Interview with Ronnie Bryant, President & CEO, Charlotte Regional Partnership

As president & CEO of the Charlotte Regional Partnership, Ronnie Bryant promotes the 16-county Charlotte, North Carolina region as a location for expanding and relocating businesses. Prior to joining CRP, Ronnie was president and chief operating officer of the Pittsburgh Regional Alliance and senior vice president of the Economic Development Division of the St. Louis Regional Chamber and Growth Association. Ronnie, who is widely known in economic development and nonprofit circles, is the immediate past-chair of the International Economic Development Council. I worked closely with Ronnie when he chaired the IEDC Governance Task Force that come up with a number of recommendations for transforming the IEDC Board of Directors into a much higher-impact governing body.

I recently talked with Ronnie about building and maintaining strong business involvement in the CRP Board of Directors and other governing bodies he’s worked with.

Doug: Ronnie, you’ve spent over a quarter-century working with high-level business executives serving on economic development boards. What have you learned about keeping business leaders actively involved as board members?

Ronnie: The preeminent key to sustained, productive business involvement on nonprofit boards like ours at the Charlotte Regional Partnership is passion. The business leaders, in my experience, who remain actively involved in governing over the long haul believe passionately about the CRP mission and really care about making an impact on our region. Just wanting to do good in some vague way won’t cut it where involvement is concerned. Two other important factors that are key to active involvement are, first, making sure your board members deal with the highest-stakes, most complex issues facing your organization, not getting bogged down in minor details, and, second, actually making progress – taking action – in dealing with these issues.

As you well know, Doug, business leaders reach the top in their corporations by focusing on results, and they expect to make a real difference when they spend time governing. If all they’re doing as board members is reviewing and discussing documents, and they can’t see that they’re having much of an impact on the organization they’re governing, they won’t be around for long, believe me. Of course, rubbing elbows with peers – making professional and social contacts at the right level – is a powerful incentive for staying active on a board, in my experience, as is something many board members are reluctant to admit: ego satisfaction. You and I have discussed this on more than one occasion in our work together over the years, and we agree that the kind of high-achieving people you want on your board are motivated by simple things like public recognition for their service, having the opportunity to chair an important committee, and participating in meetings with key stakeholders.

Doug: In your experience, what kinds of things can erode business leaders’ commitment to, and participation in, a board?

Ronnie: I can think of one other thing that’s causing problems these days in terms of keeping business people involved in nonprofit boards, and that’s the erosion of corporate ties to local communities as ownership changes happen more and more often. There was a time when in cities like Pittsburgh you could count on a major manufacturing firm or bank to be heavily involved in civic affairs because they were firmly rooted in the community that they saw as their home base. That’s becoming a thing of the past unfortunately.

In the last few years, as everything has started to move faster and faster, time has become a huge barrier to business people’s participation in nonprofit governing, and to civic affairs generally. These days, when we approach a business leader about involvement with the Charlotte Regional Partnership, one of the first questions we get is, “What’s the time commitment I’m expected to make?” Now, given the concern about time, nothing can erode commitment faster than non-productive, time-consuming work, like poorly designed board committees that have show-and-tell meetings that generate more words than action. That’s one of the reasons that the Charlotte Regional Partnership Board launched the governance improvement initiative that you worked with us on, Doug; we fine-tuned our Board committee structure to make sure that it made really good use of committee members’ time. Another thing I’ve seen make it harder to get business leaders involved in governing is allowing your board’s membership to become diluted so that peers aren’t any longer meeting with peers. You don’t necessarily need to have an all-CEO board, of course, but if you do want heavy-hitter board members, you’d better make sure your board has a critical mass of them so that peers are rubbing elbows with peers.

Doug: A closing question, Ronnie: How have you gotten the business leaders on the boards you’ve worked with over the years involved in external relations?

Ronnie: I’ve found that the business leaders on my boards over the years have always been willing to make specific contacts when they’re asked: for example, a CEO calling another CEO in the community about investing in CRP, or getting in touch with the CEO of a company considering re-locating to the Charlotte region. I’ve always invited my board chairs to join me in critical meetings with important stakeholders, and when it makes sense we share the podium as speakers. But I’ve found that the majority of business people on boards can’t really make a commitment to do regular public speaking. They’re just too busy.