body of this organization, the board’s goal is to make decisions that are in the best interests of the entire membership.”

In other words, each of Tri-State’s 44 member co-ops are equally represented in the governance, policy development and

Working together, the cooperative business model provides financial strength to Tri-State and its members, which in turn delivers value to the co-op member-owners.

Co-ops work for people, not for profit. As not-for-profit entities, electric cooperatives’ operating budgets are established to cover the actual costs of running and maintaining their systems.

Positive margins that may be generated are oftentimes returned to the members in the form of capital credits or reinvested in the organization’s local infrastructure.

“We recognize that we are stewards of our membership’s assets,” Anderson said. “With our board’s leadership, we are in a strong financial position that has sustained investment-grade credit ratings.”

In addition, many of Tri-State’s member co-ops recently have taken advantage of board policies and incentives and have

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invested in their communities through the development of more than 40 megawatts of local renewable resource projects, including small hydropower, solar farms and heat recovery systems, as well as net metering projects. The initiative assists Tri-State members that make investments to diversify their resource base while helping to meet their renewable portfolio standard requirements.

“We recognize that our members have a unique opportunity to participate in local renewable energy projects, so the board adopted a first-of-its-kind in the nation program that supports the development of these projects within the members’ service territories,” Gordon said.

Cooperative Principle #4: Autonomy and Independence Tri-State and its member co-ops are autonomous, self-sufficient organizations working together to effectively meet their long-term power requirements.

Self-sufficiency is one of the many characteristics that gives strength to the cooperative business model. Because co-ops are organizations that are governed and operated by the people and for the people, the sense of independence is not only deep-rooted, but a vital component of co-ops’ can-do attitude.

“We are owned and operated by the people we serve, so we’re focused on doing what’s in their best interest,” Anderson stated.

Tri-State’s self-reliance historically has been illustrated by its ability to secure and maintain an efficient and stable electric generating resource portfolio and transmission network to effectively serve its members’ long-term power requirements.

Toward that end, in 2011 the association was involved in two major resource acquisitions. In mid-September, Western FuelsColorado–the fuel supply organization in which Tri-State is the majority owner–purchased the Colowyo Mine in northwest Colorado. “Ownership of the mine ensures us a reliable and affordable supply of fuel for one of our primary power plants in the area to the extent of its projected useful life,” Anderson explained.

Tri-State also acquired a 272-megawatt natural gas-fired combined cycle generating facility in Fort Lupton, Colo., a plant that helps meet Tri-State’s need to add intermediate generation to its fleet and provide operational flexibility in a high-growth part of its system.

Although the majority of its operational and resourceplanning activities are carried out in an autonomous manner, Anderson was quick to point out that Tri-State’s board and management “stringently abide with the numerous regulatory and compliance processes in place while continuing to make decisions and pursue opportunities that ultimately provide the greatest benefit to our membership.”

Transmission infrastructure is uniquely important to electric co-ops that serve sparsely populated rural areas. While investor-owned and municipal utilities serve on average 35 and 47 customers per mile of line, respectively, cooperatives average only about seven customers per mile. In fact, while co-ops deliver 10 percent of the electricity in the United States, they operate 42 percent of the electric distribution lines that cover three-quarters of the nation’s land mass.

Tri-State owns and operates more than 5,000 miles of transmission line across its 200,000-square-mile service territory and continuously invests in the system to reliably serve its member systems’ loads, access power markets and interconnect generation resources.

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» Craig Station

THE VALUE OF AMERICA’S ELECTRIC COOPERATIVES • Today, 841 distribution and 65 G&T cooperatives serve 42 million people in 47 states – that’s 12 percent of the U.S. population.

Cooperative Principle #5: Education, Training and Information

Tri-State puts a high priority on engaging its member-owners, employees and other important constituents, so they can contribute effectively to the success of the association.

Electric cooperatives have always • Electric cooperatives put a high priority on engaging their own assets worth $112 members, employees and other billion and own and constituents. As the utility industry maintain 2.5 million has evolved over the years, having the miles, or 42 percent, right tools, training, information and of the nation’s electric education have become increasingly distribution lines. important.

• Electric co-ops employ Equally essential are the continuous 70,000 Americans, pay efforts put toward communicating $1.4 billion in state and with the end-use member-owners–a local taxes and retire powerful grassroots network that, $545 million in capital when called into action, can make credits annually. its unified voice heard and have a tremendous impact in a number of arenas. “The foundation of consistent, two-way communication with our co-op constituents is one of many key elements of the valuable relationship that makes the entire network stronger and more effective,” Anderson stated.

One issue that Tri-State has embraced and advocated for on behalf of its members and the entire consumer base is affordability and proposed public policies and regulations that would significantly increase the cost of producing and delivering electricity.

“The message and mission of sustained affordable electricity and its importance to rural economies is one that Tri-State has integrated throughout the fabric of our entire organizational

» Training in Brush, Colorado

structure, ensuring that member-owners are aware of these issues and have their voices heard,” Anderson said.

"The cooperative business model’s democratic structure provides for self-regulation and governance by and for its members."

- Rick Gordon

Cooperative Principle #6: Cooperation Among Cooperatives The nation’s network of electric co-ops share common ideals and goals, allowing them to work together toward mutually beneficial solutions for the good of the whole.

The funny thing about cooperatives is that they are doggedly independent by nature, but are quick to come to each other’s aid and work together toward common goals and objectives. Never is that more apparent than when disaster strikes–whether it be the recent wildfires or other severe acts of nature. Crews from neighboring co-ops are quick to lend a helping hand to their fellow co-ops–asking nothing in return because they know they will receive equal support if and when the time comes.

“We sometimes refer to ourselves as an electric co-op family,” Anderson said. “We’re a consortium of independently operated utilities all dealing with our own circumstances, but our commonalities far outweigh our differences. We share ideals and core values, and we rely on one another and support each other from beginning to end.”

Cooperative Principle #7: Concern for Community Tri-State and its member co-ops work for the economic development and well-being of their communities, striving to make life better in the areas they serve.

A telling characteristic of cooperatives that sets them apart from other businesses as much as any other is the commitment to the communities in which they reside and that they serve.

“Our number-one mission will always be to ‘keep the lights on,’” Anderson explained. “However, not only do we and our member

co-ops energize communities with a reliable, not-for-profit supply of electricity, but we also drive economic development, fund scholarships, support local charities and work to make life better in the areas we serve.”

Tri-State and its member co-ops have a long track record of supporting and giving back to society in the cooperative spirit through fundraising activities, sponsorships, volunteer efforts and contributing time and money. Two world-renowned organizations that have received long-standing support from Tri-State and its members are St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital and Ronald McDonald House Charities, both of which provide a vital service to rural families in need.

Preserving Western heritage and investing in the next generation of electric co-op member-consumers also is a priority. For many years, Tri-State and its members have supported tomorrow’s rural leaders by supporting several Future Farmers of America and 4-H youth programs, Ag in the Classroom educational initiatives, the National Western Stock Show and Rodeo and the Colorado State Fair Junior Livestock Sale.

“Today, we as an organization and the electric utility industry as a whole face many challenges,” Anderson summarized. “But that’s nothing new,” he noted. “Tri-State’s 60 years of existence has been an evolution of sorts–full of growing pains, overcoming countless obstacles and enjoying a number of different accomplishments. Going forward, we will continue to deliver on our part of the value of the cooperative business model to the benefit of our 1.5 million member-owners across the West.”

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BUSINESS | FAEGRE BAKER DANIELS LLP

Faegre Baker Daniels LLP Two Firms Come Together to Ensure Success Over Time

BY KIM DeCOSTE

T

he law firm Faegre Baker Daniels LLP is a fresh example of business continuity that came together on January 1st of this year, and is the result of a combination of two well-established firms, Faegre & Benson and Baker & Daniels. The two firms brought together virtually identical core values that its partners wish to continue, enabling the new firm’s leadership to quickly and easily articulate three guiding principles: 1) clients first, 2) high performance and 3) one firm. With this important value-based step forward, Faegre Baker Daniels set in motion a plan to establish itself as one of the top 100 law firms in the United States. The firm recognizes that lasting success requires growth and change, while still being committed to maintaining consistency.

The two legacy firms were fortunate to have no offices in the same cities, and leadership agreed to continue operations at each office. Faegre Baker Daniels now has 10 U.S. and three international offices, offering a full complement of legal services to clients ranging from emerging enterprises to multinational companies. The firm's 750-plus legal professionals handle complex transactional, regulatory and litigation matters, and FaegreBD Consulting, the firm’s advisory and advocacy division, based in Washington, D.C., provides public policy, regulatory and technical services to key sectors of the economy.

Industry-focused teams were also important to both legacy firms and continue at Faegre Baker Daniels. One of the firm’s key areas of focus is on energy, resources and clean technology industries, where it has the breadth and depth of legal and policy experience to serve clients whose needs range from the comprehensive to the specific. Jim Spaanstra is leading this effort, which the combined firm now calls its “EarthTech industry group.” Spaanstra told ICOSA, “It has been exciting to be a part of the EarthTech industry group over the last two and a half years, and especially since the combination took place. The professionals from both legacy firms who provide services to clients across the industry segments are pleased to be able to offer more targeted solutions as a result of collaborating with the much-expanded talent base we now have in place.”

The legal professionals in this industry group represent a broad spectrum of businesses, including:

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• Utilities • Project developers • Financial sponsors • Power equipment manufacturers • Power technology developers • Natural gas and oil producers, distributors, processors and transporters • Renewable energy companies including ethanol, biofuels, wind, solar geothermal and waste-to-energy companies The firm is a national leader in working with clean technology companies throughout all parts of their businesses and in assisting other energy and resources companies with potential clean technology aspects of their businesses. In addition to providing counsel on intellectual property rights, their expertise includes working with construction firms to address green building regulations, as well as with energy alliances, and with universities and research facilities. The firm has also been an active sponsor of the Cleantech Open (www.cleantechopen.org), a nonprofit cleantech industry competition ICOSA has covered in the past. Cleantech Open seeks to find, fund and foster cleantech start-ups. Regional Director, Dick Franklin, told ICOSA, “They have been a key partner since we began the national expansion. The firm has been generous both with their fiscal support as well as with other resources to help CTO succeed and grow year after year, and we are most appreciative. They have been instrumental in helping with our regional expansion as well. They are outstanding sponsors to Cleantech Open.”

In addition, the firm’s energy policy consultants in Washington, D.C., are uniquely positioned to assist clients in understanding the potential threats and opportunities presented by the federal regulatory landscape and in developing and executing federal and state government relations programs to realize their public policy goals. These strategic consulting services are offered to corporations, public policy groups, energy companies, industry associations, universities and units of local government affected by a variety of governmental initiatives in the energy and environment arena.

FIRM AT A GLANCE

750+

LEGAL AND CONSULTING PROFESSIONALS

150 YEARS AS FIRM

(In 2013, Faegre Baker Daniels celebrates its 150th anniversary)

And for the third consecutive year, Faegre Baker Daniels is supporting the Western Energy Leadership Summit, which will take place in 2013 in Keystone, Colorado (www.westernenergysummit. com). It promises to be an exciting event! Through its sponsorship of the summit, the firm and many of its energy clients are able to bring their voice to the important policy discussions that will include leaders from corporations throughout the United States, federal and state agencies and governors from across the western states.

Several Faegre Baker Daniels lawyers and consultants will moderate panels at the summit as well. Bob Anderson, who will lead a panel on key financial topics related to power generation and infrastructure projects, sees this as an exciting time for the U.S. energy sector. Anderson notes, “Public and private financing of energy projects are at a crossroads today. We have a great opportunity as a country to lower our energy production and distribution costs and to continue to improve the manner in which we care for our environment. But, this will require us to work together in a spirit of compromise and focus on solid projects.”

Bill Weimer, who will head up an energy technology panel, believes that certain technologies are worth developing and investing in, while others have not proven themselves to the point of deserving significant investment. “Important technology innovations can happen in this industry in the near future. The energy industry has enjoyed a good run of technological gains, but now must smartly invest in specific areas, and avoid spreading our finite funds across all possible areas,” says Weimer.

To learn more about the Western Energy Leadership Summit, please visit www.westernenergysummit.com. To learn more about Faegre Baker Daniels LLP, please visit www.faegrebd.com.

ICOSA is working to support the Western Energy Leadership Forum in Keystone in 2013. We are excited to be working with event organizers, Randy Stratton of Ener4orum as well as with the other excellent sponsors such as Faegre Baker Daniels to explore the challenging questions around energy in the Western United States, around the country and globally.

We believe firms like Faegre Baker Daniels bear testament to our notion that true success is not a one-time “spike the ball” incident.

Instead, we believe true success is seen over time as businesses mature and grow.

Businesses that are truly transformational change with the times and remain relevant by virtue of the changes they undergo. Faegre Baker Daniels is an excellent example of such a firm, and we are proud to welcome them as ICOSA collaborators.

100+

NUMBER OF COUNTRIES WHERE FIRM CLIENTS ARE LOCATED (Clients in every U.S. state and more than 100 countries)

85

PRACTICE AREAS AND INDUSTRY SEGMENTS

75

FIRM RANKING IN UNITED STATES

(One of the 75 largest law firms headquartered in United States)

16

PRACTICE GROUPS

(Benefits and executive compensation, business litigation, client technology solutions, construction and real estate litigation, corporate, exempt organizations, finance and restructuring, government advocacy and consulting, health and life sciences, insurance, intellectual property, labor and employment, product liability and environmental, real estate, tax advocacy and wealth management)

13

TOTAL FIRM OFFICES

(Beijing, Boulder, Chicago, Denver, Des Moines, Fort Wayne, Indianapolis-2, London, Minneapolis, Shanghai, South Bend and Washington, D.C.)

5

INDUSTRY TEAMS

(Energy, resources and clean technology; financial services; food and agriculture; and life sciences)

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55

BUSINESS INTERNATIONAL SECURITY SOLUTIONS

T he World is a D angerous Place Protecting Your Most Important Assets

BY GARY BLACK

The Company Integrated International Security Solutions (IISS) was born out of a passion to serve the men, women and families of our nation’s military service members, and to bring executive business experience to an industry that has failed, at times, to empower our own. Our American soldiers have sacrificed everything to make sure that our families, and our American way of living, are safe and secure. IISS, in conjunction with LifeQuest Transitions, makes it their responsibility to let these veterans know that they will walk beside them through their next mission: life outside of the military life that they have called home.

IISS respects that many international security firms are started by and hire our veterans. However, IISS believes that as military leaders and business executives, they must take things much further. They respect the fact that these soldiers are our future.

They believe that with their combination of seasoned business executives and military professionals, they can change a corrupt, yet very crucial industry–an industry that many of our top U.S. companies are embracing at a rapid pace.

The Story C.W. Conner, the managing director of IISS, LLC, is also the CEO and founder of LifeQuest Transitions (LQT), www.mylq.org. LQT is a nonprofit organization dedicated to empowering our nation’s military service members with life skills that enable personal growth; promote leadership development; and facilitate positive change during transition into, through and beyond military life. LQT has worked with thousands of wounded, ill and injured Americans through their unique multifaceted approach based on the physical and psychosocial health factors that contribute to the reintegration and self-sufficiency of our veterans and their families. The LQT model is a combination of science and practical sense that involves intense facilitation of adventure-based learning and cutting-edge fitness techniques in an environment of trust. LQT core services include physical training (PT), return to duty (RTD) and adventure programs.

When it was announced that our troops were returning home, the donations to LifeQuest literally stopped overnight. Our

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country is getting frustrated by lengthy resolutions and tired of hearing about war.

LifeQuest understands the fatigue; however, they realize that our soldiers’ war is just beginning. The war they battle here at home is their transition back to health, successful living and career stabilization.

When asked why this approach is necessary, Conner states that “As we continue to fight and believe in our returning soldiers, we must create education and business that empower them to be successful!”

That is why IISS was born.

Conner understood that he needed to develop an income generator to support the needs of LifeQuest. This solution would create steady cash flow in order to support our American heroes. He sees it as a privilege to work harder in order to make sure our veterans know that it is our time to fight for them.

IISS’s approach to your business is simple. We take an equitable approach to asset support and security.

We implement a balance of services into your asset protection plan, including company-specific logistics, cutting edge technology and

experienced operatives. No environment is too challenging; no job too complex–from pipelines on foreign soil to vessels in international waters and VIP protection, we handle it all. Experienced professionals take ownership of your project and commit the proper resources to complete the job efficiently and effectively.

IISS EXECUTIVE EXPERIENCE EXPERIENCE Energy The IISS Energy Department has more than 100 years experience in high-risk oil drilling on land and at sea.

Our long list of contract success includes United States, Papua New Guinea, Iran, Iraq, Pakistan, Libya, Russia, Mexico, Central and South American countries and other volatile energy locations.

Transportation The Transportation Department has more than 100 years experience in air and land transportation logistics, supply chain management, commercial risk management and technology.

Maritime In-house maritime executives provide proven legal experience pertinent to the private security industry. He also has in-depth industry knowledge as an experienced independent contractor and corporate-level manager.

Military / Special Operations IISS's Operations Department has more than 150 years combined senior military leadership–more than 100 of which represent special operations service.

SPECTRUM OF SERVICES Personal Security The IISS team asked ICOSA a question: “What is the most important asset you have? Is it your family, your business, your magazine, your web T.V. show? Or is it you?” We answered this question for them. It’s all of it!

Training and preparedness may be the determining factors in a life-or-death situation. The customized training programs at IISS will help prepare you as an individual, business group or family for the unknown threats that shadow us worldwide. No matter your current level of experience, our training in firearms, self-defense and hostage mitigation and survival will better prepare you for travel in any environment. This training will allow you to more effectively protect yourself, your family and your business.

We have developed a oneon-one full security assessment that will provide you with the most personalized, yet costeffective, security solution. We are the full concierge security solution for your personal and corporate needs.

Executive, Personal and Family Foreign Travel Security Training • Training for executive teams traveling abroad • Individual and family home and travel security • Specialized training for highthreat environments • Situational awareness techniques • Basic firearms training • Self-defense tactics • Women and children welcome

Disaster Preparedness Training • Preparing for domestic disasters • Foreign travel civil unrest preparedness • Anti-kidnapping training • Hostage survival techniques • Carjacking preventative measures

full-spectrum approach allows you to place risk mitigation confidently into the adept hands of IISS.

turn-key solution for all your asset protection needs. Start to finish, we do it all–assess, implement and protect.

Technology–Implement and Control

Affirmation

We bring visibility and control to a new level. State-of-the-art technology includes softwarebased equipment to display and control security systems and assets from afar–allowing you to monitor remotely. We elevate visibility and control to a new level, offering real-time data from global systems in every field, building or rig you are monitoring.

Threat avoidance is key; anticipating a threat before it arises is imperative. Our technology provides detailed asset evaluation, allowing you and your IISS team to make the right decisions to ensure proper control.

Firearms Training • Basic pistol and assault rifle fundamentals • Advanced pistol and rifle techniques • Foreign weapons proficiency • Concealed and carry permits • Certified NRA instructors

INTEGRATED SOLUTIONS Logistics–Assess and Empower Our primary focus is the complete safety of your assets. Your IISS team begins the process with a one-onone evaluation of every need–your resources and risks. This evaluation team consists of in-house industry professionals, field and managing directors.

Your specialized team uses a solid knowledge of the specific industry, mission expertise and corporate experience. This

Operatives–Protect and Sustain Our selective hiring process ensures that only proven combat veterans become part of the team.

All personnel deployed to critical locations are elite members of either the U.S. Army Special Forces–Green Berets or U.S. Navy Seals. All members who IISS deploys have gone through a careful selection process and detailed additional training on the latest tactics and techniques. Reassessment and retraining are a regular part of the operations cycle.

From the top down, your organization represents your values. Our operatives provide safety and protection of your assets with a professionalism and behind-the-scenes delivery to maintain your hardearned reputation.

Integrated International Security Solutions is your

“When I decided to take my family to Africa, my first thought was the protection of my wife and daughters.

I wanted this to be the memory of a lifetime for them, but I also I wanted them to be safe. Because we would be traveling through areas with a higher risk than what any of us were used to, I sought out the help of IISS. When I first met the staff, I knew this was a great decision. These are some of the highest quality people you will meet. In just two days, IISS trained my wife and me in firearms tactics and put my entire family through a readiness program that covered how to prevent and deal with attacks internationally. I wanted my family to be ready for anything and to be trained by the best. IISS was definitely the way to go. I would recommend IISS to anyone desiring the peace of mind of knowing they have properly prepared their family to identify and deal with the unpredictable threats that come with traveling abroad,” said Michael Willis, the president of a mutual fund company.

IISS has dedicated itself to empowering the very people who have given us freedom and recruits only the most professional and elite executives and operators. We will dedicate ourselves to the protection of your assets as we are the turn-key solution for all of your asset protection needs. Engage with Integrated International Security Solutions today and allow us to welcome you to the next generation of private security. Call today at 855-SOS-IISS, or visit us online at www.iissllc.com.

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57

BUSINESS | TWINKLE BABY

Small Businesses Surviving Challenging Times An Interview with Twinkle Baby’s Lara Pebbles

BY KIM DECOSTE

I

COSA tells stories from all corners of the country and around the world. One small California-based company called Twinkle Baby is working hard to survive these challenging economic times. Its founder and CEO, Lara Pebbles, is diligent in keeping her family, her home and her business running smoothly. California’s regulatory and lending environment is particularly challenging, and she has faced more than a few hurdles in recent years. It is interesting to hear how she is managing in these unsettled times.

She serves as an example of many small businesses around the country right now. Here is our interview with Lara.

ICOSA: Lara, tell us a bit about you and the history of your company.

PEBBLES: Thank you for asking for my thoughts as a smallbusiness owner on continuity and success over time for a California-based business. Twinkle Baby is a Santa Cruz, California, company established in 1997. We manufacture children’s specialty products, like the Twinkle Baby Bonding Doll, which is our signature product, and various styles of blankets and hats. We pride ourselves on the quality of our products, our customer service and our contribution to the community. We are committed to staying with our original idea of being a Made in America company.

ICOSA: What is your focus as you manage your business in a tough economy?

PEBBLES: I firmly believe that to sustain a small business with continuity and success over time, one must focus on several key factors: (1) reducing costs, (2) creating competitive designs, (3)

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seeking new markets, and (4) maintaining superior customer service. It is, however, equally important to retain good employees, which is tough too. Even in a down economy, where there are plenty of people looking for work, employers want to keep their best people. One must not only provide a good working environment, but implement a training and retention program to maintain the highest skill levels possible. At Twinkle Baby we find that a happy employee will provide quality products, which in turn will keep our customers happy.

Ultimately, all of these factors represent the difference between success and failure.

ICOSA: What do think the role of small business is in the economy right now? How has it been for you and your employees?

PEBBLES: I believe that small businesses are what drive the U.S. economy because they provide jobs–small businesses are critical to our economic growth and help keep America strong.

As a small business owner during this economic downfall, it became very clear that in order for the company’s direction and growth to be positive, we had to maintain our focus on keeping costs down, producing quality products, and providing consistent customer service.

How did we maintain the same consistency when stores were closing and customers weren’t purchasing? It was obvious that we couldn’t continue at the same level, considering the market we were serving was now at a higher price-point for our children’s specialty line.

While trying to maintain a U.S.-based company during the economic crisis, we found that customers weren’t willing to continue to purchase at the same level–customers were instead purchasing from

the larger chains where the price-point was lower. We had to restructure, refocus and become more aggressive to win back our customers and gain new ones by providing attractive incentives, offering bigger discounts and being extremely price-competitive.

We had to reconnect with our old customers, connect with new ones and give back to our community. We kept our Made in America integrity and continued to manufacture here in the U.S. We believe that all of our customers appreciated this continuity and have continued to purchase: and we believe that our recognizable branding really connects with the consumers and retailers in our market demographic area.

ICOSA: As a result of the pressure on your business, what have you done that is new or different in recent years to keep things moving in the right direction?

PEBBLES: It has become essential for us to develop and implement different marketing tactics, based not only on the downturn in the economy and the competition, but also on the differences among potential customers to effectively increase market share for our particular product. This is challenging for any organization to do, but because we are small and we did not have a lot of resources (human or capital) to spare or to waste, it was really challenging.

"We had to restructure, refocus and become more aggressive to win back our customers and gain new ones."

- Lara Pebbles

"The experience of building this little company from a dream to reality has been instructive and made my life so much richer."

- Lara Pebbles

We have a niche market that is very popular with our customers, so we focused on multimedia and using the Internet more effectively, and we offer discounts to customers and retailers as a tactic to maintain consistent revenue and grow our company.

These are not new tactics–but they are new tactics for us–which are helping us draw attention back to our brand.

I firmly believe that quality and service have to be maintained.

It is critical for small businesses to be proactive by lowering prices and dropping their baseline to survive during tough economic times. The consumers will continue to buy, and more companies will be able to survive if they work smarter and focus on what matters most not only to them, but also to their customers. Customers need to be reminded about why they choose particular brands and why they should go on choosing them. Every dollar spent is like a vote of confidence in the product or service!

ICOSA: Has there been a single challenge that you have struggled with more than others?

PEBBLES: (Laughing). Well, there have been many struggles, and believe me, my legislators have heard from me! We are not unique in this issue, however, and we have heard the same thing from others in business across the country, and here locally. The downside for many small businesses is the difficulties encountered in getting funding to improve your business. It takes money to make money, and the lack of access to capital has been staggering. There are Small Business Administration loans and other governmental programs designed to help small businesses stay afloat, but too often these programs have requirements that are just too hard for small businesses to meet–especially during

a downturn in the economy.

There are just too many hoops to jump through. The reality is that unless a small-business owner has a stellar credit rating, neither the government nor the banks are giving loans, and maintaining that stellar credit while balancing work and life challenges is exceedingly difficult.

ICOSA: What do you think the outlook is, and how are you feeling about Twinkle Baby’s future and your own?

PEBBLES: I am trying to stay optimistic. The reality is that during this tough time, I have managed change in my family life. I have helped a couple of friends try to hold on to or maintain their own small businesses, and I have children approaching graduations and college. I am lucky to have a tremendous network here in Santa Cruz who really have stood by me through the difficulties, and I have amazing

children, so that is all good. But it is getting harder. A couple of friends recently have given up, closed up shop and are back on the job market. I am trying to be as creative as I can be to balance my personal income needs with the costs of doing business, and hope that we can stay afloat.

Whatever happens, Twinkle Baby and the experience of building this little company from a dream to reality has been instructive and made my life so much richer. I know I have skills that would allow re-entry to the job market if I have to, but I hope to continue building our customer base so the company can grow.

If nothing else, Twinkle Baby is a chapter in the story of my life that is allowing me to build tremendous relationships with all kinds of people, whom I would have otherwise not met. Relationships with new people are a kind of capital themselves, and they often help bring about exciting new things–like the chance to talk to ICOSA! Thanks so much for letting me share with your readers!

Lara Pebbles is the mother of three amazing children, CEO of Twinkle Baby, and sits on several nonprofit boards in the Santa Cruz area. For information, please visit: www.TwinkleBaby.com.

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59

BUSINESS | ADAPTING TO CHANGE

Listening and Adapting to Change for Long-Term Success

BY DIANE IRVIN

F

or sustainable, consistent growth, businesses must listen to their clients, adapt and evolve to meet their everchanging needs. The risk of change in a business can be substantially reduced if leaders have a quality baseline assessment of their organization’s current reality, make data-driven business decisions, and track trends against that baseline over a period of time.

In service industries, such as hospitals or trucking companies, where labor is a significant budget item, having the tools, processes and professional expertise to monitor the impact of change on the workforce is essential. In fact, seven engaged employees, whose hearts, minds and energy are focused on quality, can do the work of 10 merely satisfied employees whose hands and feet may do the job, with one eye on the time clock.

Management can ill afford not to be attuned to the needs of the organism–the dynamic entity that is their organization.

Listening Through Quality Data Expertly surveying the workforce to collect enough reliable data for a baseline is key to making successful decisions. Quality responses from the workforce can provide leaders with deeper insight into what they may have suspected intuitively about the organization, while creating an environment of trust in which innovative solutions can germinate.

In today’s data-rich yet information-poor environment, it can often be overwhelming and difficult to determine what information is valid and reliable. Internal surveys of employees do not result in the quality of data that can be collected by external third-party experts in research. Unless it is a regular part of their jobs, human resource professionals can rarely devote the time needed to assess employee opinions, develop reports and analyze the data. The objectivity on internally conducted surveys is skewed by auspices bias–the respondent’s tendency to answer according to the surveyor’s preference and employees fears of breach of confidentiality. Therefore,

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decision makers who want to listen to an organization through employee surveys should rely on an outside human resource research and consulting firm.

In order to collect reliable data, the complex process begins with communicating to employees the purpose of the research and establishing trust in the researchers and the process. The data collection process continues by conducting the research according to protocols that produce high participation, reporting and interpreting the results, summarizing data trends, working with stakeholders to set priorities, outlining an action plan and delegating responsibility for outcomes according to an agreed-upon timeline.

Expertise in each step of the process is required to ensure that the data will be collected effectively, understood completely and used successfully to achieve the organization’s objectives.

Data-driven decisions create trust and reduce the risk of change, partly because leaders and other stakeholders share

a clear understanding that is based on data, rather than ego, status, power or politics.

As our healthcare and trucking industry clients can attest, using data to create a goaloriented map is a long-term process, not a one-time event.

Using Data to Reduce Costly Nurse Turnover Registered nurse (RN) turnover in hospitals conservatively costs $90,000 per RN, and is a major contributor to the high cost of healthcare. One of the nation’s largest healthcare systems uses RN exit interview data to identify ongoing trends that drive

Turnover in hospitals conservatively costs $90,000 per registered nurse, and is a major contributor to the high cost of healthcare.

turnover among nurses in its hospitals. When Strategic Programs, Inc., began conducting exit interviews for its 43 hospitals, the healthcare system had above-average nurse turnover. Determined to improve, they identified a percentage of turnover that was acceptable and established a baseline measurement of their turnover.

Over a period of eight years, they repeated the process for improvement–interpreting exit interview data, outlining action plans, implementing interventions and measuring the results of interventions–and succeeded in reducing turnover 4.2 percent beyond their established goal.

Once the system reached its turnover percentage goal, they continued the process for improvement by celebrating their strengths and successes, while outlining an action plan for new successes. While system leaders committed to continue monitoring turnover, they expanded their focus to employee engagement–making a conscious effort to involve staff in listening to their survey data, conducting data-driven action planning and implementing interventions. As a long-term result, they reduced unwanted turnover among clinical staff, thereby reducing patient safety incidents and re-admissions and improving employee morale and productivity.

morale actually improved.

Why? Leadership clearly communicated the rationale behind the cuts, and also took pay cuts alongside the drivers. “We were able to make good decisions because we knew what our drivers were thinking,” said Bailey.

The Boyd Brothers journey toward cultural change required commitment, persistence and focus.

Through data collected by third-party interviews, the leadership actively listened to their drivers and identified specific fleet managers whose ineffective practices were directly contributing to driver turnover. Leadership then provided coaching and training to help these managers learn more effective communication techniques.

Consequently, their fleet

Using Data to Encourage Cultural Change A Strategic Programs, Inc., trucking client has its own success story that began in 2005, when they were experiencing high turnover among the drivers and misinterpreted early improvement as permanent improvement. While Boyd Brothers had been relying on data from surveys to offer short-term solutions to its personnel problems, its leadership realized that utilizing data from employee surveys could also help them implement cultural change and keep the focus on a long-term solution.

“In the beginning surveys were a reliable way to identify some low-hanging fruit, which offered quick rewards and motivated us to continue improvements,” said Richard Bailey, president of Boyd Brothers. “Once the pain had eased, it was too easy to turn to other problems and lose sight of the original one,” he explained.

Partnering with experienced human resource consultants helped Boyd Brothers keep their focus and continue their successful journey to change and stabilize their company culture.

During the recession, the company was forced to cut driver pay four times. However, during this difficult economic time, driver

YEARS 1-3 TURNOVER REDUCTION 14 Annualized Turnover %

All Jobs

RNs

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managers eventually met and then surpassed industry scores. By 2010, Boyd was named “Best Company in North America to Drive For,” largely because of their excellent fleet managers.

Listening to their drivers, and developing an action plan to train their managers, took Boyd Brothers as a company from good to great.

Collecting reliable data by a third party over a period of time is the best way to listen, and then make informed data-driven decisions. While short-term success can be motivating, it can also be misleading. Commitment to the process of improvement is crucial to continuing success over time.

When businesses operate effectively and leaders listen to employees through quality surveys, they have reliable data to drive decisions, which improves the work life of their employees, partners, clients and communities, which ultimately expands to the global economy. Together, historical trends and real-time data create a roadmap that can drive success. It all starts with listening.

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Diane Irvin is the senior vice president and co-founder of Strategic Programs, Inc. For more information, visit www.strategicprogramsinc.com, or call 1.800.800.5476.

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61

BUSINESS | CONSIGLI CONSTRUCTION

» Westover Readiness Center

» Cambridge Public Library

Generations of Success How One Family Owned Business Carries on a Passion for Building

BY HELEN NOVAK

Creating a Legacy

W

ith his humble roots as a masonry contractor in suburban Massachusetts, one could reasonably speculate that Italian immigrant Peter Consigli never imagined that in 100 years his great-grandsons would be leading a construction management firm currently ranked as the 78th largest in the country, with gross annual revenues more than $633 million, a bonding capacity of $1 billion, and more than 600 employees building projects for private and public clients throughout New England and New York.

Commonly quoted family owned-businesses statistics state that 30 percent make it to the second generation, 10-15 percent to the third, and three to five percent to the fourth generation. Luckily for Consigli, the work ethic, integrity, family cohesiveness and passion for building that began with Peter and his sons in 1905 are clearly alive and well today. Into its fourth generation of leadership, Consigli is one of the few family owned businesses that have not only endured, but flourished.

Until the early 1990s, the small construction firm operated primarily in and around Milford, Massachusetts, a western suburb of Boston, providing building and masonry work, including snowplowing, utility work and grave excavation for all the local cemeteries. As each new generation took the reins, the following generation would cut its teeth in the business by plowing snow in the winters and digging graves during the summers.

In the mid-1990s, at the age of 28, Anthony Consigli followed in his father’s footsteps and took on the role as president. Shortly

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thereafter, his younger brother Matthew joined as vice president. At the time, the recession was hitting the building industry pretty hard, and Anthony and his brother knew that the old business model wasn’t going to work any longer. Consigli had to grow or die.

Standing Apart Several things needed to happen. In order to ensure the company’s continued health and growth, the brothers knew that clear competitive distinctions needed to be identified and marketed to prospective clients. Consigli’s significant differentiator always has been its ability to self-perform work in the field. With specialized trades on staff, Consigli could exert

more control over the job sites, which meant more control over the budget, housekeeping and safety, as well as schedule.

By building on the strength of its self-perform work, Consigli could deliver oldworld, hands-on craftsmanship unmatched by many construction managers in the industry–who mostly outsourced that skilled labor.

By combining construction management with genuine builders, particularly in complex restoration projects, Consigli would be unique in the building industry.

Another distinction is the consistent involvement of Anthony and Matthew in every aspect of the business. This keeps the decision-making process more nimble, more responsive and efficient, giving the feel of a smaller company

while offering all the resources and technologies of a larger, multinational company. The result is a better experience for clients.

Anthony explains, “We recently went through a negotiation on a very difficult project with a client that does a lot of work with a lot of different firms. The entire negotiation took an hour, with just me going through all the points directly with the client–no attorneys.

At the end the client said, ‘This is the easiest client negotiation we’ve ever had.’ Usually there are layers of people internally, another construction manager and other lawyers involved, and it can make for a very cumbersome process. But for Consigli, it’s either me or my brother; there’s no one else. We are the ultimate decision-makers.”

Focusing on Your Passion Early in his career at Consigli, Anthony served as project manager on a utility project that did not turn out well. Local papers publicized the failure. Although quite painful, and momentarily damaging to the company’s reputation, this seminal moment would help to bring about significant positive change. Anthony decided that the company would no longer do utility and civil work–the renewed focus would be on what the people at Consigli loved to do the most, and that was building buildings. Because masonry represented the company’s initial roots and has continued to be a mainstay throughout its history, a specialty was built around building restoration, which remains a primary market today.

“One of the things that I see in our industry is that as a family owned builder in New England, Consigli competes a lot against larger, pure construction managers, who are very good at what they do. But I think that one of the differences a client might see on our projects is that we approach a job with a bit more emotion and passion, care and concern. We love the building process. For us, a project is a great opportunity to build something that’s going to last for a long time. We get excited about that. We don’t look at our projects as a job number on a financial transaction sheet; we look at them as pictures, in plans, and relationships, and with enthusiasm–and that brings about a whole different level of excitement to a project and makes for a better experience. We want to get to the end of the job and hear the client say, ‘Hey that was great, I want to do that again,’” says Anthony.

Living by Your Values Construction is an inherently risky business, and problems crop up with every project.

Consigli prepares for those situations ahead of time by holding fast to some nonnegotiable principles. Putting safety first is one, providing quality workmanship is another, and accountability is probably the most important.

A few years ago, Anthony was at a town meeting and saw someone he had met before and felt he should know, but couldn’t place. He also vaguely remembered that the prior experience with this person was not good.

The woman approached him and said, “It’s so nice to see you Anthony! We had such a good experience working with you!” Then it all came back to him. Several years earlier, there was a large building renovation project in which the new windows were beginning to show signs of future leaking. And although there was no demand from the client or claim to replace them, the superintendent on the job notified Anthony and recommended full replacement of all the windows. Anthony agreed, saying, “It was the right thing

to do. This was a building that was going to be there for another 100 years, and we certainly didn’t want our name to be associated with a building with windows that were leaking.” Anthony kept one of those replaced windows. It sits in his office as a reminder–to not only uphold the quality of work, but also to remember that a quick response and care for the work must be of primary importance over profit and loss. That woman at the town meeting didn’t remember the problems on the project; she just remembered that Consigli took care of everything, and that the building turned out great.

“It all boils down to integrity, honesty and doing what you say you are going to do–which was something my greatgrandfather, grandfather and father were committed to,” says Anthony.

Planning Ahead Committed to systematic planning, the brothers had the patience and perseverance to plant the seeds for future work to put Consigli in the healthy position to pursue projects strategically in the down economy. Despite the strength of some building markets in the mid-1990s, they were determined to diversify Consigli’s work to weather any future market dips. They pursued federal work, while other firms were busy building high-rise luxury condominiums. When Consigli won four significant federal projects in 2008, the building industry hit a standstill in other markets, and competitors began scrambling to pursue federal and state work. Well, Consigli was already there.

The economic downturn also caused increased enrollments at public colleges, which now needed

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to think about the sequence of how they are going to put their work together. I think it is going to be something that we continue to promote hard and invest in, and I think that it’s really one of the catalysts for positive change that we’ve seen in this industry in a long time,” says Anthony.

Growing Future Leaders » West Point USMA Science Center

renovations and additions. With Consigli’s solid experience working for institutions and private colleges, they were wellpositioned to take on this new influx of work. And, the company’s healthy backlog enabled it to offer excellent employment opportunities to some of the most experienced construction management and tradespeople in New England who were being laid off. By actively recruiting professionals in a variety of specialties, Consigli was able to fill many skill sets in its workforce and maintain its talent and volume of work by broadening its reach into new markets, such as life sciences.

Reinventing and Reinvesting Reinvesting in the company also created the opportunity to grow during a recession and take advantage of the next trends in building and growth markets. Committed to taking calculated risks and reinvest in the business, Consigli acquired a small construction firm in the Hudson Valley region of New York in 2009.

This enabled the company to expand its geographic reach beyond New England in an area that offered much in the way of academic, historic, health care and cultural projects, which represent some of the company’s core specialties. By this time, the firm already had thriving offices in Portland, Maine, and Connecticut.

In order to keep growing and evolving, Anthony and Matthew knew they had to challenge themselves and their employees to continually embrace advanced building technologies and tools such as Building Information Modeling (BIM) and Vela, and to innovate and devise solutions to the most complex construction problems.

“BIM provides one of the biggest positive changes for our industry in a long time. We are promoting it internally and externally as a better tool to plan our work. Whether it’s in the coordination of the mechanical or electrical systems, or it’s in thinking about the schedule, or just allowing the superintendent

"It all boils down to integrity, honesty and doing what you say you are going to do– which was something my great-grandfather, grandfather and father were committed to."

- Anthony Consigli 64

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Since the formation of Consigli, its mission has always been one of customer service and building great buildings, but it evolved in later years to also focus more heavily on its employees and on becoming one of the best places to work in New England. As a result of this focus, Consigli received both the Massachusetts and Central Massachusetts Family Business Awards in 2009 and has been ranked one of Massachusetts’s “Best Place to Work” for six years running and, in 2011, was named Maine’s #1 Best Places to Work in the large firm category.

The current company mission, “Consigli will be the most desired contractor to work with and for,” embodies values that emphasize worldclass treatment of employees and clients. This mission reflects the Consigli family belief that employees who enjoy coming to work will take greater pride in their performance, and as a result, will give clients the best experience possible when they choose to work with Consigli.

Consigli’s approach to business and to creating a work environment that empowers employees has built a culture of responsibility to the company, its clients and to each other. Embracing the mantra of creating “Raving Fans” of clients and making that part of the company directive has sparked new

meaning behind client service and quality work. Building teams have a renewed sense of urgency and improved work ethic.

“Our people have a passion for building above all else. We thrive on complex projects that challenge our creativity and call for innovation. We know we must compete and earn our work every day, and that leaders do that best.

We know that sustaining our team requires that we recruit, train, mentor and motivate,” says Anthony.

Despite the fact that both Anthony and Matthew have many years left in their careers, they have established a formal leadership development program to cultivate future leaders across all departments.

“One of things I am most proud of here at Consigli is the family of people that we built around us over the years.

Making sure those people stay committed, stay happy in their work, and enjoy what they do is extremely important,” says Anthony. “A big part of leadership is setting goals and then guiding our people and organization to meet those goals. A bigger part of leadership is how we get to those goals. It’s about keeping people together when things get difficult. It’s about resilience and perseverance during hard times and doing the right thing–showing character and class when it matters.”

Helen Novak is public relations manager at Consigli Construction Co., Inc. Based in Milford, Massachusetts, Consigli is a full-service construction manager and general contractor serving academic, health care, institutional, life sciences, corporate, landmark restoration and federal clients throughout New England and New York State. To learn more about Consigli, visit www.consigli.com or contact Helen at hnovak@consigli.com.

Inform. Innovate. Impact.

US DOT Region 7 University Transportation Center MATC is a consortium of 8 universities headquartered at University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Partners include the University of Kansas, Kansas State University, the University of Iowa, Iowa State University, the University of Missouri, Lincoln University, and the Missouri University of Science and Technology.

The Mid-America Transportation Center (MATC) facilitates world class education, workforce development, and technology transfer initiatives. MATC’s research portfolio surrounds the central theme of improving safety and minimizing risk associated with increasing multi-modal freight movements on the U.S. surface transportation system.

The University of Nebraska–Lincoln is an equal opportunity educator and employer.

For more information about MATC or to sponsor a student in our K-12 afterschool program please visit matc.unl.edu.

BUSINESS | SHINISE IN PRACTICE

A Culture of Care Shinise in Practice

BY CANDACE RUIZ

Âť Sasaki Shuzou Sake Brewery

I

n April 2012, I attended the SEE Conference (Sustainability, Ethics and Entrepreneurship) at the University of Denver where academic researchers from around the world present their work. At this event, we could see a shift in business practices that can produce a more just and sustainable world. As we begin the movement from shareholders to stakeholders, many top businesses are changing their practices to reflect their internal and external demands. But this has been going on for centuries in Japan. During the poster session at the SEE Conference, researchers from the University of Northern Colorado and Kobe University displayed their investigation on the Japanese practices of Shinise. They recognized the carefulness in goods and services that were produced in Japan, and they set out to discover the mystery of these long-lasting companies. At a follow up interview with Dr. Keiko Krahnke, associate professor of Management, University of Northern Colorado, the spirit of Shinise was revealed.

The foundation of Shinise stems from ancient merchants called Ohmi, who traveled throughout Japan. These merchants showed integrity in actions and products, existed harmoniously with stakeholders, demonstrated fair and honest manners as the only way to succeed in business, and

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valued the spirit of care and living simply.

Today, Shinise businesses are known in Japan as longlasting companies that demonstrate sound principles of responsibility for their actions and products; they agree that when profits are up–more is given to society. Furthermore, they believe that companies should never waste even in times of abundance, and that they should demonstrate care for everything. They are small businesses, usually restaurants, hotels and artisans, some that have been in business for more than 400 years. Their common characteristics are intuitive methods of clarity and continuity of corporate culture and values, learning systems built on relationships, and balancing tradition with innovation through gradual change. They tend to shy away from notoriety and are thankful and humble to be able to stay in business each day.

Other commonalities are that many are family businesses but are open to bringing in top talent; they change with time, but the core business doesn’t change. They know who they are, including their values and strength. They do not invest in opportunities if not in alignment with core values, and they serve the community. The service to community is by building relationships. For instance, in a restaurant they know where all their ingredients come from, even the areas where the seaweed is harvested.

Shinise values include honesty, excellence, tradition and intimate relationships with the natural environment.

Continuance, not growth, is the goal of a Shinise company.

One can expect the handing down of tradition and values for the business, including understanding that it is not important to make money

but know how to spend it. The Western business practices of reduced prices and sales tactics are not used but rather fair pricing.

Shinise companies usually don’t market or advertise. The company’s undisclosed skills and competencies make the company unique.

Some other common elements among Shinise businesses are the value of trust, collaboration not competition, improved employee performance through mentoring, the use of intuition, review opportunities for innovation, and continuance not growth. They are businesses that live and operate on absolute trust, value continuance or the quality of their products, and rely on centuries-old wisdom.

To recognize a company with the spirit of Shinise, one should look for the Noren. This symbolic cloth may have the company logo or a symbol that hangs in the entrance. This cloth symbolizes that the business can be completely trusted to protect and continue the value and quality of the company. The Noren conveys to the world the gratitude of being able to operate the business another day. Another tradition that has influenced the business practice of Shinise is the tea ceremony, Sado. This ceremony allows guests to recognize the service is for them; serving the very best to the guests and showing transparency are two values shown in this ceremony.

The next step in the ceremony is Wabi and Sabi, which help to recognize what is unnecessary and eliminate it–to focus on what is important. Other stages of the tea ceremony include value the work, appreciate each encounter and relationship, harmony, respect for others and quiet our minds so we appreciate the moment.

In Japan today, there are 145 companies that were founded before 1602. As trusted Shinise companies, they have used the principles to continue in business today. The central region of Japan has a significant number of Shinise companies. The 400-year-old restaurant called Hyotei is a tea house in a pine forest and is located in an old trekking region (like U.S. truck stops).

Tired travelers stopped to change straw shoes but requested the restaurant serve more than just tea; herein developed the eggs known as “Hyotei Eggs.” Still in business, Hyotei is one of the most well-known and trusted restaurants in Japan for its excellent food and elegant presentations. With three stars on the Michelin Guide in 2009 and high-ranking officials visiting, guests will not see award plaques, framed newspaper articles or any sign of their prestige as humility is one of the important values handed down for many generations.

Japanese sandals are a recognized tradition and the 115-yearold manufacturer, Itochu, has followed the Shinise principles throughout time. The current owner acknowledges the external pressures to implement new ideas but emphasizes the importance of balancing the old with the new. Following the Shinise principles, he will ask the question, “Would this change be in alignment of who we are and what we are about? Would this be in our best interest?” He also described the dilemma of efficiency and effectiveness and explained that he would not consider efficient ways to management or manufacturing if it, in any way, diminishes their values. The tradition for sandal making always includes that the product is made with care, thoughtfulness and precision.

In the late 1800s Sasaki Shuzou, a sake brewery, started up in Kyoto. Shying away from a Shinise brand today because it was such

Shinise businesses are more interested in slow or no growth and to trust their intuition and value more than any bottom-line number.

» Hyotei Pine Forest & Tea House

a young company, the current owner stated it is important to continue the values of the business rather than growing it. Included in the brewing process are new technologies and innovative ideas, but maintaining the quality and the taste of the traditional style are a priority.

The Shinise business relies on intuition to continue the brand. By examining Shinise business practices, Western companies have the tools to build long-lasting organizations. In fact, as my company develops to support the emerging market of social responsibility, we’ve come to realize that companies want to instill these principles in their company but are reluctant to accept intuition as their guideline.

Dr. Krahnke agrees. She emphasizes that the Western attitude in business is, “we make things happen,” or “we want nature to bow down to our needs and wants, and we ’tinker’ with nature.”

People of Japan are accepting of what happens, and they show resilience. The Japanese culture is not so actionoriented. As the researchers continue their qualitative study, they are interviewing more companies to identify those traits of Shinise in Japan.

The inspiration to study these practices was to identify the care Japanese take in their service and share the knowledge of why they have so much heart and care. What they were discovering was seeing that U.S. companies are not necessarily reflective.

In fact, Shinise businesses are more interested in slow or no growth and to trust their intuition and value more than any bottom-line number.

In Western business, we utilize corporate social responsibility (CSR) practices as a way to demonstrate to stakeholders the ethics, values and beliefs of a company.

CSR is a learned practice that begins with empathy and guidelines beyond obeying the law. Will CSR be the Shinise of Japan? American business will find useful the methods of the Shinise practices–of care, understanding systems, embracing collectivism, and continuance and by looking and learning from the ones who have gone before.

Research provided from the unpublished paper, “The Spirit of Shinise: What we can learn from long-lived Japanese companies,” by Keiko Krahnke, University of Northern Colorado; Isaac Wanasika, University of Northern Colorado; Yasuhiro Kanbe, Kobe University; and a personal interview with Dr. Krahnke.

Candace Ruiz, MBA, is the co-founder and managing director, speaker, trainer and corporate social responsibility specialist at Business Service Corps, LLC (BSC). As a social enterprise, BSC assists companies with high-impact community engagement programs. The company has developed a unique experiential leadership training program focused on corporate, global and community citizenship. Candace is also a part-time professor of business in the Colorado Community College System. To learn more about Business Service Corps, visit www.

BusinessServiceCorps.com.

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BUSINESS | DOVETAIL SOLUTIONS™

dovetail solutions™ Stability in Motion » Andy Boian

B Y G A I L F R A N C E S , W I T H J U D Y TAY LO R

A

ndy Boian chuckles. “It’s not rocket surgery,” an amusing malapropism borrowed from one of his two young children, one that Andy uses frequently to make a humorous point. Humor and humility stand out at the onset as one of his most endearing characteristics.

It is no surprise that his unique boutique firm, dovetail solutions™, of which he is founder and CEO, has become a distinguished model of success for more than seven years.

Continuity is central to his personal and professional core, and continuity is the substance from which his character was rooted.

Both he and his wife are homegrown Coloradoans of second and fifth generations, respectively. Boian’s face lights up when he talks about his young family, his Colorado ancestry, and when he reflects on his well-grounded past. His philosophy began taking form early in his life at Regis Jesuit High School, an all-boys’ school, where he learned the value of service as a young, impressionable man in the program Men for Others. There he was taught about serving; serving as a son to his family, serving a partner to his spouse, and serving as a responsible community member. This is where he was also taught the unforgettable motto, “your community belongs to you and you to your community.” This stuck with him and became part of the filament from which his moral fabric was shaped.

Boian’s favorite high school teacher was the late Dan Sarlo, a Boettcher scholar and former Peace Corp English teacher.

“Mr. Sarlo taught us about serving, and the importance of what happens worldwide,” which fit seamlessly into Boian’s selflessness and his natural penchant for connecting. In fact, he perfectly fits the descriptor “connector” in Malcolm Gladwell’s popular book, The Tipping Point, where the author elaborates on the "The Law of the Few," or, as Gladwell explains, “the idea that in any situation roughly 80 percent of the 'work' will be done by 20 percent of the participants.” Connectors are people who link us up with the world ... people with a special gift for bringing the world together.

Connecting comes naturally for Boian, and it is one of his greatest attributes–it’s in his DNA. In civics class he would listen intently to Carl Kasell on NPR, which was a much-anticipated unique highlight of Sarlo’s civics class senior source project that underscored worldwide awareness and nationbuilding for others. This was Boian’s early introduction into the fascinating world of political science, and it resonated with him.

When Boian was 25, he became a senior VP of business development for a large telecommunications firm based in Denver

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and was responsible for marketing and community investment in 11 different markets nationwide. His team grew revenue significantly for four consecutive years.

Later, he was instrumental in two different companies exceeding their community involvement goals, and he assisted numerous seniorlevel executives to become well integrated into the communities in which they worked and served.

In 1994, after graduating from the University of Northern Colorado with a major in political science and pre-law, he continued his studies with the goal of making his communication business more efficient. He graduated from the University of Colorado at Denver in 1999 earning a master’s in public administration (MPA). Never straying far from the academic world, Boian is a part-time professor of political science at Metropolitan State University of Denver and was honored to receive Metro State’s “Favorite Professor” award in 2003 and 2006. He is also an adjunct professor of international studies at the University of Denver and has taught at the University of Colorado.

Moreover, he was recognized by his alma mater as an alumnus of distinction in 2011, the first in political science in

the history of the university.

Another significant person in Boian’s life was and still is Cole Finegan, longtime Denver attorney and Governor John Hickelooper's former chief of staff. Boian and Finegan worked together during the 1991 mayoral race, which provided the extraordinary opportunity for their relationship to develop. “Cole knows what community is about; he is very clear about intent and is devoted to public servitude.”

He has been Boian’s mentor since 1991 and presently serves on his board. Once again, the mysterious laws of attraction manifested, and a great stroke of luck struck. Meeting Finegan was when preparation met opportunity again.

These early influences and influencers unquestionably made lasting impressions, as they are central to the elemental structure of dovetail solutions™, the privately held Denver firm Boian founded in 2005. “Key to a successful business is building one’s brand,” and he learned long ago that he cannot be “all things to all people,” so he very strategically aligned his firm with the B2B professional in mind. Service firms such as insurance companies, banks, law firms, engineering firms and CPA firms, to name a few, make up his discerning clientele.

“The ideal business climate is one that holds relationships to a higher standard. Trust, integrity, honesty and loyalty are key aspects of any great decision maker–in business, in politics, in life.”

Boian and his team built dovetail solutions™ into a one-of-a-kind public relations, branding and positioning firm that specializes in strategic communications, crisis communications, social media, employee communications and their exclusive Strategic Community Investment–invest in the community and people will reinvest in you. dovetail solution’s™ campaigns integrate the client’s company into the communities they serve, promoting their business and leveraging their reputations.

The core values of the company reflect his personal and holistic core values–community, partnership and integrity. “Your most valuable commodities are your time and money.” And his firm is committed to help maximize both. These are not aspirations but affirmations that he and his team live each and every day. It’s really a simple philosophy: • To be remembered, you have to show up.

• Your best resource is your community. Make it a core part of your business.

• An effective market presence takes more than a good brand. It takes relationships–good ones.

“Andy works really hard to make connections between people; whenever he gets involved in something he really engages and commits himself to the success of the project,” said Tami Door, president and CEO, Downtown Denver Partnership.

Although the firm has experienced laudable success, it has not been free from challenges. “We started late in the recession, and in the beginning had to do a little belt-tightening,” which is counterintuitive to a growing business, he said. “Starting the firm on the upside of the downward business cycle was a bit daunting, but we stuck to our guns knowing we were creating a firm that offered something unique.” Behind the scenes he worked strategically on his formula with his informal board with the knowledge that the customers who represent the clientele he serves “don’t buy from an ad on a bus.” So he connected the dots with strategic precision and began the process of growing his organization organically.

On November 2, 2011, dovetail solutions™ acquired Story + Welch LLP, a Denver-based public relations firm that focused on B2B, professional services and technology clients. The acquisition not only expanded dovetail’s client roster, but as part of the transaction Story + Welch co-founder Jeremy Story joined dovetail solutions™ as president, bringing more than 15 years of experience developing and executing high-profile communication campaigns for organizations ranging from Fortune 100 to private start-ups. This fortuitous event strengthened the dovetail management team and positioned the firm to continue significant growth.

Kittie Hook, senior VP of Cassidy Turley Fuller Real Estate, explained, “I enjoy working with Andy because he takes on a client and gives personal attention to their needs. He is always finding new ways to expose and market the client or project. He is genuine and caring for all his clients, and he has a sense for community. He helps his clients,

“The ideal business climate is one that holds relationships to a higher standard. Trust, integrity, honesty and loyalty are key aspects of any great decision maker–in business, in politics, in life." - Andy Boian

and the communities prosper at the same time. He is well respected in the community, and he is always in touch with current events and issues.”

True to form, Boian doesn’t stop with his business. He has also been actively involved in politics at the local and national levels, working on both sides of the aisle as a senior campaign adviser and speechwriter.

In these capacities he has worked on numerous mayoral, gubernatorial and presidential campaigns over the past 21 years. He served on the transition team for a former U.S. interior secretary and also the nation’s 42nd president, Bill Clinton. His political work takes him to many locations throughout the United States.

“This has been a journey of both growth and self-discovery,” Boian says. “I’ve learned a great deal about myself from my mistakes. I’ve come face-toface with my faults–which I’m eager to correct–so I can move forward in new, productive and positive ways.” Although he has built a talented and accountable team, the buck stops with him.

His biggest lesson is that “I have learned to be more humble,” he said.

Philanthropy is also fundamental to Boian’s generosity of heart, and he is committed to the plight of the defenseless. He serves as board chair of the Kempe Foundation for the Prevention and Treatment of Child Abuse. He admits sadly that his company and family resources are not enough to solve or even make a significant dent in the enormity of the problem of child abuse, but he intends to put forth everything in his power to tackle the problem head-on. He is committed and intends to serve that underreported population.

Besides his work with the Kempe Foundation, Boian is remarkably active in the Denver community. He is the founder of ExecConnect, vice chair of the Denver Botanic

Gardens board, chair of the Downtown Denver Partnership membership committee, a member of Colorado Succeeds board of advisers, a corporate committee member of The Children’s Hospital, a member of the Metro Denver Economic Development Corporation Board of Governors, member of CXO, a part of the 2011 DMCLF National Philanthropy Day selection committee, a member of numerous committees at the Denver Metro Chamber of Commerce and a part of the Public Relations Society of America.

The company sponsors several nonprofits with professional services gratis and actively participates in the Denver Public Schools Foundation’s School Partners Program at Columbian Elementary School in northwest Denver.

Recently, so much has happened with the growth of the business that he feels the need to step back and take a look at the bigger picture. He is having a bit of a challenge learning how to get away from it all. Naturally, he wants his family to be there with him to take in all the pleasures he experiences.

But with two young children, ages five and two, it’s not always easy to pack everyone up and get out of town. However, he does manage to carve out some time for the 50-mile Santa Fe Century Ride, a warm-up for the longer 150-mile MS Ride for Life. And, he thoroughly enjoys everything life has to offer.

Cole Finegan, now a partner with Hogan Lovells, says, “Andy has grown a thriving firm, despite a down economy and a slowdown in hiring. One of the keys to great achievement is the ability and desire to give back. I have known Andy for over 20 years, and he continues to be a person who embraces his civic role and gives back to our community.”

“Take a big breath,” suggests one of his colleagues. After all, “it’s not rocket surgery.”

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BUSINESS | STRANAHAN’S COLORADO WHISKEY

What Do Success and Continuity Taste Like?

ICOSA Talks to Stranahan’s Colorado Whiskey to Find Out

BY D A R R Y L WAT S O N

T

here are not too many people who can remember the nuances of flavor profiles over time. For most, the recollection of a special occasion may be highlighted by what is consumed, but the drink itself rarely lingers in the memory most of us. In the beverage industry, however, continuity is a requirement for success. Whether one is talking about vintage champagne, a great craft beer or a special spirit, beverages constitute for many, one of life’s great pleasures. And for those tasked with production and quality control for iconic brands, it is a responsibility not to be taken lightly.

ICOSA sat down with head distiller Rob Dietrich of Stranahan’s Colorado Whiskey at the Rackhouse Pub, and learned a few things about the creation of an iconic Colorado brand and the challenges of building it while maintaining 100 percent devotion to the quality of every single precious bottle.

ICOSA: How did you get started in the whiskeymaking business?

DIETRICH: In 2006, I met the original head distiller, Jake Norris, through a mutual love

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of vintage motorcycles and alternative fuels. He wanted to fix his bike up to run entirely off the spent heads from the still, and I had been working on a diesel motorcycle, fashioned with an engine from a cement mixer, which used vegetable oil as its fuel.

We hit it off. I started helping him with some bottling, and almost immediately he asked me to be a night distiller.

ICOSA: Now you are the head distiller at Stranahan's. What do you do?

DIETRICH: I am in charge of all production, everything from the grain, to brewing, to distilling, management of the barrelhouse, barrel aging, barrel selection (20 barrels for each batch), and bottling. I also manage 12 full-time employees and six part-time tour guides.

ICOSA: The company is entirely based in Colorado, correct?

DIETRICH: Stranahan's has always been in Colorado, and everything we do is homegrown and local, as much as possible. We are now owned by Proximo Spirits, based out of New Jersey, but operationally, we maintain the quality and care we have always had, and the good news is that we have a larger

budget, which has allowed us to get more equipment, and expand our rack house, in order to meet the demand for our whiskey.

But then the entire brewery moved away! Flying Dog moved to Maryland, and we had to contract out for someone else to brew our wash for us. The loss of our contractor left us hanging, so for a bit, we had Oskar Blues brewing for us and transporting the wash in giant milk trucks.

ICOSA: Growth is a good problem to have. Can you talk about some of the challenges you faced from your start in the business up to now?

DIETRICH: In 2004, we were originally housed in part of the Flying Dog Brewery's building, and we contracted them to brew our wash for us. They actually had pipes run from their side, over the building, into the still house, into holding tanks, and from that we would distill the product.

We were making about three barrels a week, back then.

ICOSA: Can you describe the process of making whiskey?

DIETRICH: A lot of people ask how we make our mash, but the answer is that we actually make a wash. A mash is what you typically use to make bourbon, which consists of 51 percent corn and a variety of grains. Mash has an oatmeal consistency and is thrown in the still, constantly agitated, and then distilled where the alcohol is directly fermented from the mash. They pitch yeast in there, so everything goes right into the still. What we do is brew a beer, which we call a wash, which is what we extract our alcohol from. So, from grain to bottle, we start out in the production house, brew up thousands of gallons of wash a week, which moves into fermentation. We pitch yeast, which ferments about six days, and that goes into a wash storage vessel, at which point it is ready for us to draw off and charge our stills.

"We use brand new white oak barrels from World Cooperage in Lebanon, Missouri. We have them use a number three char, which is the deepest char you can get on a barrel."

- Rob Dietrich

ICOSA: Why do you use copper stills instead of the aluminumclad tanks you use for fermentation?

DIETRICH: Copper ions naturally attract toxins and sulfur in the alcohol, so it acts almost as penicillin, pulling out residual yeasts and toxic compounds.

ICOSA: How important are barrels in the whiskey-making process?

DIETRICH: The wash has a lot to do with the flavor of the whiskey, so we are using a 100 percent malt barley grain, and you'll get those natural sugars from the grain. But, almost 60 percent of the flavor comes from the barrel. We use brand new white oak barrels from World Cooperage in Lebanon, Missouri. We have them use a number three char, which is the deepest char you can get on a barrel. When you burn that wood, all the sugars and tannins rise to the burn surface, and the charcoal not only acts as a natural filter, but allows those beautiful rich sugars and tannins to interact with the whiskey.

ICOSA: Can you run more than one batch through a barrel?

DIETRICH: No. We fill a brand new barrel and let it rest for no less than two years. The batches that I throw together are comprised

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of two-year, three-year, fouryear and five-year barrels.

Everything goes into one batch, so you are getting the best of all the worlds–complex notes from a two-year whiskey, as well as oaky notes from a five-year whiskey. So instead of releasing a two-year whiskey or a four- or five-year whiskey, we give it to you all at once.

ICOSA: How much whiskey does a barrel hold?

DIETRICH: 53 wine gallons of 110-proof spirit; that's 5.04 bottles per wine gallon.

ICOSA: How many barrels do you produce a week?

DIETRICH: Approximately 40-50 barrels per week. It’s a team effort–we work around the clock. I have a good team of distillers, operators, production people and administrators. We are a small, close-knit family.

We have a lot to do, and we all wear many hats.

ICOSA: Stranahan's uses volunteers to bottle its product. How did that evolve?

DIETRICH: In the early days, when we were bottling, we needed a couple extra hands, and all our friends, who liked the whiskey, would come in for about four hours. We'd listen to music, give the volunteers some sodas, feed them pizza

"What we are barreling now affects the future, what we harvest right now affects the present, and what we've barreled in the past affects everything."

- Rob Dietrich 72

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at the end, and give them a bottle that they themselves helped to fill, thus feeling part of the process.

ICOSA: Sounds great! How can one volunteer?

DIETRICH: In the early days, it was just comprised of our friends because it was a fun thing to do, and fun to bring our friends in to do, and also was borne of necessity. We used to bottle every five weeks, but now we bottle every other Thursday. As it became more popular, we discovered that a beautiful side effect of this was the grassroots marketing approach. Now, we have a 5,000 person waiting list, which is drawn from in lottery style. So put your name on the list, and wait it out.

ICOSA: Stranahan's is essentially one recipe, but sometimes you bring out special batches from time to time–is that correct?

DIETRICH: Correct, and this is where I get to have some fun. We release what we call a “snowflake”–our regular whiskey, aged at least two years in our oak barrels, extract it, and cask-finish it in a wine barrel. It doesn't even have to be a wine barrel; it can be a cognac barrel or a specialty barrel of some kind. This is why we call it “snowflake”–each special batch is unique in its own way, and will never be likely to be reproduced.

ICOSA: Do you ever have a chance to meet with other distillers and talk about your craft?

DIETRICH: There is only a handful of craft distilleries in Colorado, and a handful of head distillers, and I am good friends with a few of them. It’s kind of fun because we are our own unique geek rat pack.

When we get together, we talk shop, and it is refreshing because there aren't a whole lot of people you can turn to at this level if you are trying to solve a problem. It is funny because everyone has their little secrets, so we are often guarded when we talk, but we are also candid on a lot of levels, as far as helping each other out. I am a Colorado native, and I feel that it is important to support the local community. There will always be friendly competition, and that's the way it should be.

ICOSA: What is your chief concern these days?

DIETRICH: Our chief concern has been, and will continue to be, maintaining the quality of the whiskey. I am always telling people that I think in the past, present and future;

"We've spearheaded the craft distilling business in Colorado, like New Belgium kicked off the craft brewing craze. For Stranahan's, our future is here, we are in Colorado" - Rob Dietrich

what we are barreling now affects the future, what we harvest right now affects the present, and what we've barreled in the past affects everything. We have to strike a balance between the demand that is now, and the need for the whiskey to simply age.

ICOSA: How much demand is there for your product? Is it a case of not being able to keep any on the shelf?

DIETRICH: We are there.

We used to distribute in 43 states and five countries.

But we got complaints from home, with people saying that they love our whiskey, but they can't find it here. So we made the hard decision to pull back our distribution to only Colorado. This has now gotten us complaints from the fans we created in the other states, so our plan is to expand distribution back to other states. It is a production problem, but this is where our roots are, and we have to take care of our home base first.

ICOSA: You mentioned that you are interested in being a renewable and green company.

DIETRICH: It is always a work in progress. We use a lot of energy and a lot of water in our production, and we are always looking for ways to

recycle and reuse that. For example, when we have a 204 degree still, which has ended its run, and we are emptying the tails out, we use that 204 degree water to heat up the wash that's going back into the stills. So instead of having a four-hour heat-up time, we have narrowed it down to a one-hour heat-up time. We do this in the brew house as well. All of our spent grain is picked up twice a day, every 12 hours, and it goes to feed cattle in Longmont, Colorado. We go through roughly 40,000 pounds of grain each week, and that all ends up feeding cattle. And we have a large building, so we are looking at solar to help reduce our energy footprint as well.

ICOSA: What does the future hold for Stranahan's?

DIETRICH: We're here to stay. We've spearheaded the craft distilling business in Colorado, like New Belgium kicked off the craft brewing craze. There are so many distilleries popping up, but it’s how you make your product, the quality you put in it, that makes you a player or not. For Stranahan's, our future is here, we are in Colorado, and in a few years, we will be back to nationwide again.

I

n the meantime, Stranahan’s Colorado Whiskey continues to build a mystique among whiskey drinkers. In 2010, a group of business people from the South Denver Metro Chamber of Commerce traveled to Washington, D.C., for important factfinding and exploratory meetings. They met with soon-to-becandidate Newt Gingrich, with the entire Colorado contingency and with a four-star general at his private residence for a private reception. As a token of their esteem and thanks for the general’s service and kind hospitality, they brought a special gift, a bottle of Stranahan’s.

As the story goes, the group gathered for a reception at the general’s residence. Chamber CEO and president, John Brackney, pulled out the bottle and handed it to the general, saying, “Perhaps you have heard of Stranahan’s? It’s a special beverage to those of us in Colorado.” The general smiled enthusiastically, pulled off the top, and took a generous swallow straight from the bottle and then passed it around for everyone to try as he reached for the cigars!

Nothing brings people together on a memorable occasion quite like a special beverage, and Stranahan’s is just that.

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THE MORE THINGS CHANGE Continuity and Change in the Fire Service

BY DR. STEPHAN HITTMANN

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ho was it who said, “Children today are tyrants. They contradict their parents.

They gobble their food. They tyrannize their teachers.” And what’s the connection between these comments, and a discussion of continuity and change in the fire service?

The dictionary defines “continuity” and “change” as being nouns when they refer to an individual’s ability to lead or transform. I believe they are really verbs, in that leadership influences people, provides purpose and motivates others to act.

More a role than a concept, continuity and change foster leadership at every level of an organization, even at the lowest level. To confirm the obvious–having a title, rank or seniority doesn’t in and of itself earn respect–you have to work for it, and then earn it!

Continuity and change are also less about ego, ideology or about those who want to be something, more than they want to do something. Cultural change is complex and ambitious in the best of times, requiring leadership from individuals who have a unique blend of skills and attitudes, not the least of which are humility, humor, patience, street smarts and a sense of urgency. Leaders also need formal training and an intuitive sensitivity to the dynamics of organizational change.

The need for continuity and cultural change in government, industry or the fire service isn’t for the faint-of-heart. They’re the realm of the pragmatic idealist; the leader who understands that the health of an organization depends on the health of its organic parts. Our greatest legacy, then, is how well we prepare others to lead, embrace organizational continuity, and understand that the real test of both is in their vision and their execution. Visions that are simply slogans can’t ever be successfully executed, with execution often being the missing link between aspirations and results.

That said, how then do we link the past to the present, as we prepare for the future? And how do we reconcile the definition of continuity as being an uninterrupted connection–the belief that the foundation for a better tomorrow must be laid today, with the presumption that change doesn’t assure progress, but progress requires change?

Each industry sees “continuity” through its own lens.

Technology and business continuity refer to protecting clients from unanticipated business interruption. Cinemagraphic continuity refers to thematic consistency (e.g., over eight Harry Potter movies). Medical continuity refers to ensuring clinical operations, patient care and other essential services. Philanthropic continuity refers to charitable consistency. Media continuity refers to the availability of news and entertainment programming

Our greatest legacy, then, is how well we prepare others to lead, embrace organizational continuity, and understand that the real test of both is in their vision and their execution.

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wherever and whenever you want it. Reputation continuity refers to protecting your most prized and vulnerable asset. Emergency response continuity refers to implementing and maintaining organizational and community-wide preparedness for natural or human-made disasters. And continuity in the fire service can best be summarized by its unspoken motto, “We’re 150 years old unimpeded by progress.” Let me repeat that: “We’re 150 years old unimpeded by progress.”

What’s really meant by such an acerbic concept, and how can we use the words “change” and “continuity” so interchangeably?

Change! What is it? People talk about it, they say they believe in it, they say they encourage it–they just don’t want to do anything differently. Sound familiar? Most organizations, like most generations, think they have all the answers. In the same vein, few think that the next generation is particularly credible. What’s my point? No organization can realistically shape its future without a plan that indicates where it wants to go, and how it wants to get there.

While the impact of organizational change, for better or worse, is eventually understood, many still, quite mistakenly, view continuity as corporate stasis, at best maintaining its status quo or at worst being actively resistant to change. I see it differently, wherein the seemingly conflicting forces of continuity and organizational change in these “new normal” times are little more than a misconception.

The “Yin Yang of Leadership,” as some have called it, requires leaders to navigate continuity and change as a prerequisite to the success of any business. Add to that the extent to which organizations change over time, referred to as “path dependence,” which presuppose that organizational continuity and change are intimately interdependent elements crucial to organizational sustainability. Thus, embracing the challenges and tradeoffs that occur as leaders work to bring about change necessitates maintaining continuity and consistency as an organizational dynamic. Lastly, it strives to bring people together and avoid cultural clashes– an “us versus them” environment. Managing continuity also challenges visionary leaders to incorporate salient aspects of the organization’s core values, traditions and shared meaning from the past–its “pearls of wisdom,” if you will.

Leadership, then, in its most basic form, is about moving an organization from point

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A to point B. In today’s world of escalating expectations and declining resources, the long-term success of these efforts embrace continuity, define how organizational knowledge is effectively transferred, and create a culture of engagement, opportunity, validation and inclusion.

The fire service accomplishes this through its ongoing investment in training, education and succession planning, linking practical change to measurable outcomes, and never forgetting its rich past as both prelude to and precursor of the future. From an operational perspective, the fire service has successfully balanced the demands of continuity in today’s changing, increasingly complex environment, via its reliance on several variables, namely: • A fundamental commitment to both preservice and ongoing in-service training (perhaps best personified by the credo of the New York City Fire Academy, displayed in large letters and which says with irrevocable conviction above its entranceway: “Let No Man’s Ghost Return To Say His Training Let Him Down”).

• Practical experience in each skill area needed on an emergency basis.

• The existence of an outstanding faculty.

• A highly motivated workforce.

• A supportive administration.

• A history of holding everyone accountable, all of the time.

• Our reputation.

• And perhaps most important, the love of a grateful nation.

While we’re obviously proud of this, the fire service, like other industries, needs to balance the importance of its rich history with a continuing need to change. It also needs to change because of September 11, and because society is changing.

New technology and the additional challenge of homeland security, in the fire service as elsewhere, test the resources of many organizations. They also require a new level of coordination and cooperation, coupled with a cultivation of organizational leadership, all the while maintaining a balance between distaste for the status quo without being a prisoner of ideology. More than the proclamation of a lofty goal, these challenges also require each individual on the front line to know exactly what to do and when to do it to achieve a defined goal.

In my experience, too many of us, to our discredit, focus on what’s already happened,

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as opposed to what’s about to happen. That might seem to some, firefighters know and has to change, and it can change by a better accept the fact that, literally, on a moment’s understanding of what needs to be done in notice, they could be called upon to make advance of a problem, then ensuring that the ultimate sacrifice. If that’s not defined as the right people are involved from the onset. leadership, then what is?

If denial blocks change, or if leaders or While the fire service can be rigid and deoperations personnel have limited prior manding, expecting people to "do what we experience in dealing with the effects of say, because we say so,” we recognize that change, potential gains can be lost, thereby this approach doesn’t always work. That necessitating a variety of recovery options. said, we have worked hard to redefine leadDiscussing and planning for change-related ership as "getting people to do what you problems, and then exercising these plans, want them to do because they want to do it.” is a start. The real issue, though, is how we For hundreds of years, the fire service has go about mitigating problems before they gone from practice to theory. The phrase occur. In prevention we have a cure, and it’s “iron men and wooden ladders,” referring in this area that government and industry to an era when the fire service did little else must collaborate both in planning, in conbut fight fires, embraces an a posteriori trasequence management, and in support of dition as it adjusts to a priori change in an those who everywhere, every day, are every uncertain future, placing new emphasis on nation’s first line of defense. preventing fires as opposed to simply putWhether it’s a tsunami in Japan, an earthting them out. quake in Haiti, a train derailment in India, an Being progressive in such an environment act of terrorism in Bulgaria or a forest fire in involves supporting organizational needs the United States, leaders channel their expeand requirements while effectively prerience as a basis for current and prospective dicting the future. To do otherwise would action. In circumstances such as be to remain stagnant, simply these, the fire service also relies waiting for the next crisis to on its past experience, working to manage.

The 911 FUND optimize its organizational effecThe phrase “the more things was created in tiveness as it factors in prior perchange” inexorably links conthe aftermath of formance indicators. It also works tinuity to change, as Socrates September 11, 2001, to maximize the value of its most noted 2,500 years ago when

by FDNY personnel important asset, its personnel, he said, “Children today are tywho were privileged who see themselves as a family rants.” If we have learned anyto work at the World to be called upon in times of trouthing from the fire service, it is Trade Center that day ble. Here then is the difference, as that one doesn’t have to turn and for many days this is a family of men and women on a television or go to the thereafter. Ever since who are linked by a special bond movies to find a hero. Our he9/11, we’ve worked and a noble calling, that is to save roes are simply down the street, to acquire apparatus, lives at whatever cost. at every local firehouse. firefighting and Firefighters put themselves In an ever-changing world in medical equipment, in harm’s way to protect the citwhich we embrace continuity, then to donate it, izens of all nations. These same change and leadership, the fire along with training, firefighters are also ready to supservice honors those who died, to needy volunteer port one another whenever and by protecting those who live. fire departments and wherever necessary. This was As we tell every new firefighter communities around never truer than in the days folon his or her very first day of the world. 100 percent lowing September 11, when we training: “Be proud! Be brave! of the apparatus and suffered such devastating losses, Be strong! But most of all, Be equipment that we and the international fire comprepared!” receive is donated to munity, and society in general, Stay safe. the 18 countries where came to our aid. we have worked (to While this respect and camadate), for whom access raderie are much appreciated, To contact Stephan Hittman, to these items often if you think about it, it’s really a president of the 911 FUND, INC.: 441 means the difference small measure when compared Central Park Avenue, P.O. Box 644, between life and death to the risks involved in doing this Hartsdale, NY 10530-0644; 914-479-8800 for the firefighters job on a daily basis. Like in the tel; 914-725-7733 fax; www.911fund.org; we're working to help. military, incomprehensible as it or email at hittmann@911fund.org.

OVER THE YEARS, WE’VE SEEN THE USES FOR ELECTRICITY CHANGE. BUT ITS VALUE HASN’T. If you question the value of electricity, consider its role in your daily life. From the comforts and conveniences of home to the time-saving tools at work, electricity is vital to how we live. In 1952, Tri-State was formed as a consumer-owned power provider with the mission of delivering reliable, affordable electricity throughout the rural West. Today, we generate and transmit electricity to our 44-member co-ops who, in turn, serve more than 1.5 million people across a 200,000 square-mile territory. Collectively, we know we’re delivering more than electricity. We’re delivering quality of life.

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C   OMMUNITY | MORE EFFECTIVE PHILANTHROPY

10 STEPS TO BECOMING A MORE EFFECTIVE PHILANTHROPIST

BY BRUCE DEBOSKEY

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any donors look at their charitable efforts and wonder: Are the nonprofit organizations I'm supporting really having an impact? What can I do to make my philanthropy more effective? How can I pass my values on to my children, grandchildren and future generations? How can I find more joy and meaning in my philanthropy? Being an effective philanthropist doesn't depend on the amount of time or money you give, but rather upon how you approach your giving. Here are 10 steps to becoming a more effective philanthropist:

1

Determine why you're giving and what outcomes you want to achieve. The reasons individuals and families give to charitable causes might include compassion, gratitude, tradition, religion, status, peer pressure, tax advantage, guilt, moral duty, ego, reputation, setting an example for or passing values on to family members, creating a legacy and more. You may also seek to help others in need; find a cure or solution to a problem; repay an advantage or opportunity that was provided to you; advance a cause; or preserve some value, principle or thing you believe is important.

2

Develop a strategy to achieve your goals. As with any investment, you must develop a strategy in order to achieve the desired return. First determine why you're giving money to others, and then ascertain what outcomes you want to achieve. These are the first two building blocks of any philanthropic strategy. While determining your strategy, seek input from the four legs of the philanthropic planning table: your tax, financial, legal and philanthropic advisers. Each adviser brings expertise to the table to help you make better, more informed and more strategic philanthropic plans.

3

Volunteer your time. Some people have more time than money while others can contribute both. Volunteering for a charity or cause that is important to you can bring you great satisfaction, help you learn more about the work being done, and it brings skills and energy that achieve even greater impact. Helping a nonprofit organization do its work brings tangible and intangible benefits to both the volunteer and the recipient.

4

Involve your family. Whenever possible, involve your children, grandchildren, siblings, parents and grandparents in your philanthropic endeavors. Every generation has much to teach and to learn from the other. Just as it is incumbent upon older generations to teach those that follow about philanthropy, younger people have much to share with their elders. Working together as a family can help you weave a common thread of shared values, collaboration and purpose that extends beyond philanthropic initiatives and could last for generations.

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5

Research before you give. With more than 1.4 million nonprofits in the United States–500,000 of which were created since 2000–it takes more than a glossy brochure or snappy website to tell you which ones are achieving real outcomes and which are not.

Research and analysis helps you determine which charities are worth your investment of time and money.

6

Give boldly during your lifetime. People rarely donate so much money or time to charity in their lifetimes that they can no longer take care of themselves or their loved ones. Many have the capacity to give far more than they do without sacrificing the quality of their lives or that of their descendents. Working with a financial adviser, you can determine

your philanthropic capacity to give. Not only does giving during your lifetime create more opportunities for satisfaction and greater impact, it enables you to change your strategy if desired outcomes are not being achieved.

7

Add charity to your estate plan. That said, your last will and testament is the last chance you will have to pass on more than money to your heirs and to make a difference that lives on in the world. Your will can be a reflection of your values and priorities and can help inform your descendents about what is and was important to you during your lifetime. Shape your philanthropic legacy thoughtfully and strategically–it will help create a better world after you're gone, but you’ll also help those who

will follow you understand you and what you cared about.

8

Go deep, not wide. Focus your giving and volunteering on fewer charities where you can make a real difference rather than spreading them thinly across many beneficiaries. Going deep enables you to learn more about the causes you support, develop a more productive partnership with those organizations, and achieve more significant outcomes.

9

Evaluate and change. Many people donate to the same charities year after year without learning whether any real progress has been made toward achieving their desired goals. When your donation is made,

ensure that the nonprofit beneficiary will be responsible for providing you the information you’ll need to evaluate the real impacts of your philanthropic initiatives. Revise your strategy if they are less than optimal.

10

Start now! Your community, nation and world need you today. Philanthropy is like love–the sooner you make philanthropy a cornerstone of your life, the sooner you will deepen the joy, meaning and purpose of living.

Bruce DeBoskey is a Colorado-based philanthropic adviser helping families, businesses and foundations with their philanthropic initiatives. Reach him at bruce@ deboskeygroup.com.

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he celebrated Denver Art Museum has embraced the next stage in the evolution of contemporary conservation. The variable media program benefits from the enlightened goals of Kate Moomaw, assistant conservator for modern and contemporary art at the Denver Art Museum. In creating a program to preserve media such as film, audio and in general art using technology takes collaboration between artists, conservators and museums. The physical fragility of film, the technology challenge and the transforming experience of the Internet are taken into consideration by art collectors and curators in how, if at all, to maintain variable media. Within modern and contemporary conservation, accounting for electronic elements has proven to be much more complex than the more established traditional methods. And so, a look behind the scenes at the Denver Art Museum with Moomaw is both formative and exciting.

» Alan Rath, Family, 1994. Suitcase, handcuffs, chain and CRTs. Denver Art Museum; Gift of Vicki and Kent Logan to the collection of the Denver Art Museum. Image: © The artist; courtesy the artist.

An Approach To Variable Media:

MODERN AND CONTEMPORARY ART CONSERVATION The Denver Art Museum

BY MARIA E. LUNA

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ICOSA: What prompted the creation of the variable media program?

MOOMAW: The Denver Art Museum (DAM) has rather organically collected a number of variable media artworks in the past few decades, and at the same time, awareness of the complex preservation needs of works like these has grown within the art conservation community. There are now specialists in the conservation of variable media working in museums such as the Tate, the Museum of Modern Art and the Guggenheim, and there is even a master’s program dedicated to this specialization in Bern, Switzerland.

A few years ago, it had become clear that the museum had amassed a small but rich collection of video, audio, light, sound and kinetic artworks and that (1) these works from the collection could make up a compelling exhibition and (2) we needed to convene a group of staff with a number of skill sets to prepare them both for exhibition and their long-term life in the collection. The results were the exhibition “Blink! Light, Sound and the Moving Image,” which was on view at the DAM in 2011, and was curated by Jill Desmond, and the formation of the variable media task force, made up of curators, registrars, collection managers, information technology specialists and conservators.

The process of preparing works for “Blink!” brought to the forefront the complexity and fragility of this class of artworks, and

the success of "Blink!" made it clear that our collection would continue to grow. Thus the task force has carried on to put in place protocols for processing newly acquired works, and ensuring that works already in the collection will be exhibitable down the line.

ICOSA: What roles do you have in the program?

MOOMAW: I am the museum’s conservator for modern and contemporary art, and I focus on the conservation of modern and contemporary sculptures, three-dimensional objects, and those works that fall under the variable media umbrella.

As a conservator, my first concern is for the long-term preservation of the works of art under my care. I have some training in the archiving of film, video and audio materials, and am working now to determine which works in the collection are highest priority for this type of preservation work.

For these materials, preservation often means migrating, basically copying, the content of video or audio recordings onto a new tape format, or increasingly, into a digital file that is stored on a server. Migration is necessary as the tapes themselves can degrade over time, putting the content at risk, or types of tapes can become obsolete as playback equipment and parts are no longer manufactured.

I rely on our associate collections manager, Julie Brown, and her expertise in storage protocols to store our tapes and playback equipment properly, and I also work closely with Julie and associate registrar, Sarah Cucinella-McDaniel, to ensure that

"The process of preparing works for “Blink!” brought to the forefront the complexity and fragility of this class of artworks, and the success of "Blink!" made it clear that our collection would continue to grow."- Kate Moomaw

these artworks are documented carefully on our collection management database. Documentation of the original state of these artworks (through photography, technical descriptions, visual descriptions, charts, diagrams, etc.), of the artist’s views on the works and their changing states and of all migrations or changes made to the works over time is essential to our understanding of them now and in the future.

ICOSA: Are you a practicing artist?

MOOMAW: I am not a practicing artist. However, Andrew Edwards, one of our IT specialists on the variable media task force, is pursuing his master’s degree in digital arts at the University of Denver and brings to the table an artist’s perspective along with technical know-how in digital video.

ICOSA: What is variable media at the DAM? What processes and practices are included when determining what artwork will be recreated?

MOOMAW: To us at the DAM, this class of artworks includes video, audio, software-based, electronic, kinetic, installation and other types of artworks that have special preservation needs that depart from the traditional preservation paradigm. Preservation of traditional artworks aims to bring deterioration or change to a halt, and to keep the object in the most static state possible. On the other hand, variable media artworks either change as a part of

» Mark Amerika, CODEWORK, 2003. Digital projection with surround sound, 8 minutes. Denver Art Museum; Polly and Mark Addison, Alliance for Contemporary Art and departmental acquisition funds. Image: © The artist; courtesy the artist.

their nature, or must be physically changed in some way in order for them to remain viable and exhibitable. Many such works need to be remade, or copied into a new format, to address technological obsolescence. Some are designed to be remade each time they are exhibited.

Some may change in dimensions or arrangement for each new exhibition location. Information about all of the various forms of these artworks must be carefully created and retained to understand the work as a whole, and to ensure the works’ authentic existence in the future.

The process of determining the preservation needs of an individual artwork is driven by a number of different things. At present, I am conducting a survey of the video artworks in the collection to determine which works are most at danger of loss or damage from

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degradation or obsolescence of the tapes.

Those most at risk will be higher priority for migration to new formats, by experts in video postproduction.

Some changes to artworks are necessitated by exhibition. When a variable media artwork is exhibited, conditions may have changed since the last time it was displayed.

For example, we have one work in the collection by the artist Nam June Paik called “Electronic Fish” that originally relied on analog TV signals for it to function. However, these days all TV signals are digital, so a digital to analog converter had to be installed in this work in order for it to operate.

In the world of variable media preservation, it is often said that the best way to maintain these types of works is to put them on display. This is when realizations are made about changes in technology that affect the artwork or when playback and display equipment can be assessed for condition problems. Frequent exhibition of these works assists in addressing these problems before technology has completely outpaced the artwork, and while parts for old playback equipment and knowledge of repair are still available.

ICOSA: What artwork have you found challenging to preserve?

MOOMAW: Some of the most challenging artworks to preserve are those that are unique objects made out of ephemeral or unstable materials. Though some artists create works from materials like cut flowers, chocolate, or even ice, and intend them to change, or fall

Artists and conservators often look at artworks from very different perspectives.

One classic case is the conservator who is trying to preserve an older work in its original state and the artist who sees a conservation treatment as a chance to improve or fix the work. - Kate Moomaw 82

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» Nam June Paik, Electronic Fish, 1986. Mixed media sculpture with a 1948 Philco TV console, rabbit ears, aquarium, black light, TV and sound. Denver Art Museum; Funds from Judy and Ken Robins, Susan and John Madden and the Acquisition Challenge Grant. Image: © Estate of Nam June Paik; courtesy Denver Art Museum.

apart over time, other artists choose ephemeral materials because they are at hand, inexpensive, easy to use, or they simply like their unique material properties. One such artwork that I worked on at the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in Washington, D.C., was the sculpture “Fishman” by Paul Thek. “Fishman” was made from a mold of the artist’s own body and was cast in latex rubber. One can speculate that Thek liked the skin-like elasticity of the rubber when it was new and its ability to pick up the fine details of the mold, the fine hairs, the pores of his skin and the like. Unfortunately, latex is a fairly unstable material and degrades quickly with exposure to air–the only way to significantly slow down deterioration is to place it in an oxygen-free environment. “Fishman” was made in 1968, and by the late 1990s the latex had become hardened, distorted, brittle and much darker in color. I made several repairs to “Fishman” in 2010, and it went on display at the Whitney Museum in the Paul Thek retrospective. However, it was clearly much changed from its original state, and in this case, for a number of reasons, making a copy was not an option. For artwork like this, there is a fine line between the work living to convey something of what it originally was and simply lasting on as a mere relic. The difficulty lies in making this call and providing the interpretive context in which a much-altered work might succeed.

For variable media works, we do often have the opportunity to migrate media onto new formats and keep ahead of physical deterioration like that of “Fishman.” However, technological

obsolescence may eventually have a big impact on certain works that rely on very specific types of equipment. For instance, “Looker II”

by Alan Rath in the collection of the DAM is a sculptural video work with small CRT monitors that are the work’s eyes. CRT monitors are no longer made, and it is becoming harder and harder to find replacement parts and knowledgeable repair technicians. There may very well come a day when the CRT monitors of “Looker II” can no longer be repaired or replaced. What happens then? Do we try to use a different type of monitor, thus changing the appearance of the work significantly, or do we let it go? These are the really tough decisions.

ICOSA: What is it like to collaborate with artists when trying to preserve their artwork?

MOOMAW: Every artist and every situation is different, but to me, it is always an edifying process. Artists and conservators often look at artworks from very different perspectives. One classic case is the conservator who is trying to preserve an older work in its original state and the artist who sees a conservation treatment as a chance to improve or fix the work.

The conservator typically looks at a work of art from a historical perspective–the point is to freeze that authentic moment in time– while the artist may see the work as a living thing, part of his or her continuing practice, perhaps something to be revisited again and again. In these situations, in order to maintain a productive relationship between the parties, I think it’s important to keep in mind that neither viewpoint is “wrong.” There is value in both perspectives and siding with one or the other–which ultimately may have to happen– necessitates some form of loss.

Artists and conservators also tend to have overlapping but ultimately different bodies of knowledge of materials and techniques. I have learned a lot from artistic approaches to materials, and when it comes to digital, video and other electronic media, in my case, the artists are often the true experts!

Thus, the process of collaboration involves quite a lot of back and forth communication, trying to learn what the other person knows and what his or her outlook is exchanging knowledge, and trying to come to consensus, or at least understanding, about how to best approach preservation.

In the past decade or so, there has been a great deal published in the conservation

community about techniques for interviewing artists, and for recording and interpreting such interviews. We all hope that this material will help curators and conservators in the future, who are tasked with interpreting these artworks after their makers are gone. One of the challenges of interviewing variable media artists is anticipating changes to artworks that may be necessary in the future, as well as asking questions about details of artworks that may seem inherent and obvious in one state, but may not be so after a work is migrated. For instance, a film-based work may be shown with the film projector running in a gallery, producing the humming and clicking sounds that film projectors make. Should it become necessary to reformat the film to video, the film projector goes away as well as the sound it makes. The question is whether that sound component is actually an important part of the artwork or not. And if it is an important part of the work, should it be artificially reproduced in that scenario? Or is the work not really the work without the actual film projector in the gallery?

ICOSA: Are there any artists you particularly admire?

MOOMAW: One artist I particularly admire for her intense level of dedication to her work is the performance artist Marina Abramović. In many of her works, she has tested the limits of her body

» Alan Rath, Looker II, 1990. CRTs, electronic equipment, acrylic and aluminum. Denver Art Museum; purchased with funds from the BonfilsStanton Foundation. Image: © The artist; courtesy Denver Art Museum.

and mind through actions like prolonged immobility, cutting or whipping herself, binding herself to her former partner Ulay, or making herself totally passive and vulnerable to an audience of strangers. In recent years, she has taken an interest in reviving past performances by other artists, and in 2005, she performed seven such works over the course of seven nights at the Guggenheim Museum in New York. Performance art is now being collected by museums and is perhaps the most intangible of variable media types. Abramović has been a real trailblazer for the field of performance art preservation through her writings, talks and performances.

A great majority of art collectors and museums will need to restore variable media. Finding opportunities in the approach and solving problems are striking when stories behind the restoration are told. When viewing variable media or any artwork, consider what has made it possible to be displayed, what materials were used and how it might relate to you, and that will illustrate in part why the artwork is at the museum. Conservation of variable media may sometimes be admonitory, but is always inspiring.

For more information about the Denver Art Museum, visit www.denverartmuseum.org.

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COLLABORATION CLOSE UP

Thorkil Sonne Named Schwab Foundation’s 2012 Social Entrepreneur Awardee

BY KEENAN BRUGH

A

utism is a common label for people who have difficulties with social interaction and communication. Because of these challenges, those on the autism spectrum have difficulty finding and maintaining employment. However, a promising new model reconsiders these people and their special abilities. Thorkil Sonne has recently become a prominent international advocate for autism.

A Danish information technology (IT) professional who learned his own son was autistic, Sonne created Specialisterne, an IT company that would hire intelligent, autistic workers to perform quality assurance (QA) services for client companies. In many of these QA positions, social skills are less important than are abilities of concentration and detailed recall. After proving the concept’s potential, Sonne’s Specialist People Foundation now has a goal of enabling one million jobs for people around the world with autism and similar challenges.

ICOSA’s involvement with this story began when Steve Allen reached out to our publisher, Gayle Dendinger. Within Colorado, Allen has been a leader in educating employers about the benefits of hiring persons with disabilities. The discussion led to encouraging businesses to learn from best practices. Allen contacted Sonne and his foundation to begin making connections for the state

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of Colorado. Because Colorado fosters a large IT sector, and the initial interest from business community members was high, ICOSA sponsored a stakeholder gathering at the Denver Botanic Gardens where Sonne introduced himself and his ideas. The next step is working with individuals, businesses and foundations that can contribute financially to make the Colorado connection a reality.

The Specialist People Foundation is receiving attention from many companies and governments around the world. Their ideas are valuable for both the autistic individuals and larger society because they help convert previously dependent people into highly productive citizens employed in a well-paying field. During the World Economic Forum’s Annual Meeting of New Champions, Sonne was announced as a 2012 Social Entrepreneur Awardee by the Schwab Foundation. After traveling around the world, Sonne will return to Colorado to continue implementation here in the U.S.

ABOVE&BEYOND

ACADEMIC | HEALTHCARE | CORPORATE | GOVERNMENT | INSTITUTIONAL | LIFE SCIENCES

Consigli is, and always will be, a family-owned business. Originally founded in 1905 as a masonry contractor, Consigli has grown from its roots as a well-respected local contractor to a leading construction manager and general contractor serving clients across New England and New York.

“Our people have a passion for building above all else. We thrive on complex projects that challenge our creativity and call for innovation. We know we must compete and earn our work every day, and that leaders do that best. We know that sustaining our team requires that we recruit, train, mentor and motivate.”

- Anthony Consigli CONSIGLI CONSTRUCTION CO., INC. Construction Managers and General Contractors www.consigli.com

MILFORD, MA | WILLIAMSTOWN, MA | HARTFORD, CT | PORTLAND, ME | PLEASANT VALLEY, NY

COLLABORATION CLOSE UP

A

ICOSA’s Jan Mazotti is the 2012 Communication, Media and PR Outstanding Woman in Business As Recognized by the Denver Business Journal On August 17, 2012, ICOSA’s President and Editor-in-Chief Jan Mazotti, was recognized by the Denver Business Journal as the 2012 Communication, Media & PR Outstanding Woman in Business. Since its inception just three-and-a-half years ago the small, but committed ICOSA team has grown the magazine to one that has web presence in 28 countries and reaches almost 10,000 subscribers domestically.

Colorado Remembers 9/11 WHAT DOES 2:04.06 MEAN?

BY MARIA E. LUNA

I The quarterly magazine has also expanded to include weekly TV and radio components as well. To get your free subscription to ICOSA visit, www.theicosamagazine. com. To listen to the radio show in the Denver market tune in every Saturday morning at 10:00 a.m. on AM710 KNUS. And to see past interviews with ICOSA change makers, visit the ICOSA YouTube page at www.youtube.com/ user/ICOSAmagazine.

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t’s Olympic gold for Missy Franklin–and a new world record for the 200-meter backstroke. Franklin has proven to be a rising sensation both during and after the recent London 2012 Olympic Games.

Four-time Olympic gold medalist, Missy Franklin is 17-years-old and from Centennial, Colorado.

Before the games started Franklin told the Los Angeles Times, “Right now, all of my races are dedicated back home to Colorado.

No matter how well I do, I'm going to give my best in every single race, and every single race, I'm going to have that Colorado incident on my mind."

gain this year, Colorado paid tribute to the brave men and women with thousands gathering in Denver’s Civic Center Park. The lunchtime function paid tribute not only to the men and women who lost their lives on 9/11, but to the brave and heroic first responders in the wake of the recent Colorado wildfires, as well as the Aurora movie theatre massacre.

Governor John Hickenlooper, Denver Mayor Michael Hancock, Aurora Mayor Steve Hogan, John Elway and Hazel Miller spoke and/or performed during the moving yet appreciative event that was hosted by The Counterterrorism Education Learning Lab (The CELL). The CELL is dedicated to preventing terrorism through education, empowerment, and engagement ultimately enhancing public safety.

Again this year, CAP Logistics was proud to carry the World Trade Center artifacts from their secure location to the park for the remembrance. New York Fire Truck Rescue 4 was also brought in for the event. It is the single rescue truck from 9/11 that remains, yet all of its firefighters lost their lives.

For more information on The CELL visit, www.thecell.org.

Franklin’s kind-hearted remarks have made her a community role model.

Franklin’s performances at the Games were inspiring. Franklin took part in several Olympic events, and medaled in the following events: 100-meter backstroke–Gold; 200-meter backstroke–Gold and set a new world record; 4x100 freestyle–Bronze; 4x200 freestyle–Gold; and the 4x100 medley–Gold. She also competed in the 100-meter freestyle where she finished fifth, and the 200-meter freestyle where she finished fourth.

Interestingly, Franklin’s swimming career has remained unorthodox as she has had the same coach throughout her career and has turned down several endorsements to meet NCAA regulations so that she could retain college swimming eligibility.

With character, Missy Franklin has become the new face of U.S. swimming.

To keep up to date with Missy Franklin follow her on Twitter, @FranklinMissy.

More POWER is Prevailing West Join us in Keystone, Colorado for the Western Energy Leadership Summit for a frank and decisive conversation about the key policies and investment for power generation, electricity, natural gas and energy infrastrcture. A quiet setting in Keystone will provide the backdrop for a gathering of key executives and leaders in government with a major election just weeks away that will shape the framework for the electricity and natural gas sector for the next decade.

With key energy state governors and provincial leaders from Canada, the debates and discussions will reveal new partnerships, cooperation and challenges to address the billions of investments that are needed to build the electricity and natural gas infrastructure to fuel the growing western states.

North America’s electricity sector is poised for dramatic changes in the next ten years. With increased energy demand, coal plant closings and nearly unlimited natural gas reserves, a new energy paradigm is underway to invest and build the infrastructure that will change the energy landscape for generations.

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Would Like To Thank The Following Friends For Their Inspiration

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Cynthia Baker Gary Black Andy Boian John Boner JD Chesloff Anthony Consigli Matthew Consigli Culler Middle School Bruce DeBoskey Kelly de la Torre Denver Art Museum Rob Dietrich Dovetail Solutions Eric Drummond Energy Efficiency Business Coalition

Diane Irvin Larry Johnson Yasuhiro Kanbe Ashley Kellogg Kevin Kersting Rebecca Kersting Kobe University Dr. Keiko Krahnke Dr. Gina Kunz Vladimir Kush Valerie Lefler LifeQuest Transitions Massachusetts Business Roundtable Tatianna Massaro

Faegre Baker Daniels LLP

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CAPITAL INTELLIGENCE. CAPITOL INSIGHTS. Patton Boggs’ Energy and Natural Resources Group A proud supporter of ICOSA

Eric Drummond 1801 California Steet Suite 4900 Denver, CO 80202 303.894.6131 edrummond@pattonboggs.com