New One Southern Indiana CEO talks goals, plans for growth
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In February, Lance Allison was named the new CEO of One Southern Indiana, the chamber of commerce and economic development organization for Clark and Floyd counties. He succeeded Wendy Dant Chesser, who stepped down to take a leadership role at the River Ridge Development Authority in Jeffersonville.
Now several months on the job, Allison—who has previously led chambers of commerce in Kentucky and Florida—said he wants to focus on continuing growth in the area.
Allison spoke with Inside INdiana Business about the challenges he sees and his short-term and long-term goals for himself and the organization.
This interview has been edited for brevity and clarity.
Tell me about your background before you came to One Southern Indiana.
I spent 20 years in small business as a photography and half of that 20 owning it. I finished up a master’s degree around 2007, and just kind of was looking to do something different. I’ve been a small business guy for 20 years, and then the chamber of commerce job in Murray {Kentucky] opened up, and it just looked like it had a lot of things I like to do. I started with the Murray Chamber of Commerce in 2008, quickly fell in love with the industry, and one of the reasons that I thought I did such a good job is because the majority of our members are small business, and I’m a small business person.
So I started to do professional development on my own and learning all that I could. I found my way down to Panama City Beach [Florida] and ran the chamber there for three years. That was very enjoyable, but life throws you curveballs sometimes, and I found myself needing to get back to Murray, but there weren’t any chamber jobs open. I got a call from a buddy of mine who owned engineering firm, so I went to work for him doing business development and it turned into content marketing and relationship building.
I did that for eight years, and then around last May, I knew that I was going to get back in the game. Then this 1si [job] opened up, so I put in my application and went through the interview process and somehow convinced them I was the right guy at the right time.
What has the learning curve been for you in the first few months in your new role?
During that process of interviewing, I was very nervous, partly because I didn’t have direct economic development experience with the chambers I was at. But what I found out during the course of the interview, what’s becoming even more true as I get into this role, is that time with an engineering firm and kind of a corporate structure actually benefited me more than had I come here from another chamber.
I think the biggest learning curve was understanding economic development. In the chamber world, tere’s not that many that do both; usually they’re separate organizations. So learning that aspect of it, understanding it better really comes down to relationships. That’s just kind of the core of everything.
Then you have to get down into understanding the community because I’m not from here. I’m from the western part of Kentucky. There are a lot of cultural shared values, but I don’t know navigating the counties that we serve. So that’s part of the learning process, too, and so I’m really pleased so far.
Some things have moved faster than I expected them to, and I think a lot of that has to do with just the welcoming nature of this area, and then, of course, the top notch staff that I have that plugged me in and raised me up and given me all the knowledge and tools I need to be successful.
What are some of the challenges that you’re seeing at least in these first few months to continue the growth that the Clark and Floyd County region has been seeing lately?
What’s unique right now is that there has been a tremendous amount of success in this area. River Ridge [Commerce Center] is driving that. Novaparke is driving that. So you ask yourself the question, “Where is the saturation point? Where’s the stopper?”
But what I’m finding out is that the potential is still growing every day here. Some of the factors that limit other communities—maybe either they’re landlocked or they have too many things going on in one sector—don’t really seem to be affecting us here. We’ve got a very nicely balanced industry. We still have growth, various places that we can go. There’s not a barrier right now going on that’s going to stop us from continuing to establish success.
And then, of course, you look into the challenges of making sure that our small businesses and medium-sized businesses are healthy and that we’re doing everything we can to shore them up and provide services and be relevant. Your chambers of commerce always want to be relevant because that business is investing into the organization, and they’re expecting a return. Being relevant to the member is key, because when they have the electric bill on the desk and the chamber investment bill on their desk, I don’t want to thinking about whether they should pay that chamber bill or not.
We want to continually evolve. So asking yourself those questions of what I need to do more of, what I do less of, what I need to start doing, what I need to stop doing, those sort of things. That’s the thing that we have to ask ourselves constantly to make sure that we’re relevant.
What are some of your short-term goals just looking through the the end of the year?
I think short-term, we’re looking at shoring up programming, making sure that what we’re doing is providing the value that [members are] looking for, listening to the membership, listening to the community, listening to our legislators and making sure that our path is still on the right way.
While we do that, we’re going to essentially turn ourselves inside out and take a look at it and say, “Okay, let’s expose everything that we’re doing here, and are we doing it right? What needs to be done better? What what do we need to stop doing? And I think that’s key for the short term.
My personal short-term goal is really just making sure that I’m ingrained into the community, the business community, the community at large, so that I can keep having a greater understanding of what those needs are and what we can provide for that. So for me, it’s very much an educational process of the community and the business community. I think that’s probably where you say, “All right, is there a disadvantage of being new?” Yes, there are some limitations in there, but that’s also the advantage, because it’s fresh set of eyes.
And what are your long-term goals?
I think we want to continue to see growth. On the economic development side, we want to continue to see growth in the industry and bring in industry and expansion, making sure that we keep our industries here healthy. I think on the chamber side, our long-term goal also is expansion into providing more targeted services to the members but also growing that membership base—growing it to a level where you can manage and continue to provide that excellent level of service but understanding that growing is going to make us better. So I think long-term we’re looking at overall chamber growth.