business backgrounder | economy
AWB honored
veterans of the
Vietnam War-era
during an emotional
surprise ceremony
after Gen. Stanley
McChrystal’s
keynote Policy
Summit address.
“We don’t agree on everything,
but we have a lot of common ground.
Economic growth is one of them.”
—Gov. Jay Inslee
state needs to pass a substantial comprehensive transportation
package. It’s simply a matter of competitiveness.
“These are big needs, these are big, expensive projects,”
Balducci said, noting that her city flourishes in large part
because it is located in the middle of three major transportation
corridors. “The state needs to step up to its obligation or the
cities are going to start to suffer, and that means our people are
going to suffer and our businesses are going to suffer. They’ll
have to locate elsewhere and we’ll lose strength.”
The mayors also agreed that their cities have no plans nor
desires to increase the minimum wage. It’s a statewide issue,
they said, since tracking and enforcing the administration of
a city-specific minimum wage would be a nightmare both for
businesses and city staff.
“I do not support increasing it at the municipal level.
How am I ever going to enforce that? Where do we even start?”
said Condon.
leadership on the front lines
The day ended with a powerful keynote address from Gen.
Stanley McChrystal. Drawing lessons from his battlefield
experiences in Iraq and Afghanistan, he said that every worker —
nurses, construction workers, teachers — is on the front lines of
one battle or another.
McChrystal began his 38-year military career, he said, believing that leaders are heroic figures in uniforms, preferably on a
horse. He came to appreciate a different model of leadership,
embodied in people like Rosa Parks and Martin Luther King, Jr.,
who set an example and kindle the connections between others
that lead to truly important and effective work.
Strong personal relationships, he said, are what lead to
trust, shared purpose, common ownership of a problem and
collaborative solutions.
As supreme commander of allied forces in Afghanistan,
McChrystal set up daily 90-minute meetings, held electronically and in person, that connected 7,500 people from diverse
agencies around the world. Those are the people who solve
problems, not the leader, he said.
“My role changed from making decisions to creating a
system in which people operated. That built relationships,”
McChrystal said.
AWB President Kris Johnson, after thanking McChrystal for
his insights, called all Vietnam War-era veterans up to the stage
to formally thank them for their service. It was part of an official
Department of Defense
commemoration of the
50th anniversary of
videos
the beginning of the
2014 Policy Summit wrap-up:
Vietnam War.
bit.ly/awbsummit14video
“ We w i l l a l w a y s
remember, we will always
25th Anniversary
honor, and we will always
Policy Summit Retrospective:
salute you for your serbit.ly/awb25rewind
vice,” Johnson said.
Commemoration of
It w a s a p owe r f u l
Vietnam War-era Veterans:
moment during a memobit.ly/vietnamvets2014
rable — and milestone
— Policy Summit.
winter 2015 33